The book I remember most was called Spoon River Anthology. It was about the people of a town called Spoon River. It wasn’t a regular book, it was more of a collection of poems that served as epitaphs on the townspeople’s graves. As my mother read each epitaph we got to know more about the townspeople—how their lives were interconnected and how they treated one another. The poems revealed people’s secrets and their cruelty toward each other. They exposed hypocrisy and sometimes revealed how people had gotten revenge for the harm that had been done to them.
The book was not a children’s book and I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I loved the fact that I was with my mother, that she was reading to me, and that we were sharing something important together. I could tell my mother was moved by the words in the book. Sometimes she’d cry a little as she read one of the poems, and other times she would sit quietly without saying anything after she’d finished reading one, like she was letting it sink in. Other times she nodded her head in understanding as she read a particular poem. Like entry number 8, Amanda Barker:
Henry got me with child,
Knowing that I could not bring forth life
Without losing my own.
And even at nine years old, there was one entry that touched me personally. It was entry number 202, Mabel Osborne:
Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium! . . .
. . . Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water! . . .
. . . And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness;
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved your love,
Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—
Thirsting, thirsting . . .
part two
dark and ugly things
“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent?”
—Anne Rice, Merrick
chapter 13
Good things don’t last long but bad things last forever. That’s what I was learning. I loved living in Ceres, going to the little country school, watching the Mickey Mouse Club with Gail after school, and reading books at night with my mother. But Momma decided she couldn’t take it any longer. She couldn’t find a job, and she told me she was too old to be selling cosmetics door-to-door. So she called Ruby and asked her to come pick us up.
I was happy to see Ruby, and I could tell Momma was too, in spite of the fact that she said she felt like a failure and a fool for having moved out of Bakersfield in the first place.
“I was just getting on my feet. Whatever possessed me to move to Sonora is beyond me,” she chastised herself. “Now I’m going to have to start all over again.”
Ruby and Momma sat in the front seat and I sat in the back. We put Sandy in a wooden box and placed her in the backseat next to me. She cried almost the whole trip.
While we drove, I fantasized about seeing Pam again. I pictured the look on her face when she first saw me, how she’d give me a big hug. I imagined what it would be like to spend the day together in her room, safe but free to dream. I liked Gail a lot, but it wasn’t the same as with Pam. We didn’t have as much in common. Gail’s grandmother loved her a lot, you could tell, and I think her parents loved her too. All that love made her a cheerful, secure child, not sad and uncertain like Pam and me.
When we got back to Bakersfield, we had to live with Ruby and Steve for a while, until Momma could get a job and afford to pay rent. Ruby and Steve had gotten married while we were away in Sonora and Ceres, and Ruby had bought a house on Lake Street, about a mile from the court. Living with Ruby and Steve seemed like a great adventure to me, but I could tell that Momma wasn’t happy about having to once again live off some-one’s charity.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Momma to get a part-time job working at night at a nearby grocery store. Ruby also worked at night at the Little Brown Jug. That meant that Steve needed to watch me every night.
This didn’t seem to be a problem because I knew Steve liked me and wanted to be with me. He didn’t act like babysitters I’d had in the past, women who were nice to me because they were being paid and who constantly let me know I was in the way, or friends of my mother’s who watched me just because they liked my mother so much and wanted to do something nice for her.
While Steve was cordial to my mother, he wasn’t as caught up in her charm as other people were. In fact, it seemed to me that he liked me better than he liked my mother. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to spend time alone with me. This was all new to me. No one, other than Pam, had ever liked me more than they liked my mother. And unlike my mother and Ruby, Steve didn’t mind me chattering at him.
My first night alone with Steve I followed him into the dark garage in the backyard. It was filled with machines and parts of machines and lots of tools all crammed in together. There was a heavy, thick smell to all that oily metal. Steve picked up a wrench and sat down in front of a machine and studied it intently. Then he started turning a part on the machine with the wrench. As he worked, he explained what he was doing. The words he spoke sounded like a foreign language to me, but it felt so good for him to include me. It made me feel like an adult.
Several nights later, Steve looked at a magazine
