Moonlight on Linoleum Read online

  Vicki would have welcomed my participation, but I had more pressing things to worry about—the cow, Cathy impatiently wondering where we were, dirtying our shoes if we did end up walking through the muddy field.

  “I wish Mommy would come get us in the car.” Vicki sighed.

  I stared at her in disbelief. I knew she did not mean Mama. She meant Cathy. I threw down the stick I had been holding and lunged toward her.

  “Don’t ever call Cathy ‘Mommy’ again,” I yelled, messing up the leaves in front of her. “She’s not our mother!”

  Vicki shrank away from me, crinkled her freckled nose, and began to cry. My reaction frightened her more than the cow. All she wanted was a mother waiting for her at home, a mother who would jump into the car and rescue us from our plight. Cathy was willing to become our mommy, but I couldn’t allow Mama to be forgotten. My memory of her was all I had left.

  WE SHARED good times with Cathy, too. She made us picnics, cooked with us, and fixed our hair. Many Saturday nights we drove into town as a family and Vicki and I were allowed to spend our dime allowance. I dreamed all week of what I would buy.

  I walked up and down the candy aisle of the grocery store auditioning three of my favorite candy bars: Butterfinger, Hershey’s, and 3 Musketeers. Then I picked up the Cracker Jacks box, studied the sailor boy and his dog, Bingo, and jiggled the box to garner a clue about the prize inside.

  Cracker Jacks cost ten cents and candy bars five cents. More times than not, I chose the Cracker Jacks. They satisfied my sweet tooth and I liked the prizes (my all-time favorite being a tiny magnifying glass). Still, if I could delay gratification and save my dime for two weeks in a row, Dad generally threw in a buffalo nickel and I ordered the best treat of all—a frosty chocolate malt—at the hamburger joint. As I sipped the thick sweetness and looked across the booth at Dad and Cathy, I tried really hard to see Mama’s face instead of Cathy’s.

  I could never give myself over completely to family life with Dad and Cathy. I feared that I, like Vicki, was forgetting Mama much against my will. Mama had begun to feel more like a ghost to me than a real person. And I had noticed, to my dismay, that Mama’s Polaroid picture on the dresser had begun to fade.

  I also suspected that Mama had begun to forget me and Vicki. The postman had delivered the proof. He brought two presents, one for me and one for Vicki. On Christmas morning, we raced to see who could rip open her package first, as if winning would prove one of us the better. I clawed the paper off in large sheets; a present from Mama was not to be dallied over.

  I lifted the lid and sucked in my breath. Inside was a beautiful blue dress with a bertha collar trimmed in lace. I picked up the dress, swung in a circle, and held the collar beneath my chin. The dress cascaded far below my knees. It took me a moment to figure out that the dress dwarfed me; it was at least two sizes too big. Cathy must have registered the look of disappointment on my face.

  “You’ll grow into it,” she reassured me.

  Sometimes, the unlikeliest things can blow out the flame of hope, like how tall you are in your mother’s mind.

  Me, Vicki, and our panda bear

  Elkhart, Kansas

  I TELL MYSELF IT was the haircut that caused me not to recognize Mama when she finally returned to Iowa for us. I was sprawled on the floor playing solitaire when a man and woman walked into the living room. I looked up briefly and then resumed shuffling the cards.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” Grandma asked.

  I looked up again. The woman’s hair was bobbed and she wore a maternity blouse like Cathy had worn during her pregnancy with Lanny. I couldn’t place the woman . . . until she smiled. That’s when I saw the space between her teeth and I suddenly recognized the smile from my Polaroid picture.

  How can you study a face in a photograph for two years and not recognize that person when she walks into the room? How can you dream of running into your mother’s arms over and over and then feel awkward when you finally stand in her embrace?

  The shock of Mama returning seemed to encase me in a fog. Almost overnight, amid good-byes, promises to return, and packing whatever belongings Dad and Cathy would allow, the landscape of our lives changed again. Only this time Vicki and I climbed into the car and waved good-bye to Dad, Cathy, Lanny, Grandma, and Grandpa. Grandpa pulled out a red kerchief and swiped his eyes.

  I’m not sure what Grandpa thought. Maybe he realized how much Mama’s return meant to me, especially since he had lost his own mother around my age. Or maybe he realized we were growing up and embarking on an adventure beyond his windmill, beyond the farmlands of Iowa, beyond the reach of his embrace. Even though the three of us had never discovered uranium together, we had become rich nonetheless.

  My allegiance would seesaw between the landscapes of my mother and father for a long time to come.

  After turning off the farm road, we headed west toward Kansas. Fields of yellow sunflowers blurred past the open car windows. The air smelled of summer, asphalt, and adventure. My heart hummed with happiness. I had what I had been longing for—a space in Mama’s life. Granted, Mama was almost two years late, and when it came to mothering, I was empty-bellied beyond words, but she had not forgotten. That fact alone made forgiveness spring from my heart.

  I studied the two blue eyes glancing back at me in the rearview mirror. They belonged to Daddy Davy. I hadn’t recognized him, either.

  Court records show that Daddy divorced Mama on December 17, 1955; the judge awarded Daddy custody of our sister, Patricia, only two years old. Daddy moved Patricia into his parents’ farmhouse in East Texas, where his parents and sister helped him care for her. He continued to work the oil fields.

  Mama’s whereabouts during this two-year period remain a mystery. Unencumbered by husbands and children, Mama could come and go as she pleased for the first time in her life. Yet, within seventeen months, she reconciled with Daddy, the man she professed not to love.

  If love did not drive Mama back into Daddy’s arms, what did?

  On May 2, 1957, Mama and Daddy stood in front of the justice of the peace in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and vowed to love each other until death do us part for the second time. I don’t know what Mama or Daddy wore, if they looked happy or sad, or where they went after the ceremony. There are no pictures of this wedding.

  I do know that shortly thereafter Mama and Daddy drove to Iowa to pick up me and Vicki. Unbeknownst to us, Mama, Daddy, Dad, and Cathy had agreed that our visit would be temporary. Come fall, Vicki and I were to return to Iowa to resume school at Elm Grove. Dad and Cathy had talked to me and Vicki about coming back, but I had no idea Mama had agreed to return us at the end of summer.

  Evidently, Mama and Daddy weren’t so much pasting the family back together as they were bringing us to their home to pay a visit. Also, unbeknownst to me, Dad and Cathy had inquired about legal custody, which might explain why we had been instructed not to pack our toys.

  If I had known then what the adults were planning, I might have flung myself to the ground weeping and kicking until everyone agreed I had survived without Mama as long as I possibly could. Anyone who had ever read Lassie knew that once she trekked a thousand miles to find Joe, her journey was over. She was home for good. Any other ending would have been too sad to bear.

  So, upon our arrival in Kansas, when Daddy unloaded our belongings into their one-bedroom rental house, I moved in for good. I imagined we would soon pick up our three-year-old sister, Patricia, who still lived in Texas with Daddy’s parents. I imagined life would return to the way things had been before Mama dropped us off in Iowa.

  That night, when Mama slipped off her clothes and stepped into her nightgown, I discovered why she wore a full, loose blouse over her slacks. A fourth child grew quietly inside her expanding womb. We had a new baby brother or sister on the way. At the time, I didn’t question when, where, or how.

  VICKI AND I were digging in the dirt with spoons, trying to reach China, the day Mama came to the back door. Gray
clouds boiled in the sky. A faint cast of green tinted the air.

  “Time to come in,” she said, pushing open the screen door with her hip and offering us a bite of her peeled banana.

  I grimaced. “I don’t like bananas.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Cathy made us eat black ones. They were awful.”

  “Terry got spanked,” Vicki added, “’cause she threw hers away.”

  “Cathy spanked you?” Mama asked.

  I nodded and Mama frowned.

  The wind picked up. Mama grasped both of her elbows as she paced from window to window. Daddy was away wildcatting (drilling an exploratory oil well). Thunder rattled the windows.

  “Logs are falling off the wagon in heaven,” Vicki said, repeating what Mama had told us caused thunder.

  I watched Mama watching the storm. Dad had been struck by lightning on the farm in Iowa after he and Mama first married. He didn’t remember much about it, but the doctor surmised that his black rubber galoshes had saved him. Storms reminded Mama of opening the door that day to see him crawling in the mud toward the house, blood running from his ear.

  Lightning flashed and thunder clapped. Mama jumped.

  Someone pounded on the front door. It was our neighbor from across the street; her face looked like a puckered peach. She had taken a liking to Mama and probably felt sorry for her, a young pregnant woman with two girls, whose husband traveled a lot, new in town and living in the rental across the street, the one without a storm cellar.

  “Why don’t you and your girls come with me to the storm cellar?” the woman shouted, holding her flapping hood close to her face. “Might be a twister coming!”

  Mama grabbed our hands and we trotted behind the neighbor lady toward a mound in her side yard. She and Mama lifted two wooden doors that folded out and away from each other. We climbed down cobwebbed steps leading into a dark hole in the earth. I was terrified of spiders and could almost feel them crawling on my skin. The old woman fumbled in the darkness, struck a match, and lit a kerosene lamp. The smell of sulfur filled the air as she shook out the match. She latched the doors securely from the inside by slipping a board behind two brackets. Then she let out a long sigh.

  “We’re safe now,” she said.

  The flame flickered, throwing long shadows across the mortared walls and earthen floor. It was cool and damp. I looked around. I had never seen anything like it. Fragments of light winked and glinted off the Mason jars filled with tomatoes, peaches, and pickles; the jars stood at attention in rows on the wooden shelves built against the sides of the cellar. The four of us settled onto creaking wooden crates around the lamp. I felt strangely comforted, tucked away from whatever danger raged above.

  I liked the old woman and her cellar. She entertained us with stories about being a young pioneer girl and traveling in a covered wagon.

  “My pa built a soddy with his own hands, he did. Nothin’ but chunks of earth and prairie grass, cut and stacked like bricks.”

  Sitting there, I could easily imagine a house made from the earth. I reckoned how Vicki and I might build a sod playhouse instead of digging to China.

  The word panther called me back to attention.

  “Jumped right through the open window of the soddy. I could see him in the moonlight, slinking around the room. I was too afraid to cry out. I grabbed on to my sleeping sister like a June bug to a screen door.”

  “What happened?” Vicki whispered.

  “He sniffed the air and must’ve decided I was too ornery to eat and hightailed it right out the window.”

  I laughed, not only because the old woman amused me, but because I felt happy. I was caught up in the archetypal undertow, present since the dawn of time, the one that compels humanity to sit around fires and tell stories.

  I do not remember how Vicki and I found our way back into bed that night. Maybe we fell asleep in the cellar listening to more stories and wakened enough to stumble home. I only remember waking up later in the bedroom we shared with Mama and hearing her cry.

  I tiptoed over to the edge of her bed and put my hand on her coarse hair. “Mama, what’s wrong?”

  She sniffed and turned my way. “Nothing, sweetie. You go on back to sleep.”

  “You still afraid from the storm?”

  “That’s it,” she said. “The storm.”

  I now suspect Mama’s storm had nothing to do with weather patterns and everything to do with the changing winds of her life. Once again she was alone and encumbered by pregnancy and children.

  All I knew then was that my mama was crying. I comforted her the only way I knew how at eight.

  “Want me to crawl in bed with you?” I asked.

  She scooted over and opened the covers like a tent. I slid in beside her, snuggling up against her warm pregnant belly, like a June bug to a screen door.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  This is what I had imagined when I kissed her Polaroid picture good night.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she whispered.

  My eyes popped wide open.

  WOULD MAMA return us or keep us?

  Once I knew that question was on the table, I immediately went to work to ensure the latter. I helped Mama around the house; I tried not to fight with Vicki, which required real restraint; and I scoured my mind for grievances against Cathy. I decided to let Cathy sink so that I might swim. Whenever I mentioned Cathy spanking us, I noticed Mama wrinkle her brow in disapproval. It wasn’t that Mama didn’t believe in spanking. To the contrary. I had experienced my share of welts and stings from her. But Mama didn’t cotton to the idea of someone else laying a hand on her daughters, especially with any frequency. Mama seemed to grow more and more protective of me and Vicki whenever we told her of any unpleasantness in Iowa.

  Yes, I sighed, we were spanked for getting our shoes dirty. Lots of times dishes waited for us in the sink to be washed when we walked home from school. I worried that I might not make an A. I had an awful dream, over and over, about a train running over me and Vicki. Sometimes Vicki gagged and couldn’t eat her fried eggs so she had to hide them under the refrigerator. After the dog bit me, I waited for you to come. I kissed your picture and cried almost every night.

  Toward the end of summer, Mama decided to keep me and Vicki for the time being. We were to move with her and Daddy from Kansas to Texas. While I had been granted my heart’s desire, my triumph was bittersweet. Sometimes, when I lay awake at night, I pictured Dad on the farm, sitting on his tractor, crying and holding on to my doll with the long brown curls, wondering why we never came back. I wanted to hug his neck and tell him I still loved and missed him. But how could I explain it? Mama was like air to me. Without her, I would die.

  I didn’t know then that I would never see Grandpa or Lanny again, or that Mama would forbid us to see or speak to Dad and Cathy for more than a decade. Years later, I came across an old faded letter tucked away that Mama had written to one of my dad’s sisters, my aunt Betty.

  Dear Betty and all,

  Here are the girls’ school pictures. This is something which I had vowed not to do, but the years soften most angers I guess. You have always been soft-hearted and were good to my girls. These are yours—please don’t give them to Don. It takes more than the process of birth to make a father. I’m sorry, but I still feel he flunked the whole course. I realize he tried, somewhat, while they were with your mother. Had Cathy been kinder and more concerned with their welfare, he might still have them though I would never have signed any papers to that effect. They would have had to earn them—not barter for them like livestock. Nor bribe them. Do you think it kind that they were told they couldn’t have their toys unless they came back? I’m so glad their love for me was stronger than their affection for their toys. I didn’t have to bribe them. Legally, Don could have had them summers (I would have consented) if he had helped with their support. . . .

  You know, I could fill a book with many of the th
ings that went on while they were with Don. Many of them that I don’t think he honestly knew about, but as a father, he should have found out. But to what purpose would this be now? Like pouring sand down a rat hole. So much for that. She’ll never have another opportunity to lay a hand on them. Or, see them again. One of the reasons I won’t stop by when we do go visit my brother.

  As always,

  Carola

  My baby sister Brenda

  Amarillo, Texas

  IT WAS EARLY August. According to Mama’s calculations, her due date was still months away, sometime in January or February.

  “Unless the baby is premature,” Mama said.

  That was the second time Mama had used the word premature. The first had been beside the Tilt-A-Whirl at the traveling carnival, with its thrilling electric lights, melodic notes, and sugary smells. I’d never seen a carnival or a cloud of pink cotton candy like the one Mama held for me as Daddy, Vicki, and I climbed into a bright blue oval-shaped car.

  Mama, who looked to be growing a watermelon under her shirt, rubbed her belly and said, “I’ll wait this one out. This baby might be premature as it is.”

  Her words hung in the air. Mama and Daddy exchanged glances, a momentary ripple passing between them. I didn’t know then that Mama was trying to fit a nine-month pregnancy into a five-month time slot.

  From my four-foot-tall perspective, the world of adults sometimes resembled a dark, deep lake, like the one that had tried to swallow me when I was only four years old. If I hadn’t clenched my toes around a slippery rock and tiptoed like a ballerina back to shore, I might have drowned. I knew what it felt like to lose your footing and go under. Precarious is the word that comes to mind, and it described our new life perfectly.

  Ever since returning from Iowa, I’d been trying to understand Mama’s tears, Daddy’s looks, and the way we bumped into one another as we tried to piece our family back together. I didn’t always know how to act or what to say. I worried that Vicki or I might do something to make Mama sorry she had decided to keep us.