Little House in the Holler - Chapter 1- The Brood, Part Two

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Sometimes, a person can look at a group of siblings and see instantly that they must be related. That was not the case with us. Eight children, taken at random from various parts of the country and placed together as a family, would have have looked as kin as we did.

Cindy had blond hair and green eyes. She wasn't especially tall. A tad bit on the heavier side of the scale, but not obese by a long shot. She was well endowed up top, which probably made her seem way heavier than she actually was. She suffered from ulcers and could often be found out back of the house, throwing back up whatever meal she had just eaten. I remember her putting mustard on everything she ate, even eggs. This was supposed to help her food stay down but I can't recall it's ever working. I'm not sure what she did for fun. I can't remember her having any down time.

Andy, a year younger than Cindy, was short and of average weight. His hair was a very odd color. Not really brown, not really red either. More like the color of black hair that someone has attempted to bleach blond and has rinsed out the solution too soon. It had a natural curl that gave him fits. He wasn't a very handsome guy. I always thought he looked like a white, skinnier, version of Sherman Hemsley a.k.a. George Jefferson. He tended to be bossy and liked to treat others like he was way smarter then they were. His hobby was looking in the mirror, trying to get his hair to stay in place.

Claude, nicknamed Sonny, was a year younger than Andy. He had dark brown hair, brown eyes, very white teeth, and dimples as deep as golf balls. He seemed to have a tan all year long. Girls were always chasing him and flirting with him. He was a tiny little fellow. This led to his being bullied as a young boy. By the time he had reached his teens, he realized that his best option, when confronted with a new group of bullies, was to pick out the biggest one, start a fight with him, and proceed to beat him senseless. The rest of the gang wouldn't even bother to harass him, not after seeing that! At home, he was a different person. He was nice to his brothers and sisters and was always looking out for us. All except for Andy, who he butted heads with often. Seemed they were always fighting each other, until some fool bothered to pick on one of them, then they would both turn on that guy and protect their brother.

James, nicknamed Cricket. was a real case. A couple of years younger than Sonny, he had blond hair, blue eyes, big teeth, and was scrawny. He fancied himself to be Daddy's favorite. He needed to be, because the rest of us kids couldn't stand him. He called our parents by their first names. The nerve! Whenever Daddy and Mama were going out and leaving us at home, he would hide in the back floorboard of the car and surprise them after they had reached their destination. He never got a whipping. He so adored running his smart mouth until he made one of the other kids blow their stack, then he would run to Mama and Daddy, smiling smugly in the background, watching the other kid get punished. In his heart of hearts, he really believed that he was the chosen one and that the rest of us kids were nothing. His hobby was dancing in front of the mirror for hours on end, singing into a brush.

Darrell had very dark hair and brown eyes. He was not little like his older brothers. When he was smaller, he had dropped a pop bottle onto a rock and a shard of the broken glass had flown into his eye. Mama did not even bother to take him to the hospital, where his sight may have been saved. I have never understood this. As a result, he was blind in that eye and sported an angry white scar, right across the pupil. At any rate, he was still a very handsome boy. He kept to himself a lot. Our other brothers never really bothered to include him in much. He and Lorra were very close though.

Lorra, was a bit younger than Darrell and almost four years older than me. She had the same pretty olive skin tone as Darrell, dark brown hair that hung past her waist, and chocolate brown eyes. They always reminded me of Donny and Marie Osmond. She was an "A" student and obedient. I could hardly wait for her to come home from school each day and share what she had learned with me. We did a lot of things together. Even with the age difference, our clothes were often alike but for the color. We shared a bed and dresser drawers. Plus, in the summer, we both bathed in a galvanized wash tub that was sat out in the back yard. He favorite thing was to tell me that Big Alice (Land of the Lost) was coming through the trees to get me. This sent me running for the house, wet and naked as a jaybird! I'm sure she did this so she could have that bath all to herself. Her hobby was playing the piano.

I wound up with light brown hair and blue eyes, which later changed to hazel. My hair was long, like Lorra's. I was fair skinned and my cheeks and nose were sprinkled with freckles. Daddy had named me "Susan', but always called me "Dawna" I guess I was an average sized little kid. I have no real idea what I did for fun. I sincerely believed that I could render myself invisible, simply by closing my eyes. I sucked at Hide and Seek, for obvious reasons. I thought that little people lived in our stereo cabinet. I would climb up the side and hang over into the box, doing my best to look back past the tuning dial, where I saw a little light. I could just imagine those tiny people that sat on a stool, singing and playing guitar for our listening enjoyment. With few toys, I kept my brain busy by having an awesome imagination.

Chris was the baby. He had blond hair and huge blue eyes, with lashes like those of a camel. Mama was given quite a few X-rays, before they realized she was pregnant. I always joked that all that radioactive cooking, that Chris received as a fetus, gave him superhuman eyeballs. He was a really cute little guy. Folks would always hand him candy or money, sometimes both, whenever they saw him. I'm sure it was the hypnotic effect of those eyes.

There we were. All of us crammed into that tiny little house. With all the differences in personalities, it was impossible for anyone to make it out of there without issues, injuries, and a little brain damage.

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Little House in the Holler - Chapter 1- The Brood, Part One

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Off of a long,dirt road, down a longer dirt driveway, so steep that many folks were afraid to drive down it, to a tiny house, in Southwest Virginia, is where this story begins. "The Holler". That's what we always called it. The grass was never mowed. There was some junk strewn about the property. Nothing major. Just a couple of old cars and an old oil heater, as I recall. The woods, filled with trees so tall that they didn't look real, almost reached the back door.

In this house, there lived a father, a mother, and eight children, three girls and five boys. In order of birth, there was Cindy, William, Claude, James, Hoss (nickname), Lorra, I was the seventh born, and then there was my baby brother, Chris. Aside from the first three kids, who were born a year or so apart, The rest of us had at least a three year age difference. I'll begin my story from when I was around age four. My memories go back to a younger age, but nothing of real interest went on during those years.

Though the house was quite small, it did have three bedrooms. Daddy and Mama were in one room, along with the baby, the other four boys were in another room, and we three girls shared the final and smallest bedroom. We all managed to fit, thanks to bunk beds that Daddy had built. Although this sufficed for sleeping, there wasn't much space left for toys or playing, so we spent few daylight hours in those rooms.

My sister, Lorra, and I shared the lower bunk. Sometimes, as I lay there at night, listening to the bed above my head creak and pop, whenever my oldest sister, Cindy, would move in the slightest, I held my breath, expecting her to come crashing down upon us. If I was ever frightened, by a bad dream, or just couldn't sleep, I would climb from under my covers and proceed to hang from the side of the top bunk. I never said a word. I would just swing there until Cindy noticed me and would reach out with one arm and flop me over onto her bed. We had an understanding.

Cindy had a sad life. Though she was only 14, she was forced into the role of being our mother. Not due to our real mama having an illness, addiction, or disability, but just because Mama couldn't be bothered with us. She had better things to do, like watching TV. During the week, Cindy's day started early. She was out of bed early, as she had to get the other kids ready for school, as well as herself. When she returned home in the afternoon, she had to start right into cleaning the house. Washing dishes, making beds, sweeping floors, all the things that Mama could have done during the day but saved for her oldest daughter instead. She even had to wash Chris' diapers and get them out on the line. Then she'd help Daddy cook supper, wash up the supper dishes, and then bathe us little ones. Even then, at such a young age, I knew this wasn't right. I felt so bad for her. Yet, at the same time, I depended on her. We all did.

Mama had a bad temper and was near impossible to please. I vividly recall her screaming at Daddy, stomping mad for some reason or another. He would usually laugh at these displays, probably because she looked so ridiculous. I wanted to laugh as well, but knew it probably meant certain death! Or at least a whipping from Mama. Although she had given me spankings before, she had never beat me like she did Cindy, and I wanted to keep it that way. For the slightest infraction, Mama would take Cindy to our room, make her remove her shirt, and hit her across the back with a belt repeatedly. Cindy never cried out. I'm guessing it was because she had gotten used to the whippings by the time I was old enough to remember them. Then again, maybe she just wasn't going to give Mama the satisfaction of breaking her.

Daddy and Mama were like night and day. He was a jolly man, always telling funny stories or singing happy songs, anything to brighten someone's day. He told us kids that he loved us and called us his babies. Mama always had a scowl on her face, like she was constipated. She did not like kids, not even her own. There were never any hugs for us. She never told us that she loved us. There was not a nurturing bone in her body. I have often wondered why a woman who obviously hated kids, would have eight of them. Surely she knew what caused babies to come along. We were in her way. Whenever I would get brave enough to ask if I could sit on her lap, she would gripe at me, "I ain't got no damned lap!" That's how she spoke to a child of four, her own child, who was merely requesting some affection.

The best times for me were when Mama would take a job for a while and Daddy would stay home with me and Chris. He was a brick Mason and didn't have a lot of work in the wintertime, so Mama really had no choice but to work, if she wanted to eat. Where days at home with Mama were filled with listening to her gossip with the neighbors and watching soap operas all afternoon, days with Daddy were fun. He let me watch PBS in the mornings. He took me outside when the sun was shining and let me explore, telling me all about this animal or that plant. He told me stories and drew me stick people, as well as teaching me to draw an infinite knot, which I've never forgotten how to do. The important thing was his being present.His treating me as a little person that needed affection and activities to keep her busy. Not like a piece of furniture, the way Mama did.

I often wish I could go back to those days and hug him more, listen to those stories a little more closely, ask him more questions,stare at him more, and fill my memory bank with all things Daddy. I had no idea how soon he would be taken from me, from all of us kids that needed and loved him so much.


To Be Continued...

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