dolly
my life and
other unfinished business
pages 13/14
as i flailed like an unwanted
necktie against the cow`s neck, bessie dragged me through briars,
into rocks and stumps, and under low-hanging limbs. those bushes
that had only seemed scary were now a real threat. as they slowly
flayed my skin away, i began to think how shocked mama would be
to see bessie coming home with a kid skeleton hanging on to her
bell strap.
what blood i had not left on
the hackberry bushes in the holler rushed to my heart as i caught
the first glimpse of the kerosene lantern mama was holding as she
called bessie, "sook, sook!" when i was finally dragged
into the yard, i thought mama would be thrilled beyond words to
see my bruised and bloodied carcass. she must have been, because
she didn`t use any words as she administered a few extra bruises
to my butt with a hickory switch.
i have to admit that switch
actually felt good. as soon as the licks had been dealt out, mama
held me tight as i cried. i could see tears in the corners of her
eyes too. if you had asked her why she whipped me, she would have
said it was because i hadn`t come home when she called me. any
parent knows that what she was really saying with that switch
was, "you scared me half to death. you have to feel pain now
so that you`ll remember this in the future." at that moment,
we were both just thanking god that i had a future.
pages
16/17/18
the floorboards
in our cabin were so far apart, a kid could feed the chickens
bits of bread or crackers through the cracks - and one kid did.
that in itself
should have been fun enough. but then up steps that youthfull
meanness that adults make tolerable by calling it mischief. i
figured that if the chickens could be lured into pecking up
through the cracks, a little girl with quick fingers could grab
them by the beaks and hold them above the ground for a few
seconds, causing them to thrash about and beat their wings as if
they had been set upon by the devil himself.
the plan was
successfully carried out enough times to give every chicken in
the yard a sore beak and a wisdom about sticking her nose into
cracks. i used to tell myself it somehow made them better
prepared for the future. it is that same kind of childlike
innocence that creates such an excuse for devilment that also
chooses to believe a chicken has much of a future in the first
place.
of course if
my daddy ever caught me at it, many a sore chicken beak would be
avenged on my backside in short order. i don`t mean, as some
celebrities have, to claim that i was abused. none of us kids
were. we were not beaten. we got plain old tennessee butt
whippin`s. and in truth, we deserved them.
when one of us
had done something wrong, the rest would rather die than tell on
the guilty party. i don`t know if that was out of loyalty to
brothers and sisters or some unspoken code of the mischievious
that made us keep silent knowing the same service would be
afforded us when we were the one who "done it."
whatever the reason, our failure to cooperate with the party
of the second party (the one holding the belt) usually meant we
would all end up getting spanked. if we had taken a minute to
think about that, we would have figured out that the loyalty we
were drawing interest on in that unspoken kid bank was not really
doing us any good if it was intended to be insurance against
getting our butt beaten for some future offense. this way, we
were bound to get whipped not only for that future one but for
every present one as well. still, the code was followed, and i
supposed there was some kind of integrity in it, if not the
clearest of logic.
i would always
want to be the last in line. my plan was to run around to be
first in line before daddy got to me, but that never worked.
you`d think a man with that many kids would lose count just once
in his life. being in last place, and being a sensitive kid, i
ended up feeling every blow to every other kid just as if it had
landed on my butt.
daddy used
to spank us with a leather strap. but when mama whipped us, she
would send us out to pick out a switch. we would try a crude form
of mountain-urchin psychology by choosing a big,
dangerous-looking stick that mama wouldn`t have the heart to hit
us with. we`d go out to fetch a switch but come back with a limb
that would be better used as a fence post. our psychology usually
backfired when mama would only get madder and go out herself and
pick out one of those reedy little sting-your-butt-bad switches.
pages 29/30
after school
that day, i went to the hollow tree to get the crayons and found
the teacher, glaring at me, razor strop in one hand and my
pitifull stolen colours in the other.
i closed my
eyes and waited for the thick piece of leather to come down on
me, but it didn`t. i would have preferred being beaton to what
happened next. the teacher called all of the other kids together,
and they watched as he took hold of my shoulders and shook me.
"do you all see what dolly has done? she has stolen!"
he railed. i was terrified and embarrassed. the teacher made such
a big thing out of it. i felt completely worthless and vile.
i got in
trouble again when i got home. we had always been taught not to
steal (that was one bit of the bible teaching daddy agreed with
mama on), and i was harshly punished for what i had done.
that whole expirience gave me a negative feeling toward school
that i never really got over.
page 43
for a few
moments, i allowed myself to think that my brother had actually
come to my rescue in a tight spot, but then his fist grinding
into my back told me i was living in a dream world. not only did
he beat me on the way home, he also told mama and daddy that i
had lied at school, causing me to get a whipping when i got
home.
page 48
our favourite
thing was a sugar daddy because it lasted so long. you could suck
on it and pull it into a point and make the sweetness stay with
you untill bedtime,even beyond. my mother will attest to this,
having found many a kid with one glued to his or her hair with no
choice but to cut it out with the scissors.
the peddlar
would take eggs or even live chickens in trade if you had no
money. i can remember the chickens, tied by their feet to the
outside of the old bus, looking quizzical but seeming to accept
their overall part in the sceme of things. we were not above
stealing our own chickens to trade to the peddler for something
sweet in our mouths, even if it meant a board across our
butts. like the chickens, we had learned to accept life`s
trade-offs.
i guess i
always had a streak of devilment in me. i think it was more due
to curiosity than anything else. the problem was that
curiosity included finding out just how far i could go without
getting my butt beat.
pages 71/72
there was also a great catchall
commandment that could make just about anything a sin:
"honor thy father and thy mother." anything you did or
said that went against what your father or mother wanted you to
do or say could be construed as dishonoring them, and there-fore
a sin. this was the one situation when i used to turn the literal
translation of the bible around to work for me. "it says
honor," i would say, "not obey." this of course
did not stop me from getting my butt beat, but it did
allow me to sniff back my tears with a healthy sense of
righteousness.