Red Rover - Childhood loneliness - Part 4

I slumped out of the big chair and dragged a crate that was under the ironing board over to Joanie’s chifferobe. It was off limits to me. She kept a lot of stuff in the top shelf: her paper dolls, photos of friends, drawing paper, crayons, and scissors. Joanie drew and colored the prettiest dresses for her paper dolls, and I was fascinated with them. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t sneaking the paper dolls out and playing with them behind Momma’s bed.

But this time, I wasn’t interested in her paper dolls. There was a mirror in the door of Joanie’s chifferobe. It was high up like her stuff, so I climbed on the crate. Joanie had said I was littler than the other kids. I wanted to look and see for myself. It didn’t do any good. All I could see was the top of my eyes - and the big bump on my head.

There wasn’t anybody I could trust to tell me the truth about this. Daddy called me “little girl” all the time, but sometimes he called Joanie that, too. And Joanie had probably called me “little” just because she was my big sister. Momma said I was a “big girl“, but maybe she just didn’t like crying. She never cried. I dragged the crate back to the front room, and decided that I didn’t need any old mirror. I knew I wasn’t little!

That night, after my sister fell asleep, I climbed up on Momma’s and Daddy’s bed. They were talking loudly in the kitchen, so I knew I had time to visit my secret place. I was afraid of the dark, but nobody knew that. I guess I wasn’t really afraid of the dark; it was the loneliness I always felt when it was dark - being alone scared me. There was a big window above the bed. Even if it was cold, I would shove the window up so that I could press against the screen and look up above the roof of the warehouse next door. There was a street light that was always on. I could only see a patch of its light on the corner, but it helped shoo the loneliness away.

If it wasn’t raining - and it rained a lot in New Orleans - I could see the stars sprinkled across the sky. I just knew that Somebody lived up there at night. I had the sense that Somebody watched me a lot through the Night Window - just like I watched people from my window. Somebody listened to my thoughts, too. I don’t know how he did it, but I liked it. I never felt alone when I looked up at the night through that window. I would stay there with Somebody until I heard the beer bottles being tossed in the crate Momma hid in the cupboard under the sink. Then I would go to bed...

　

Red Rover - Childhood Loneliness Part 1

　

“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Kathy right over”.

I put my head down like a bull, and ran with all my strength, hurling my 35 pound body into the linked arms of the two big boys who had called my name. Their arms were as immoveable as the iron stove I ran smack into as a toddler. I flipped over their arms and hit the playground asphalt so hard that everything went black for awhile. I opened my eyes, and realized I was face down in the black ground. I raised my head, and saw shoes and legs standing around me.

Then I remembered tumbling into the air…I didn’t want to remember…

One of the shoes kicked something at me - it was small and white with red stripes. “Yuck! That’s her tooth!” the voice above the shoe repulsed. I buried my head back into the asphalt grave, quenching the humiliation threatening to resurrect in my tears.

The bell rang. I heard the kids rushing away, so I risked raising my head up again. They were lining up in rows, disappearing through the school doors - like bathtub water circling the drain and being swallowed. A second bell rang. As if cued by its shrill sound, tears filed from my eyes, washing my cheeks before drowning into my lips. I was late for class! Momma would be very angry with me…

I pushed up on my hands and knees - surprised at how they were stinging - and stood up. The bloody white tooth glared at me from the black ground …I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

Like a stray cat, I wandered into my first grade class - where I was shooed out - and sent to the nurse’s office. “What happened?“, she asked. “I was playing Red Rover, and…“ She interrupted me, and said, “Stupid game…“ She looked at my head and my knees, then gave me a white piece of cloth to put where my tooth used to be. "I'm sending you home."  I sat and waited for Momma…

I felt the tears starting again . I knew Momma wouldn’t be happy with me. I did a bad thing by getting hurt. I was dirty and there was blood on my dress. I just hoped nobody would tell her I had cried. I remembered crying on my first day at Kindergarten, and Momma telling me I was a “big girl“ - and big girls don’t cry… I took the gauze from my mouth and wrapped it around the tooth in my pocket and wondered how Momma would put it back in…

My family didn’t have a phone, so the school called my Aunt Gertrude who walked to my house to tell Momma to come get me. I waited a long time. The hurt on the outside stopped. But the hurt on the inside was like when I was hungry - but Momma didn’t have anything to cook - and I couldn’t tell Momma how bad it hurt because it made her real sad. Or real mad at Daddy…

I don’t remember what Momma said to me during our one block walk to our house. I don’t remember Momma saying anything to me at all. I know she was sad about what I had done because she walked real slow and only held my hand when we crossed the street. I wondered if she knew I had cried…

We lived upstairs in a warehouse at 1029 Ninth Street, (Momma made me memorize our address - just in case…) that had been converted into one large bedroom where my Momma, Daddy, and my older sister and me slept. (My big brother slept on a little bed next to the kitchen). Momma divided the room up so that we had a “front room”in the bedroom. It only had an ironing board, a big purple chair, a few wooden crates Momma had painted red - and a TV my Uncle James had given us. When Daddy wasn’t home, Momma would let me watch it by myself. But this day, she put me in bed and told me to close my eyes and be still - then left me alone in the Big Room. I guessed she was in the kitchen, sitting at the wooden table which left little pieces of itself under my skin. Momma was probably drinking coffee and staring at the peeling paint on the 12 foot ceilings. She did this a lot in the day… At night, she did the same thing - except she drank beer instead of coffee…