Repeating Patterns

I can’t recall why we went to Aunt Nan’s that day, but I’m sure it was an important event; not Christmas because Christmas was always at Bee-Bop’s; and besides, there was no snow on the ground. It had to be some occasion because we just didn’t go to Aunt Nan’s without a reason. Maybe it was someone’s birthday. Most likely it was early spring because the air had the kind of crispness to it that scratched at my throat when I inhaled. And Aunt Viv had me bundled up as if we were on an Alaskan expedition. Of course that I was bundled wasn’t unusual. Aunt Viv’s area of expertise was making sure I had enough clothes on to fill a small closet. Never mind I couldn’t move. We were early as usual. Uncle Ralph’s area of expertise. Everything laid out to the letter, all “T’s” crossed and “I’s” dotted, never late!
We were in the breezeway, between the kitchen and garage. Aunt Viv peeling the layers off me I had just thirty minutes before dutifully put on. The smell in the breezeway was not exactly welcoming. Damp cement, mixed with leather, horse blankets and livestock fodder fed the earthy, musty smell. Oily garage smells crept in from the left; rich kitchen smells crept out from the right, and all the smells seemed to follow me into the house. I always had mixed up emotions about going to Aunt Nan’s. It was too small. Too small for her own family. With all the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmas it became a sea of people, scrunching past one another, looking for a vacant perch, and a ponderous line outside the bathroom door. The bathroom had a lingering odor also, of what I now know to be a very high iron content in the water. As a child I assumed it had something to do with raising boys, who never did inside chores and were known to be slobs. But Aunt Nan’s boys were all that made being there tolerable. She had four. Danny who was too young -- too young for me to play with; was a big momma’s baby, so I didn’t want to play with him anyway. David was just two years older than me and I suppose my favorite. He always invited me to go places even though I was a girl, and he didn’t treat me like a girl. He taught me how to ride in the back pasture, in spite of the trouble we would catch if Aunt Viv or Uncle Ralph found out. Maybe I had a crush on him. Chuck was a teenager, an Eagle Scout and would take David and me down to the Tastee Freeze; that is until he found a girlfriend. Aunt Nan’s oldest, Jaime Lee was married and more like a fun uncle, unlike the ones seated around me on the worn gold velvet davenport where I waited. Patiently I sat waiting, while the stout aunts bustled around the kitchen, scooting past each other with their wide hips. Preparing the food, laying out huge bowls of fried chicken and uncovering Jell-O salads packed with so much fruit and chunky stuff it couldn’t wiggle. Patiently I sat half listening to the balding uncles smoking their filterless Camels in a blue cloud and discussing the union strike at the John Deere plant. Patiently, while more family arrived and was greeted and hugged and kissed, I waited. Patiently waiting for David or Chuck to show their face so I could sneak out from under the watchful eye of the adults, with them.
The phone rang. Although I could only hear one side of the conversation I could tell from the inflection of her voice it was a special call.
“Vivian, Go get on the extension, it’s Mary Louise.”
Mom?
Why was she calling me here?
How did she know I was here?
Why didn’t she ask for me?
Finally . . .
“Abby, it’s your mother, dear, come to the phone.”
“Hi . . . Moma . . .”
It was wonderful news. Daddy and she were getting back together — again. I felt the lump ascending in my throat and I choked on it. I couldn’t talk. I handed the phone off to someone and ran to David and Chuck’s bedroom. I closed the door softly so not as to draw any more attention than I already had. I turned my back to the door so if anyone entered they couldn’t see my crying. And there I stood. Rigid. Afraid to move. Afraid. I stood staring out the window at Stardust and Starlight in the meadow, the twin palominos grazing so tenderly. As I stood staring, I concentrated on crying as quietly as possible. I could already hear the hushed voices outside the door.
“I’m sure she is okay Vivian —she just needs some time.”
“Poor Abagail.”
“She has been through so much.”
“I know and now Mary is uprooting her again.”
“How can she?”
Oh, deliver me from those shrouded noises. I guess I had heard them all my life. I don’t know that I can bear them even one more time. Don’t they know I can grasp the difference between love and pity. Don’t they know I love her; she’s my Mother.
Momma and Daddy had married when I was two. It had been Grandpa that decided I should continue to live with Grandma and him till they were ready to begin a family of their own. Grandpa died shortly after. Living with Grandma was effortless. She and I got on very well. She was unruffled and I understood the necessity for good behavior because of her maturity. I was eight and starting second grade when I moved to New Orleans to live with my parents and my new baby sister, Zeke. She was nick-named for an uncle on Daddy’s side, and she was so very cute. Living with Momma and Daddy was an adventure in the least. Daddy was a truck driver and gone most of the time. Momma worked nights and we spent a lot of time at the sitter’s. When we were all home together, it was a roller coaster. Steak and wine or beans and Koolaid. We could be having so much fun; and the next moment the voices would begin to rise and rise. I learned to take Zeke and go to our bedroom and I would sing right into her ear while cupping my hand around the other ear. Just loud enough so she couldn’t hear what was going on in the next room but quiet enough so they couldn’t hear me sing. At the beginning of the fourth grade, they split up not for a week but permanently. I was sent to live with Aunt Vivian and Uncle Ralph. Zeke, still a kind of baby, was sent to Aunt Donna and Uncle Kennard.
Aunt Viv and Uncle Ralph were remarkable. They were childless and somehow it seemed as though they needed me desperately. Uncle Ralph was an accountant, the town treasurer, a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church and a 32nd degree Mason. He wore ties and starched white shirts. He was balding, smelled of hair tonic, Old Spice and tobacco, and he was all the things that appeared right and normal. Aunt Viv was his perfect mate. Harriet Nelson only overly plump, with a little too much rouge on her cheeks and lipstick on her teeth. She wore bright floral house dresses and her breath was of stale coffee. She doted and baked. She sewed, quilted, ironed and gardened. And she doted some more. They were routine. They were overly protective and frugal. They listened to Lawrence Welk and farm-to-market reports, mowed neighbor's yards and carried food to shut-ins. I know they loved me. Because they were childless, because I was motherless, because I was family. They were safe.
Still standing at the bedroom window, my tears dwindled to quick short gasps for air, I had not noticed the palominos leave the meadow. The wallpaper had replaced my gaze; repeating patterns of cowboys on horseback and racing covered wagons in dull shades of brown. A cowboy with his arm arched in the air riding a bucking bronco followed by a covered wagon pulled by four stout horses with their manes and tails streaming behind them. Where were they running to or what were they running from? Soaked in heartache and my attention on the racing cowboys, I didn’t notice Chuck had entered the room. He laid a warm and comforting hand on my shoulder. I started. I began my uncontrollable crying again. How long had I been standing there? Did they send him in? Listen to all that clamor; everyone had arrived. How can I face all my family, when they knew what I had been crying about? How do they know when I’m not sure? Without saying a word, he told me it was okay to cry. When I was settled he guided me out of the room, sheltering me from the sidelong fretting gawks, out of the house and we escaped to the back pasture. David had the horses saddled.