A New Life

25

After my strep throat had ''developed into something worse'' and my mother refused to have me admitted to the hospital, the plan was to have me effectively drink bottles of penicillin. As past bottles of prescription syrup had come in small, flattish bottles with doses measured out in teaspoons, this came in round pint sized bottles and I was to have several table spoonfuls four times a day. After the first few times counting out all the spoonfuls, mother found it was easier just to fill the bottom of a juice glass. About every day and a half it was time to open up a new bottle and by the third day of this I was starting to feel very better. It was Friday and this was the first time that we followed the summer plan of me being taken to the family home to stay with my father at night while my mother worked the night shift at the grocery store.

On the drive up I was firmly counseled not to tell dad about seeing the doctor or of the medicine I was taking. Dropped-off, I got to join him and Pappy for dinner. During all the preceding years, mother had cooked the family dinner for us which ranged from a variety of different meals, though often with a common side dish of sliced cucumbers in brown vinegar; I always liked that one with pepper sprinkled on top though it gave me acidly burps afterwards. Left to his own skills, my father primarily fried stuff. His favorite was link sausages, typically accompanied by some canned veggie. Once in a while he would fry-up french fries by filling a fry pan full of Crisco, bringing it to a boil and pouring in frozen fries. They were far more interesting than the baked fries mom had occasionally cooked up. Once dinner was done and the remaining Crisco in the fry pan had cooled, he'd pour it back into the can to use for the next time. About once every month, when he'd have his usual day off from work to give him time to prepare, he'd make Hot Dog Lasagna: Sliced Hot Dogs between layers of lasagna, ketchup for sauce and a little bit of mustard for zing. I don't remember any cheese being involved, if there was I'm sure it would have been American.

Anyhow, on the very first night of this new routine we had dinner, after which I went to the living room to turn on the T.V. and watch some old repeats. Then I heard dad and Pappy talking and saying how terrible mother was and that she was a 'whore.' For some reason, while I had overheard mom saying bad things about me from the next room for years and hadn't reacted, I was terribly upset hearing this. I left the house and ran across the hayfield to the big glass windows of the main grocery store. Doors being locked at night, all I could do was knock on the window endlessly until one of the night crew came and saw me. After a while, my mother came to the window and Joe unlocked the front door and let me in and she asked me why I was there. I told her the things Pappy and dad had been saying about her after dinner and asked to stay with her for the rest of the evening. With a glance to Joe, she reluctantly agreed and went away to call my father to let him know.

This was my first time being in the main store after hours when the night crew worked. As I wandered around, each aisle had a worker with a shopping cart or two of boxes to unpack and put on the shelves. When I later joined the night crew myself at the age of eighteen, I found that pallets of food were delivered to the back loading dock and pulled into the back room. Then the workers would unload the pallets into shopping carts based on what aisle the boxes belonged to; each worker would take two carts worth with them to their assigned aisle, one shopping cart pushed by the handle, the second pulled from the front. Once my mother had finished the call, she hunted me down as I watched the others work and she brought me to the cereal section, which was apparently her shelves to fill. At this point I had been helping out at the branch store for two years on my own, but I was still shaken by the events of the night that I just watched her work for a while before starting to help out.

On the drive home she told me that I needed to stay with my father no matter what they were saying from now on as she and Joe were doing important business at night and couldn't be bothered. She also told me that during the phone call to let dad know I was staying at the store, she confronted him with the things they'd been saying about her and in return he claimed they hadn't said anything bad about her and I must have just made that up because that's how I felt about her. On the next Monday, during the drive up mother trash talked about dad and when she dropped me off at the house, I eventually told dad what she had said and when she came to pick me up, he confronted her about it and she said I must have just made that up because that's how I felt about him. I ended up being the ping-pong ball in this game between my parents daily and by the second week I concluded that the only way to make it stop was just to keep my mouth shout and not listen to what either of them had to say.

While I had understood not seeing any friends during the month out west the previous year, now being at home during the evenings I was in the same town as my friends but by the time I got to town it was too late to see them. Still I tried and called their houses but was told by their parents it was too late, even to talk on the phone. By the middle of August I was so lonely I broke down crying on the phone with Pete's mom as I begged for a chance to see him. To no avail.

So the routine was dinner with dad and Pappy, then I'd go out of the house for an hour or so just in case dad and Pappy were going to finish dinner with a good trashing of mom. Then I'd come in for the prime time shows. As I hadn't been able to pack anything the morning of the move day to take to the apartment, I would pick one thing from my home bedroom at the end of each night to take with me when mom picked me up and eventually got my toys and games evenly split between the two places.

The end of the night with Pappy and dad meant watching the local nightly news, then Pappy would go to his apartment for the night and I'd watch the first half hour of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with dad until mom arrived. She'd drive us back to the apartment and, once we reached it, I'd take my next dose of penicillin and turn on the T.V. to watch the last half hour of the then ninety minute The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson while mom got ready for bed. Once the show was done it was bedtime, the next morning I'd be gotten up in time for my morning dose of penicillin and then I'd hang-out at the apartment until it was time for the mid day dose, then evening dose and join mom for the drive to work that evening. After a couple of weeks the penicillin was no longer needed. I actually missed that part of the routine as I had come to enjoy the artificial cherry flavor of the syrup.

And so the Summer went.

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