Chapter 6

Uncertain Ground

I mentioned before I was six when our family was visiting mom’s parents in Stayton and something happened that changed my life. In the living room at Gram and Dade’s the room full of adults. My great, great grandfather on my mother's side, lured me in his lap, put his hands up my dress then into my panties. Even at that young age, I knew something was really wrong. I got out of his lap and got away as fast as possible.

I also knew the adults should have protected me but obviously they didn’t. They looked away and pretended not to see. For goodness sake he had even done time for being a pedophile, why was he there?

When I told Mom and one of my sisters what happened their response was the same, “I knew how to stay away from him.” There is a shroud of shame that comes from being abused, why was I so ignorant, why was I in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Years later my counselor, Dawn phrased it like this: “You had no voice and no power even over your own body." True indeed.

My parents seemed to be at odds with each other. Dad wanted a clean house, Mom didn’t find it a priority. Our farm house had smoke blacked walls from the wood stove and the mess that came from carrying in the kindling and wood. The cats and dogs were in the house, a slop bucket on the back porch to feed the hogs, potato and carrot peelings, rotten tomatoes and fruit. To get the scraps to the bucket we carried a colander that dripped from the kitchen sink to the back stinky porch...the driveway was shale and dirt. Even our Kirby vacuum cleaner emitted dust every time we used it. There was no end in sight of dirt.

Mom taught us to fear Dad. Every day before he got home from work she’d say, “Clean up the house your Dad is coming home.” We hurried around dusting furniture, sweeping floors, vacuuming rugs and stashed our homework assignments in the top drawer in the dining room buffet so we at least we knew where everything was.

At dinner our family ate together, each of us sitting in accustomed places. Dad sat at the head of the table. Mom and Elsie at the other end. I sat closest to Mom, Sophie beside me and Grace and Elsie across from Sophie and me. Sometimes me and my sisters got the giggles and made our family laugh. But sometimes Dad got mad, two of my sister took after him and would get mad too, some clammed up, while I was the only one who cried. He would leave the table time after time. I wondered if he going to leave and never come back.

I was a finicky eater. One morning Mom made me oatmeal for breakfast but the milk was sour. I wouldn’t eat it. Lunch was same story. Dinner came around and I was told if I didn’t eat it the whole family wouldn’t go to an outdoor theater, a rare occasion. It was almost blackmail but I did what was asked. I didn’t eat oatmeal for thirty years.

One day everyone in the family had left except Dad and I. I made our families favorite dinner mashed potatoes and gravy. The potatoes were good but they could stand alone like little sandcastles and the thick gravy looked like snow on a mountain top. We both laughed.

On paydays, Dad came home with three things: some kind of fish, a dessert such as Boston cream pie, and some candy. Then he and Mom sat at the kitchen table and wrote out the budget in a little notebook. I kept one of them and still have it. They were responsible and made every penny count. I’m thankful that their example showed me how to create a budget.

My second teacher grade was my all-time favorite, Mrs. Stonebreaker. She was intuitive and sensitive all the things little Margee needed. Once, a girl in class named Anita who was an only child had a double pack of Double Mint Gum in her desk, while in our house we only were allowed a quarter of a stick. I decided it wasn’t fair so I took liberty to take a whole stick more than once. She complained and Mrs. Stonebreaker had the whole class put their heads down so the guilty one would raise their hand. I’m pretty sure she knew I was the one, but I didn’t trust adults and refused to confess.

Bluebirds was a little girl club. Mrs. McKee, our leader had the meetings at her house which was immaculate and smelled like the fresh-baked cookies, a real contrast to ours. For one Mother’s day gift she’d cut fabric into rectangles to make placemats for my family. We ironed a decal of violets then we carefully pull threads around the edges to make a fringe around the sides, they were beautiful. Mom loved the gift and I was proud she did.

Although there was another day I treated Mom so bad... she’d come to school at recess to see my classroom and I hid. I was embarrassed her dress was grease stained. When dad came home I heard her crying and I hid in their clothes closet behind Mom’s dresses, ironic to say the least.

I had my teacher Mrs. Stonebreaker again in the third grade. She knew something was still bothering me and to her concern and to my embarrassment, she had me sit on a chair by her desk chair and she quietly asked if I was okay. She was genuine and tender but I really didn’t know what was troubling me.

One day I packed my little suitcase to run away from home. I made it all the way to the corner of the main road. Mom hadn’t tried to stop me, so I walked back home. It hurt. All I wanted was her attention.

I fondly remember just before bed Mom would read, Little House on the Prairie to me and my sisters. We gathered around and with bated breath wondering what would happen next as the story unfolded.

At the end of haying season I was in one of two hay mows in the barn. A steer was misbehaving and dad threw a milking stool at it. In my freight, I jammed the pitchfork in my foot. I ran to the house I knew I might need to go to the doctor, but the Fuller Brush salesman was there and Mom didn’t take me until she was done visiting with him. The doctor put a drain in it because it was so unsanitary, then gave me a tetanus shot, it really hurt.

After grammar school one day I was playing at the cattle guard down the road from home. I left my saddle shoes overnight and it rained. The next morning I went to get them they were ruined. I showed them to mom and she told me I was going to get a spanking from dad when he got home work. Which he did with a sharp stick of kindling, it really stung inside and out. Leaving the shoes was a childish act, not something I’d done on purpose. The message I got from that experience was, money mattered more than me and shouldn’t be wasted. When I got a new pair of shoes I polished them every night. I wanted them to look nice and protect my dignity.

Originally our house had only two bedrooms. Dad and Mom in one and me and my sisters all in one room with two, double sized beds. The downstairs room was too small for the five us. Dad converted the attic into three bedrooms. Leslie and I shared one bedroom because we had the same habit of keeping our room clean so made we made a good match. Grace had her own room, Sophie got the best one, it had a window looking over lilac bushes and the sky and Elsie stayed in the downstairs bedroom.

I was in high school when Dad built a wall holding desk in Leslie and I's bedroom. I made a weekday chart and wrote down my outfits down to my bracelets, because I didn’t want to wear the same outfit two days in a row. I was protecting my dignity just like polishing my saddle shoes every night when I was just six.

When I was little and afraid of the dark, I’d go to dad and mom’s bedroom and curl up beside Mom. Dad got grumpy if I moved around too much, it wasn’t comforting to be there very long so I went back to the bed that Leslie and I shared.

My sixth teacher Mrs. Dudley, played favorites and I knew I wasn’t one. The kids in class called Sherry a flea bag but the teacher didn’t stop them. The class didn’t know my sisters and me had scabies, an itchy rash from clothes not washed in really hot water. A classmate named Gary told me I had skinny, hairy arms. After that I wore a long sleeved sweater covering my arms no matter what the weather. One day a teacher told me that I didn’t have to wear it when it was hot. Later I realized that he was a toe-head so my dark hair to him, must have looked really dark. End of story Mrs. Dudley gone and Gary gone.