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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463412814 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
Read an Excerpt
FOLLOW YOUR HEART
THE CHILDREN FROM HELLBy Pajes Thomas
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 PAJES THOMASAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-0533-5
Chapter One
This is my life the way I remember it.
We live on the third floor of an apartment building on Armitage Street in Chicago. Aunt Joe lives with us. Mr. and Mrs. Newman live upstairs; they are friends of Mother's. The Coffman store sets on the comer. My first memory is when Aunt Joe sat me on a round table to comb my hair. The table tips over and breaks some dishes. Mother and Aunt Joe fight over the broken dishes. Mother says, "You stupid imbecile! You ornery bitch! How many times do I have to tell you not to sit the kids on the table?" Aunt Joe retaliates by saying, "At least I have the good enough sense to take care of them. I don't sit on my ass reading all day." Father comes into dinning room and puts a stop to it. He says, "Stop acting like children." They get busy and clean up the mess Aunt Joe and I made. I am just scratched. Mother and Aunt Joe's fighting gives me a terrible headache, which makes me cry.
All of us children on the block like to play in front of Mr. Coffman's grocery store. Sometimes Mr. Coffman gives us candy or some kind of goodie. He always tells me how pretty and cute I am. Mrs. Coffman lets me hold the dustpan for her while she cleans the floor in the store at night. She always brags on what a good helper I am. She always rewards me with a doughnut. I enjoy the attention they give me. Sometimes the fire hydrant in front of the Coffman store starts spewing out a lot of water. It is like someone turned on a big faucet. All the children like to play in it during the summer. Mr. Coffman doesn't like it when we draw hopscotch on the sidewalk, or in the winter when we have snowball fights. This kind of stuff makes him unhappy with us but this is the only time he yells at us kids.
Mostly it is the bigger kids who do things like this. The smaller children sit on the curb and play in the mud a lot. We get ourselves awfully dirty. It is fun to get dirty. This makes Mother and Aunt Joe angry. They have to clean us up before Father gets home. It is fun to listen to them fuss at us for being so dirty. Father doesn't want us playing outside or having any friends. The rule is that we talk to no one other than the family members. Father says, "One of you will say the wrong thing and get me into a lot of trouble. What happens in this house is no one's business but mine. Do all of you understand this?"
Mother and Aunt Joe work as a nurse's aid. Mother is taking an LPN course through the mail from the American School of Home Nursing. Mother says, "Father is a lawyer, he graduated from a law school in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is also a member of the Bar Association." Mother tells all our neighbors Father is a lawyer. This must be important to her. I sense this makes her feel like she, too, is important. Father and Aunt Joe claim Mother is dumb: they say that her usefulness ended when their show went under. Mother desperately wants to prove them wrong. She intends to do this by getting her nursing degree.
Mother is proud when Father plays the violin and guitar while Vesta sings. I love it when the family can sit in the same room and not fight. We all gather around and listen to them. It is a lot of fun when Father draws pretty pictures for us kids; this doesn't happen often unless we have company that Father is trying to impress. I can tell how happy this makes Mother because she seems to glow all over. I want to sing, too, when I get big like my sister; if Father will let me take lessons. I love music: I want to play the guitar, too.
When Father is at work, Mother and Aunt Joe lock any child that can walk outside. I remember begging Mother to let me in the apartment to use the bathroom but she refused. I go potty in the alley behind Mr. Coffman's store. That is where I usually go. Mr. Coffman catches me and yells me out good. I cry and tell him Mother will not let me in until it is time for Father to come home. Mr. Coffman gives me a doughnut. He says, "Never do that again, it is very dangerous. I will let you use my bathroom." From this day on he let me use his bathroom in the store. I love this old couple. I always try to listen and learn from them. I believe they love me.
When Father is at work some ladies come over to see Mother from time to time. They always leave something for Mother in bags. Father doesn't know this and I am not going to tell him. If he finds out he won't like it.
Delores is missing and everyone is looking for her. She is found in the basement hiding in the coal bin. She has coal all over her. Delores is crying and she has blood on her dress. I can't see where the blood is coming from. Mother is very upset when she notices Father has coal dust all over him, too. Mother says, "What have you done? You have molested this child!" Mother is accusing Father of hurting Delores. Delores acts afraid to be in the same room with Father.
Aunt Joe says, "You rotten cock sucking, mother fucking son of a bitch, don't you think the three of us is enough for you?" Mother says, "You rotten dirty scoundrel, she is just a baby." They fight for a long time, Father is mean, but this time I feel sorry for him. What has he done that they are treating him so badly? I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Someone calls the police. When they knock on the door Mother opens it and says, "Everything is okay." Mother picks Delores up and holds her in her arms, covering her bloody dress with her apron. The police ask a few questions, write on some paper and leave. As they leave they say, "Keep the noise down, people are trying to sleep. We are tired of answering the complaints coming from this apartment."
Mother wants to take Delores to a doctor. Father says, "No fucking way she is going to a doctor. She is my daughter and I have certain rights. I can do what I want with her." Then he asks in a loud voice, "Josephine, what the hell were you doing in the basement anyway?" Aunt Joe says, "I was looking for your daughter and I found her, you son of a bitch; surely you can find someone a little older then this child to fuck." I don't blame Father for hurting them this time. Father runs from the apartment and doesn't come back that night. Mother doesn't take my sister to the doctor. She does, however, try to comfort her. Delores gets to take a bath, and Mother allows her to play in the water. I can't see anything wrong with Delores. Delores gets to sleep with Mother and Aunt Joe.
Mother and Aunt Joe fix us supper and put us to bed. For a change things are quiet, so I crawl in the closet and go to sleep. The closet is where I always like to sleep when I am upset. It also gives me a better place to think about things.
Aunt Joe takes Vesta to school the next morning. Father comes home from work late and Aunt Joe had supper ready. Things seem to be normal just the usual fussing over who is sleeping with whom. A few months went by and the usual fussing and fighting continue.
Mother and Aunt Joe often fight over who is going to sleep with Father. Sometimes they both sleep with him. This time Father wants Mother and Aunt Joe to sleep with us children, and Vesta to sleep with him. I will never forget the fighting that takes place this night. Someone calls the police. Father says, "All you kids pretend to be asleep." We obey quickly, not a sound is made from any of us. Mother and Aunt Joe step out the window and stand on the ledge of the window sill outside.
Father answers the door. The police look around our house and find only the mess Mother and Aunt Joe made while fighting. They look in our closets with flashlights. When they leave Mother and Aunt Joe come back in the window. I can see how badly they are beaten. Both of them sleep with us children. Vesta sleeps with Father. I can hear Vesta crying. I wonder why she is unhappy. I feel sorry for her but there is nothing I can do to make her feel better. After a while Vesta comes back into the room with the rest of us children. I wet a wash cloth and wipe away some of the tears from my sister's face as she cries. I lay down beside her until she falls asleep. Then I go to the hiding place in the closet. Some kind of a problem comes up over a woman at Father's office. Mother and Father fight. Father has what Mother calls a suspension from work. Mother and Aunt Joe are not happy about this; it means Father can't go to work for a while.
The next day, we ride a train to Grandmother's house in Pelican Lake, Wisconsin. I am afraid of the train and this makes Father angry. Father is not in a good mood, he is still angry with Mother and Aunt Joe. He yells at me and says, "I'm going beat your God dam ass if you don't shut up!" Mother says, "Shut up yourself you are embarrassing me and everyone boarding this train, not to mention the fact that you are making us look like white trash." After we board the train it is fun to watch the things go flying by. It is also fun to watch the different way people dress and act.
My parents are quiet and not speaking to each another. When we get to Grandmother's she gave us all a big hug, like she always does when we see her.
While we are at Grandmother's, Father takes a belt to me. I am in Grandmother's rhubarb patch. I am small enough to run under the kitchen table and hide under Grandmother's dress, without bumping my head on the table. Grandmother takes a broom and hits Father with it. She chases him out into the yard. When she comes back into the kitchen one of her eyes is red. She says, "No one will take a belt to a baby in my house. I wonder how he treats these children at home? Well, he won't mistreat them here." We stay at Grandmother's until Father's suspension is over. Aunt Joe stays behind to work and keep the rent and utilities paid so we will have a place to go back to.
When we are at Grandmother's we often sit in the yard and listen to the adults talk in the evening. This evening, as we are sitting in the yard listening to them, Father says, "You kids might want to gather around and listen. Those of you old enough to understand might want to know something about your heritage some day."
He went on to say, "My mother was an Indian girl, her Indian name was Blossom, but Father called her Mary. When Father married Mother his family disowned him for marrying an Indian girl. No one in his family would let Father or me into their homes. He was physically kicked out of the family. Father was very unhappy. He was under a lot of pressure and he started drinking moonshine. While my father was drunk he went with other women. Father's brother, Uncle Fred, encouraged this. He felt Father should leave Mother and marry a white woman. He felt that would fix Father's relationship with the rest of the family. I guess my Uncle Fred loved my father and was trying to help him. His intentions were good but this made things worse."
"When Mother found out about Father's unfaithfulness, he was afraid, because he knew the Indian ways: Father hid all the knives in the house, hoping Mother wouldn't find them. He did everything he could under Indian law to keep Mother from hurting herself. He was only allowed to do so much without disgracing her more then he already had. While Father was at work, Mother told me to find a big kitchen knife and bring it to her. I got a large knife from where I had watched my Father hiding it. I gave Mother the knife. When she saw Father coming through the door that evening, she stabbed herself in the stomach with it several times. My Mother died before Father could get help for her. Mother committed suicide while her whole family watched because I gave her the knife my Father had hid."
"She is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere near Guthrie, Oklahoma. I have always felt responsible for Mother's death. I can't even find her grave site to put flowers on it, or to tell her how sorry I am." He speaks very softly and I think he is crying. He says, "There are many Indians buried in unmarked graves. Father's family made fun of me and called me a half-breed. I was not very comfortable around them, you might say, I grew up alone. I learned to enjoy being alone. I just told the whole world to go to hell. I lived my live the way I wanted to."
I think, "This is a very sad story."
Vesta asks, "Father, why didn't a grown person stop you from giving your mother this knife? If they were standing there, just watching and doing nothing, someone should have stopped you." Father replies, "It's an Indian tradition, when a man is unfaithful to an Indian girl, the Indian girl kills herself, to show how much her and her family have been disgraced. No one has the right to interfere with her actions. My father broke the Indian law when he hid the knives from her and because I gave Mother the knife, Mother's tribe rejected me after Mother's death. Indian people have laws different from white man's laws. The Indiana people are a very proud people. She made the choice to protect her family's honor. She felt she was doing what was expected of her. I wish she had thought about me, I had to grow up without a mother."
Delores, La Verne, and I whisper to each other and wonder if this is what made Father so mean. La Verne is also my sister.
La Verne asks, "Why didn't your father get a beautiful grave stone to mark her grave so you can find her?" Father replies, "It was against the white man's law to mark an Indian's grave. You see, in those days, an Indian didn't have the status of a white person's pet pig. White men chased the Indiana people off their land, then tried to annihilate them." He sounds very bitter.
We look at our skin. Delores says to La Verne, "Yep, we are white." Father continues: "The Indians could no longer provide food and shelter for their families. Indian's were tortured, made fun of and allowed to die for lack of food. White men only gave them the lowest kind of jobs."
"The United States government offered them handouts instead of allowing them to live and work on their own land. Many of the Indians refused the handouts because they were ashamed to accept welfare. The government does not give them the amount of food they had promised. The only thing the Indians wanted was the right to live on their land and be allowed to take care of their own families. Many Indian children died from the lack of food."
"White people are wasteful and greedy, they think only of what they want. They don't understand nature or how to preserve wild life or care for the land. They destroyed the animals and the land for the sheer fun of it. Indians killed the animals for food only. They didn't know much about gardening. But they also were going around blowing big holes in the ground with dynamite. The Indiana's outsmarted the white people's government; the Indian people are smarter than white people."
"Today the government of the United States pays the Indiana people a monthly check for the suffering they caused them. The white people won the physical battle, but the Indian people won the moral battle. Today most Indian people don't even know about their heritage. Only a few tribes have tried to preserve some heritage for their young people; they hold yearly celebrations hoping this will help teach them the customs and beliefs of their ancestors. Many still live on reservations and still try to use their laws as much as our government will allow them to."
Another time while we were visiting our grandparents, Mother tells us what her life was like when she was a girl. She says, "Father lost his eyesight while he was still quite young. Before Father lost his eyesight Father was a logger. He worked with several hundred men. They worked for long hours. Some of the men slept in tents, others slept in Father's barn. They had a very large tent they used as a kitchen and dinning room. We were finically in good shape. We had everything we needed and almost everything we wanted. We were spoiled."
"When Father started to lose his eyesight he still had to work. He even tried to work after he couldn't see at all. He nearly cut his leg off sawing down a tree. He had to quit working. Things changed for my family. We had no way to support ourselves. It was a rough time for us, but somehow it made us children stick together, and help each other more. It made us closer as a family."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from FOLLOW YOUR HEART by Pajes Thomas Copyright © 2012 by PAJES THOMAS. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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