Ink

They lived in what was called “The Little House” on a farm in the middle of nowhere, outside a small farm town west of Indianapolis.  The little house was built for the great grandfather, who came to live with his son on the farm. This was after his (the great grampa’s) second wife had died and the step-kids had taken the farm he lived on for many years. Or, at least that’s what she was told and led to believe. She did not know a lot about him.  She knew that he had once “tried it on” (as the Brits say) with his granddaughter Jane, who firmly rebuffed him, and that he had somehow blown all of the money he inherited, and most of the land.  Not uncommon in those days, but still it caused even the great-grandchildren to wince when they looked at the Big House on the next farm over where the second wife and her kids had lived until she died.  Was her name Bessie? We didn’t know for sure. We only knew that our family, whose patriarch was one of the sons from the first marriage, inherited a small farm with a small house ordered from Sears and a smaller house where she lived until she was five.

A series of family members lived in the house over the years.  Three of the older four children (her mother’s siblings) went off with spouses to live in Indianapolis. One daughter and her husband lived in a small house at the end of the always dusty gravel road that connected it to the Big House Little House farm. This was her Aunt Edna, whose two young daughters were the first role models she had. From early on they took her to play upstairs with BillDings and in the yard outside. There were lilac bushes- didn’t everyone have lilac bushes?- and a small kitchen garden.  She loved those days when she could walk down the gravel road barefoot to her cousins’ house.  They were a lot older than she was (well, three or four years) but they were patient with her and kept her entertained.  In her world, having something to do was a huge event.

When she was two the brother arrived.  Her mother, who had been raised by a woman with severe mental health problems who was hospitalized several times during her mother’s childhood, was barely making it with one toddler.  And now that it was a toddler and an infant she was at the edge.  The Dad worked in Indianapolis and was gone long days and nights.  As a narcissist he never thought he needed to be at home with them.  He filled time with work, bowling, golf, drinking and whatever else he wanted. All of those things came easily to him.  Being a father did not.

One day early on, she went to the kitchen door and pushed.  It flew open, so she slowly climbed down the steps to the gravel driveway between the house and the barn where she looked for eggs every morning.  She crossed the driveway. Stopped for a moment and looked up at the bright blue cloudless sky.  The air was warm. She kept walking across the barnyard passing the trees and farm equipment.  She reached the field which was not yet planted.  She knew this because in her memory the field was flat and had not been plowed and planted in rows of either soybeans or corn, depending on the year.  She did not have words to describe fear or being lost so she kept walking.  She turned right and walked.  She passed the orchard, the sheds, and then walked toward what she realized much later was a ditch (the little ditch). 

Suddenly someone picked her up.  Someone picked her up and took her back to the little house.  For many years, well into adulthood, when she remembered this she thought it was an angel who picked her up.  She could not think of another explanation.  Much later she knew.  She knew that it was her grandmother, her wounded and non-verbal grandmother, who stood at the windows and watched outside while she spoke to herself. Seeing the granddaughter, whom she saw every day from the window, outside walking toward the ditch made her leave the house and run toward the little girl.  She swooped her up in her arms and walked back to the little house.  Grandmother knocked on the door and her daughter answered.  Without words she put the little girl inside the house, then turned and went back to the big house. 

Over time, the little girl learned to spend more time with her grandmother.  She wouldn’t be missed by her mother, who didn’t really like her, and her baby brother took all of the time and energy that her mother had.  And this continued into her adulthood.

Years pass and walks turn into long hours away from the little house.  Hours spent with the grandmother and the cousins, walking over rotting apples from the apple tree between the big house and the little house.  There was no one to care for the trees, and no one to pick up the few apples that might have been salvaged to turn into pies, cobblers, or apple sauce.  The little girl found a white cat from among the barnyard cats.  She named it No Apple, because the cat always tried to eat the apples on the ground and the little barely verbal girl would shout, “No apple!” as in “Don’t eat the apple.”  The name stuck.  As she grew, she was with her grandfather as much as possible.  He had taken a job at Bridgeport Brass during the war and stayed on when the younger men came home.  He stayed on while he farmed the fields.  He was left with two small fields, enough to bring in extra money for the family- still four children at home.  With the kitchen garden that the older girls helped with, they got by.  The little girl ran into the field to meet the tractor coming up toward the house and begged to ride with him.  He was frustrated that her mother was not watching her more closely, but he always let her ride with him to the end of the rows.  She sat still and didn’t move. Whatever he told her to do, she did.

The years passed.  Maybe it was boring, and maybe she should have been in town where there were schools and other activities.  Still, with all of the time alone and little entertainment she ended up with a genius level Stanford-Binet.  Sometimes on weekends she would go to town to visit her other grandparents. She would get her hair washed, brush her teeth, eat at regular times, and sleep alone.  The first time she remembered being sexually abused was in that house.  And it was her grandfather.  He took her panties off (she was just starting potty-training) and told her to dance.  She was dancing when her grandmother opened the door and found them.  She swooped the girl up and took her in the bathroom.  She asked the girl lots of questions and washed her private parts with a warm cloth.  They never spoke of it again.

Over the years the girl had symptoms of being abused.  There were nightmares of wanting to scream but not being able to open her mouth, the hyper-alertness when she heard sounds in the night.  Her grandmother continued to bring her there on weekends, but often the girl slept with her grandma in her bed.  It all started to fit together later when she traced it back to those days.  

Back to the farm.  Her Mom got pregnant again, and her Dad was working for the big corporation after finishing his college degree.  The girl needed to start school.  It was time to move to a town closer to Indianapolis.  The morning they moved, she awoke in the living room on the sleeper sofa. No one had told her what was going to happen.  No one ever did. Her uncles were there helping with the furniture, and somehow they ended up in the new house.  That’s where they lived for six years.