Chapter Five
After we closed on Sunday afternoon, I tried to take a nap.
I closed my eyes and curled up on one side.
The tinkling of the wind chimes hanging to the left of the front door, a chirping cricket that had managed to find a corner under the trailer, and my own breathing blended into one loud noise that wouldn’t let me sleep.
I slammed a pillow over my head, leaving only my nose and chin out from under it.
That didn’t work. I tried playing blackjack in my head.
That didn’t work, either. Finally, I got up and wandered over to the living area and turned on the television.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was playing. I sure didn’t want to watch that, but there was something about that silly tree that reminded me of my mother’s laughter.
She used to say that we had a family stick instead of a family tree when I asked her why we didn’t have a big Christmas gathering like Frank did.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” she’d said. “I always wanted to have one holiday with lots of kids gathered around a huge tree on Christmas morning, too, but we are doomed. We both come from a long line of only children going back for centuries.”
“What do you mean, ‘doomed’?” I’d asked her.
She’d wiped her hands on a tea towel and hugged me. “Doomed is when you don’t get brothers and sisters. I’m hoping that when you grow up, you break the record and have a dozen kids.”
So far, she had not gotten her wish, but I did the DNA thing a few years ago just to see if she was right. I have never even gotten a report about a tenth cousin who has been dead for decades.
Because I’d always asked for a tree, Frank set one up in each of our hotel rooms during the month of December.
They had usually only been a foot tall and had come with a few tiny little bulbs glued to it.
He’d told me that the big tree in the lobby had been decorated just for me. I believed him for years.
Evidently, it was commercial time, because the next three channels I surfed through were all advertising either wine, beer, or liquor.
A visual of my mother with a drink in her hand after one of Frank’s horrible family reunions appeared as clear as if it were real.
Mama and I had dreaded those events that happened four times a year—Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve.
He loved all his loud relatives, and the liquor and beer had flowed freely when they were all together.
Mama and I had tolerated them—barely. I did not want to be related to any of those people.
Independence Day was the worst holiday. I still shiver to this day when I think of Frank’s Aunt Minnie.
She would always be the first to greet us.
She would bury my face in her big boobs so tightly, and when I finally wiggled free, she would bend down and kiss me on the cheek.
Her mustache was like being scraped by a porcupine.
Before I could get to my hiding place, one of the many drunk great-uncles would hug me and fog up my eyeballs with his breath.
Had Mama lived and I had gotten married and had kids by now, I would have refused to take them to those gatherings.
I remember hiding behind a big oak tree every time the event was held outside.
Two big roots that ran on top of the ground made a lovely little nest for me.
The Christmas party was held at Aunt Minnie’s big old two-story house, and after dinner I escaped to the attic.
That place was like going on a treasure hunt for a kid.
In both of my hiding places, I usually sat alone and practiced shuffling my old maid cards like Frank did with his lucky deck every night.
If I’d had relatives my age, I might have been a different person—but then, probably not.
Frank would always come home drunk after spending time with his relatives, and Mama always had a migraine that put her to bed for at least two days.
When I fussed about not wanting to go, she would tell me that she’d promised Frank she would become part of his family, and he vowed that he would never forsake us, and that he would not gamble again.
He’d kept both promises: He didn’t put me in a foster home, and he didn’t gamble until she passed away.
Those big family occasions were in Kentucky.
The summer before my sixteenth birthday, we made the trip from West Virginia, where I had won a lot of money in an illegal game.
Frank spent so much on fireworks and booze that he was the big man on campus that year.
Aunt Minnie’s mustache was still as prickly as it had always been, but I was tall enough that I didn’t get smothered by her big boobs.
I just wanted the day to be over, but the universe had other plans.
On our way out of town, Frank and I went into a café for breakfast. He met Paula, the owner, and decided that since we were flush, we would stay in Kentucky for a while longer.
He married the woman a month later in a fancy ceremony at Aunt Minnie’s house.
“Go live a normal life. Make friends,” he’d said the day after he and Paula got married at the Harlan County Courthouse in Kentucky. That fall, he enrolled me in Harlan County High School. “Go Black Bears.”
“What about our next poker game?” I’d asked Frank when we left the courthouse.
“There will be no more gambling,” Paula had said. “Frank loves me enough that he promised he would give up poker.”
Yeah, right! He promised Mama the same thing, and look what happened.
All I had known for almost eight years was going from one place to the next, studying in whatever hotel or motel room Frank had left me in until he bought me a phony ID. Then I was able to go to the poker games with him, and often won more money than he did. Friends were not part of the equation.
Until I came to the Tumbleweed.
I’d been at this place for four days and now had $503 and some change in my lockbox. I had been excited to see Scarlett and Rosalie leave that afternoon so that I could have some alone time in the trailer, but now I wished they were still there.
“Here I am without Rosalie singing hymns under her breath or Scarlett watching television,” I whispered and closed my eyes, shutting off the visions, “and I miss them.”
Did friendship mean dependency on another person? If so, I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling at all.
I turned off the television and stood up. I rounded the short bar, opened the refrigerator door, and stared into it like it were an abyss. “This place is as quiet as a tomb.”
What do you know about a tomb? Mama’s voice popped into my head.
“It’s just a saying.” I shivered at the thought of Mama being forever in a tomb.
I was glad that I could envision her laughing and having a good time on the beach and in the cool ocean water, rather than imagining how I would feel if I visited a cold tombstone in a cemetery.
Everyone needs friends, she said.
“Why? And what has that got to do with us pouring you out in all that water?”
A hard knock on the door startled me. I whipped around so fast that it made me dizzy. I figured Rosalie or Scarlett had their arms full and couldn’t open the door, so I hurried across the floor to find Ada Lou standing on the porch.
“Put your coat on. I’m going to give you a tour of Dell City,” she said. “And then we’re stopping by my place for a movie and popcorn.”
I was glad for anything that would take my mind off the past, but something about being told what to do set me on edge. “You’ve been around Rosalie too much.”
“What makes you say that?” Ada Lou asked.
I reached for my coat. “You are almost as bossy as she is.”
“I’ve been accused of worse,” she said with a grin, and led the way to her truck.
She could barely see over the steering wheel, and she had to stretch her leg to get her foot to the gas pedal. But that didn’t stop her from driving several miles an hour over the speed limit.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“When is your birthday?” she fired right back at me.
“December 24. Mama told me that Santa Claus left me under the tree.”
“I like that better than a stork flying through the air with you, or some stranger leaving you under a cabbage plant in the garden. When I realized how old my Robin would be today, it made me think that any child she could have had would be about your age. You could be my granddaughter.”
“I don’t think so,” I said and told her the story of what my mama had said about the family on her side only having a stick instead of a tree.
She laughed out loud. “I would have liked your mama. And, honey, family doesn’t always mean that you share blood or that DNA crap.
It can mean that you share heartfelt love.
Look, I never got to be a grandmother, so I’m going to give you some advice.
The family you are born into is just a starter one.
The people in that one care for you the best they know how.
They love you, feed you, clothe you, and all that until you are old enough to go out into the world and find your own family.
I found mine right here in this place, and you could, too, if you just open your eyes. ”
“Why do you care?” No one else had ever—more or less—adopted me on the spot. Hell’s bells, I didn’t come from a dysfunctional family. I came from a nonexistent one. Frank was more like a friend than a father figure.
“Because in another world and another time, you might be my granddaughter, and grandmothers are supposed to be bossy and give advice,” she answered. “Besides, Rosalie says that you are the best help she’s ever had, and she is my friend. If I can do this for her, then I’m happy.”
“And if you fail?”
“Then I tried, and that’s all any person can ever do.” She shrugged.
We sat in silence for a full minute before she spoke again. “Do you know why I named my daughter Robin?”