As my mother held Bobby Jr., I went to comfort the baby girl. It was odd, she was not crying, not moving. I gently touched her and she woke. Why hadn’t the crying and violence awakened her? It seemed the tiny baby had already lost her hearing from an ear infection that was the result of neglect and not her father’s “special” attention. These children’s only chance at life was to be as far away as possible from their dangerous teenage parents.
Bob M. was out of our house the very next day. One week later, both of my sister’s babies were put up for adoption. Mother knew from experience the terrible realities of both adoption and child beaters, and she knew which was worse. But I did not know what to do with what I had seen.
How could I ever erase the shadow of the baby, a man shaking an infant in the dark? I could not undo it. It would color everything I saw ever after. Yes, when it comes to children, I am a ferocious mama bear.
“A Stranger’s Car”
It was another Saturday afternoon and I was out playing in the field next to our house. I had my eye on a horny toad who thought I could not see him in the sagebrush. Now he jumped to the next pile of sticks, hopping from rock to rock. Gotcha!
I held him in my hands but with lots of room to breathe there in my finger cave. How wondrous you are! I thought as I carefully placed him back on the ground. What else can I catch today? I was feeling rather pleased with myself as my eyes met the horizon. Directly in front of me a brand-new car was parking on Orangewood Avenue. A man in a suit opened the door and, smiling at me, began to cross the street and walk into the field. He seemed to be speaking to me.
I had a feeling in my stomach. Men in suits didn’t walk in the dirt like this, and that car didn’t belong on our street. This man was the man they told us about and he was doing everything they said he would do. He was smiling and moving quickly. What was that he was saying? Something about a puppy.
“Hey there, now, do you know anything about puppies? I have a puppy in my back seat here.”
As he spoke he walked toward me in the field.
“I was taking it home to my son, but it’s crying. I don’t know what to do. Do you think it’s hungry?”
Oh, I definitely knew what to do with puppies, but I also knew there was something wrong. I wanted to feed the puppy but . . . was there really a puppy? This was almost irresistible.
Puppy ruse? Stranger’s car?
Bad man! Still I did not move.
He was closer now. I could see his tie, his dusty shoes, and his smile. Taking it all in, I thought, Do not get into that car, yet I did not think, Run away. I was frozen in my tracks.
Now the stranger was only about thirty feet away. Even as I thought, I know what you are, some part of me was still looking over his shoulder to see if there really was a puppy who needed me in his back seat.
Now he was only fifteen feet away, still smiling, almost upon me when my mother called from the back door.
“Rickie Lee!”
I looked. She had come outside and was moving toward our fence.
“Rickie Lee, what are you doing there? What’s going on?” and “Who is that man?”
The man hesitated, then he stopped. He looked over his right shoulder at my mother, gauging the distance between her and me and him. I was alone and exposed. I thought Mother was too far away to help but he did not agree. In one motion he turned and headed quickly to his car.
“Get over here right now,” Mother commanded. As I started to run toward our house I got there in time for Mama and I to see the man drive past us.
“What did that man want?”
“He said he had a puppy. He needed someone to help him.”
She was furious. “Puppy? You knew there was no puppy, right?”
“I knew, Mama. That’s why I did not go over to him.”
The suit was a ticket into any neighborhood. It gave him authority, it confused people. This man had done this before. He knew how to dress for the part.
Helplessness begets fury. I felt loved as Sergeant Bettye fumed her way across the neighbors’ lawns telling everyone what had happened, almost happened, to Rickie Lee. I was only a second or two from being kidnapped. We both knew there was nothing Mother could have done had the stranger taken the steps toward me instead of away.
Everyone in the neighborhood was now talking about the stranger’s car. The neighbors came to complain about the world we lived in. My father thought it was time to move. The attempted kidnapping was too close for comfort.
Come and meet the angel born today
Inside another stranger’s car
Be still, until this wayward bird
Passes over where we are . . .
(“A Stranger’s Car”)
The Hillbillies Across the Street
Gloria Moore was my playmate from across the street. She and I organized that song and dance performance of “Side by Side” when my dad first heard me singing harmony. All the mothers came out on the street to see our choreography. We were Vaudevillians!
Gloria invited me to go to church with her and all her cousins. They went to church all day long and I wanted to go with them. I just had to ask my mom’s permission.
There was an uneasy peace between my mother and the Nazarenes across the street. Mom had lived under the oppressive rule of evangelicals in the orphanages in southern Ohio so she knew firsthand about their zeal, their sin, and their rolling around on the ground barking. She fumed when she spoke of them because Mother wanted no reminder of her roots, and she knew better than I what might be going on in those houses.
It was hard for me to understand until the first time I went into Gloria’s home. Gloria’s mother did her son’s hair. Elton Moore was thirteen years old, the same age as my brother, and what was nearly as disturbing—it looked as if she had dyed his hair black. Mrs. Moore sat straddling Elton from behind as she watched As the World Turns. Oh my gosh, I couldn’t breathe. They may as well have been attaching body parts, it was so horrifying. Gloria acted as if everything were normal as she led me past them and into her room. We did not speak of it except she tried to separate herself from her terrible situation with:
“My mom likes Elvis Presley.”
Huh?
“She dyes my brother’s hair so he’ll look like Elvis.”
Oh, that I could understand. If Elton looked like Elvis, then Mrs. Moore felt like she was somebody.
That year Elton and his cousin Christian went shooting pigeons with their BB guns. To get a better perch for shooting birds, they both climbed high up a power line pole. Christian lost his balance and grabbed a live power line. The current surged through his body, gluing him to the line which was humming softly as Elton watched from a few feet away. They said by the time Christian finally hit the ground, he had caught fire and shrunk, and he hit the ground as a little piece of coal. Elton was emotionally charred and never recovered.
The notoriety of Christian’s horrible death brought a prestige to the Moores, and suddenly kids who never spoke to Gloria offered their condolences. Gloria’s aunt was inconsolable and her faith shaken to the core. What kind of God lets a mother’s only son die so brutally? Mrs. Moore would go to church alone now. Elvis would not be attending either.
My mother, the moon
To say my mother was unpredictable is to say that the ocean is salty. It was a given, but you went in there anyway, hoping to float on top of the waves.
One day Mom would fight for me like a lioness, the next she would slap me across the face for spilling my milk. She was a storm