Nice Little Girls

June 1955


My mother was a beautiful woman, with blue, black hair, and eyes that were so dark it was difficult to tell where iris ended and the pupil began. I remember as a child wanting my blue-gray eyes to change and be a definite color like Momma's. When I was little she always wore dresses unless she was working out in the garden. They were pretty cotton dresses that fit her waist and had a full skirt swirling around her legs when she walked. To me she looked like a goddess, or at the very least a movie star, since I didn't know what a goddess was. In the winter time she wore wool dresses that showed off her shape even better than the cotton summer clothing.

I made her angry a lot, sometimes several times a day. Often our day would start at breakfast with an argument over milk, which I wouldn't drink, or cereal which I didn't want to eat. Eggs tasted good to me but I often got the runny yellow yolk on my clothing and had to go change.
Momma didn't learn to drive until about 1956, after we moved to the country. Daddy didn't want to spend his weekend days grocery shopping, so it had to be done during the week. Since we were walking to town, she could only buy food for a day or two. This meant we walked downtown several times each week. Our shopping trips were always made in the mid-morning hours, so we could avoid the heat of the afternoon. We lived in a small town west of Boise, Idaho, in a high desert. It gets pretty hot in the day and cools down at night. The morning hours are comfortable until about noon, then it's best to be inside. In 1955, when I was four years old, no one I knew had an air conditioner. We had a round fan that moved its head back and forth to cool the room, and our house was surrounded by big trees, just like all the other houses on Broadway Street. There was a big willow tree in our back yard that drooped almost to the grass on the ground. I liked hiding there playing it was a deserted island. In the summer time, it was the coolest place to play.

Daddy worked at the local sawmill. It was across the irrigation ditch that supplied water for Momma's garden. Once across the ditch you walked a ways and you could see the whole place, but there was a bigger ditch called a canal that we couldn't cross. There the water ran really fast and the sides were steep, it was scary. Daddy pulled the green chain. I used to wonder why they painted his chain green, it seemed red or blue would be prettier. I don't remember if I ever asked, even if I did no one bothered to answer.

One week day in June, we had to go to town to get something for Momma to fix for dinner. I dribbled egg yolk down the front of my dress. “Why don't you pay better attention, Terri? There is another dress in the closet. You go up and get changed, right now.” Momma told me in her loud, mean voice. It wasn't the way she talked most of the time. “You put on the pink one it looks so pretty on you.”

My hair was a trial to Momma, it was blond and straight as string. She twisted it up on rags to make it curl in little curls. I pulled the pink gingham dress over my head and made a face at the blond curls in the mirror. They never stayed more than a day, and I hated sitting stil for the time it took to wrap all the little rags in my hair.

Momma gave me a look when I came back to the kitchen table. “You look like such a sweet little girl.” She told me. “Now, you be nice.”

I knew it wouldn't take long for me to show my usual colors. I couldn't fit my Momma's defination of nice for any length of time at all. My baby brother was thirteen months old and he didn't have any trouble being a nice boy, however I couldn't seem to get the hang of being a nice, little, girl.

The houses on Broadway street had big yards with drooping willow trees, just like ours. They were so messy my Momma said. She didn't like anything that messed up the yard or the house. I figured that was why she was angry at me so much of the time. I couldn't seem to keep much of anything clean back during those days. I was one of those children, the ones who's shoe is always untied and clothing seems to have been drug through the dirt before being donned. They always waited to dress me at the last moment, it saved on laundry I guess.

We walked down Broadway. Mike would run into peoples yards and Momma spent a lot of time trying to get him to walk down the side of the street. There was no sidewalk for two or three blocks. I knew some of the people who lived in those houses, the Erickson, and Arnolds are the only two familys I could name. They had girls that were a few years older than me, DeeDee Erickson and Tony Arnold.

We passed the Assembly of God Church, that we attended for a while. It was a small, white, building with clapboard siding. The pastor and his family lived next door, their name was Slaughter. They didn't like me at that church, and my parents, bless their little hearts, began to search for another place to worship. My Sunday school teacher, called me a child of Satan. She said I would burn in Hell forever. I had the disconcerting gift of precognition, something the good people of the Assembly of God would not accept. We didn't go back after Easter, but my parents began to punish me if I told anyone what would happen next. Truthfully, I don't think Daddy cared about that bunch, but Momma wanted to belong. My little gift prevented her from joining in somethings wholeheartedly, she never knew when I would spout off. She would hold me by my arms and stare me in the eye, brown eyes to blue, and tell me “Nice little girls don't do that.”

The people who lived in the house next to the Slaughters had a pet deer in their back yard. They had no fence and you could see him tied up with a collar on, like a dog. He seemed really big to me, and his antlers were scary. Apparently they found him in the woods as a fawn and thought he would make a great pet. I didn't think he looked very happy there in the yard, and I wanted to go let him loose. But he was scary with those big horns and I knew my Momma wouldn't like it so I passed by on our walks. I think the town made them take him to the zoo or something because he wasn't there after the end of the summer.

Momma always carried Mike past the Deer House, so he wouldn't run into their yard and get stuck by the horns. The next block had a sidewalk and we crossed the street to walk on the sidewalk. Mike always wanted down here and he would run up the gray cement ribbon to the steps that lead to Meridian Street outside the VFW Hall. I didn't know what the VFW was, but it seemed important. There were eight steps that took us up to Meridian Street, it is supposed to have been built on one of the meridian lines of the globe.

We stopped at the corner, Momma tried to take Mike's hand but he put it behind his back, his mouth pursed up like he was mad. “Terri get your brothers hand.” She said. He didn't mind holding my hand, most likely because I wouldn't pick him up. I took his hand, she took my hand and we walked across the street.

“Look both ways.” I parroted the words I heard her say so many times.

“He's your responisbility.” She told me, dropping my hand as we got to the other side of the street. We had two more blocks to McFaddens Grocery Store.

There was an empty lot on the north side of the street. The south side was the Creamery. There was no sidewalk there. Big truck were parked in front of the building and men unloaded silver milk cans from them. They were put on a a path of rollers that took them through a door that had strips of blue canvas hanging down. As the cans disappeared, I wondered what it would be like to ride on those rollers, but I knew that would be a bad thing to do. Daddy told me they pasturized milk there so no one could get sick from it. My grandparents lived on a farm with dairy cows, and chickens. When we were there in the evening Daddy would help milk the cows. The milk was warm and frothy, and tasted different than what came in the bottles the milkman delivered at our house. I didn't like either of them.

The main street in town had a light on the corner. We waited for it to change before we walked across First Street. There were several businesses between this corner and the grocery store, I liked looking in the windows.

An old man was leaning up against the building outside what my Momma had once
told me was a bar. He spoke to my mother, “Hi Blackie, how are you?”
She smiled at him and answered him. His arm snaked out and grabbed me, and he pulled me to him hard against his legs. “You have such pretty blond curls, I think I'll just take you home with me.”

He laughed as I tried to get away from him.

“No, my hair doesn't curl.” I said, thinking if it was the curls he wanted they weren't real. “Momma makes them with rags.”

He laughed harder, and my Momma laughed with him. He smelled bad. I thought if she let him take me I would never see my Daddy again. I thought he was like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, the one who ate small children. “My Daddy won't let you have me.”

“Little girl, I've known your Daddy since he was your age.”

I began to cry and Momma held out her hand. “Don't be such a baby.” She said to me. “Mr. Wilson, we need to get along now, its going to be hot this afternoon.”

He kissed me on the cheek, and rubbed his whiskery face agains mine, then let me go. I kept sniffling all the way to the store. The saddle and leather shop didn't even hold my interest as we walked passed it. I held my baby brothers hand and he patted me trying to console me.

“Stop that crying, nobody hurt you.” Momma held me by both shoulders and shook me. Staring at me in the eyes again, brown eyes to blue. “You aren't a baby any more.”

I don't know when I began to think of her as Mother instead of Momma. By the first grade, I called her Mother for the rest of her life.