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By Misti Date: 2005 May 30 Comment on this Work [[2005.05.30.17.32.13744]] |
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born to teenage parents mom beautiful and warm but not much of a barricade against daddy and his anger daddy was six foot seven with cold blue eyes and a snapping leather belt but when he was happy he wrestled with me on the floor watched "Saturday Night Live" and "The Tonight Show" with me made me giggle like the one good picture I have of us daddy shirtless on his hands and knees on the tacky '70s shag carpet in the tiny den me on his back smiling big for the camera a bitten into apple in one hand looking like a happy healthy five year old spoiled beyond belief we moved around a lot moved from rent house to trailer house to rent house to trailer house two different family vacations Red River, New Mexico when I was four New Orleans, Louisiana when I was six right before the divorce I saw the murals of the topless dancers on Bourbon Street all those taunting tasseled nipples later while being grilled on how to charm the beauty pageant judges my sister said she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up I said I wanted to be a Bourbon Street stripper amid the chaos the moving changing schools crying at Dolly Parton songs on the radio because my heart was easily broken even at six there was Meme and Pop's house on Cuba Road in Bridgeport, Texas the town of my birth Meme and Pop my mom's parents still young enough to enjoy me when my world was all about climbing the rocket at the park staging soap operas with my Golden Dream Barbie and Triathlon Ken making up songs about the Shock Wave at Six Flags Over Texas and malicious bumblebees and temptresses and married men into my portable tape recorder tap lessons and beauty pageants and all those glittery sequins Meme would read fairy tales to me from her Childcraft books and tell me ridiculous stories about a fictional little girl Poccahontas and her daddy, Indian Chief and her best friend, Suzie and the mean witch who lived in the woods and caught the girls when they wandered off too far without Indian Chief's permission and tied them to chairs and fed them cold pea soup Indian Chief always rescued the girls he never spanked them or yelled at them until they shivered and sobbed but would tell them in a tender yet firm voice that they had learned their lesson Pop was what I wished my daddy could have been jovial and affectionate never making me doubt for a moment his adoring unconditional paternal love back then Cuba Road was dirt across the road was a barbed wire fence and a thicket I loved to explore with my older friends and Mamaw Crenshaw my great-grandmother lived down the road in her trailer house with the vegetable garden well-tended in the backyard in the summertime after supper I would run outside the screen door slamming behind me to play on the swingset until the sky became heavy with stars sometimes the grownups would sit on the patio in the backyard telling their stories as they smoked their cigarettes across the pasture I could see the twinkling lights of Decatur the world was dark and mysterious teeming with mythology but I was always safe on Cuba Road. |