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A Dead End

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When I was in college, sometimes the only private place I had to go was in my car. I drove all over Oklahoma City that first year, getting lost and finding my way back again. Sometimes, I even ventured out into neighboring towns, depending on the breadth of contemplation I was undergoing at the time. I came upon many crossroads, forks in the road, and endless highways. At dead ends, I had to turn around and go in a different direction altogether.

People don’t talk about miscarriages. Much. Maybe its something they want to keep private, or maybe there’s some external pressure to keep it under wraps. For me, I’ve been quiet about it—for the most part—because I didn’t want to make anyone else sad and I fell in line with the notion that ladies don’t talk about such things. But I’m ready to talk about it. In a way, I need to talk about it. There’s a pull inside me to find out and connect with other women who have shared a similar experience, and how can I do that unless I put it out there?

In November, I joined a club I never wanted to be in—the pregnancy loss club. My loss is minor compared to what some women have gone through. I was only seven weeks along when I had a D&C to take care of it. It’s easy for me to compare my loss to others and feel the need to get over it. I’ve been sucking it up all this time, but, as trauma tends to do, my not working through it has compromised my emotional well-being.

We all have our own unique ways of dealing with things, and I don’t mean to suggest that women should or shouldn’t go public when they have a miscarriage. But through therapy (yes, I see a therapist—loud and proud therapy participant right here), I’ve discovered that I need community. And it helps me to tell my story.

In my case, I was pregnant with a “blighted ovum”. You can look it up, but my doctor told me that there was probably going to be something wrong with the baby, so nature took its course. The problem was that my body still thought it was pregnant, so I was going into the doctor sick as a dog and happy to be so, thinking that the raging hormones making me sick was a good sign. “This is a loss. You’re going to grieve,” my doctor told me. It’s true, but this has been a strange grief. It hasn’t been anything like the losses I’ve experienced before. In all of my other confrontations with death, I grieved for what was. Now, I grieve for what could have been.

From the moment I learned I was pregnant, I knew it was a little girl. We even picked out a name, which I will keep to myself since I might like to save it for a living child one day. When I called my Mama to tell her I was expecting, she said, “Well my, my, my!” and was so excited that her words started getting ahead of her on the phone. We started calling the freshly fertilized egg “Lizard” as a code word, because when we asked our four-year-old if he would like to have a little brother or sister, he said without hesitation, “I want a lizard.”

I called my doctor and we formulated a plan to titrate off my meds. I stocked up on prenatal vitamins and cut out all of the things you’re supposed to cut out when expecting:  wine, soft cheese, raw sushi, cold lunchmeat. We made an appointment with the obstetrician, and Joey made plans to go with me. Even though I was sick as a dog, I gained fifteen pounds from eating bland carbohydrates. I could see the weight gain in the mirror at the gym, but all would be well once I was able to announce my pregnancy to the world. Then everyone would understand the extra pooch over the waistband of my pants.

In the waiting room at that first OB visit, Joey and I began to formulate what we would say in that first Facebook post. A second child wouldn’t warrant the same type of announcement as our first child—where we shared the news via a family event and a special email out to all my co-workers. A Facebook post would be sufficient, but we wanted it to be worded just right. The child might look back on it years down the road, and we would want that child to feel loved right from the start. They told us it was probably too early to see everything in that first ultrasound, so they had me come back in for bloodwork a couple of times and scheduled a follow-up ultrasound. The bloodwork came back with good levels of heightened pregnancy hormones, and that made everyone in our small circle confident that everything was just fine. I was so confident that I told Joey he didn’t need to come to the second ultrasound.

In the waiting room that second time, I watched a teenage girl with a nervous smile—a girl that I had taught a couple years before—go back with her boyfriend to be seen on the OB side of the office. I had been pregnant the first time alongside some of my students, and I found it strange. Here I was, once again, sharing in the maternal journey with someone half my age.

The rest of it went by so fast it is almost already a blur in my memory. I remember being told by the ultrasound technician that she did not see the fetus, and I took a deep and accepting breath. My doctor said, “It’s not working out”, and I cried. Afterwards, I went to the bathroom and overheard an excited mother breathing a sigh of relief about something and talking to the same doctor about next steps in the pregnancy. It occurred to me then how strange it must be to work in a profession delivering devastating news to one person, then turning around to deliver happy news to the next in line. I felt sorry for everyone who had to care for me through this process. How awkward it must be for them, I thought.

There was certainly a great deal of pain initially, but a prolonged suffering has been in the aftermath. I can’t bear to open Pinterest right now because the social media gods have decided to fill my feed with baby stuff. It’s not so bad when a friend posts that she’s expecting; for the most part, I’m genuinely happy for an expectant mother. It’s hard to see the medical bills from the procedure I had to undergo, so I’ll be triumphantly glad when I can pay those off. Medical jargon is what it is, but the fact that the type of miscarriage I had is referred to as a “missed abortion” gets under my skin.

The most surreal part of the whole ordeal was signing a document that designated where the fetal remains were to be sent. In my case, the embryo was absorbed back into my body; of course that didn’t stop anyone from taking the other tissues to a lab and charging me for it.

I’m here at this dead end and it is time to turn around. I’ve been sitting here for months trying to figure out a way to forge a path through, to pave over uneven, rocky ground and get over it. But sometimes getting over rough ground just tears up your car.

Desires of the Heart

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Aunt Ruth wasn’t really an aunt at all, we just called her kin because she was more than kith to MawMaw. Her hair was fire engine red, and she always wore cat eye spectacles with a beaded chain that would hold them around her neck. She loved Jesus as any good country woman would and she knew how to behave herself in mixed company, but she liked to dip snuff and she cussed a little.

Aunt Ruth had grown up poor like everyone else in Sparta, Georgia, at that time, but she had managed to get by picking cotton and eventually got a job as a secretary for a businessman in town. She never took a sick day and held her boss man in the highest regard, as women were wont to do in those days. He had given her a job that didn’t require breaking her back in the fields; he had been the reason she didn’t have to worry about food on the table or paying a bill. She retired at 65, but continued to talk about what a nice man he was for the rest of her life.

Never married, she lived in a small A-frame house, always neat and tidy since there were no children. Her front porch was cute as could be—daisies in pots next to the porch swing with daffodils and hyacinth in a perfectly placed flower bed. She mostly came to visit with MawMaw at her house, but on the occasions that we visited her, we could always expect a treat out of her cookie jar. Ginger cookies were her favorite. And a cold Coca-Cola to wash it down with.

She liked to play gin rummy with MawMaw, and when they weren’t playing cards, they were looking at the Simplicity catalog and gushing about the outfits they’d like to make if they could just find the right material. Aunt Ruth was very stylish in my eyes, a very put-together lady, and she loved fashion.

“Ruth, you ought to make that dress. Might getchew a man in that ‘un!” MawMaw would say.

“I reckon it’s too late for me to get a man now, Louise.”

“Hogwash. Any woman your age still wearing heels and not a lick of gray hair? You’ve just got to wait for the right one to show up.”

“Louise, it’s called Clairol. You should getchew some. And I been waiting 83 years. If he shows up today, he sure don’t care about punctuality.”

“All in the Lord’s perfect timing.”

At 83 years old, Ruth didn’t really care anymore about finding a husband. She did, however, want a child of her own. I think she doted on us to make up for it, spending time with us playing dolls and having tea parties. She loved tea sets and had a large collection of them in her china cabinet at home. Since she didn’t have wedding china, she filled it with other things.

In those days, there was a filling station as you came into Milledgeville, just over the river bridge. A dashing young man named John worked there as an attendant, and it seemed that the station was always busiest during his shift. All the ladies’ cars ran low on gas at the same time, when he happened to be available to fill them up.

John had a head full of dark hair and stood tall at 6’1”. He kept his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal his defined biceps, and the material across his chest pulled a bit at the buttons. His brawny physique came from early mornings on his father’s dairy farm, pulling calves, hauling hay, and anything else his parents needed him to do in lieu of paying for room and board. His Mama fed him a good meat-and-potatoes diet, and she prayed he would find a good Christian woman to do the same for him one day.

John wanted to go to college, so he saved every dime he made at the filling station. He had hoped that he would get a football scholarship somewhere, but senior year came and went and well… here he was.

In April of 1969, John had finally saved enough to pay for his first semester of school. He applied to the University of Georgia, saying a prayer over the envelope as he stamped it and placed it in the box at the post office. He had a plan. He would move in with his Uncle Horace and Aunt Christy in Watkinsville and work at his uncle’s auto repair shop until he could afford to move all the way into Athens on his own. Three weeks later, the mailman delivered a letter addressed to him from the Office of Admissions.

His mother laid it at the foot of his bed so he would see it when he came home. She had a bittersweet moment, thinking of him as a little boy, now grown up and moving off to start his own life. A life better than theirs, a life of more comfort and wealth. Her baby was going to be a college educated man.

With bated breath, John opened the envelope. “We regret to inform you…” it began. He laid down on his bed for a good long miserable hour, and then an indignant anger started to rise up within his chest. He sat up. The anger continued to rise like a fever into his head, and when it did, he stood up, took all the money he had—stored in a shoebox in the back of his closet—and stormed out the door. They didn’t want him at their school? Fine. He was going to buy him a motorcycle, dammit.

It was Aunt Ruth’s 84th birthday. She got up at 4:45 a.m., as usual, and spent quiet time with the Lord on her mustard yellow settee in the sitting room. She propped her slippered feet up on the coffee table, turned to the Psalms and settled on number 37.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;

dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and He will give you the desires of your heart.

She made herself a breakfast of two eggs, a piece of smoked sausage, and grapefruit. She normally wasn’t so hungry first thing in the morning, but today she wanted a fortifying stick-to-your-bones kind of meal. She would skip lunch, she thought, and hold out for the big birthday dinner at MawMaw’s that evening.

She piddled around the house for awhile, watering her flowers, working on her cross stich sampler, and watching Andy Griffith. She decided she would go into town—it being her birthday after all—and finally get that pretty dark pink silky material she had been eyeing for months. It was expensive, but she couldn’t remember the last time she treated herself. She figured it was a good a day as any to splurge a little.

She pulled her Buick into the A&P parking lot first, remembering that she needed to replenish her coffee canister. When she got out of the car, she met John in the parking lot. He was coming out of the store with a brown bag concealing a six-pack of Schlitz beer.

“Hello, young man.”

“Hey Mrs. Ruth, how are you doing today?”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you. It’s my 84th birthday. I’m happy to be seen and not viewed!”

John gave her a courteous chuckle. Then he got a notion. “Mrs. Ruth, how would you like to go for a ride on my new motorbike?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, sugar. I might fall off or something.”

“No ma’am, I wouldn’t dare let you fall off. Let me give you a ride. I just got it. 1969 Harley-Davidson.”

“Well…” She thought for a moment. She thought of her simple life and all the chances she hadn’t taken. She thought of her heart’s desires. “Why not!” she said to the handsome young twenty-one year old.

They rode for miles that afternoon. All over the county. Everyone they passed stared at them, puzzled. This old woman on the back of a motorcycle with her hands around the waist of the most eligible bachelor in town.

When he got to the river bridge, he accelerated, and she felt the bike lift in the front. “Yippee!” she cried in his ear. They felt a rush of wind, his dark hair waving freely and her perm and set gone to all hell. All at once, something radiated out of their chests and rose from their shoulders. John laughed. Ruth smiled and squeezed him tighter.

Running on Empty

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The fog was so thick I had to creep along at 10 miles an hour. I passed a mile marker sign, then another, then finally a sign that listed a single gas station at the next exit. I rolled up the exit ramp, a right at the stop sign—praying no one was coming—and made it into the Citgo parking lot. I picked up my cell phone out of the cup holder. No service.

Fine. Might as well get out and get something warm to drink. I dug through the console for enough change to buy a coffee and went on inside.

“Do you have a bathroom?” I asked the attendant.

“Around the corner. Here’s the key,” he said, looking up from a newspaper. Great, no cell service and an outside bathroom.

I walked around outside and started to unlock the door, but it was already open. I flipped on the light switch, and there in the corner of that nasty little dark bathroom was a child. She was maybe five or six years old with long, tangled brown hair and a dirty face.

“What are you doing here, little one?” I asked in the softest voice I could manage having just been startled. I had a feeling that if I spoke the wrong way, I might scare her off like a stray animal.

“Mama told me to stay right here. She’ll be back in the morning.”

“Okay, where did your Mama go?”

“To work.”

“Well, where does she work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, well I’m going to see if I can get you some help. Are you hungry?”

“A little bit.”

I ran back inside and told the man at the register about the unexpected bathroom guest. “Oh, that little rat! I’m sorry about that. I told her Mama not to leave her there!” he said, irritated.

“Well, no, it’s okay, but we need to call the police or DFACS or something, right? And she says she’s hungry.”

“Of course she is. Those two cost me too much. Take her a pack of peanuts off that rack and you best be getting on.”

“But…”

“I said you best be getting on. She’s not your problem. I’ll handle her.”

Shocked to my core, I walked backward a couple of steps and turned to walk back out to my car. I sat there in silence for a while, looking down at my hands on the cool steering wheel. I would have to keep driving and find cell service so that I could call for help, but I didn’t want to leave the girl alone. I looked up through the windshield and locked eyes with the man at the register. I knew I had to get her out of there.

I raced my car around the building, yanked the girl off the floor and told her she had to get in the car. I caught sight of the man running around the corner as I closed her passenger door. He caught me at my side of the car, and thick, calloused fingers grabbed at the edge of the door, prying it open. I turned around and donkey kicked him in the groin, slammed my door shut and put pedal to metal. “We’re going to find your Mama,” I said.

We lost sight of him in the fog pretty quickly. I nearly missed the ramp to get back on I-75N. I had to find cell service. The girl sat quietly without shedding a tear. She’s used to this chaos, I thought as we sped down the highway, me keeping my eyes on the dotted white lines in front of me as best I could. The visibility was only about fifteen feet. “We’ll get you something to eat soon. I know you’re hungry, but I had to get you safe. Away from that bad man. Do you know him?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Who is he?”

“Mama’s boss.”

It all became clear to me in the silence that followed. Her Mama must be a prostitute and he, her pimp. I lifted my phone out of the cup holder, taking my eyes off the road long enough to see that there was still no cell service. “HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!”

I jerked the steering wheel, luckily in the right direction. The Mack truck blazed past me in the mist. “You had better put on your seatbelt, child.” She did.

Just then, I heard a shot, then another, and a couple seconds later, felt the air going out of the back tire on the driver’s side. We rode even faster on the rim, trying to lose the bastard. We had just passed an exit and I could see nowhere to go but off the road. “Hang on tight.” I jerked the wheel to the right. The car went down an embankment and flipped twice. Please God, make a way.

We landed right side up, thank God, and I told the little girl to get out. “We have to run now.”

I held onto my phone and raced with the little girl through the trees back toward the last exit. The terrain was hilly and uneven and the underbrush tore at my pant legs. I held onto her tiny hand, grimy and cold. She couldn’t have even reached the sink back there in that abysmal place. It wasn’t long before we came to a clearing and a dirt road. Unbelievable. An unpaved road next to the Interstate.

I checked my phone again. One bar. I dialed 9-1-1. When the dispatcher picked up, I couldn’t hear her clearly and I was sure she couldn’t understand me, breaking up as bad as it was. I just prayed that they would be able to track us using GPS from my phone or something. Please, God.

We walked down the road, hoping to find a house with a friendly resident.

“You best leave that child with me and get on, ma’am,” the man said from behind us. All the blood ran out of my head as I realized he had caught up with us. I felt sick and turned around, trying to control my breathing. Please God, make a way.

“No sir. I’m going to get this child home safe.”

“Ain’t got no home, that ‘un. And I done told ye, she’s my problem. Not yers. Get on and we won’t have no more trouble.”

“I can’t do that.”

“We might have a problem then,” he said as he pulled his gun.

“Shit, Jim. Put that thang up!” came an elderly female voice behind us, then the sound of a shotgun being cocked.

“Aww, go own Edna! This bitch messin’ around what none ‘a her bidness. I ken take care my own!”

“Your bidness ain’t right, Jim, and both you and I know it. Now go own and I’ll take care a this,” said the old lady in curlers and house coat.

“Damn it, Edna,” he said just before he shot her in the arm. She returned fire quickly, hitting him right between the eyes. A fine shot for an old woman with one usable arm. He keeled right over backwards, his heavy head making a thud in the red dirt and sending up a cloud of dust.

“Y’all get own inside and we’ll call the law,” she said.

We sat down on her sagging floral print sofa while she phoned the sheriff’s department. The living room walls had 70s style wood paneling from floor to ceiling. The house smelled like cigarette smoke, baby powder, and Aquanet hairspray. There was a velvet painting of Elvis Presley beside her television with an ornately carved wooden frame and two shelves on the adjoining wall holding a dusty collection of curiosities. There was a bookshelf with no books, save a Bible and a Rand McNally Illustrated Atlas of the World. There were several photo frames with the store pictures still in them. In a tiny metal frame was a wallet size Olan Mills photo of a young boy with a bowl cut. He looked familiar.

I drew in a long sip of oxygen and blew it out, the first deep breath I had taken since stopping at the Citgo. I turned my head and saw that the girl was gently fingering the yarn in a crocheted afghan thrown over the armrest. Poor thing, she must not know what to make of all this. “Are you okay, darlin?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m glad my Granny found us.”

The Long Road Home

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About three miles off Exit 90 on I-20, you’ll run into Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. I know about this place from years of going back and forth to school in Oklahoma City. I stopped there the first time out of curiosity, but something kept drawing me back to it each time I journeyed past on the long road home and back again. Most recently in the fall of 2019, when going to a friend’s wedding out west, I stopped to pay homage to this origin story.

I’m fascinated by the origins of great people. Andalusia, the home of Flannery O’Connor, sits in the county of my birth, as does the home of Margaret Mitchell and, a few miles down the road, the stomping grounds of Alice Walker and Joel Chandler Harris. These are all somewhat modest places, but Elvis’s family home evokes a more emotional response. I can see the struggle of a young family when I go to this place. I can hear the prayers of a mother wondering how her family will make it. I can smell the drunkenness of poverty and sense the aspirations of a young man who was built by this, who cherished this, but who wanted more than this.

The house that built Elvis is all-in-all the size of my living room. It is a little white two-room house with a front porch that must be about four foot deep. Vernon and Gladys Presley were evicted from this house after failing to pay rent when Elvis was just a few years old. They, like my Papa’s family, had to move around a lot. I don’t know where all the places are that housed my grandfather’s family, but I have an image in my mind—that my great Aunt Tina planted—of feeding chickens through the floorboards. When the job and money run out, you have to find a new place. Such was the life they led.

I’ve lived a much more privileged life, as there has never been a doubt in my mind where home is, both in the place sense and the people sense. My parents have stayed married since my mother was 17. I know it hasn’t always been unicorns and rainbows for Mama and Daddy, but the fact is that they remained together through the trials life threw at them and, in turn, have provided a safe and strong foundation for my brother and me.

In the place sense, home has always been on Black Springs Road. The only time Beth and Buck Eubanks picked up and moved was next door, out of a single-wide trailer and into Granny Johnson’s old place. This patch of land will always be home to me. Part of my emotional stability is settled on the notion that no matter how bad things get, I can always find my way back to Mama and Daddy’s house, and I do just about every weekend. It’s a beautiful gift they gave me by staying put.

I have wandered. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I went halfway across the country to school and spent summers in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York, the city of dreams where I just knew I’d end up. I get to New York every once in a while, but I’ve settled here in Sandersville, Georgia, for the better part of a decade now. If you had told me eleven or twelve years ago that I would be here, I would have laughed in your face. But God has a vicious sense of humor sometimes, and He knew right where I needed to be—30 minutes from my Mama.

Elvis co-wrote and released a song called “We’re Gonna Move” in 1956. The song talks about all the things wrong at their place—there’s a leak, there’s a stove without a chimney, there’s holes in the walls the neighbors can see through, a window without a pane, a hole in the floor, a crack across the ceiling. He finishes each stanza with “We’re gonna move to a better home”. One of his earliest songs, these lyrics cut to the heart of his short life. Elvis went to his heavenly home at only 42, abusing prescription drugs and passing suddenly at his Graceland estate in Memphis.

Graceland is by far the most famous Elvis attraction, hosting over 500,000 visitors per year. The website for Graceland boasts that it is the most famous home besides the White House. But it is not Graceland that draws me back each time I drive out West. It’s that tiny two-room house in Tupelo.

Rooster

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None of this would’ve happened if Daddy hadn’t fallen asleep. Mama was working her shift at the hospital and since he wasn’t working that weekend, he was supposed to be watching my baby brother and me. It was a beautiful, sunshiny day with just the right amount of breeze to make it comfortable. Daddy had taken us back to the pond that morning, propping brother up on some old quilts in the back of his pickup truck and trying to teach me how to bait a hook. I didn’t want to touch the juicy red wrigglers, so he just kept doing it for me. I caught a couple of bream the size of fish sticks and decided I had had enough, so I whined until Daddy packed everything back up and took us home. And besides, I had wet my pants because I was too scared to squat behind the tree. I don’t care what Daddy said, it looked like prime boogeyman territory to me.

We got back home around 11:30 and had an early lunch of boiled hot dogs and boxed macaroni and cheese. Brother had his Gerber peas and applesauce and went down for a nap. I, on the other hand, had established that I was too old for naps. Daddy said “I don’t care what you do, just go to your room and be quiet. If you wake up your brother, I will tan your hide.” Let me explain. If you weren’t raised in the South, bless your heart, you might not understand that there are echelons to corporal punishment. There’s the “pop”, usually reserved for babies and toddlers, which is just a little tap on the hand or foot. This says, “You’re too little for a spanking, but in a couple years this is going to turn into one. Straighten up, little grasshopper.” There’s the spanking, a traditional hand to butt transaction. The next level of discipline would be the “whooping”, which usually entails a paddle, switch, or belt. You have really ticked off one of your elders at this point, but the worst punishment of all is “tan your hide”. It is typically administered by fathers or really mean Grannies and is reserved for special occasions.

So I pitter pattered back to my bedroom and closed the door.

You can’t fault a 6-year-old for being curious. It’s in the nature of an intelligent child to question the world around him or her, and I was brilliant, thank you very much. It occurred to me, sitting there in my quiet bedroom, that if a chicken could hatch an egg by sitting on it, then so could I.

With this notion, I considered that Daddy had not yet gotten the eggs that day and wouldn’t I be helpful if I just went ahead and took care of that chore for him? He would be appreciative that I had done him this favor, him being so tired and all. So with Daddy sawing logs in his living room chair, I set out on my mission.

The window was a little tricky to get open, but with a little finagling, I finally figured out how to unlock the window and push it up. The screen was easy—it just popped right out. As luck would have it, the monstrous air conditioner was right below my window, just like a stairstep. I hopped down onto the unit and right down to the soft green grass below.

I ran all the way to the chicken pen. (See, there’s part of the trail from our house all the way to Granny’s house that Papa’s shop casts a shadow over. One does not simply walk past the shop. You must run or the boogeyman will get you.) I jumped to unlatch the eye hook on the door, propped it open, and went on in the pen. Thinking I was about to feed them, the fowl followed me back to their nests, where I found six brown eggs and two beautiful blue ones. I held out my too-short t-shirt and put the eggs in the pouch as I had seen Granny do before to carry eggs. One rolled out the side and cracked on the ground, so I set the rest of the eggs down on the dirt while I tried to cover it up. Daddy wouldn’t like it if he saw that I had dropped one of his precious eggs. This turned out to be kind of fun, it looking like brownie batter and all, so I plopped down right there in the chicken shit and made a beautiful mud pie. The chickens were starting to peck at the eggs I had laid on the ground, so I scooped them back up and headed back for home. As it turns out, I forgot to shut the door to the pen.

By this time, Daddy was up and yelling my name desperately, “Alice! Aliiiiiiiiiice! Oh God, oh God, I’ve lost my child!” I knew I was in trouble, so I snuck in the back door and went to my room just as he started off toward the corn field. I could still hear him yelling my name, but I was right back where I was supposed to be, and besides, his only rule was that I not wake up brother. He didn’t say I couldn’t go get the eggs.

I proceeded with my science experiment. I decided that I should take off my pants to sit on the egg, because chickens don’t wear pants. I placed the first egg on the floor and sat on it. Smush. I took the second egg and made a nest for it with the blanket off my bed. I gently sat on it this time. Smush. It was when I picked up the third egg that I heard Daddy howling with tears outside and figured I better go check on him. I had never heard Daddy cry at all, much less like this. “Oh God, oh God! Please! Where is my baby girl? Please God!”

I creeped out of my room and toward the kitchen door as Daddy trudged up the stoop. I saw the shadow of a great winged demon fly up from the floor as Daddy opened the screen door. “Squawwwk!” The rooster! The rooster got out! The rooster was on Daddy’s head!

As Daddy flailed and fought with the rooster, I ran for my life toward the back door and all the way to Granny’s house. I was surely a goner unless I made it into the loving arms of our matriarch. Standing in my underwear with raw egg all over my butt, I banged on her back door with all my might. “Granny! Granny! You’ve got to let me in! Grannnnnnyyyyyy!”

Thinking the worst, Granny opened the door and shooed me inside, locking the door behind me… and she never locked the door. “What on earth, Alice? What on earth is it?” I explained to her in no uncertain terms that I was just trying to help get the eggs and the rooster got out and Daddy was going to kill me. Kill me dead.

When Daddy came up to Granny’s door, he had a dead rooster in one hand and his belt in the other. “You’ll not lay a hand on this child,” Granny proclaimed as she consoled me in her rocking chair, feeding me an oatmeal cookie and a Coca-Cola. Granny saved my life that day.

Mama was grateful that, after a long day on her feet, she didn’t have to cook supper. “Granny, it was so sweet of you to cook supper tonight. This is the best chicken and rice I think I’ve ever tasted.”

“Rooster and rice,” Daddy moaned, his eyes downcast.