While we were living here and Nancy was little, somebody gave Ma an old crib. We didn't have any little ones to use it but sometimes Ma would babysit for someone so she took it and fixed it up. Nancy kept her dolls in it. When both Dad and Ma were out of work they applied for public assistance. The welfare lady came and asked an awful lot of question, some that shocked us. About half way through the interview she pointed her pencil at the crib in the living room and she asked which one of us had the baby. Mom was really angry about that. It was really a slam in the face. Today it would be normal and expected but not in those days and not Ma's kids.  We were denied help as the woman said that we older girls should be working. I don't think she believed Ma about the crib. You had no way to appeal anything in those days. We survived so someone must have got work.

Anna was gone then and I think it was either before Millie got married or afterwards and Millie didn't have a kid right away. None of the rest of us ever had boyfriends even till many years later when Nancy was in High School. I had guys I knew later on from work or school or even church but none of them ever came home and I never went out with any.

There was a young fellow who did like me but I wasn't crazy about him and we never dated. He was drafted during Viet Nam and he and some others that I actually never met sent me letters while they were in Viet Nam. The others I'd "met" through an actress from TV. I'd sent her a fan letter. She was in California and appearing on Peyton Place as a character named Rita Jacks I think. Her real name was Pat Morrow. She had started handing out names and addresses of fans of hers who were stationed in Viet Nam. I think at one time I was writing to 6 of them. At least one of them and the boy I knew from home wanted to marry me. I didn't want to marry anyone but especially not someone I'd never met before and the one I did know I still didn't want to marry.

I said no, of course. I told them both as nicely as I could and one never wrote back after that. The one from home was killed in Viet Nam. I was told they found a letter from me with my photo in his pocket. I felt real bad about telling him no after that but I was never in love with him. I also doubt at the time Mom would have allowed it anyway.

She was very possessive of those of us still at home. Some of us thought of it as love but later I would begin to see it as a way of controlling a part of her life. When you think about it, most of her life was dictated to her by others. She didn't make any of her own decisions until she left home to be with Dad. If she tried to make a decision when she was living at home, either her mother said no or her mother controlled whatever she did. Her mother always took her pay envelopes and let her have back only a tiny bit. I guess we are lucky she didn't do that with us.

I started working while we lived here. I went back to school for one year when I was 21. Then I got a GED. There’s more about that time on here somewhere. I got a job at Clarks Dept. Store. I also worked for Daw Drugs, for Jupiter's and for Singers and some other places before I finally went to work for National Catheter.

I always gave Ma exactly half of whatever I earned. At one time I was bringing home a paltry 37 dollars as unemployment pay. I gave her half of that. Enid had gone to BOCES AKA Board of Cooperative Educational Services, to learn to be a beautician AKA hairstylist. She made big bucks both in pay and in tips. She paid Ma twenty dollars a week. Both of us lived at home in the same set of bunk beds, and ate the same foods and yet I always paid more than she did. It bothered me then and it bothers me still that Ma never told her she should pay more. When Ma needed cash, it was me she came to and asked. It was never Enid.

Enid was really mean growing up but more so when we lived here. When she was a teenager she attacked me and Sue and whoever else may have been there with a broom. Somehow the broom went up in the air and hit the light bulb in the ceiling. Glass splattered down on us all and she was still angry and screaming and hitting us. I think Mom and Dad came home then and broke it up. Of course we got punished. Did we get the punishment because we defended ourselves or did I, in particular get it for being the older one and not finding a way to stop her? I'll never know because at the time you didn't ask. You just suffered. Enid would usually get off scot free.

She was mean in so many ways. A lot are too nasty to even talk about but one thing she did was to go in the bedroom where we were, me usually reading. She make slap noises and scratch her skin till she had welts. Then she'd go tell Ma we hit her and it was usually me she blamed. I'd either get switched or punished in some other way for it. Enid had sensitive skin. She could run a fingernail over it and welts would raise up.

I think I may be repeating myself here because I do recall writing this down somewhere.

Enid from the time I learned to drive and we were both working would insist that I go to town and do her shopping for treats for her. Nobody but Dad had a license besides me at the time. Enid was too busy to go along at the time and buy her own stuff. She'd tell me what she wanted. She promise to pay me for it when I got back. Usually it was ice cream and candy and soda pop or potato chips. I used to tell Ma I didn't want to do it because I knew what would happen but I was always forced to do it.

I'd go to the store and get her stuff for her. I'd get back with exactly what she told me to get here, the exact flavors and amounts and she would throw a temper tantrum. Think about this. She was at least 18 and she kept doing this until she left for the Army and I think she was in her twenties then.

She would refuse to pay for it and Mom would say "Never mind." So I would be out the money. I'd stick the ice cream in the fridge and whatever else in the cupboard or the fridge. I'd go on about my own business, usually chores that I still had to do while Enid, of course, had none. Later, out of her room she'd come and eat the stuff that I paid for and she said was wrong. I would pray that she never asked me to do that again but she did a lot and Mom always told me to give her another chance. It never worked.

I slept on the bottom bunk and she slept on the top. While I was sleeping she would drop her underwear on my face. I'd wake up screaming. Other times I'd crawl into bed tired and get stuck with pins. She take Ma's sewing pins and stick them up out of the sheet to stab me. Once I found a note on the pillow saying "the claw" was going to get me. Mom laughed it all off. She said to me once. "What can I do? If I switch her she'll have welts." She was always telling me to just let it go. Enid desperately needed help. She was mentally unbalanced and no one knew why.

In school and at work she was "Little Miss Perfect" No one would ever have believed anything bad about her. When we sang in the church she would come along and sing with us and look like a normal kid but she was never normal.

After she joined the Army we were living in Argyle by then and things were better but here, they were pretty awful.

I'm telling this story backwards a bit. When Enid had to go to Albany to be tested to get her license to be a hairstylist, she needed a guinea pig. None of her friends if she even had any would do it for her. She asked me to do it. I said no. Mom said yes I should do it. "Do it for her", she begged. "It's only one night. You can do it and nobody else will. She'll fail if you don't."

You guessed it, I did it. There would have been no peace at home if I didn't. Not that there was that much anyway while she was living at home.

It was winter, I think December. We got on the bus to go to Albany. It was afternoon. She sat beside me in the seat. She's five years younger than me, remember. She reaches over and hands me a tiny folded up piece of tissue paper. She says it’s in case I get lost. Me? I open it up thinking it’s a phone number or address or something. What it was is one single dime. Now even in those days if I was to call for help, especially in Albany it would have taken more than a dime. I shut up and didn't say a word and dropped the dime between the seats. What she didn't know is I had a few dollars of my own on me. I was hoping to get a chance to buy a drink or something.

I never got that chance. She marshaled me into the building. I think it was a school and up the stairs yelling at me to hurry or she'd be late. We sat for a while and waited for her turn. I was not allowed to even go pee if I had to go. Finally it was her turn. I'd seen what the others went through. I wasn't looking forward to it.

Roughly I was shoved into a chair and told to shut up. I hadn't said anything and I'd probably have a bruise on my arm later but I said not a word. She pulled out of her bag bottles of stuff. Yanking my head back hard, she raked the comb through my scalp, probably drawing blood. She separated my hair into four sections. Each one got different glop on it. One was cold red Jello. One was evaporated milk. She had to do different tasks to each section. Pretend dying and setting and straightening and God knows what else. So there I sat with my head having various condiments on each section and shivering form the cold goo.

She somehow passed and I was thinking, "Good, it’s over. I can wash this crap out now." Nope, didn't happen. She wadded a towel around my head, shoved her bottles and brushes into her beg and dragged me down the stairs where still shivering and dripping I was hustled into a taxi and taken to the bus station where we got on the bus minutes later for the hour and a half ride home in the middle of winter.

At home, I was crying as I washed my hair out. The brat never even thanked me. Mom had to do that for her. I vowed I would never do anything for Enid again but somehow I always got roped into those shopping trips.

Next

Index

Home