Alabama Monsters

January of 1962 changed my life forever. My mom was called home to Arizona because her mom was very ill.  For reasons my mom has never been able to explain she did not take me with her and instead chose to leave me in Alabama with a woman named Mable. The first time I met Mable was the first day of staying with her. Mable. To this day I don’t like the name Mable.

Mable lived at the very end of a very long up hill dirt road. That dirt road was in Alabama somewhere close to Montgomery or Mobile, or maybe that ugly road was in Highland Home, I really don’t know. I do recall that before my mom left me with Mable, I was living in Montgomery for a small while.  My mom worked at a restaurant where I tasted my very first Lemon Meringue Pie. That pie made leaving the 331 worth it for a small while, well, at least until I licked the last smears of lemony meringue off my plate. My mom no longer owned and operated the 331 Roadhouse, which was my first home after my parents divorced. I loved living at the 331 because life was so rich and everyday was filled with something new and exciting. The best part of living behind a roadhouse in a cabin was the swimming pool and the backwoods. I loved playing in the woods with my friends but not so much with my sister. Nope, playing anything with a sister that is 9 ½ years older is only asking for trouble and pain.

I remember one day at the 331 I was really into pretending I was a horse. My imagination gave me a real horse snort and the ability to prance better than and rear taller than Black Beauty. I loved being a horse; it was almost better than riding a horse. One day, I don’t know what possessed me but I, being 4, was properly pesky with persistence and begged and begged Kathleen my sis to play horses with me. Kathleen did not want to play with a 4 year old. Kathleen wanted to play with the boys who flocked around her like she was made of chrome and beer. Finally, after pestering my sis sufficiently, I broke that last straw. My older sibling spun around so fast her tightly curled auburn hair swung across her face just like a horses tail! My sister gave me “that look” and then collected up a thin twine of a rope. Kathleen placed the twine in my mouth and tying it tightly around my head explained that if I wanted to play horses  – I needed to know what it was really like to be a horse. Kathleen then took my flip-flops away. Kathleen then peeled off a long green twig from a nearby bush and told me she was going to use it like a riding crop. I stood looking up at my big sister, bare foot with a rough piece of twine in my mouth and my big brown eyes were asking her what next? What next was her spinning me around, pushing me forward and then slapping that green stinging twig on my backside and yelling “giddy up horse!”

My loving 14-year-old sister made me run barefoot through dirt with rocks and stickers and grass and through briars thick with berries, all the while snapping the tip of the twig against me causing my skin to welt up. She ran me up the dirt road to the thick woods and then into the woods we went until I lost my imagination and began to cry. I learned when I was 4 what it is like to be a horse and I never asked my sister to play horses with me again.  But then, this was while I was still living my wonder filled life at the 331 and one of my last memories of 331 was learning what it really felt like to be a horse.

My memories of Mable’s were different in texture than my memories of other times in my life. Mable memories are coarse, sticky, cold, and scary. Mable’s house was a long way from the 331 Roadhouse and a long way from my sister who married the love of her young life at 15. Mable’s house felt cold like an icy wind that penetrates you to the bone. I had no choice but to be at Mable’s house and it took me several weeks before I fully realized that my mom had indeed left me behind with a stranger. I missed my mom. I missed my sister and all her frustration with me. I missed my friends at the 331 and I even missed my father and my two brothers. I had not seen my father or brothers since my parents divorce.

In the morning Mable would wake me up for school or for chores on weekends, with a razor blade attitude like I had done something wrong in my sleep. She would bark out orders and I would dutifully follow her instructions for I was afraid of her. I had to get up and make the bed I slept in then get dressed and within a certain amount of time I had to be in the kitchen for breakfast. If I missed getting to the table by 1 minute I missed breakfast. I missed breakfast a lot. As I would be walking toward the table a minute late Mable would be clearing the breakfast away scraping the food into a bucket as she verbally admonished my willful laziness. I would watch eggs and grits and toast fall into the bucket. The sound of the silver fork slamming against the plate pierced my ears making my small-framed body tight. I can still hear her ugly demeaning words to this day. I don’t believe Mable liked children and I do believe she was being paid to keep me. Fortunate for me, I was not that big of an eater so getting used to not having breakfast was easy but I did not dare show that I did not care.  I was taught by Mable and her hand to show disappointment and to demonstrate that I was sorry and vocally express that I was learning a valuable lesson. Life went from magical to nightmarish and my yearlong days became days of deep sadness when I had to be in Mable’s presence. With my magical child freedom gone I became a wounded child serving what felt like a life sentence with wicked witch Mable as the matronly jail attendant.

One day while playing outside where I have always preferred to be, a young boy close to my age, 6 or 7, walked up to me and asked if I wanted to play. I was in aw! Someone my age! I was not aware that any people lived anywhere remotely near Mable’s prison. Play?

You can guess what my response was.  “Oh yes!” was my reply which was a bit over the top with loudness that made Peanut smile. Peanut saved my world! Yes, my new friend’s name was Peanut. Peanut had blond hair with squinty blue eyes and Peanut was skinny like me.  Peanut and I became best friends in less than a minute.

Mable did not care about where I was or what I was doing so long as I was not in her house during the day. So, after school, as soon as I put my red plaid satchel away I was outside calling Peanut to come play.

Peanut and I had a secret call that meant “meet me at the water’s edge”. That secret call would get us in trouble almost daily and trouble sounded like the monster Mable screeching obscenities from her smoked filled living room. I did not care because I learned that Mable would not come out and hit me. I discovered that Mable preferred cigarettes and whiskey over tormenting me after school. Mable knew that after my call to Peanut I would be disappearing soon and that was what she wanted.  Once the screeching was done, off I would go and soon Peanut and I were building our own little world in the Alabama swamps. I was happy to have my magic back again.  Although I could not see Peanut’s house from Mable’s I knew he was close by. I could not see his house because his house sat behind a grove of thickly wooded Sycamore, Oaks, and Elms and other brush. I know the names of the trees because Peanut taught me. The trees kept Peanut and I apart for only a small while. I was so thankful he got up the nerve to come ask me to be his friend. I was also happy that his house was close enough, hidden behind those trees, so that we could communicate via our fire engine siren calls that truly were symbolic as a calls for help and we did help one another.

In the swampy soggy, green smelling woods, Peanut and I hunted for signs of squirrel and skunk and dug up grubby worms. We tested our tracking skills by naming what animal made the most recent tracks in the muddy banks along the moving water’s edge. I don’t know how but we had a boat that we often used to float out to the middle of the waterway where there was a sandbar. Once we had beached the boat on the sands we would get out and look for special sticks and rocks and moss that we could use for decorating our imaginatively constructed forts. We crafted forts from fallen, waterlogged branches. Big branches would fall from trees and float along with the current until coming up against the sandbar’s traps. Peanut and I would pile up the branches much like a beaver’s dam and crawling under or inside we would tell one another secrets. Secrets about our lives and I learned Peanut’s life was a lot like mine. We kept one another safe by staying away from that treacherous dirt road that led to pain and sadness. 

Peanut and I would get home from school and do our business like chores and homework and then scream like sirens so we could meet up in the woods. We did this almost everyday for what felt like months. Although it was winter in Alabama I did not care about cold winds or wet drizzles and Mable did not care if I blew away. Because Mable did not care, I was able to go play and pretend I lived in a different world. One day while Peanut and I were out floating along in the rotting wooden flat-bottomed boat, he told me a story about monster armadillos. He described armadillos as being pink and hairy with red beady eyes and claws that could rip your heart out! I was petrified! All I could see in my mind’s eye was the armadillo purse my mom bought while we lived in Panama. My mom’s purse was dark brown, not pink, but the eyes on the armadillo that was rolled into a purse were red! I knew Peanut was telling the truth. You can always dye pink armadillos brown.  We were floating along,in the boat heading toward a sandbar, when Peanut upped his story a notch. Peanut described how monster armadillos loved to gather on sandbars and wait for food floating by. In my mind Peanut and I suddenly became monster armadillo food. I began to cry and Peanut began to cry because he had convinced himself his story was true!  Just imagine, two crying 6-year-old kids bawling their eyes out, in a boat that was barely water worthy, gently floating along heading toward a sandbar must have been a sight to see! When the boat landed we refused to get out and sat on the boat's bench cuddled in each other's arms for protection, knowing a big pink armadillo would soon be coming out of our fort to eat us up! Then, as if someone had waved a magic wand, he and I began to giggle and the giggling turned into loud snot producing laughter and we knew that out laughter chased away all the pink smelly armadillos! Safe! We were safe! We laughed the whole time while beached on the sand bar making sure no monster armadillos would approach us. When the sun began to sink behind the trees we pushed off from the sandbar to head toward what we called our prisons. Night was always long and always lonely. And unknown to us, this was our last day together.

Report card day was my last day living with Mable. Report card day was the last day I saw my best friend who saved my life for a while and who saved me from pink armadillos with laughter. I arrived at Mable’s after walking up the dirt road eager to do my duties and screech for Peanut. I was not in the house 5 minutes when Mable approached me about my report card. Mable wanted to see my grades and unfortunate for me I could not find them. Mable went to the bathroom and wet a towel and then yanked me up by one of my arms. She literally picked me up off the floor and carried me outside almost pulling my shoulder out of its socket. When Mable put me down she began to pop me with the twisted wet towel as she screamed about how incompetent I was.  Mable demanded that I run back down the dirt road to where the bus dropped Peanut and I off and as I ran Mable ran behind me popping my back and legs with the wet towel.  I was not crying I was screaming with tears flying from my eyes like the rain of a winter storm. Mable did not care. Back at the bus stop, there in the dirt, was my report card that must have dropped from my grip when I got off the bus. I picked my school grades up from the dirty road and sobbing my heart out I apologized as I handed the card to the Monster Mable. Mable took the report card and ripped it up saying it did not matter since I did not care enough to hang onto it. Then, she began popping me with the wet torture towel as she drove me like an animal back to her house. The towel, as it snapped against my young skin that left bleeding welts on my skinny little girl’s body. Mable justified her actions, yelling it was my entire fault and made me clean up quickly. Mable informed me, as I sobbed and washed myself, that my father was coming to get me and she could not wait for him to arrive. That news was the best news I had heard in a long while.

My father was coming to get me. Life was about to change, again.  I whispered little prayers of gratitude knowing my father would save me and I asked God to forgive me. I asked for forgiveness because one of my prayers was for my father to punch Mable in the face.

My father arrived. He rescued me from Mable. He did not punch her.

Life did not get better.

to be continued ...


(All stories blogged by me are my property and protected under copyright laws. No part may be used or reproduced in anyway without my permission ~ Maryanne Mesplé)