As she told the stories, I could not help but think of how cleansing a thing it had to be for her. My mother had lived in a lovely house until the beginning of the Great Depression. The stock market crash of 1929 caused a downward spiral globally, propelling the depression. The young children paid the highest price in their troubled family life. The children that emerged years later were more rigid than nails for it.
I was amazed by the things she remembered with such clarity, something that she had tried unsuccessfully for years to burn from her memory. I placed my mother’s story about stopping on their way to Texas for my grandad to get a job working at the oil well site. They stopped by the road and saw a field that had been a garden and asked the owner if they could dig up some of his turnips. He shook his head yes. It got them through that day.
My grandad got his job, and my grandma went to work as a Fry cook at a dingy little cafe. They moved into a small twenty-five-unit place called the Project.
The Project is where James lived. James was unique to my mother, and I knew because she had to stop. My mother rolled over and sobbed and sobbed. I could not bear it. Finally, I said it was alright. You do not have to talk anymore. I left for a while, and when I came back into her room, I thought she was sleeping, but she spoke very calmly and softly.
James was two years older than me but had failed second grade. He was in third grade now and doing better in Miss Sheridan’s class. Everyone loved James. He came to my rescue one day after school. We always walked to the cafe, and mama would give us both a biscuit leftover from lunch. One day A man was following us from the restaurant. James picked up a handful of rocks and hurled them at the man. We ran to tell James’s mom, who kept an eye on me for my mom.
James held my hand to school every morning. He would knock on our door and wait for me to come out. My mother referred to James as Billy Joy’s toy soldier. James had a very noticeable cowlick. It went to the side and then stood straight up no matter how hard he tried to comb it down. James’s mother said it was because of the scar at the edge of his hairline from a shelf falling on him, causing the cowlick. I thought it made him look strong, but he was embarrassed.
Mother said if anyone was supposed to rise above the Great Depression, it was James. James was excited because the school would be out for the sports competition on the last Friday of the month. He would help his mom wash dishes for fifteen cents a day. My mother said James told her one time while they were sitting on the stoop eating a pop cycle that the best thing that ever happened to him was when she moved into the Project two doors down. His words were, I was lonely until you came, Billy.
I got up and went for a cup of coffee. My mother worked up to that horrible day when her small world fell apart before her very eyes.
The stories so far of Miss Sheridan’s third-grade class were on the surface. My mother was preparing herself to dig into the bedrock, the final act to the play no one saw coming, and no one wanted to see play out.
I could sense my mother could not speak any more about James. Talking about James had caused her such pain. I wondered what more my mother would have to say about James or if it were too hard for her ever to bring him up again. I would soon have the answer to that.