Chapter Twelve
Sarah had been born Etty May Johansson. Both of her given names were due to her mother’s inability to spell. Etty was supposed to be named for a famous singer of her mothers era. The women had not only misspelled the name, but mispronounced it so badly that no one could have possibly made the connection. Etty’s mother had been born to parents that saw no value in education and she had gone to school only when forced to by the authorities. She was the daughter of a Swedish father and an Irish mother. Etty favored her grandmother, a women that she had never known. She had the red hair and green eyes associated with the Irish, and the fair complexion associated with the Swedish. She was a very pretty girl.
Until she was Thirteen Etty May lived in a trailer park in one of the very worst areas of Waco. The name park applied only to the fact that there were trailer homes parked in it. There was no flora save for a few scraggly weeds, and even they had to struggle for survival.
When it was dry dust covered everything, and when it rained the entire park became a quagmire. If it rained heavy for any length of time residents had to park along the bordering street and walk in. The kids playing in the park were always either covered with dust or mud depending on the weather.
Among a group of trailers that most people would have considered uninhabitable, theirs was the worst. The harsh Texas sandstorms had long ago removed most of the paint turning the trailer a motley combination of pastels with dull aluminum showing though. Where there had once been a porch, there was now only a precariously leaning stack of cinder block. Although seemingly impossible, the interior was even worse than the exterior. There was not a single clean dish in the kitchen where most of the space was taken up by empty beer cans, whisky bottles and pizza boxes. The meager furniture was vermin infested to the point that the only solution would be to burn it.
Having lived in squalor from birth, Etty was unaware of how dismal their living conditions were. She possessed a sunny disposition and was a happy child. As she grew older, she became aware that even in her destitute world most of the homes were better than hers. The other kids in the park dressed better than her and certainly had more playthings than she had. They were encouraged by their parents to shun her and took that as permission to be mean as only children can. She tired of attempting friendship and kept to herself. Having no outside influences to counter the lessons learned at home she lacked even a modicum of social graces.
Once she started school, her lack of upbringing soon got her in trouble. The first week of school, she was sent home for cussing. Her mother’s boyfriend assured the principle that he would take care of the problem. His solution was to beat her with his belt all the while cussing her out. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t you know schools don’t allow that kinda shit from little girls? What are you, stupid?”
Etty May was not stupid, and soon after starting school she came to understand that her life was far from normal. One of the first things she learned was that most people did not talk like her mother and her boyfriend, but unlike her mother she wanted to improve. She strived to do well in school and tried to model her speech after that of her teachers.
Near the end of the sixth grade Etty had her first period while in gym class. She was being jeered by some of her class mates when the gym teacher intervened. With a scathing scowl at Etty’s antagonists, the teacher took her hand, and led Etty to her office
Etty, although frightened, and mortified nearly to tears, tried not to let it show. She hated to show weakness, especially in front of this teacher that she admired. It did not take the teacher long to realize that Etty had no idea what was happening to her. This teacher had been aware for some time that Etty needed advice on taking care of her self, but had been reluctant to broach the subject for fear of creating a wall between them. She now felt that she had no choice.
After explaining what was happening and providing her with a tampon, the teacher asked Etty to come back to her office after class. That afternoon, and over the next few weeks, she taught Etty about personal hygiene. She showed Etty how to take care of her hair, gave her a hairbrush and other personal hygiene items that she paid for out of her on pocket.
Etty, although ignorant was far from stupid. She had been aware for some time that the rest of the world took more pride in their appearance than her family. She just had not quite known how to go about changing and up until now had known no one she could confide in.
Under this teacher’s tutelage she was transformed into, if not a fashion plate, at least someone that was presentable.
Clean clothes was something that Etty had to attend to herself since the concept of personal hygiene was as foreign to her mother and her mother’s boyfriend as were the concept of work for pay. Etty managed to improve her wardrobe somewhat by baby sitting, but more by theft. She kept what she had clean by washing them in the sink and hang them to dry in her room.
The theft bothered Etty somewhat, but she carried a chip on her shoulder and felt that the world owed her for the way it treated her.
She learned at a very young age to stay clear of her mother’s boyfriend when he was drinking, which was most of the time. He was always mean but even more so when drunk. His name was Jack and if they had any money he and her mother would spend their time in the bars and Etty May would be free to do as she pleased. Unknown to Etty May, most of their small income came from Jack peddling her mother for what ever he could get, and when desperate he would sell her for booze. Although she did very little to take care of herself Etty’s mother was basically a pretty woman.
Etty May didn’t know who her father was and by the time she was ten she was pretty sure that her mother didn’t know either. The strange thing was that years later she was trying to remember her mother’s given name and couldn’t. It occurred to her that her mother and Jack had no friends and she didn’t remember anyone ever calling her mother by her given name. None of the neighbors visited as they did in the other trailers. Etty May could not remember having seen anyone in their trailer, ever. Moreover, she couldn’t recall any of the neighbors speaking to her mother. She didn’t even recall Jack calling her by her given name. He just called her bitch when he was mad and Baby when he wasn’t. Etty May thought she must have known her name at one time, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember.
When Etty May was twelve years old her breasts began to develop and like most young girls she was quite taken with them. She was in the bathroom one afternoon admiring herself in the mirror when the door opened, and Jack stood there leering at her. She covered her chest with her arms and told him to get out. He said, “Don’t be bashful. Let me have a look.”
He stepped forward, grabbed her arms and yanked them down to her sides. When she screamed, he let go of one arm and hit her so hard that her legs went weak. He picked her up by the waist and sat her on the sink. He put a massive hand over one small breast and covered the other with his mouth. Etty had never been so frightened in her life. She felt bile rising in her throat and fought the impulse to puke. Just then, they heard car tires crunching the gravel in the drive. Jack straightened up and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep you’re fuckin mouth shut.”
He walked out and closed the door behind him.
After Jack left the room she jumped off the counter, leaned over the toilette and vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach. She sat on the floor quietly sobbing for a long time. When she finally came out of the bathroom her mother looked at her and said, “What happened to you?”
Etty answered, “I fell down. I’m fine. I don’t feel well. I’m going too my room.”
Her mother looked at her funny, but didn’t say anything. After that, Etty made sure she was never in the trailer with Jack alone. If her mother went out, she would leave immediately and make sure her mom was back before she returned. In the end, it didn’t matter. A year and a half later, he came into her room at four thirty in the morning and raped her. It was a hot Texas night and air conditioning was one of the many conveniences their trailer lacked. Her room didn’t even have a fan. She had the lone window open, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of a breeze, so she slept in the nude and without covers.
She awoke to the stench of the alcohol on his breath and his weight heavy on her body. She tried to scream but he clamped his hand over her mouth until she couldn’t breathe. She was sure she would suffocate. In desperation, she bit down hard on his hand and tasted blood in her mouth. He rose up and hit her in the face as hard as he could. When she came to he was gone. She went to the bathroom, got in the shower and in spite of the heat turned the water to as hot as it would go. She collapsed on the floor of the shower and stayed there until the water turned cold. Her mother could hear the shower and was sure she knew why, but couldn’t bring herself to go to her daughter. The shower finally stopped and there was only the sound of Jack’s snoring.
When Etty May could finally bring herself to get out of bed the following morning, it was almost noon and her mother was sitting at the kitchen table drinking whisky straight from the bottle. Etty May stood there looking at her with tears running down her face. Her mother finally looked up at her and said, “There’s nothing I can do.”
Etty May went back in her room. She threw what few clothes she had in a paper bag and walked out. On her way through the kitchen, her mother stopped her and handed her a wad of bills. It amounted to less than fifty dollars.
Etty May had no idea what to do or where to go. She walked around for over an hour and then at her wits end went to see June, one of her few friends. June had no more of an idea than Etty what she should do.
“You can’t stay here. My Dad would never stand for it. He told me to stay away from you. He said your mom’s a….never mind. Look I have this friend, my dad doesn’t know about him, anyways he’s got his own place. He might let you crash there for a few days until you figure out what to do.”
June’s friend lived in an apartment over a garage. The garage faced on an alley behind the house of the widow lady that rented it out. The widows husband had died years ago and the garage was her only source of income other than social security. In addition to the apartment, she rented the parking space underneath to a neighbor that tinkered with cars. She was a crotchety old women, but paid little attention to her renters as long as she got her rent on time.
The place amounted to a bedroom with a kitchenette in one corner and a small bath with a shower. It wasn’t much, but it was nicer than the trailer. June’s friend, Bobby Hanson, looked her over and asked how old she was. She lied and said sixteen.
“Christ, I could go to jail. You look about thirteen. What the hell happened to your face?”
With tears running down her face, she told him. Bobby was far from well off and had never been accused of being generous but non-the-less he felt sorry for this pretty little girl.
“Okay you can stay a few days, but you’ll have to find something else soon.”
Within a week, they were sleeping together and June was no longer speaking to her. Bobby was twenty-five, good looking and had a nice sense of humor. For the first three months, things went fairly well. Bobby had a job as a dishwasher at a small diner within walking distance of the apartment. In spite of being drunk most of the time, he treated Etty fairly well. His drinking didn’t concern Etty much since she grew up in a house where that was the norm and she didn’t spend much time contemplating her lot in life.
She spent most of her time while Bobby was at work reading movie star magazines and romance novels. Cleaning the house didn’t take up a lot of time and she wasn’t much of a housekeeper anyway. Although she had begun washing occasionally, at the prodding of her gym teacher, Bobby had to point out to her that most people bathed daily. Once she learned the joy of being clean, she became almost fanatic about it. Although during the first thirteen years of life she had taken an all over bath maybe once a month, she now found herself bathing twice a day and even more on hot days.
Things were as good for her as they had ever been and if she had taken time to think about the future, she probably would have thought they were as good as they ever would be. However, things were about to get a whole lot worse.
It started when Bobby dropped a tray of dishes at work. He had taken a pint of gin to work with him and consumed most of it within the first hour of his shift. The boss would probably have let the broken dishes go if he hadn’t smelled the booze on his breath. He may have let him off even then, if this had been the first time. However, he’d caught him drinking on the job before and by this point he had just about all he wanted of Bobby.
The first week after getting fired Bobby sat at home drinking and watching television. Etty didn’t find this strange since that was how things had been all of her life. However, when the money ran out and Bobby couldn’t find work he started getting mean. The first thing he did was start complaining about the way she kept house and then went on to telling her how inadequate she was in bed.
Two months after he was fired, the landlady came to the door while Bobby was out and told Etty that if she didn’t get the rent by the end of the week they would be evicted. When Bobby came home, she told him what the landlady had said. After ten minutes of ranting and cussing, he left the apartment and slammed the door behind him. He came back drunk two hours later and told her that there was a man on the porch that he wanted her to be nice to. She said, “I’m always nice to your friends Bobby. Why is he on the porch?”
“He’s a john you dumb bitch. He paid me to go to bed with you.”
“I can’t do that Bobby!”
“Then get your ass out and go back home.”
“Please Bobby, you know I can’t do that. Please don’t make me do this.”
“I don’t have any choice and neither do you. It’s this or we are going to be on the street.”
“Please Bobby, I’ll do anything. Just please don’t make me do this.”
“Fuck! You lay on your ass around here all day while I bust my ass to make us a livin, and the first fuckin thing I ask you to do to help out, you start bitchin.”
“I’ll do anything, anything Bobby. Maybe I could get a job. I beg you don’t make me do this.”
“Shut up and get in the bed room, and wipe your face. No one wants some weepy bitch.”
It may have been him using the term for her that Jack had always used when referring to her mother, or maybe she just saw the handwriting on the wall. Whatever it was all the fight went out of her. She turned, walked into the bedroom and started to undress.
Bobby sat on the front step drinking beer and smoking while she was with the john. The next day Bobby was apologetic, but it didn’t matter. Nothing he said could ever make Etty feel again like she did before he’d come home with that john. Although Bobby was apologetic, he continued to bring home johns. So, like mother like daughter, she went to doing what desperate women have done since time began.
However, within a few months the old woman that owned the garage caught on to what they were doing and once again showed up while Bobby was out. She told Etty that she wasn’t renting her garage out as a whorehouse.
“You’ve got three days before the rent is due, if you’re not out by then I’m calling the police.”
When she told Bobby, he raved and ranted but eventually decided he’d had enough of Waco anyway and they hit the road. Etty May begged him to let her stop turning tricks and much to her surprise he agreed. While she was turning tricks their sex life was almost nonexistent, but after she quit it picked back up. Etty didn’t know if his lack of interest in her was because he was ashamed of what he was making her do or because he found her disgusting because of it.
For the first two weeks after they left Waco, they hitchhiked and slept in fields at night. Bobby picked up bottles for the deposit and managed to steal enough food to keep them alive until he got his first job. That job didn’t last long and neither did the subsequent ones. After they left Waco, they traveled all over the country doing everything from washing dishes to picking crops. Etty May even worked as a roofer once for about a year. They lived pretty well that year and would have lived better if not for Bobby’s drinking habit. That year they were able to buy a car and although it was Thirteen years old, it was transportation.
It had been twelve years since they left Waco when she realized she was pregnant. Etty had long ago decided that she was incapable of having children. She and Bobby had been together for many years and she had never used birth control nor, to her knowledge, had Bobby. However, the fact remained, she was pregnant and while Bobby seemed to take it in stride Etty was scared to death.
Etty and Bobby had lived in almost every state in the country and Bobby had had too many jobs to keep track of. They had even tried prospecting in the Yukon for a time. They lived in a tent until it got too cold for them to take it anymore and then hitchhiked back down to the lower forty eight. They hadn’t made enough money panning to buy a bus ticket and they had long ago lost their car to Bobby’s need for drinking money. Bobby had a couple pretty good jobs over the years but something always went wrong, usually something related to his drinking.
For all those years, although Bobby drank when ever they had money and Etty had grown up in a house where drinking was an every day occurrence, Etty didn’t drink. Contrary to her Iris roots, she never developed a habit. She would have an occasional beer and she liked beer but she never became addicted.
After the baby came, Bobby really tried to do better but he couldn’t seem to get over the need for alcohol. The truth was he didn’t believe that things would ever be any better no matter how hard he tried. His self-esteem had hit rock bottom the night he brought the first john home to Etty and it hadn’t improved much since. He really did love Etty, but feared things would never be the same between them again. He thought that she would leave him if she could see anyway out. However, if she hadn’t been able to make it on her own before the baby, she had no chance now. What neither of them grasped was that without Bobby’s habit to support, she could have easily done better by her self.
They were in Maine when Bobby saw an ad in a paper he’d picked up in a truck stop. The ad was for a ranch hand on a spread near Cholla, New Mexico. He called the number listed and was promised the job. Bobby sold his gun, the only thing of value he had in the world to get the money to go. He had bought the pistol in Alaska for what reason Etty could never understand. She accused him of being afraid of claim jumpers, in a joking way, but was more upset about it than she let on. Why a man would spend their last red cent on something they had absolutely no use for was beyond her.
The sale of the gun and what they had in their pockets, got them a two hundred dollar car and enough gas to get to Cholla. When they got there, the job had been filled. The rancher was totally indifferent to Bobby’s complaint of traipsing over half the country on his promise. The rancher said he had got tired of waiting for him to show up, although it had only been five days. Bobby pointed out that he had told him that it would take them a few days to get there. The rancher was unimpressed. Bobby figured one of the locals answered the ad after him, and the rancher decided to take the local talent instead.
There was a small restaurant for sale in Cholla that Bobby had noticed on the way through town and he figured nothing ventured nothing gained. They found out from the guy at the Conoco station that a bank in Albuquerque held the paper on the restaurant. They called and then drove over and talked to them. The bank had held the paper on restaurant for over a year and they were desperate to unload it. They had just about made up their mind that they would have to write it off when Bobby came along. So, Bobby and Etty May were in the restaurant business. Their son John had just turned five.
For the first two months, the three of them slept on the floor in the storage room, but Bobby was determined to make it work this time. He stopped drinking and saved as much over expenses as he possibly could. As soon as Bobby had enough saved, he rented the trailer out on SR 247. They settled down and for awhile they were happy, at least happier than they had been up to then. Their son started school and made friends that he brought around to the restaurant. Etty would give them sodas and occasionally ice cream.
Etty and Bobby knew everyone in town and were respected by the few other business people. They had made a few friends around their age and Etty started thinking that her life was going to work out okay after all, but as usual in her life, it just wasn’t to be.
Two years after opening the restaurant Bobby was diagnosed with colon cancer and her small world once again got hard.
Bobby was sick for six months before he died, and for the last month, he was either in the hospital, or at home in bed. Etty had hired a drifter to cook and handle the diner when she couldn’t be there. She was desperate to keep the restaurant going. It was the only thing she had going for her, and her only way of supporting herself and John. It was all she could do to keep the bank at bay and the food service had cut her off completely. She was forced to go to Albuquerque and buy food at Costco to keep the restaurant open. She was certain that if the bank thought they could find another buyer they would have foreclosed.