On November 21, 1940 in Wewoka, Oklahoma, Viola Haley gave birth to a little red-headed baby boy. It was a cold, inhospitable day. She had neither money nor inclination to attempt a trip to the hospital but birthing at home was not the uncommon practice it is today. Her husband was not around. A rodeo rider, he was out on the rodeo circuit and likely wouldn’t be back for at least another week. Viola hurried to her neighbor’s and banged on the screen door. “My water’s broke!” she cried.
The baby arrived hours later, and the young mother, drenched in sweat in spite of the icy day outside, slept for hours as rotating neighbors kept watch over her, the newborn and the 3-year-old sister. My husband James would grow up, both in-and-out of that very unusual household. But he would never get to know his mother, never even get to see a picture of her: Viola died when he was only two. She was fifteen days shy of her thirtieth birthday.
It turned out his father was not one to really settle down after that. Over the course of his life, he married six times. And after Viola died, Jim’s father hired people to take the young boy in. So except for a couple of instances, Jim never lived with his father or sister. He told me that at one of the homes he lived in, the woman of the house didn’t like him. He was about six or seven at the time and upon coming downstairs, he walked past the bathroom. The door was open and he glanced inside. He was surprised to see it occupied by the woman, stark naked on the toilet. His eyes opened wide with astonishment when suddenly she jumped up, yelling, “Why you little pervert, I’ll beat you to an inch of your life!” Young Jim turned tail and ran as fast as he could but the woman, still naked, caught him and started beating the crap out of him with her bra.
It wasn’t until he was seventeen and had to get a birth certificate so he could join the Navy that he discovered that the mad woman flailing the brassiere at him had not been his real mother. “Didn’t you know, Boy?” an aunt of his asked.
No, he didn’t know. He had always thought that bizarre brassiere-waving woman had been his mother. He sighed, at first relieved that she actually hadn’t been, until it dawned on him that no one had ever bothered to tell him that his real mother had died when he was only two. And suddenly his relief turned to tears.
And it still hurt years later when he told me.
As an adult, Jim never asked his father why he had farmed him out to strangers rather than let him live with him or other family members. Jim suspected that it might have had to do with the wishes of the various wives. While he was growing up though, he believed it was because he stuttered. But I suspect the young boy stuttered as a result of being placed in the care of so many different strangers who didn’t give a damn about him.
And that thought has more than once brought me to tears.
Writing Through Challenges & Change 