Watermelon Baby Chapter 1

A young girl in rural Maine begins to tell her tale of the unthinkable.

Before I met Ms. Faye, I had lived with my Momma in a tiny trailer next to Grandma’s house.   Daddy had been gone for over a year but he came home the night before I first saw Ms. Faye. 

Just up the road from Grandma’s the road forked.  If you went straight, a few miles up the narrow and winding road was a covered bridge weathered by time.  If you bore left at the fork, there was a primitive ski area that has since become one of the most popular and state-of-the-art ski resorts in the state of Maine.  On the other side of Grandma’s house there was a wicked big willow tree that stood close to the road.  Behind it was a grove of lilac trees.  Their branches touched at about three feet in the air.  Grandma had my uncles keep the lower branches trimmed and the baby trees from growing in the pathways between the trees.  It was like a maze of tunnels for me, brother Toby and all my girl cousins.  We had to stoop over but we could walk through the tunnels just fine.  A few of the tunnels were wide enough for us to go through with the rusty tricycle that Grandma kept for us.   It was mostly rust but some of it was red and white.  I helped Grandma make tassels for the handlebars with yellow yarn.  Yellow was my favorite color and she let me pick the color.  Grandma was nice like that, unless you got her “Wrathy”.  She would tell us, “Grandmother is getting wrathy. “, and we knew that we needed to stop what we were doing right away. 

The back of Grandma’s lawn was lined with wild raspberry bushes with the prickliest thorns.  Behind the bushes the land dropped off steeply and there were all sorts of dead and downed trees in what I saw as a grave yard for trees.  Back a ways was a small pond that was home to many frogs.  We called it the pollywog pond.  It was littered with old trash and rusty cans and metals of all sorts.  We got into trouble for going there by ourselves to gather our jellied treasures of frog eggs.  We would gather buckets of them and stash them all around.  We would abandon them and inevitably they would come to reek in the summer’s heat.  

An aged apple tree held a tire swing for us.  I would swing and swing there.  I liked to twist around in circles until I could not stand up straight.  I would try  to walk, after going endlessly around and around.  Then laugh at myself and my staggering gait.  My bottom would frequently get wet from the rain water that had collected in the tire. 

The yard’s side of the house was lined with wild roses that had been transplanted.  The flowers were a precious cotton candy pink.  They were incredibly fragrant.  They had their own prickles that helped protect them from young fingers that desired to snatch their beauty and deliver it as a gift to Grandma.  The flowers were always full of tiny bugs.  Grandma didn’t really want the flowers in the house because of that.  If I managed to acquire a handful she would graciously accept them, put them in water and then grab a needle to start removing the tiny thorns from my fingers.   The petals fell from the roses with great ease.  Sometimes when snatching the flowers, I would come away with only the stem and a few leaves. 

      *****

I am a grown woman now but will tell you my story through the eyes  that were mine as a child.  I will tell you the story in the same way that I told it to Ms. Faye and the others.  There is a part that they do not know and that part I will tell as an adult because a child should not speak of such things.



“My name is Clara-Rose.  I guess I got my name ‘cause Daddy said my name would be Clara or he would just call me Norman.  It was up to my momma and she chose Clara.  Roses are Momma’s favorite kind of flower.  She said that I was the only Rose she would ever get from Daddy.  Seems like Momma named me and Daddy didn’t have no say in it.”.

Those were the first words that I ever spoke to the lady in the gray skirt.  Her blouse was white with a denser white fabric creating pinstripes.  Under her arms, her blouse was wet with the summer heat.  Her hair was held back with run away strands curling into ringlets around her face.  The color of her hair was, oddly, a pale red and a shade of blonde at the same time.  Even odder still, was that her eyes were the same color as her hair yet not red, nor pale, nor blonde.  They were a deep and rich golden hue.  Her lipstick was too red and showed on her teeth when she smiled.  She had a funny smell about her.  I couldn’t identify the smell as a child but now I can clearly identify it as the scent of mothballs.  

She talked funny but I liked it and quickly used her accent as my own.  As a child I loved to speak with an accent.  I mostly liked pretending to be anyone but me.  Her talk was soft and slow.  It was kind and soothing.  I was a young girl from the north speaking like a young lady from the deep south.  She smiled when I talked like she did.
I think that she liked me because a person could hardly keep me from talking if they set their mind to it.   She seemed to want to keep me talking.  I made her job easy in that I talked a lot, but difficult because I wanted to tell her every story except the one that she wanted to hear. 

This is how I came to meet Ms. Faye.

The August night was heavy with humidity.  The air seemed to sit uncomfortable and weighty upon my chest and had a hard time getting inside my lungs, where it belonged.  Sleep was beyond my grasp.  It wasn’t even teasingly  just outside of my reach.  It was nowhere.  I thought of the porch outside at my grandma’s house just across the yard.  It’s wooden floor promised to be cooler than the soft mattress that I had sunken into.  The mattress had been mine as long as I could remember.  It now rested on the floor and not in the crib that I once slept in.  My seven year old frame was small and only my feet hung out over the end of it.  It’s vinyl covering was hot and wet, with my own sweat, against my skin.  I thought of going over to grandma’s porch in search of sleep, but was afraid that Momma would worry if she could not find me in the morning. 

Instead, I began to ponder the time spent at the covered bridge just hours before.  I tried to feel the chilled water on my feet and the shade of the bridge above me.  My thoughts were no match for the heat.  I had no power to cool my little body by shear will nor vivid imagination.  My mind drifted to images of my childhood sweetheart, Jimmy Gorman.  His smile twinkled in my memory’s eye.  We spent many hours together on and under the bridge.  Our discussions reflected the innocence of our age.  His eight years were much wiser than my seven years.   He was already done with the second grade.  I would start it in a few weeks. 

I thought about the way that the tall grass had swayed in the day’s soft breeze.  I wasn’t thinking about any of the sounds just the images, the  sun shining, the grass dancing, the tiny grasshoppers, the strawberry stains on our hands.  Images tip toed through my thoughts in the nights heat.  It was oddly silent. 

I thought for a moment that I had achieved sleep and was dreaming the most beautiful dream.  I heard my daddy’s voice.  It had been a long time since I had heard his voice.  I snuggled in, forgetting the heat, and began to enjoy the comfort of his voice.  Though it was hushed, it was louder than a whisper.  I could not decipher his words nor those of Momma’s response.  His voice was enough.  For a while, I continued to hear their voices trading words and believed them to be the offspring of slumber and the desires of my heart. 

I heard the soft hiss of Daddy’s lighter.  It was a sound that was so familiar that I almost didn’t distinguish it form the silence of the moment.  Had it not been followed by the scent of a burning Camel cigarette, I would have counted it a wishful thought.  At the first mingling of the burning scent and spent butane fuel, I struggled to know whether I were asleep or awake.  As the scents lingered and a hint of Old Spice became evident, I knew that my daddy was home.  He hadn’t been home since he and Momma yelled at each other the last time. 

I sprang to my knees.  My mind was already out the door and hugging my daddy.  My heart seemed to be going faster than my thoughts.  My legs seemed to be stuck.  My hair was wet against my bare back.  My underpants clung to me in dampness.  Respiration came quickly and fled even quicker; inhaling and exhaling his scent.  The nicotine that hung in the air satisfied an appetite that had not known quenching since the last time that I heard daddy’s lighter hiss. 

Momma’s angry words stopped me in place.   I did not move from my knees.  There were words of fury back and forth.  The hushed tones were violated by the escalating volume.  I laid back down hoping that nobody would notice that I was awake, hoping that nobody saw me spring to my knees to welcome my daddy home.   I did not want Momma’s angry voice to bring my father home.  My daddy and my father smelled the same way.  They spoke much different.  My daddy talked kind to me.  My father yelled and was angry.  My daddy never hurt me.  My father touched me and made me touch him. 

I would lie real still until I knew who was out there with Momma.  The angry sounds continued until they were punctuated by a hollow thud.  The silence sounded like my heart beating in my ears. Then the silence was so loud that it hurt.  Still I didn’t move.  Nobody ever moved when Momma and my father were angry.  More silence followed.  It seemed that the quiet and the darkness would last forever.  Then I saw him.

Was it Daddy or my father standing in my doorway?  The hiss of his lighter was followed by the illumination of his face and chest.  I didn’t move until I believed that it was Daddy standing there.  There was the sound of a long deep drag on his cigarette.  A cloud escaped his mouth with his exasperated exhalation. 

“Daddy!”, I squealed, with great hope, as I jumped from my bed.  I grabbed to hug at his legs but my arms encircled his waist.  It had been a long while since I had hugged my daddy. 

There were no whiskers to scratch my face as he bent over to kiss his girl.  There was only a tiny piece of toilet paper with a circle of blood in the center near the cleft in his chin and one just below his left ear.  His chest was bare and warm against me.  He lifted my face with his right hand until I was looking into his face.  The smell of his Old Spice was strongest on his face. 

He leaned forward and kissed my mouth.   A dreadful knowing filled me.  My hands moved to my daddy’s waist and then downward for confirmation.  My fingers searched in vain for the beginning of my daddy’s trousers.  It was my father who stood in my doorway and not my beloved daddy.

They were, of course, one and the same person but my child's mind required that they be separated by their actions.  My daddy was not capable of what came as second nature to my father. 

Later that night,  I slept.  The wooden floorboards of the covered bridge cooled my little body.   I was safe in the bridge’s embrace.  It held me.  My eye’s opened when the day’s  light was just beginning.  There was a white circle of light, muted by the day’s dawning in the distance, that searched for me.   When it landed on my face it made me squint my eyes.  Blue strobe lights flashed through the beams that held the bridge’s pitched covering.  When the light flashed it’s illumination, I could read name’s that were etched into the wooden structure.  Some were old carvings that were weathered and harder to read.  The blue lights flashed on and off then on again.   Doug loves Rita.  Again they flashed off and then on.. a large heart with the words “I love Kevin”, scribed inside of it.  The blue lights were becoming dimmer as the sun climbed above the surrounding mountain tops,  but they still flashed off and then on and then off.  The newest etching in the structure etches itself into my being.  It had the lightest color of lettering because it was most recently etched:  Jimmy loves Clara-Rose.  Below it was written in pencil “and the watermelon baby”. 

I saw the lady in the gray skirt for the first time just a little while later.  The policeman told me her name was Ms. Faye and that she would ride with me in the police car.  Nobody told me that it would be all right or that I would be ok.  I remember thinking that, if I had Jimmy and my watermelon baby, I would be ok.

It was the story of what my father had done that night and what had happened to him that Ms. Faye wanted me to tell.  She wanted to know, especially, how I had come to be at the bridge all by myself.  I never did tell her that Grandma had brought me there and had told me that what had happened to my father was going to be our secret. 


 

Reviews

[An Ordinary Woman]

Wow. It's a wonderful write, marked as fiction, and I won't assume otherwise.

Of course it is woven together with the painful acts of child abuse, something I know more about than I care to admit. Still, I found it to be very well written, the story from the child's POV contrasts nicely with the adult telling of the story.

I haven't read much on here (the cafe) about topics like this one, and sometimes I wonder why, because it is more common than many care to admit.

It is very well written and extremely powerful in content. Thanks for sharing.

[Mastermind]

Oh my, what a powerfully moving story. And the descriptions (especially of the landscape) were exquisite, I actually felt as though I was in the story. I had been meaning to read this for a while now, and now I'm certainly glad that I did, because the plot absolutely pulls at my heartstrings. Thank you so much for sharing this gorgeous story, keep up the wonderful, raw work!

[Sharla Gentile]

Powerful . . . to have written this takes much courage and strength. I admire your honesty and your writing style.

Stay strong and please, keep writing!

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This was a very good descriptive write, strong and sinister towards the ending. I applaud your talent.

[Evelyne Aaroness]

Okay, wow. This turned out to be unexpectedly dark.

The transition between the description of the grandmother's house and the explanation of how the narrator met Ms. Faye was a little rough and could be smoothed out simply by taking out the asterisks as they are slightly out of place there anyways, and interupt the flow. You could also add a line like "I was [insert age] then." to help the transition along, but it's not absolutely necessary.

Watch how thick your paragraphs are. The thicker they are the harder it is for the reader to keep their attention on what's actaully going on. It's easier to get lost in the words when they're bunched in larger groups, and there were a couple paragraphs I read which had the subject changing in the middle of them. Subject change is a wonderful place to cut a paragraph.

All in all, this was a good read, and I enjoyed it. In some places it reads like a first draft, but that can be changed by another edit. Good job, and keep writing.

[TL Boehm]

this is a formidable post. Every time I read something this powerful I hesitate a bit more to post my own 'novel'. Your descriptions are exquisite and the tone never breaks - it is easy to fall into this work - as tho' I am listening to this woman tell her story and not just 'reading' the page. It is HEAVY subject matter - but you got your point across precisely without going to far into graphic detail. I am looking forward to chapter two.

[Celtic Cat]

Wow. Completely HEAVY. What a wonderful story-teller you are. You had me from the first line and never let me go. This is a sad, moving story and I'll be waiting for the next chapter. Love Grandma, wonderful character. Love all the little backyard walkways, they made me want to follow behind the kids to whatever magic place those walkways would take us! I'm also very curious about "Watermelon baby". Love the part about spying the new etching. Also, I think it is very fitting for a child to differentiate between Daddy and Father, amazing how our defense mechanisms are on auto-pilot when need be. : (
Great write.

[John Herrin - Determine..]

A moving, powerful accounting of child abuse, but rendered without a clinical slant. It's told with sadness, but a close sadness felt by a child. Even though you tell us that you're showing us this from the child's perspective, there is the tinge of adult regret and pain. Just enough of that regret and pain give focus to the child's innocent awareness.

You descriptives are beautiful from Ms. Faye to the roses. This is a well-developed narrative and I'm looking forward to the next chapter. Over time, as you work on this, I suspect you revise this chapter and maybe even move it further into the book. Of course, I don't know where you're going, but I think you've established a powerful tale.

Keep writing!

[BrightEyes]

Powerful tale here. I was heartened to see "chapter 1" as now I am hooked and hoping for more. I like how the child seperates "daddy" and "her father" ; it speaks to me of something a child would do to attempt to reconcile unconceivable acts.