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Rolsyn Luce Sadler: |
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My mother missed the big parade, just one of the long anticipated parades being held that day up, down, and across the nation. That was my fault. She stayed home waiting for me. Dad and everyone who could walk, be carried, sit on horses, or crowd windows and balconies along the route were there to see Boston’s first Armistice Day parade, the eleventh of November 1918. I arrived two
days later, the third of my parents’ three children. Boston was my
birthplace, also Mother’s, but two islands became my world soon after
that. Martha’s Vineyard, Dad’s family home, was one. Due to his work,
Cuba was the other island I called home until I was eighteen, but my
traveling was not over by then. If I had been assigned an emblem by my
guardian angels (I am certain, by now there must have been more than one),
it would be a suitcase. Dad was an
engineer. From the early years of their marriage until his retirement,
Mother made a home wherever he was sent, mostly in Latin America. His was
an active part in the sugar industry, designing and building sugar mills
and running them. It is difficult
to know when childhood memories begin, and which of them are the memories
others fondly tell about you. I don’t remember the first journey to Cuba
at the age of two, but somewhere in the early years I remember being tied
by a length of clothesline to a deck chair and voicing my opinion of that
restraint, while my brother and sister ran free on the ship. I remember
our homes in Havana during the three years we lived there. First, there was
a penthouse apartment on top of a hotel. A metalwork spiral stairway led
from the top floor of the hotel to our home on the roof. It had a large,
wide front verandah, shaded by bougainvillea vines. I remember leaning
over its railing to watch cars below, with brooms tied before their front
wheels. I had been told that strikers (whatever they were) had strewn
roofing nails on the streets. I can remember
the coolness of the water in the large fountain in the patio of the hotel.
The water flowing through the hanging ferns onto my head as I paddled and
the red flick of goldfish around me. The manager put a stop to my
participation in their world. I can smell the
cool, dark, fragrant pantry of the hotel, where the cookies and cakes were
kept. The chef put a stop to my sampling them. I can hear the
click of a latch when we locked the Peruvian consul’s wife in the
bathroom because we didn’t like her. Mother put a stop to that. I remember our
table in the large hotel dining room and my sister saying to me “Eat
with your mouth shut.” She tried to put a stop to that. It is
possible that the hotel put a ban on children when we moved to our next
home. Maybe that is why we moved. It was a house
that time. I remember the shady trees out front and the navy blue berries
they dropped on the sidewalk. They had a bland taste, but the centers were
seedy and tangy. I remember the
streetcar rides to the beach, and the gritty, hot feel of sand between my
toes. The crowds and
the flash and thunder of horses at the racetracks. The emptiness of
the streets I followed the day I ran away from kindergarten. I don’t
think I was sent back, because I have no recollection of the building. All
I remember is the emptiness of the streets in bright sunlight. But I also
remember the contrast of brilliant Cuban sun and deep shadows when the
color and excitement of confetti-and-serpentine-throwing crowds filled the
streets with costumed movement during the pre-Lenten season. Our next move was
to Oriente Province, on the opposite end of the island from Havana. Dad
was the chief engineer for three sugar mills. We lived at Baguanos, one of
the mill estates, until I was eight. Then at San Germain, another of the
three, until I was twelve. I don’t remember the name of the other (I
think it begins with a P). In Baguanos the
residences for staff were built on the side of a hill, forming a horseshoe
of houses with a golf course in the middle and tennis courts across the
opening at its base. Our home was at the top of the hill, next door to the
manager’s large home, which was at the very top center of all the
houses. It was a lovely setting and a happy place for a home. Our house was
built for the tropics, with a wide screened porch around three sides. The
porch on the right side was cooler because it was shaded by a thick, heavy
vine that had delft blue flowers. If you plucked a blossom, a drop of
nectar formed at the place of parting. My inquisitive tongue found it. This part of the
porch was our sleeping place during the hotter months. There were five
beds in a row, and at the very end of the porch at the back were an old
Morris chair and a couch where all the dogs slept. We loved animals,
or at least Mother and Dad tolerated our love for them. There were white
rats in a large cage on the play porch. This fronted a two-bedroom wing
Dad had had built for us three and our rats. They multiplied. There was a
pig. My sister had a tender heart and suffered because of it, as did
others. One day, when the chicken-and-egg man rode up with a mournful
piglet tied behind his saddle, my sister heard the squeals. My mother
could not withstand the squeals and her pleas, so we had a pig that we
kept in the chicken yard. Pigs are really
clean creatures and reluctant to be bathed by two enthusiastic little
girls with soap and a scrub brush. I found that pigs can bite. I carried
the pail of water and received the bite. Perhaps it was because I was the
youngest of us three that I seemed to be the recipient of the results of
my sister’s and brother’s ideas. We had a billy
goat named Maggie. He was all billy and butt, in spite of his name. It was
my brother Byron who discovered the exciting game of letting my end of the
seesaw rest on the ground until Maggie gathered himself for a charge. Then
Byron would quickly lower his end and raise me in the air while Maggie
thundered through, under me. It was fun until Byron missed his timing and
Maggie didn’t. And we had a “miniature” parrot whose voice wasn’t. With it he let the world know he was awake until Mother opened his cage in the morning. He would then waddle to and climb up the back of her chair and mutter until she placed a coffee soaked piece of toast in a saucer on the floor. Then began the reverse process, his voice unwinding its complaint until he reached the saucer. I now wonder what our guests thought as they sat at our table with dogs at their feet, a parrot working around the back of Mother’s chair, and a white rat, maybe two on Byron’s and my shoulders. The visitors seemed to like the baby rats better than grown ones. We seemed to have as many guests as rat progeny—in spells. Life really began
for me at age five. It was then that I met the first love of my life. It
was that love that fills the mind and heart day and night. I lived for a
glimpse of him. I’m not sure whether it was the man or the horse. The
man was a chemist who did something with the sugar in the mill. The horse
may have been sway-backed (I never saw him without his saddle), but he was
beautiful or they were beautiful. Anyway, it was beautiful. I had my first
horseback rides by waiting for them at the foot of the hill by the tennis
courts in the late afternoon. But I was fickle.
I loved another horse, too. This one belonged to the garbage man. I would
wait for him at the foot of the hill where the road started and circled
behind the houses in a horseshoe. The garbage man let me hold the reins
while he busied himself emptying the contents of the cans into the back of
the wagon. And I drove the wagon and dreamed over the beauty of that
horse. Dad bought my first horse shortly after that. I wonder if my dreams
or my fragrance spurred him on. My first horse! He was horrible and mean,
and his name was Billikins. Dad broke his finger when Billikins bucked him
off. So then I had a quiet mare. She was very nice. Lady was her name. Dad used to tell
our visitors, “Don’t walk out back after dark. We’ll never find
you.” Our backyard was an ever-changing scene. It was ours—El’s,
Byron’s and mine. There was an understanding that the front yard was
Mother’s, and there she had her rose gardens, and we respected her
terrain as she did ours. The movies of the previous Saturday were the
basis of much of our play there, especially if it had been a cowboy
picture. I remember well because I was usually the victim. We had large and
small packing cases in which the machinery had been crated for the mills.
They became bunk houses and bars, and we even built trains and a
stagecoach from them. There were trenches dug if we had seen a war movie.
And Maggie the goat became a bull and Byron a toreador while El and I sat
in the manger of the stable with hibiscus blooms in our hair after we had
seen a Spanish picture. I must have been amazed when I found that people
paid for a seat in a movie, and you couldn’t take your dogs. We had a
whole box full of seats with Dad’s name on it. We went every Saturday
afternoon and, on special occasions like birthdays, at night. On Saturdays
we took our dogs with us because they ate the peanut shells. Distances in
childhood are at least twice as long as they are in later years, so I’m
not sure how far apart the three mills were. Dad, as engineer, had to
travel between the three much of the time, and sometimes we went with him.
The roads were impassable most of the year due to the heavy rains, so
Dad’s car had wheels like the kind on train coaches and was driven on
the railroad tracks. It didn’t seem unusual to us to go clickety-clicking
along the rails. I probably assumed everyone’s father traveled to work
that way. As we traveled,
we made periodic stops at small telephone boxes beside the rail line. Dad
would call the dispatch office to make sure the tracks were clear until
the next telephone stop. Sometimes we had to back onto a siding near the
telephone and wait for a long, cane-laden train to go chugging by. Then
Dad would unlock the switch, shift it, move the car onto the main line,
get out and re-lock the switch, climb back in again, and we would be on
our way to the next checkpoint. The only time in
my life when I saw sparks fly between Mother and Dad was during one of
those waits. We waited, surrounded by the stiff, shaggy rows of sugar
cane, the rails glimmering in the sun in heat-wavy lines. The dry,
starched sound of the leaves of cane moving in what breeze there was and
the whir of flying insects were the only sounds to stir the drowsy wait. I
suppose the idea had come to Dad when he had to climb in and out of the
car when we backed onto the siding. Anyway, he decided to show Mother how
to drive the car while we waited for the train to pass. But the heat and
the gears and the engineer in my Dad were too much for him to bear, and MY
FATHER SHOUTED AT MY MOTHER. The only sound after that was the starchy
rustle of the cane stalks, the renewed whir of insects, and Mother’s,
“Well!” We three sat, our six train-wheel-sized eyes staring from the
back seat. As unaware as a
fishlet in the life-sustaining and supporting elements of the water that
surrounds it, I grew up in the gentle, life-giving warmth of love. Of all
the gifts so generously given to me by my parents, the meaning of love in
all its multiple and shaded variations was one of the greatest. Love was in the
thump of a sleeping dog’s tail when I entered a room. Love was there
when Ato, our Chinese cook, grumbled as I reached into the bowl for one of
the potatoes he had peeled. He grumbled, though he always smiled as he
shrugged and reached for another to replace the raw one I was munching. My
mouth still waters when I peel potatoes. The swat of a
broom and the exclamation “Gallega” by our houseboy, Julio, who was
also Chinese, was part of the love. I teased him. I loved kites,
but no kite can equal the magic of the butterflies and bumblebees
fashioned of bamboo and bright tissue paper by the man who tended
Mother’s rose gardens. He must have made them in the evenings, because
he was always tending roses in the daylight. His face was lean and stern
when we ran through his domain, but softened when he handed us our kites.
He was from China too. Becky was part of
it. She was from Jamaica. She bathed us and made peanut butter soup and
cinnamon toast for our suppers on the play porch. She soothed our hurts
and scolded our mischief. When Mother protested over her slipping our
socks and shoes on while we lay on the bed after our bath, her love said,
“Oh, Mrs. Luce, they grow so fast. They’re my babies.” Irons was her
husband. I thought he was seven feet tall, though I am now sure he was
only six-six. He must have had other jobs, but the only one I knew was
that he took care of my horse and shepherded me on my longer rides. Love
was there in his huge hands as he gentled my mare when I saddled her, when
he picked me up after a tumble, and in the warmth of his eyes when he
smiled. Tina was small
and brown and old, and she smoked cigars as she scrubbed our mountain of
laundry. I can hear her now as she stood waving her arms over the sheets
spread to bleach on the grass, “Aiii! If it ain’t the keeeds, it’s
the daawgs!!!” And she would sweep the sheets and our footprints up in
her arms and march back to the tubs. But she loved us. We knew it as we
sat talking with her and tried puffing on her cigar. During those
early growing years, the main focal point of my love was my brother. As I
grew, I became his shadow, and he responded in his young male way. Whether
I had a vitamin deficiency or was just curious, I tasted leaves, seeds,
and flowers of all kinds. It was his hand that gave me the leaf of the
elephant-ear plant to taste, with the assurance that it was the best yet.
That agony of a tongue and mouth filled with pins and needles for the rest
of the afternoon didn’t dim my adoration; nothing could. There was one
time when he would act the older brother. It was when I was in a fight
with our playmates, who were all boys but one. Byron would stand aside
until he saw what he considered a high blow, then he would interfere and
say, “Hey, don’t hit my sister on the chestesses. Don’t you know you
never hit a girl on the
chestesses.” It didn’t matter if I had a swollen lip or a bump on the
head; he would always step between when it was my chestesses. He was a year
older, but for one whole, complete week I could lord it over him that I
was the same age. My birthday was November 13th, his November 21st. Being a shadow to
him must have made the shopping lists easier. If he wanted a baseball
suit, order one for Roslyn. A pair of dungarees? Might as well get another
pair for Roslyn. And, because of him, I loathed dresses. The misery of my
life was that, after my four o’clock bath I had to wear a DRESS. That
also meant I had to wear SHOES. There was one
time when I felt quite good in a dress. It was at a costume party at the
clubhouse. Mother had turned me into a fairy princess with a bouffant
skirt made of multicolored layers of pastel organdy. I loved the feel of
the satin ribbon streamers that hung on my shoulder from the headdress. I
casually waved my wand as the feminine in me responded to the looks of
admiration. Then the mother of five of our playmates, all little boys,
rushed up and said, “Oh, how lovely! If I had a little girl, that’s
the way I would dress her all the time!” Mother’s quiet
voice said, “Not if you had a little girl like Roslyn.” The week before,
I had left the whole of the back of my new Easter dress hooked over the
top of the sliding board. It was beautifully made of pink silk and dotted
swiss. It couldn’t be mended. My bottom did mend, though. With the wisdom
that guided their love, my parents did not spare the rod. I now realize
that a respect for the rules that governed our home and the homes of
others, as well as a respect for people and their property and feelings
was part of the gift of their love. We did need reminding at times. With
the back of my dress missing, the job was simplified. I got what I
expected that time. The few times
that I was punished and didn’t think I should have been, my reaction was
not resentment, but only a feeling that “big folks just don’t
understand these things.” Once I was
carried away with enthusiasm when I was an Indian. I waited behind the
bushes with the hatchet from the woodpile. I didn’t scalp Byron, and I
didn’t draw blood. But he showed the rising lump to Mother. As she
reached for me, hairbrush in hand, I kept saying, “But it was only
make believe!” Then there was
Bobby, who was Byron’s and my constant companion. He looked like an
angel but wasn’t. One afternoon he and I appeared on the golf course.
His shirt was splotched with drying blood, as were his cheek and hair,
from a scalp wound. When Dad and the others exclaimed, “What happened to
you!” The traitor said, “Roslyn hit me with a stick from the
woodpile.” Mother was very
slow to grasp that situation. No matter how many times I told her that
“Bobby and I are friends now,” she still made me go down and apologize
to his mother. Big folks just didn’t understand such things. However, we
discovered that Mother meant what she said in other ways. We tested it the
day Byron and I were chasing each other with sticks that had been used to
stir green paint. Somehow we got tangled in the clothes on the line during
the chase. It didn’t rub off. We tried that. Then the big question came
up: should we retreat to our secret space under the house, or did Mother
mean it when she told us to tell her if we did something wrong, and we
would not be punished? I suppose one
thing that helped us make our decision was that we could think of no way
to explain those glaring green streaks on the clothes, so we tried her. As we walked away
from the tea table where we had found Mother, we were in a stunned state,
not from a spanking, which was withheld, but with the knowledge that she
meant what she had said. There were two
times each year that held special magic. Christmas was one, of course, and
for the other I had to wait another six months. CHRISTMAS. The
word by itself—to the ears, to the eyes, to the tongue—has a crispness
like its cookies, a whisper of enchantment like snowflakes brushing
windowpanes. It brings to mind the rustle of tissue paper behind closed
doors, the aroma of baking cookies and roasting turkey, the accented red
of cranberry sauce, the frosty breath of carol singers, and, at the center
of its joy, the infant in a manger. It holds a sense of wonder for a vast
number of people. From the many who
cherish Christmas Day for its humble beginning there is a gift, surpassing
all gifts, that is given to their children: the meaning of Christmas. And
another: their own childhood wonder implanted in the lives of their
children. These childhood Christmases leave an imprint of lasting awe on
all the following years; no matter where the joy of Christmas is
experienced after that, its roots were established for us in the beginning
by parental love, and they affect us always. My earliest
Christmas memories contain no frost tracings on closed windows and package
juggling shoppers. There were palm trees that rasped in the wind and a
bright green golf course across the hibiscus hedges that guarded the rose
beds. In our dining room there was a fat green pine tree whose top almost
touched the ceiling. The trees always appeared a few days before Christmas
and stood there unclothed and promising until Christmas morning. I didn’t know
it then, but our tree was the first gift of the season. It arrived with
others from the States, for they were sent to the families of the three
mill estates by the New York office of the sugar company. The real climb to
enchantment began Christmas Eve afternoon when all the children of the
mill staff were invited to the manager’s house. I didn’t mind then
that I had to wear a dress. Scrubbed and
polished, we would all sit quietly—for us—on the floor of the large
living room of that gracious place. A fireplace filled the back wall. I
now wonder if the fireplace was built with Christmas in mind, for
certainly in that warm, green world it must have been the only day of the
year it was needed. Suddenly, rounded
eyes swung to the front of the house. We heard sleigh bells out there!
Pushing on another’s shoulder, a knee, the floor, we scrambled to our
feet. Then, a deep laugh behind us, and we all spun around and froze like
children in a game of statues. A little frightened but also filled with
wonder, we were looking at him.
Santa Claus was real! He did have a red suit and black shiny boots and a
bulging pack. How did he get a pack so big down the chimney? It didn’t
matter. He was here! He chuckled as he
pulled the first package from the bag, and called a name. Then another.
And another. “Don’t forget me,” I whispered. Then, with a tug, a
gleaming red fire engine. “Oh, for me?” No, Bobby. Then another
package. Another. His pack was becoming limp with folds of emptied
promise. Then he reached
deeper into the bag and in his hands, as he pulled them free, was the
perfect doll, the only doll in the world. The longing to hold it, the
wanting to have it must have filled my eyes. A pause as he searched the
upturned faces. A long, long pause as he looked at the pink and white
perfection in his hands. Then, looking into my eyes, he held it out, and
he said with a chuckle, “Merry Christmas, Roslyn Luce.” And later, the
excitement at bedtime as we hung the stockings at the foot of our beds. I
knew I wasn’t going to sleep this time. I’d find out if Santa or one
of his helpers filled my stocking. And the questions, “Will mine be
filled with switches because I did hit Bobby with that stick? Will the
tree really be dressed in all its glitter when we get up tomorrow? Will I
get the new saddle blanket?” Mother tucked us
in and the darkness covered us as she switched off the light. Her whisper,
“Sleep tight,” made me giggle. I woke, but the stocking was still flat as I felt it with sleepy hands. I wouldn’t sleep, not this time. But I did. Suddenly I was wide-awake, and the stocking was fat and full of bumps! I could see it in the dim light. Then, six hurrying feet and three hands shaking Mother by the shoulder, “Can we open our stockings now? It’s almost Christmas morning.” And a sleepy “Yes” sent us scurrying onto our beds where we sat cross-legged and delved into the secrets of our stockings. Pure magic came forth in our fingers. At last, the
sound of Mother and Dad in the dining room. Our hopeful calls, “Did
Santa Claus dress the tree? Can we come now?” They replied,
“Of course, come and see,” and we tumbled through the door, halting
before the tree, eyes round with wonder. From the star at its top, to the
piles of joyful secrets at its foot, we looked in awe at its complete
beauty of color and the tinseled glitter on its branches that shimmered
from our hurry. Then we started to search the tree for the Infant. Who
would find him this time? He was tiny and perfect, and surrounded by a
sparkling golden halo, and hung hidden on the tree. One of us always found
him; the one who did felt an added joy that Christmas morning. ***
Six months later, in June, anticipation and excitement filled our lives again. It started when Dad came home from the office with a fat folder of railway and steamship tickets. Then the suitcases and trunks appeared. It was time to visit Gammy at the Big House on the Island. We were going North for the summer once more. This annual trip
was fun in itself. The twenty-four hour train ride to Havana with the
frequent stops at stations where there was bustle and color, the sweetness
of the fruit handed to us through the windows in exchange for the coppers
in our fists, the lulling click of the wheels as we slept in our berths.
And then, Havana in the morning with its familiar aromas and sights, and
next, the ship. Dad counting all
items, “One, two, three, four…. There should be eleven pieces.” The
eleven included our three noses, for he always counted baggage and noses
in this routine. The voyage by
ship was of two kinds. We either boarded the ship, sailed for five days,
and finally reached New York; or we embarked in the morning, arrived at
Key West in the early afternoon, and from there took the train to Boston.
Both journeys were filled with delights. The five days
encompassed a round of activities: the subdued click of silver on dishes
in the dining saloon; the sound of the bouillon wagon being wheeled along
the deck at ten o’clock in the morning; the rush of the dark waves,
their blue verging on deep purple, topped by a filigree of gold Sargasso
seaweed; the groan of the ship and the roll of the deck glaring in
scrubbed splendor in the Caribbean sun; and our rushing feet and laughter. On exciting days,
when the ship rolled deeply, we sometimes waited for the steamer trunk to
slip from under the berth and rush across the cabin. As it emerged, Byron
and I would jump on and ride gloriously until it returned to its hiding
place with the next lunge of the ship. After the first
day or two, areas restricted to passengers, especially children, meant
nothing, and the bridge, the engine room, and the galley were all explored
before the end of the trip. Then, the Statue
of Liberty, the jagged outline of the New York skyline, and a fat tug
pulling us toward it. And leaning over the forward rail while the derricks
tugged and chugged the great nets of bagged sugar from the hold, I would
announce to the world, “That’s my dad’s sugar!” But I liked the
Key West trip best. Key West, the tiny settlement at the very tip of the
string of keys, or islands, that joined it to Florida. There I
approached the wide mouth of the customs shed with a tremulous excitement
in my stomach and a quiver in the arm that held my doll. This was the
place where they searched for booze.
Byron had told me you couldn’t have it in the States, but some people
hid it and tried to bring it to Key West with them. They even hid the
bottles in dolls! I wonder what the
custom inspector thought when I held my doll up to him and said, “See, I
don’t have any.” I liked Key West
because there were horses and carriages, one of which Dad hired for the
afternoon, for our train left in the evening. I remember the
fishing boats and their smell, the bright sunlight on water and people,
the sound of the horse’s hooves on the pavement, the little bags of good
things to eat. Dad always bought things to munch on when we traveled. But
I remember best my Mother’s corset. Some people,
mostly women, know the geography of a corset. In strategic places
throughout there are narrow strips of cloth called casings. Within these
are flat, pliable metal strips covered in cloth. These are called bones. One afternoon in
Key West, bouncing along in the carriage, El and I sitting on the jumpseat
facing Mother and Dad, and lucky Byron riding beside the drive, I was deep
in thought, “Byron says if I can kiss my elbow I will turn into a boy.
I’ll try it again.” My sleeve nearly
parted, but I still couldn’t do it. “Maybe when I grow some more. Boys
are so much better than girls. They can drive the stagecoach while silly
girls sit inside and moon.” My eyes focused
on Mother. Was she trying to kiss her elbow? I didn’t want her to turn
into a boy! She was certainly trying to do something. Her elbow was up by
her ear, but she wasn’t trying to kiss it, thank goodness. Dad said,
“What’s the matter Lotta?” I caught her
whispered reply, “My corset bone has worked loose and won’t stay in
the casing.” Dad, the
practical engineer, said, “Well, let’s pull it out,” and reached
down the back of her neck and pulled. A long, black metal strip came into
view. He pulled again, gently at first, but the cloth that covered it had
bunched inside the casing and held fast. He tugged. Again. Then harder. The driver must
have sensed an emergency, or maybe Dad said one of those words for which I
got my mouth washed with soap. Anyway, bringing his horse to a stop, he
swung around and surveyed the situation. Then, suddenly
all action, he handed the reins to Byron, got down from the box, walked
behind the carriage without a word and climbed onto the back of it.
Leaning over the folded-down hood, his hand joined Dad’s in the
tug-of-war. They tugged. They tugged some more, harder, and suddenly,
there was a slight tearing sound. Mother bounced back in her seat. The
gleaming black corset bone swung high in their hands, bits of cloth
fluttering at one end. Mother sat like a queen amidst the round brown
eyes, and the small and large brown faces that stared up at her from where
they surrounded the carriage. I was sure that, even in the olden-days when
she was a little girl, she had never wished to be a boy. She was a lady. By sundown it was
time to board the train. There, we were met by our
porter, who greeted us with, “Welcome aboard, Mr. Luce. Good to have you
and the family with us again.” Next came the fun
of exploring our compartment, which adjoined Mother’s and Dad’s. Of
course, everyone knew the toilet must not be used until the train was
moving, but the ice water in our bathroom, though not
boiled, could be drunk on American trains! So we drank three or four
of the funny little flat paper cups, expertly squeezing them open and
holding them under the chilly faucet. As we unpacked our books and games
and toys and stowed them away for the three-day journey, Byron and I
debated whose turn it was to sleep with head-to-the-engine. We always
shared the top berth, his feet in my face and mine in his, while El had
the lower one to herself. She was the oldest. We liked the top berth
better anyway, though feet-to-the-engine was degrading, and therefore,
worth arguing about. All the while we
were moving slowly out of Key West. By the time our berth positions and
things were sorted, our hair combed and hands washed, the train had gained
speed. Then I could sit and watch the most fascinating part of that
journey, the sight of water under the train as we clacked our way over the
causeways that joined the keys. By then, all of us sat waiting for the
sound of the first call to dinner by the diner-porter chiming his way down
the corridor. Then we followed
Mother and Dad through the swaying train to the dining car, where the
tables appeared to be supported by the starched corners of the white table
cloths, and glass and silver danced and jingled to the rhythm of the
wheels. That night we
three always felt like grownups because we were permitted to sit at a
table by ourselves and order whatever we wanted. No food tastes so
good as the first meal on home soil. “American milk” that tasted like
the cow smells. “Cuban milk” tasted like the pan it was boiled in.
Pickles that were sweet, watermelon, and real ice cream. But Byron and I
looked at El with some disapproval. She was acting too grownup when she
frowned and looked disgusted at some of the things we ordered. And there,
she said it again, “Eat with your mouth shut.” Thus, we reached
Gammy at the Big House on the Island. Gammy was my father’s mother. I
don’t remember if she was taller than the other women in my life, but
she was thin like Dad, and she made molasses cookies like down-filled
pillows, and doughnuts that crunched when you bit them. The Big House was
big. It was white with green shutters and a mansard roof. There was a wide
verandah around two sides, with an enclosed railing guarding the edge, and
white pillars supporting the roof. There were rocking chairs, and these,
tipped over and covered with blankets, made delightful secret havens when
it rained. From the front
hall you could look way up the open stairwell to the third floor and see
the smooth banister of polished mahogany descending the stairs from up
there, then following along the second floor hall and down to where you
stood. The banister was waxy sleek, and you could fly down it. Gammy was
always telling us to be careful when we did. The rooms were many. There was a long dining room with a long table and benches along its sides; a parlor with lots of untouchables in it; a living room where we read the funny papers on Sundays and played checkers and Slap Jack on rainy days; a big warm-smelling kitchen; a back hall and downstairs toilet; then the backstairs to an upstairs back hall and bathroom, and eleven bedrooms on the second and third floors. My father was
born in one of these rooms, as was his father and some more fathers
farther back. Back then they were sea captains and whalers. On the top floor
there was a staircase which twisted around itself and led to the roof. Its
opening in the hall was shut off by a large dresser—to keep us off the
roof I suppose. At one time there was a “widow’s walk” on the roof,
where the wives used to stand and look to the sea for the returning
whaling ships. I don’t know if a hurricane blew it away, but the awesome
words “widow’s walk” made us sure the stairs were haunted, so we
didn’t go out on the roof by that route. The Island is
Martha’s Vineyard, a part of Massachusetts. It lies a few miles off the
coast of Cape Cod. The Island is big enough to have three large towns on
it with lots of spacious fields, lagoons, and woods between. It is ringed
by beaches of all types—gentle, lapping waters, or fierce rolling
breakers. Its harbors are snug and filled with boats. The happiness and
wonder in a child’s eyes as she stands in the middle of Disneyland for
the first time best expresses my feelings about those summers on
Martha’s Vineyard. It was a time of the gathering of the clan. By the
4th of July the Big House was filled with seven cousins, three mothers,
three fathers, and three grandparents, for Mother’s parents came down
from their home in Boston. Seven
cousins—three litters from the same breed—tumbled together for the
whole summer. We knew our own mothers, but the nearest one bandaged our
stubbed toes or scolded us when she thought it necessary. Amidst the
excitement of living in spurts and hurry that make a child’s world,
there are certain rituals. We had our ritual of “firsts.” They began when
we stepped off the Island steamer that had brought us from Woods Hole on
the Cape, across the Vineyard Sound to the wharf at Oak Bluffs or Vineyard
Haven. I know we greeted
Gammy with all the love that was in our hearts, but I’m positive the
first question asked was “Where’s my bathing suit?” Gammy was the
trustee of those precious articles that became our second skin during
those summer months. She washed and mended them, and put them away each
autumn. She unpacked them and laid them out for our arrival. And wafting
fumes of mothballs about us for the first twenty-four hours, we lived in
those garments all summer. We took them off only under dire circumstances:
when other big folks were coming to visit at the Big House and our big
folks wanted us to look nice; when we went to Sunday school; or when, via
the grapevine, we heard that the big folks were going to town. Then there
was a rush for our shoes, a shucking of the suits, a hurried wiggle into
confining clothes, a hasty sharing of the washcloth, a sweep of a comb,
and we presented ourselves hopefully. We also took the
suits off when we went to bed. There they lay in the puddled folds into
which they had fallen when we stepped out of them, to be stepped into the
next morning when their dampness covered us again. There was a pile
of newspapers at the back door. When the ship’s bell in the front hall,
or the sound of the conch shell, summoned us from our various activities,
we grabbed one in passing to sit on at the dining table to protect the
benches from our wet seats. Thinking back, it is a wonder that there were
no barnacles on our bottoms by the end of the summer. The peeling off of
the suits each night must have discouraged them. Safe in our
suits, the next “firsts” had to be accomplished. We headed across the
road in front of the Big House to the field of tall grass and bushes of
wild roses and beach plums. There, in Indian file, we lay down on our
stomachs and began wiggling a path across the field—sort of angling from
one corner to the opposite, southwest by northeast—to Aunt Hattie’s
and Millie’s house. Millie was our Aunt Millie, too, but their house was
always Aunt Hattie’s and Millie’s. This path making
was in preparation for the first Northeaster, though we would visit them
often before if the first storm took too long to arrive. The first
Northeaster was important, though we didn’t really like them. When the
wind swings around to the northeast, everything becomes gray. The sky
becomes an angry dark gray with hurrying multi-gray clouds. The whole
outside world is in dripping gray shadow. The Vineyard Sound and the
harbor are a tumbling gray green, pushed by the turbulent wind to stark
white at the top of rolling waves. The rain is wet gray, with no hint of
the lightness that would change it if a shaft of light could pierce the
grayness from which it comes. The fog horns sound gray, and the gray lasts
for three days, always three days. On the second
day, or possibly the third, when the Big House walls and big folk tempers
were strained to cracking point, the telephone would ring. That was the
signal for a scurry to find our rain slickers and a rush for the path to
Aunt Hattie’s and Millie’s house. That was the day
of the first Marshmallow Roast. With our slickers left dripping on their
porch, we would hunt in the attic for the marshmallow sticks that had been
tucked away the season before. Then, sitting on the floor, bumping
shoulders, we would hold the sticks toward the glowing logs in the
fireplace and toast the plump marshmallows—all afternoon. There was the
first swim, tinglingly cold. The first grasshopper caught, and the victor
would announce, “They still spit tobacco juice!” The first turtle,
which we stalked so carefully in the Pond, putting each foot into the
water toe first, pushing the reeds aside with cautious hands so that the
sunning turtle would not shoot out its head and scramble off the rock. A whole list of
firsts came with the 4th of July. For three seasons—fall, winter, and
spring—life on Martha’s Vineyard is quiet, regular, and normal. It was
still so when we made our arrival there each June. During the first week
of July, though, the real summer began: shutters were removed, rooms
swept, rockers lined up on porches, dust covers shaken and folded—all
this made an almost audible swish and rumble all over the Island. Then the
off-Islanders arrived along with the fireworks and band concerts in the
parks, and the population of the Island jumped to at least ten times its
normal state. We always waited
with special eagerness for the winter wrappings to be removed from the
town of Oak Bluffs, which was only a mile from the Big House. There the
smell of popcorn would tantalizingly pull us through the crowd to Darlings
for our first box of salt-water taffy of the year. We would linger
awhile in the aisles of the Teepee, fascinated by the toys and objects
from Japan. Then we hurried down the street to Thorne’s Store where the
glasses that dribbled and the stink bombs and the pieces of fake ice with
flies in them put a plotting gleam in our eyes. There we clutched the
dollar the big folks had given each of us and pondered and examined the
fireworks we would buy. Most important of
all, though, was the day the shutters were raised on the building that
housed the Flying Horses, and its music peeled forth at the end of Main
Street. The first ride on the Flying Horses was a vital part of our
ritual. As we climbed the worn stairs and walked across the scuffed
floorboards to the ticket window, we did so with a feeling of
proprietorship. Our grandfather
had been the only one who could put the Flying Horses together when they
first arrived from Europe, and Dad and Aunt Abby rode them when they were
little. Though we weren’t quite sure we believed that Aunt Abby could
ever ride Flying Horses. We would clutch
our tickets and run for our favorite mounts. We shouted to each other,
“I’ll be the first to catch the brass ring!” and our laughter joined
the familiar lilt of the music as it swung our horses into the race. After the
excitement of the 4th of July had subsided, there was always the first
picnic. On a sunny morning we would bunch in a sudden halt in our dash
through the kitchen toward our breakfast. The big folks were making
sandwiches! “Are we going on a picnic? Are we? Huh? Are
we?” We were. The baskets, the
tub of ice, the seven cousins, and the three mothers—one to drive, one
to referee, and one as a spare as we made the twenty-one mile drive to
South Beach—always managed to fit into the Ford beach wagon. In that
little ancestor of the station wagon of today, that was quite a feat, and
we did squeeze, especially as the summers passed. There was always
the drive back just before sundown. The gloating over the treasures we had
found on our walks up the beach: a nice big bottle without a real note in
it. A lovely, smooth glass float from a fisherman’s net! A tennis
racket! “I bet we can string it with fish line,” the proud new owner
prophesized. Tired by the
tumbling breakers and the wind and the sun, gritty with sand in our ears
and hair, sloshing inside with soda pop as we bumped along, we sang. We knew many
songs, but we loved to sing one of Dad’s songs from MIT, especially
while riding through town and especially if Aunt Clara was the referee in
the front seat. Seven voices singing, ringing loudly on the words, “…
and a HELL of an engineer!” with fourteen gleeful eyes watching Aunt
Clara’s head swing around, lips pursed to hush us. We waited eagerly
for the first trip to Cape Pogue on La Gitana, Dad’s boat. She had sails
and a motor, a cabin with four berths, a head, and a galley. I don’t
remember the sail, but I remember the motor strewn all over the cockpit. I
know Dad worked on it at other times, but I suppose the engineer in my
father could not resist taking it apart in the middle of the Vineyard
Sound when he heard a knock in it. So, there we
rolled on glassy seas, and I played with Sou’west on the forward deck
while Dad tinkered. Sou’west was our cat. He always turned southwest
when he went to the bathroom, thus his name—naturally. Cape Pogue is a
hook of land northeast of Martha’s Vineyard. The hook encircled quiet
waters with sand beaches and a lagoon. There we swam in our birthday
suits with only the
gulls and Mother and Dad to note, if they were interested. We dug for
clams and searched for scallops. Later, while Mother prepared supper over
the fire made of driftwood we had collected, we watched our captured
horseshoe crabs race to the line we had drawn on the sand at the water’s
edge. Looking back on
those early years, I realize what a strong shoot from parental genes and
training I was developing into as the youngest from our family roots. I
also realize that I probably was not an easy one to raise. For, by
whatever method the decision had been made, I was convinced that someone
had made a mistake when I was delivered to my family as a girl. Working
with my father in his workshop (cabinet making was his hobby), or watching
him work with Byron on our boat, I was enthralled by all the things that a
man could do. There, with Dad and my brother, I was determined to be as
much like them as possible. The only one who could make me see myself in
the role of a girl was my mother, for in the deeper places of my feelings,
I wanted to be a lady like her. In the meantime,
I would try anything—be braver than I often felt—just to keep up with
Byron and our male cousins and friends. I busily asserted my place among
them. At times I must have been a burr in the fur of others. But, nurtured
by my parents’ love and expressed thoughts, their observed way of
living, their participating activities in our life within the two island
environments, I grew by leaps and re-bounds—and some pruning. From Dad I must
have gained some of his engineering outlook and a desire for answers and
quick solutions to problems. It could be seen developing in my views on
life. When situations and answers made practical sense, I accepted them as
my own. I was a questioner, though, until the reason satisfied me. For
instance, I finally confronted El with the fact that no one could keep her
mouth shut while eating. When she showed me, by chewing with her lips
together so as not to make noises like a pig slurping in a bucket, I
accepted that and learned to keep my lips together while chewing. Before
long I probably admonished Byron or Bobby, “Hey, chew that gum with your
mouth shut! What are you? A pig?” One day in
Baguanos, while watching Ato make cookies, I questioned him about his
family in China. Yes, there were several still there, including his
father’s mother and father. I then told him Byron and I were going to go
see them one day soon. “We might pop up right through the floor of your
father’s mother’s kitchen,” I stated. A bit of digging
on Ato’s part revealed what Byron had shown me, with a knitting needle
pushed through an orange, that, if we started digging in our backyard, we
would come out some place in China. We planned to do that soon. I then informed
Ato, “You see, our world is round like a golf ball.” He nodded his
head in solemn agreement. My parents
answered questions; none of mine appeared to leave them tongue-tied. When
I asked Mother how Santa Claus could fill all the stockings in the world
in one night, she replied, “Oh, he has many helpers.” That made sense,
and I stopped feeling sorry for Blitzen and the other reindeer. When I was
eight years old, I went to mother with a real puzzle. But first I prepared
the way with some information for her: “Byron says Juanita’s daddy
planted a baby seed in her mother’s stomach. That’s why she is getting
fat, especially in front.” Then I posed the question I had been mulling
over, “If my tummy button is a little pot for baby seeds, and men
can’t grow them in their stomachs, why does Byron have one?” Whatever her
answer, it must have been reasonable, for I left that interview with
another puzzler laid to rest. For quite some time I had thought that the
stork-delivery business was a strange way to get babies. I had been
watching for those storks, for there were a lot of new babies around. One
new baby in a house across the golf course had arrived in the daytime,
too. Did the stork drop it on the lawn? How? I had looked that baby over
carefully and had seen no black and blue lumps, which I thought she should
have had after such an experience. I meant to ask Mother if I had had
lumps, but I didn’t get around to it. Anyway, my question about baby
seeds wiped out the stork problem. To this day I’m
not sure whether the giving of titles is an honor or just more comfortable
for the donors in identifying burgeoning personal development. I seemed to
gather labels as though others weren’t quite sure who or what I was.
Most people seemed to forget my name, my real name, until a situation was
serious: when I was in trouble, being introduced to strangers, or they
were talking about me. Byron called me Rozzie most of the time. Cuban
friends called me Rosalinda. My grandmother sometimes called me Mary
Sunshine, which was confusing until the day I could read one of her
letters myself and saw that “Mary” was spelled “Merry.” My father,
in his more serious communications with me, often called me Kid. But there were
other labels that hung on like burrs in my fur. From way back, possibly
starting from the day I was tethered to a deck chair and protested about
that, I was called Squeegee. That one was used for a long time, but there
was another that I disliked intensely, and that clung to me for years, way
past the time it was warranted, I felt. Among the
bombardment of things to learn and set in order within my family’s life,
telling the truth was very
important. Quite often it was satisfying to do so, as witness the day we
faced Mother to confess our part in that green paint on the laundry. But
the day I earned the title “the Broadcaster,” I began to learn that
people did not always question the truth in front of others. I had had the
best intentions the day I decided to do something about a problem that
caught my attention. It certainly seemed to bother the grownups I had been
listening to in a room full of bridge tables the day before. I discussed
their problem with Byron. When I said, “Let’s do something about
it,” he agreed. So we meandered
slowly across the front yard of the house two doors down from ours in
Baguanos, about the time when tea was usually served on that porch. Those
neighbors were English, and they were nice. They gave us ice cold limeade
and things they called scones, which I knew were really biscuits, and
biscuits, which were really cookies. It was a nice pause to visit with
them on a hot afternoon if we had time for sitting on their steps and
talking. That afternoon we
arrived at the right time. I called a greeting, and we were invited to
join them. Balancing a plate
on my knee, I had ample time to study the problem from my vantage place on
the top step. We talked awhile. I sipped and nibbled and thought about my
approach. I was in no hurry, but I could see Byron beginning to get
restless. I was afraid he would leave me to state the case on my own. So,
swallowing the last bite of biscuit, I hurriedly asked my hostess, “Why
don’t you shave your legs like other ladies do?” I don’t
remember her answer, or if she took my question seriously, but via the
golf course or the telephone (I always suspected Byron, but he denied it
when I accused him) that question bounced home too quickly for comfort.
That night I was dubbed “the Broadcaster.” For what seemed
an eternity that label flapped around my ears. Big-folk talk in a room or
around the table would suddenly halt at the most interesting part. In that
silence all eyes would focus on my widened ones, and someone would say,
“Remember the Broadcaster.” El and Byron made
the most of it too. Keeping secrets from me, they would look at each other
wise-eyed, and one would caution the other, only they varied it by saying,
“Remember the Loud Speaker.” If I protested too loudly over that,
Dad—sometimes Mother—also switched things around to calling me “the
Loud Squeaker” instead of Squeegee. Interwoven into
those developing and guided years, quietly but strongly, I became aware of
my mother’s and father’s faith in God. As naturally as Mother’s
goodnight kiss or Dad’s hand holding a handkerchief to wipe away tears,
God became an accepted part of my family life. Talk about Him was not just
a Sunday topic. Religious instruction in our home developed more as an
osmosis process, rather than a sitting down to learn at specified periods.
Unseen by El, Byron, and me, God was as real to us as a friend of our
parents whom they talked about, but whom we had not seen. Mother often read
to us before bedtime. That was a time of delight and exciting adventure.
Interspersed with tales of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy (my favorite),
Treasure Island (Byron’s favorite), and Little Women (El’s favorite,
which didn’t make sense because it always made her cry), there were
stories from the Old and New Testaments. Moses and the bullrushes! I had
nightmarish thoughts over that little baby lying in a basket in the path
of a thundering herd of bulls. But he was saved from those pounding
hooves, thanks to a girl who was brave and helped God pull him out of the way of that
stampede. That was a thriller! Joseph and his
mean brothers! That was a long story, but I liked it, for at the end
Joseph helped God fix their
wagons. The Dead and Red
Seas! Could be, but back in those days water must have looked funny. There
were lots of stories, some make-believe, some real, and I grew to tell the
difference. I knew that the ones about my Raggedy Ann doll were only
make-believe, but the ones about a man named Jesus were real; he was a
real live son, like Byron. God was his father, and Mother and Dad knew
God. As the years
passed I became increasingly aware, and gained a greater understanding of
my parents’ faith. I came to see that Mother’s and Dad’s love for
each other and for us was a reflection of the source of perfect wisdom and
love they believed in, and that this formed and directed their actions and
attitudes in their lives and ours. In this they gave me their greatest
gift. So it was that,
from November 13, 1918, to the summer of 1935, I grew in their midst and
two islands were my world. And I was changing. I no longer wanted to be a
boy, but I still liked them best.
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