Margee's Big Boots

Trigger Warning: sexual assault

The summer I turned eleven, a truck loaded with fertilizer pulled into Garretson’s Building Supply for the night. A fire started and mixed with the fertilizer caused a tremendous explosion. It leveled several blocks of buildings and broke windows all over town.

 It was indicative of bad things that can happen when you least expect.

We got up early the next morning to go bean picking. Even though we lived in the country we could see a glow over the mountain ridge. Later we drove through the city and we could see what happened. It looked like a war zone. And smelled like death. Some students went to school in the morning like me and the others in the afternoon. The split shift left both students’ unsupervised while parents were at work.

 The YMCA was a new building and had skylights over the dressing rooms. You could imagine what some boys did. They climbed up on the roof to a bird’s eye view of girls dressing or undressing. Paul told me later Kathy had pretty breasts. He didn’t comment on mine.

We had two periods of social studies. It gave plenty of time for us to get bored. The teacher didn’t pay much attention. The boys whispered, talked and joked using crude language. Paul asked me if we would have sex with him. I ignored him.

I was having headaches. Mom wondered if glasses would help. She dropped me off at the eye doctor’s office while she ran errands leaving me to fend for myself. Later in my story I will call him “Doctor Eye’s.

After my eye exam he said I might have breast cancer instead of a vision problem. He could tell by examining my breasts he stood behind me and did just that. I was shy, naïve and vulnerable. He knew and took advantage of me.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt and Uncle’s ranch in Sublimity. Their barn housed a grass seed cleaner to plant lawns. Two of my boy cousins suggested that me and my sister Sophie play hide-and seek. It had lots of -hidey holes- perfect for the game except it was a dark place. But when I found a hiding place my oldest cousin stood behind me and fondled my breasts. I didn’t know how he exactly knew where I would hide. I should have left right then but I didn’t think he’d do it again. I was wrong. I told my little sister ‘let’s go to the house’. Later she thanked me for protecting her.

That summer I was working as a nanny for my Aunt right after her baby boy was born. My youngest cousin had a bedroom across the hall from mine. He had a knack for opening the door just as I was getting undressed taunting me that I had little breasts.

Some guys like big breasts and others small. After my son was born men whistled at my milk engorged breasts. 

Stupid breasts anyway.

I was six. It was a beautiful summer day. I was swinging and facing a mountain range. I looked up to the sky and saw puffy and white clouds. I told myself there has to be a God who created such beauty. That was the beginning of my faith journey. Even though I was young I knew I needed a Savior.

When I was an adult I was told by a friend, six year olds don’t have consciousness of sin. But I knew my sins were sassing, disobeying my parents, tattling on my sisters, being grumpy and stealing. I stole a miniature breakfast set, complete with a frying pan for bacon egg and a pancake turner. When I got home I realized I couldn’t play with it in the house. I went behind the barn and played a little while, but it wasn’t worth it. I left them there.  

My parents were at odds with each other. Dad wanted a clean house, Mom didn’t care or it was not a priority. Our farm house had smoke blacked walls from the woodstove, the mess that comes from carrying in the wood. Cats and dogs in the house, a slop bucket to feed the hogs, potato carrot peelings, rotten tomatoes and fruit. To get there we carried a colander that dripped from the kitchen sink to the back stinky porch, the driveway wasn’t paved, no end of dirt. We had a Kirby vacuum cleaner. It emitted dust every time we vacuumed.

Mom taught us how to fear Dad every day before he got home from work. She’d say “Clean up the house your Dad is coming home.” We hurried around dusting furniture, sweeping floors, vacuuming rugs and stashing our school and homework papers in the top drawer in the dining room buffet. At least we knew where everything was. 

I was playing my role trying to stop the family pain, a very big job since I was just a child. Dad was depressed. I tried to make him happy. Mom was unpredictable. I tried to please her. Grace had aches, why was she the one? Sophie’s teeth turned black because the dentist painted them to prevent cavities making her a target for teasing by two of her friends who sat beside her on the school bus but not the next. I hurt for her but I couldn’t help. Leslie was content. I didn’t worry. Elsie was hateful. I didn’t know why. I was anxious and I know why.

Dinner time our whole family ate together, each of us sitting in accustomed places. Dad sat at the head of the table, Mom and Elsie at the other end. I sat closest to Mom, Sophie beside me and Grace and Elsie sat across from Sophie and me. Sometimes me and my sisters got the giggles, it made our whole family laugh. But other times Dad got mad and stormed out, some of us got mad like him, some clammed up but I was the only one who cried. He left the table time after time. Later I found he made any excuse to leave because he wanted a smoke. When I was a teenager my boyfriend would do the same hiding it from me.

I think of all the negative things that were part of my world. I had a need for safety and order. I was six and so nervous I went downstairs to go to the bathroom over and over, always ready to flee. What might happen in the dark?

My second grade teacher, my all-time favorite, was Mrs. Stonebreaker. She was intuitive and sensitive, all this little Margee needed. Arlene  in class was an only child. She always had a double pack of double mint gum in her desk but at our house we only  got a quarter of one stick. I decided it wasn’t fair so I took liberty to take a whole stick more than one time.  After Arlene complained Mrs. Stonebreaker had all of us put their heads down and the guilty one to raise their hand. I think she knew I was the one but I didn’t trust adults and refused to confess. I knew she cared but I just wouldn’t fess up. 

I was in Bluebirds, kind of a group of girls almost like a club. Mrs. McKee, our leader, had the meetings at her house. It was immaculate and smelled like the fresh-baked cookies she made for us. It was like the television show Leave it to Beaver, an unrealistic picture of an always happy home. For a Mother’s day gift she’d cut fabric into rectangles to make placemats- for my family of seven-and we got to iron a violet decal on them and she showed us how to carefully pull threads to make a fringe around all sides. They were beautiful. I was proud and Mom loved her gift. 

But another day I treated Mom so wrong. She’d come to school at recess to see my classroom, but I hid. I was embarrassed, her dress had grease stains. When Dad came home I heard her crying and hid in their clothes closet behind Mom’s dresses, ironic I know.

I had Mrs. Stonebreaker again in the third grade. She knew something was still bothering me and to her concern and to my embarrassment had me sit on a chair by her desk chair and quietly asked if I was okay. She was genuine and tender but I really didn’t know what was troubling me. 

One day I packed my little suitcase to run away from home. Just before the corner of the main road Mom hadn’t tried to stop me. It hurt. All I wanted was her attention.

But on the positive side just before bed Mom read to me and my sisters Little House on the Prairie. We gathered around and with bated breath wondering what would happen next as the story unfolded. 

What a contrast up or down, I didn’t know which it would happen next.

Dad was sometimes hard to please. One spring day the place for the garden was covered with yellow mustard weeds. I pulled all of them up and put them in a big pile. I was proud and excited for him to see. But when he came home I showed him and saw his expression, it told me plowing alone would have done the trick. He didn’t look impressed with all the effort that I wasted.

But one time when Mom and my sisters were gone I fixed dinner for Dad and me. I made mashed potatoes and hamburger gravy. The potatoes stood up like little sandcastles and gravy like snow on a mountain top. We both laughed. It really was pretty funny.

At the end of haying season I was in one of two hay mows in the barn. One of the cows was misbehaving. Dad threw a milking stool at it. In my fright I jammed the pitchfork in my foot. I ran to the house. I knew I needed to go to the doctor but the Fuller Brush salesman was there and Mom didn’t take me until she was done visiting with him. The doctor put a drain in it because the pitchfork was so unsanitary.

After school one day I was playing at the cattle guard down the road from home. I left my saddle shoes there and it rained that night, ruining them. The next morning I went to get them and showed them to mom. She told me I was going to get a spanking from Dad after he came home from work. He spanked me with a sharp stick of kindling. It really stung inside and out. 

Leaving them was a childish act, not something I’d done on purpose. The message to me was money mattered more than me and shouldn’t be wasted. When I got a new pair of shoes I polished them every night. I wanted them to look nice and protect my dignity.

My sixth grade teacher was Mrs. Duddly. She played favorites and I knew I wasn’t one of them. The kids in class called Sherry a flea bag but Mrs. Duddly didn’t try to stop them. The class didn’t know my sisters and me had scabies, an itchy rash- from clothes not washed in really hot water. 

A boy in class Gary told me I had skinny hairy arms. After that I wore a long sleeved sweater covering my arms whatever the weather. One day a teacher told me that I didn’t have to wear it in hot weather. Later I realized that he was a toe-head so my hairs looked dark. End of story Mrs. Duddly gone and Gary gone.

I was a finicky eater. Mom fixed oatmeal for breakfast but I refused to eat it. When it was time for lunch   the same story, only then the milk and oatmeal were cold. Dinnertime came and I was told if I didn’t eat it the whole family wouldn’t go to the drive-in-theatre, a very rare occasion. It was awful, it was cruel but I had to eat it. I didn’t eat oatmeal for thirty years.

Trigger Warning: sexual abuse

There are three  parts to the story, each distinctive yet under the same roof.

Part One

Mom was the oldest of six children and grew up in Stayton, Oregon. We called our grandparents Dade and Gram. Dade built their two-story house, using poor grade lumber, walls very thin and certainly wouldn’t pass inspection like today. Mom bought the windows for the entire house. 

She had three sisters, and a brother.

Gram called Mom her right hand. Mom took their house payments to the bank and at home answered the door when they didn’t know who was there. The unknown really scared Gram.

She took pills from a bathroom cabinet for her extreme anxiety. I didn’t know why until I was an adult..

Part Two

When my Aunt Fran was little she had a series of ear infections so one of her eardrums burst as a result. She didn’t hear well, her speech garbled, the kids at school made fun.  Gram didn’t like it so she took her out. As a result Fran never learned to speak clearly, her handwriting barely legible and spelling very poor.

On my summer break she had a nightstand and had a small dish full of coins. I wondered why anyone needed money in the bedroom. She used Ben-Gay rub for aches and pains. I loved its smell. She had false teeth it was fascinated to watch; she put them in a cup and added a blue tablet, a fuzzy blue explosion. 

I learned a good work ethic, just like on our farm hard work pays off.  She got up early and made a full breakfast, eggs, bacon toast then packed lunches before we left to work the crops and me alongside; picking, raspberries, strawberries, beans, tomatoes, corn and others I’m sure. 

One problem I learned was to pay my own way. It carried into my marriage with Dave. I was used to paying my way. I drove our new car to pick beans, we didn’t need the money. He wasn’t happy, he was embarrassed but I saved the two hundred dollars a long time to feel secure.

Part Three

My Aunt Betty’s husband was driving drunk and crashed his car into a bridge abutment. He died instantly. She was left with an infant boy, no home and no income. The obvious answer was to move to Dade and Gram’s.

It was complicated; my cousin lived with five adults, highly favored and spoiled rotten. It didn’t serve him well in the real world.

We went to Christmas every year. My cousin had doting grandparents, aunts, and of course his Mother. Each of them gave him several gifts, him ending up with a mountain of presents. My sisters and I got only one, my parents said. We stopped going.

 He was the “king” of the house. In my story he will reappear but not in a good way.

Part Four

Gram was extremely anxious and nervous. I watched her take pills from a kitchen cabinet. I wondered why? Her feet got stuck until someone lifted her up so she could stand. Now I know it is a neurological condition from extreme anxiety and stress. No wonder with her pedophile father living in her house?

Even though her father had done jail time for sexual abuse he still conveniently lived in the house and abused Mom’s youngest sister Norma, leaving her vulnerable and unprotected.

Unfortunately there was a tool shed in the back of the property. There he exposed himself to my sister Grace and Norma.

She fled immediately after high school graduation. She married Bud. We were told that he didn’t want to come to their house because it wasn’t clean. That was a bold-faced lie, the reason was because she suffered abuse year after year.

Years later he sexually abused me in a living room full of adults who looked away.

He was creepy.

He was everywhere.

Why, O why was he living there?

Dade was extremely harsh with his children; his weapon of choice was a razor strap hanging on a nail in the back porch. He whipped Aunt Mick because she wouldn’t eat vegetables. To her dying day her diet was eating chicken, potatoes, strawberries and chocolate. She was thin and gaunt, her own version of anorexia.

My uncle Jim endured the harshest discipline being a boy. He joined the military the very day after graduation. He settled in Texas. He came to Oregon only two times. The abuse robbed me of knowing my uncle.

Jim, Mick and Norma, Mom’s youngest sister, all were essentially run-aways.

But there’s hope even for the broken.

Three parts, each one the same yet different  

Part One

Dad was from an extremely dysfunctional family, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and mental illness replete in the Short family. He and his sisters, Hazel and Ruth, were raised by a strict Nazarene mother. 

Her name was Clara Margaret Short I was named after her but exchanged to Margaret Clara Short. 

Dad used to say “Watch me be Ari.” As a kid I wasn’t sure what that meant, still don’t know in that reference he was schizophrenic, one who has episodes of psychosis, seeing things that aren’t there, conspiracy theories and dangerous at times. I consider it the worst of mental illness. They live in a different time, a different world. Decades later I was diagnosed bi-polar but that was the tip of an iceberg, dangerous and cold. 

Dad told me about a time when Ari was running about in a rage. Grandma was so scared she gathered her children and hid behind a bush wrapped in a blanket to keep them warm and from harm. 

I met her only once. Her house was cold and served us cold asparagus with dinner. Afterwards she took us in the kitchen and took out her glass eye and put it in an eye-shaped dish on the kitchen windowsill. It was pretty scary for little girls. She explained she lost her eye when she was dragged behind a horse. It would have been terrifying and was a wonder she lived through it.

Grandpa often abandoned his family. He was an alcoholic, ruled his life and affected his family in a very negative way.

Dad was the baby in the family but he shouldered all responsibility. Grandma banged her iron skillet on the wood stove, a signal for him to take his 22 rifle and his dog to get something for dinner. The land was rocky and barren hard for even weeds to grow. I wondered if he sometimes didn’t come back with any meat. 

One summer he went to Eastern Oregon for the haying season to earn money for his family waiting back home. But when he got back he spent it all on drink.

Dad called his dad a ne’do-well a worthless person. How hard to have a Dad. 

My only memory of Grandpa: he was sitting on a rocking chair on our front porch, his eyes as blue as Dad’s. 

Part Two 

 Dad’s older sister Hazel reflected the harsh reflection for their growing up years. She married a man who wore a black patch over one eye. Just looking at him was scary.

Their house was really small, two bedrooms, one for their kids, four boys and one girl. They shared a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and the laundry room on the back porch.

The entire house was messy and cluttered. The kitchen was a jumble, canned foods, bottles and cereal boxes covered the counters.The table had a Lazy Susan in the center; it circled around at people’s every whim to get whatever they wanted. No need to say, “Pass the” it was all in reach.

Typical of the Short family mental illness gambit ran from one family member to the next generation like an unstoppable plague.

All of their children had some form or another of it, depression, suicidal thoughts, bi-polar and schizophrenia. Decades later I was diagnosed bi-polar.

Michael, a cousin my age, committed suicide two years after he married Elouise. His sister wailed mournfully over his casket. “Why didn’t he come, why didn’t he come?” Why couldn’t I save my little brother? It was as if she was trying to bring him back to the land of the living.

Part Three

Dad’s youngest sister, Ruth and husband lived in Cottage Grove one hour north from home, an easy drive so we went to see them at least once a month. It’s odd but I remember Hazel’s family home and home much better.

They were polar opposites: Hazel’s house messy, Ruth’s neat and tidy, everything in a controlled environment just like me.

They had three boys; the youngest my age, both of us were diagnosed bi-polar, a bad thing to have in common.

Her husband was a pastor until he ran away with the church secretary. I don’t think she ever got over his betrayal.

She had an underlying sadness, a mood disorder undiagnosed, certainly. There was a picture hanging on the dining room wall. An Indian on his pony, both heads bowed low, mournful, maybe wanting to escape death, seeming a safe place.

But there’s still hope.

Dad and Mom met on a blind date. He was on leave from the Navy she was working at the post office in Stayton he was stationed in San Diego.
They were married in Milton Free Water, Oregon. Dad was handsome in his Navy uniform and Mom lovely in her ivory laced wedding gown. After they moved Mom told me their landlady listened through the apartment walls to hear if mom was vacuuming, thereby using too much electricity or was she stingy?

Eventually they had five girls but Dad wanted boys. They planned names for boys Gary for Grace, Michael for me, Sophie, Stephen then I think he gave up. Dad wrote a letter to his mom he wanted boys, and her reply was “You have five little girls and a farm.”

I heard that if you could kiss your elbow it would change your sex -for me a boy- I stood at the top of our driveway and tried really hard but to no avail. There was an inherent desire to please my dad.

I was in the eighth grade Dad went to Goldendale to visit his mother’s grave I thought. I learned much later that he was deeply depressed and that he had gone to commit suicide. But he came back to the Lord instead. He didn’t get diagnosed as clinically depressed and medication until he was almost eighty. He had suffered with depression far too long.

When Dad came home, our family life was radically changed. It was complicated. He wanted us to have family devotions, we weren’t used him being our spiritual leader. But he was setting our family on the path to becoming whole. I cherish the memories that I have the room and the sight of him holding his Bible. He became a man of prayer, humility and sacrificial giving.

Even though my parents were Christians it didn’t mean everything was okay. They went to a counselor, for typical marriage problems I suppose. His office was at the courthouse, I curious place, I thought. The next appointment he asked for the whole family to come. The table was very long and narrow we girls sat lined up on one side and Dad and Mom on the other. He asked each of us a question, I don’t remember that part. His final conclusion was we girls were doing okay. But Dad and Mom had issues to work out.

I felt very nervous and very small.

I was the second born of five girls. In my baby picture, I was pretty sober, probably an “old soul”. That picture and those following, I usually had just a bit of a smile.

My sister Grace was the oldest, followed by me three and a half years younger. My parents named me Margaret ~Margee~Clara after Dad’s mother, and my aunt Margaret ~Mick.

Sophie, Leslie, and Elsie finished our family.  Grace was older so we were always called “Grace and the girls.” When I came along she wasn’t happy she had to share the throne. 

Author Edith Schafer described a family like a mobile, each one affecting the others.

Grace was the trail blazer- I diligently studied her high school albums to learn some grown up things and ways~. I was the “in town responsible one” because I stayed in Roseburg but also my position in the family being overly responsible. Sophie was Dad’s favorite. He called her “Puppy Dog” she followed him around whenever she could. Leslie was “the star” clearly Mom’s favorite. Elsie was our sweetheart but our little scapegoat. 

We created quite a stir when we were out and about. It must have looked like Mom had a flock of ducklings following after her. People smiled or made nice comments.

One Easter morning, all five of us, squeaky clean, wearing new dresses, shoes and ruffle edged socks. A picture taken on that Easter morning all of us lined up in front of our hardly used piano. Grace and Sophie were standing and the rest of us sitting on the bench.  Grace was seven or eight, Elsie not quite a year old, and the rest of us all ages between. Sweet memory.

I remember waiting in the car while Mom was getting groceries. Across the parking lot we saw monkeys playing behind lattice work obviously in the basement. 

We went inside at Chapman’s pharmacy while we waited, looked into display cases with maple sugar candies and wondered how Vermont sugar maple candies tasted. I bought one when I was in high school, I didn’t like them.

I won’t ever forget the time we were shopping at Montgomery Wards. Elsie spied a bathroom display complete with a toilet which she used to go “big potty”. We made it out of that store as fast as we could! 

We moved to Roseburg when I was a preschooler. We lived in a rental house on Hamilton Street. While we lived there, the city swimming pool was within walking distance. I took swimming lessons there. I overheard two of the swimming instructors talking about how happy another student was. I was a timid child and I knew I wasn’t a “happy”. I never learned how. 

Mom gave me a birthday party when I was six. She made chocolate and vanilla pudding layered in fancy glasses goblets. She had invited the kids living nearby. One gift was a ceramic donkey I named Pedro. He had side saddles perfect places to plant small succulents. Another was a blue glass poodle with a distinctive poodle cut; using curly glass strings to mimic the look.

Charter Oaks a street nearby, we  played kick~the~can dusk, the light fading into the dark. At home on our front steps we played “Simon Says and Guess which hand held the rock. They were simple games, but fun. There was a tall Laurel tree in our front yard, perfect for climbing and hiding.