The Long Journey Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

seem—for the Raggedy Andy doll Mother had sewn for me. His body was made from unbleached muslin, and he wore the bright blue pants and red-checkered shirt as illustrated in the series of Raggedy Andy and Raggedy Ann books. Mother embroidered his features by hand.
    Looking back, I believe I chose to play with him most often in the many romantic stories that Margaret and I made up because he felt soft to touch, and because he, more than any other doll, felt most like a part of me. I’d had him since I was very young. He slept with me every night, my arms hugging him tightly to my chest, his coarse wool curls against my face. He shared my dreams and was with me much of the day. He was the constant observer, his wide unblinking eyes staring at everything that went on in the family, and at night staring out into the darkness.
    “Rhett,” Scarlett of the nail-polish-painted lips said with a sigh. “Oh, Rhett!”
    “Scarlett!” exclaimed Rhett of the bright orange hair and embroideredface. Then he caressed Scarlett’s smooth, pale face with his muslin, pawlike hand, and together they tumbled to the grass in a passionate embrace while cars passed slowly on North Broad Street.
VII
    Bubba smashed the sharp edge of a small glass truck against the bridge of my nose. It was one of those glass trucks that you bought at the five-and-dime, filled with tiny colored candy balls. You turned the truck upside down, pried up the cardboard bottom, and ate the candy. Then you were left with a clear glass truck, or a car, a puppy, or a phone.
    Blood spurted from the gash in my nose, but I didn’t go running to tell Mother. I couldn’t. I’d been teasing him unmercifully, telling him that the spirit of his sister had left my body, which was now inhabited by a wicked witch. I crooked my fingers like claws at him and cackled.
    Bubba wasn’t buying my witch act at all. Maybe I was a poor actress, or maybe he was too smart to believe it. Maybe he was too old to be as gullible as I’d been when Mother had done the same thing to me. I’d not been more than a year and a half old when I began to learn the Mother Goose nursery rhymes by heart. Mother was so proud. She told me how she would misquote lines so that I would correct her. A couple of years before her death in 1986 she brought up the nursery rhymes on the phone. It was then that she told me about how she used to change her voice, claiming that she’d left her body and that a wicked witch inhabited it. “You were such a smart little thing, I couldn’t believe I could fool you like that,” she said with what sounded like mild amusement as she remembered my fear and gullibility.
    My mother had just told me something I’d had no memory of, but which I’d done to my brother. I felt sick. Even after nearly half a century, it was still just a joke to Mother. To me it was an example ofharmful behavior that had been passed down through the generations. How many other damaging things had been done to me that I’d mindlessly reenacted on my brother and—later—my sons because Mother had taught me by her own actions when I was so young that I didn’t remember? To even think about it hurt.
    But the day Bubba slammed the truck against my nose I had no idea that it was Mother who’d taught me that teasing way of retaliation, for something I no longer remember. Maybe my disagreement with Bubba had to do with picking up toys. Often, enough building blocks to erect a small city lay scattered on the living room floor, along with battalions of plastic soldiers with their machine guns, rifles, and hand grenades clenched in their fists, the tin aircraft carriers that Daddy had brought from Macy’s in New York City, and dozens and dozens of tiny plastic planes, almost obliterating the wool flowers woven into the carpet.
    While Bubba and I were fighting, Mother was screaming that she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such children. Now she was sitting on her bed banging the back of her