writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

Scourge Of My Childhood


linda j, crider



��The bane of my existence when I was four. five and six. years old was my cousin, Dick. He was the same age as me but that made no difference. I was a girl and he never let me forget it. He always reminded me of my station and the proper expected behavior of my gender.
��“Go play with your dolls,” Dick would say when I wanted to join him in some boy’s game or general rough and tough fun.
��There were other cousins around, but they, too, were boys and Dick dominated the group. His word was law so I was always left standing in the background watching as they played war games with toy soldiers and built towns and cities with construction toys in the sand box or on hilled up mounds of Georgia red clay.
��One mid-summer June day, Auntie came to visit with my mother. Mother was pregnant with my sister. Dick was forced to come along complaining, “Girls are no fun and I don’t want to play house or dress-up. Linda plays with dolls! Boys don’t play with dolls.”
��Auntie just smiled and let him grumble When they reached the yard, she gently tapped him on the shoulder. “Dick,” she said, “Linda may be a girl, but you be nice to her. She’s your cousin.”
��“But, Mom,” he pouted.
��“No buts,” Auntie retorted. “Play nice.”
��I ran through the yard between the sky high walnut trees. Their big leafy branches made shadowy splotches on the ground and on Dick and Auntie as they climbed up the little bank from the road.
��“Yeah!” I squealed. “You’re here!”
��Auntie pushed the wispy flaxen colored hair out of my eyes and gave me a hug. “For the whole day.” she said.
��“Come on, Dick. Let’s go play house. You can be Miss Brown.” I said all excited to have somebody play the part of Miss Brown to my Miss Bruce. “We’ll have a tea party.”
��“Yuck!” Dick screamed falling to the ground.
��“Maybe he could be Mr. Brown,” Auntie suggested.
��“I don’t want to be anybody but me,” Dick hissed.
��Scrappy, the dog, bounded around the house and, seeing
��Dick sprawled on the ground, ran to greet him with a wet tongue and lots of tail wags. Dick laughed and rolled on the ground with the long-eared beagle dog. I joined the twosome and soon we were darting and dashing in some kind of puppy dog tag game. Thoughts of little girl dress-up tea parties were gone, replaced by rough and tumbling boy games.
��Auntie had disappeared into the house leaving Dick and me to our own imaginations and summertime at its best. After a short time, Scrappy, tired of running back and forth between us, lazily scampered off to nap in the sun.
��Dick and I brushed the sandy clay from our arms and legs. I smiled remembering my new wetsy doll. “Let’s have a tea party,” I said. “You can be Mr. Brown, like Auntie said. You can wear Daddy’s tie.”
��“no,” said Dick. “I’m not playing with dolls. I’m no going to play with you. I don’t care if you are my cousin; you’re a girl!”
��He ran across the soft green grass and through the open door of the storage shed in the side yard. It was just the sort of dusty old hide-out a boy would run away to. My chest felt tight and I wanted to cry. He was closing me out again, just throwing me away because I was a girl.
��I picked up a stick and sauntered into the storage shed. It was cool and shadowy dark with only two dusty windows and the open door to let in light. I plunked the stick on the lawn mower. It made a dull tinkling sound. Dick didn’t acknowledge my presence, just kept exploring a large wooden box of nails, nuts and bolts. I continued to tap the stick on the building’s contents. I struck a can of red paint on a high shelf.
��“Let’s paint something,” I said.
��Dick dropped a handful of nails. With eyes bright, he turned to face me and said, “Yeah! We can paint. I know how to paint.”
��We dragged a ladder to the shelf and Dick climbed up. He pulled the half-full gallon of fire engine red paint to the shelf’s edge. Then, taking the wire bale handle, he lowered it to me. I eagerly took it, letting it slide down my leg to the concrete floor.
��Together we searched for paint brushes, but there were none. We did find a long screw driver and used it to pry off the paint can lid. We stared sown into the deep well of bright color.
��Scrappy barked from the doorway. His little round shadow looked spooky on the cool, grey floor.
��“Let’s paint Scrappy’s house,” I said. “He’s a good dog and his house is really ugly. It doesn’t have any paint on it at all.”
��“we don’t have any paint brushes,” Dick sighed.
��“Don’t need any,” I said looking at the feathery boughs of a nearby pine tree. “We’ll make some.”
��“How?” Dick asked.
��“Pine tree branches,” I answered matter of factly.
��Together Dick and I dragged and carried the gallon can outside to Scrappy’s little wooden clap-board house. We only spilled a small amount, sloshing it over the side of the can as we pulled it over a large rock in our path.
��Soon we were ready to begin our mission with pine boughs all dripping with the bright red paint. We swiped and dripped, dripped and swiped, streaking and smearing the red color on the dog house and the ground around it.
��“We have to paint the sides,” I said and proceeded to whoosh my bough-brush back and forth on the back side as Scrappy watched our escapade with somewhat amused interest, cocking his head slightly from one side to the other.
��“That’s not the way,” Dick said with a scowl on his round face.
��With his make-shift paint brush, he pushed me away splashing and splattering me with the red enamel.
��I wiped my eyes and decided he couldn’t paint me and get away with it, even if I was a girl, I stabbed my pine bc,ugh into the paint can and pulled it out, swiping it through his hair, across his face and down his chest.
��He grimaced and before I realized what was taking place, Il too, was painted. All of me, but what was covered by my sun dress, glistened shiny red in the warm summer sun. My hair, stuck fast to my head, held some of the little pine needles and Dick laughed.
��“Looks like you got horns!” he said.
��I drew back and swatted him hard with my wispy paint stick. Dick screamed.
��“You cry like a girl,” I smirked.
��He shoved me down and dirt stuck to the paint covering me. I was a red, sticky mess and I would make him pay; pay for always being so mean to me.
��I stood up and quickly poured the remaining paint on Dick’s head. He just stood screaming as the thick gooey redness oozed down his face? arms and legs.
��He began to run toward the house. Mother, big with her pregnancy, and Auntie both ran outside to see what was the trouble. Seeing Dick, both screamed, thinking it was blood.
��“Linda painted me!” He cried. “She painted me then poured paint all over me.”
��“It’s paint,” Mother sighed in both relief and disbelief as she looked toward me all covered with paint. dirt and pine needles.
��I stood statue-like and didn’t speak. I was, after all a little girl. I was innocent of such bad boyish pranks.
��“it’s enamel car paint,” Mother whispered to Auntie. “Left over from when Warren had that old Hillman Husky painted. How will we ever get it off them?”
��“Kerosene,” Auntie remarked. “We need to pour some in a tub and just put them in it. I can’t believe these kids. Stand right there, Dick, and don’t you dare move.”
��Mother hurried toward me and I still stood innocent-like and managed to force a couple of tears from my nearly-painted shut eye lids.
��“Honey, what happened?” Mother asked seeing my innocent distress.
��Sobbing pitifully, I didn’t answer.
��Within a few minutes, both Dick and I stood in a big metal wash tub, stripped naked while Auntie scrubbed our skin raw with a brush dipped in kerosene. After half an hour we were clean of paint and most of the first two layers of skin.
��“Now,’’ said Auntie as we stood before her. “What happened? Why did you two do this?”
��I just stood still and continued to act innocent. “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Dick did all of it. I’m just a little girl.”
��“Dick,” she said, “you’re grounded for a month. No movies, no ballgames and no company. Do you understand? Linda wanted to play tea party. You should have listened to her and you wouldn’t be in all this trouble now!”
��I felt proud of myself. I had finally gotten even with my cousin, the little scourge, for all the times he had made me cry because I wasn’t a boy. I smiled contently, glad I was just a little girl and hurried to have a tea party with my new wetsy doll.



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...