Losing Mawsie 2

Next morning Mawsie was still sleeping but her breath wasn’t so hard. Me and Ethan took turns all night seeing to her. When I touched her hand now, it was still warm, but not hot. I made Ethan feed the chickens and let the milk cow out to pasture then sent him on to school. He didn’t want to go but I made him anyway. Folks was on us all the time to do right and git an education. I wanted to go too, but I knew Mawsie couldn’t be alone. I hoped the widow woman would come back, but I couldn’t be sure. So I moved the rocker close to Mawsie’s bed and sat down to wait.

I wanted to open the curtain and let in the morning sun but I worried it might be too bright so I just set in the half dark and thought about our Mama. I was about three going on four, when Ethan come along. Before he was even walking, she took off to Memphis, said she was going to get a job and then come get us. I guess she either didn’t find no job or she thought better of having a couple of kids dragging along with her, cause we never heard from her.

Mr. Clark’s cousin who works as a salesman said he saw her one time, working in a place out on the Jacksboro highway. He didn’t say what kind of place, but we figure it must be a café or a dance hall. Mama don’t have much schooling but she’s always been real pretty with long red curly hair. She had a nice singing voice and used to sing in the church choir when she was a young girl. So maybe she was singing at that place.

Mawsie never said much about her, bad or good. They was about ten years apart and Mawsie thought Mama was their daddy’s favorite. When he died with the cancer, Mama was about my age, maybe 15 or 16, and she run off with one of the boys from church. They got married but his family made them get unmarried, her being not of age.

She run off again a year later with our daddy. They didn’t bother to get married, just got them a pickup and a little trailer that they pulled behind it. They say she had me in the trailer. But I don’t remember none of it. When I was about two years old she left me with Mawsie and went looking for Daddy.  I guess she found him, cause the next time we saw her it was to drop off Ethan.