Pine Woods
Pine Forest
Rain finally disappeared itself from my reality. Thank God. I was about to grow webfeet. Looking down over the balcony railing this afternoon, I scanned the tree tops that litter the spaces among our apartment complex. They're green as green can be, soaking up the sun doing their photosynthesis thing, making the air around my balcony richer. But, I don't see any fir trees, the evergreens. How I miss them. They remind me of my early kid days, down in Alabama...It's fall 1950, the scorching humid summer heat is gone. I wear my most favorite outfit – my blue jeans, long sleeved red plaid shirt with real snaps instead of buttons, cowgirl hat, real cowboy boots with red trim and my six guns strapped around my waist. I’ve got a silver buckle and the tassels on the ends of the holsters streaming behind me when I run. When I grow up I might be just like Annie Oakley, riding fast ponies, shooting at targets from the saddle, amazing the audience, and getting lots of applause. Daddy says I can do anything I want. He promised that when I’m older, he’ll teach me to shoot a gun. Mama just sighs, giving Daddy that, "You've got to be kidding look."
When I’m not in school or doing some chore, I’m down in the pine woods at the bottom of our big front yard, the house and yard surrounded by cotton and soybean fields mostly. I lay on my back in a nest of dried sweet-smelling pine needles, moving my arms like an angel without snow. Staring up through the ring of tall pines, the tops frame the blue sky, and the sun’s rays heat my face. I am as near as I can get to what I think heaven is. In the summer, when it’s really hot, my back gets all sweaty. But in the fall, it's dry and cool.
Down here in the pines, I can think out loud in privacy. I know what privacy is 'cause Mommy always says, "Daddy and Mommy need their privacy" when she closes their bedroom door. Me and my sister have to knock for permission to come in. The pine woods is a place where nobody can tell me what to do and, more often, what not to do.
I’m snug in my pine needle nest, thinking about my future, my real future. What should I do when I grow up? Looking at Mommy, being home all day with me and my four-year-old sister with only her grandmother to talk to is definitely not fun, as I see it. She seems to spend her life sweating, her messy curly black hair getting in her eyes. She’s got a wringer washer but has to hang everything outside to dry. Then she irons all our dresses, her stuff and Daddy’s white shirts, too. If she’s not doing laundry she’s cleaning or cooking, trying to get my hair to curl like hers, or chasing us to pick up our rooms and take baths. Mommy makes all our clothes, too. She only buys clothes out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog when we need underwear or a sweater or winter coat, stuff she can’t sew easy. When I grow up I want to go into a real store to buy my clothes, not sew them or order them out of some catalog.
But what should I be? A nurse? That wouldn’t work either. After seeing Doctor Pitts and his nurse stitch up my sister, I know ‘blood and guts’ are not my cup of tea. As I remember, I’d dared her to get the cookies on top of the refrigerator. I was holding the kitchen step ladder when she tripped stepping from the ladder to the counter. Boy, did I get punished for that. I couldn't site down for sometime.
I watch squirrels and chipmunks scamper around my pine nest. How about a teacher? Lots of girls grow up to be teachers, I hear. Although school’s only been in session three weeks, I don’t much like the teacher. Conversations don't make sense, like this one.
“Do the black kids have the same books we use?" I ask. I’d seen them go into the other entrance to the school on my first day, so I knew they were around.
Teacher says, “Why of course they do. When we get our new books each year, we give our old books to the Negro classes.”
I say, “Why can’t we read the books together? That way we could all have new books? And, anyhow why do the black kids have classes at the other end of the building?”
She says, "That’s now how things are here. Now, pay attention and do your arithmetic lesson.” Nope, not a teacher.
I look up at the sky again. There must be something in my future, but what it is I can’t imagine. It would be fun to work in an office like Mommy did years ago when Daddy was away at the war. She told me all about not so long ago. She even smiled for a long time after...Back to the future.
Dare I say, I couldn't imagine the life I've had and the things I've done. The pine trees were wonderful.