A stitched up knee

by Liz O'Neill

Background
We continue to plow through Lizzy's early years.

This was also the time that I was trying to get around with a stitched-up knee. Because I was persona non grata, unwelcome in the front of the building with the jump-roping girls, I assigned myself to the back with the boys who were playing much more interesting games anyway.

As a review, being fair to those who are unfamiliar with my stories. I was standing on the running board of a pickup truck coming up a hill. I did not know the driver was stopping to shift and I jumped off. At that point, the wheel moved forward catching my knee under it.

When playing on the boys' side of the building, most boys were down on the ground with trucks and cars having fun. I couldn't have as much fun as I usually would because I had to be careful of my knee.

I may have told you the times I tore my stitches from my knee. One was while riding my bicycle. The other, chasing down the hallway railing with my brother just a little above me. This caused me to quickly, without thinking, jump off the railing. I could feel my stitches ripping out.

The having to go up and down the ladder in the barn where the abuse occurred, all flashed back to me in the 3rd grade when I found myself in the lead needing to go down the grated metal fire-escape during a drill. I froze everytime and began to cry.

Finally, the teacher who broke hearts by telling them there was no Santa Claus and made the boy beside me wait so long that he wet his pants almost daily, had mercy on me and let me go down the wooden indoor stairs with the 2nd graders. It may have been intended to be a further humiliation but it was, for me, a great relief.

At other times I found myself literally up against the fence with the kids calling me names and making fun of me. I did find a consolation one Fall, in the unusual Maple leaves which I loved to shuffle through just outside the school grounds. For some strange reason, they had a very fuzzy underside which I loved to lightly trace my fingers across. I collected many and saved them in the family Bible.

The house next door, where my slow friend whom we protected from the bullying brothers in the neighborhood, had a wood stove which late one evening became too hot and started a chimney fire. It was frightening to see the stark silhouettes of the firemen against red-orange flames leaping from the chimney Our houses had never seemed so close together.

The fire was extinguished and all was forgotten, until, I came home from 3rd grade, one day to find only charred remains to Benny’s house where I’d gone to watch him drink tea and listen to the phonograph. I had previously believed only crabby grandmothers drank tea and listened to records on the real wind-the-handle phonograph player, but Benny and I spent hours doing just that.

The funny toilet located just a few steps up, that seemed more like an outhouse brought inside, was gone too. There would be no more looking through the hole and peering way down into the darkness of the basement to see where things landed. They just dumped dirt on all of it, moved in a trailer, and painted it pink, black and green.

A year later, all of this came rushing back when I heard the firetruck and looking out of my 4th grade classroom window, saw the truck parked in front of my house. Filled with dread and terror, without even asking my teacher for permission, I raced down the hill and into my house to see Mother calmly standing there explaining it was a chimney fire and everything was fine.

Everyone in the neighborhood was registered to take tap dance and baton lessons. “Heel – toe, heel – toe, shuffle – ball – change.” Mother had sewn some beautiful costumes for the recitals. All of the mothers sewed to save money. I was so proud of those souvenirs and hung them in the closet off Nickey’s room where we used to run and hide among the coats.

Sometimes after my aunt and cousin had visited, I noticed the costume of the most recent recital was missing. This happened at least two or three times. No one ever confronted my cousin about it. People didn’t do such things in those days. However, my father was allowed to say just about anything he pleased and got results.

One time before he, Mother, and my paternal aunt and uncle were going to the races, my father said to Mother, “I hope you have stockings on, you’re not riding in this car without them.”

The next thing I heard was my aunt saying to her husband, “Come on, we’re going home.” She evidently did not have stockings on. They went into the house, packed and didn’t return for three years. The next time they had some conflict, they were absent for five years. And when she divorced her husband for batterering her, my father told her, "Never set foot on the property again."

She came to visit our neighbors because she had been friends with them since they were kids. She did not, however, set foot on our property. We could yell over and talk to her but she could not cross the property line.

Thirty-four years later, they finally reconciled. I think it may be genetic, my own sister Cassie doesn’t, nor hasn’t throughout our lifetime, spoken to me more than a few sentences at a time. I remember the only time my sister ever hugged me, was when I rescued a berrying pan from the brook for one of our friends. Cassie even kissed me on the cheek.

Everyone in the neighborhood was just tall enough to hike each other up onto the back of the iceman’s truck to use the ice pick to chip off a chunk of ice. There was an exhilaration in the gang to get everyone served before the iceman cometh or emerged from one of the houses carrying the scary metal tongs that he could easily use to scoop up anyone of us.

I think at the age of two, I remember Mother had an icebox. I don't remember anything more about it

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A stitched up knee

by Liz O'Neill

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