Terra Orndorff

Pedestals crumble

Growing up, I wanted to spend time by myself, reading, writing. During summer break, I dreamed of independently and leisurely spending days on my own. Dad decided ten years old was too young for such freedom. In hindsight, as a parent myself, perhaps there was some truth there. The end result of his decision was sending me across the pond, quite literally since only our pond separated us from Dad’s parents, to Mammaw Mae.

Mammaw Mae, Dad’s step-mom, married Grandpa, a widow with nearly a dozen children in desperate need of a woman’s love. She then gave birth to another. The baby. Dad’s youngest sibling, Alan. While I adored Mammaw Mae, raising those kids proved difficult for her. Grandpa, a cold man with very little outward emotion, left the child rearing to her. She loved them, but a woman can only do so much with teenagers pissed that their mom died, and this new female is seemingly there to replace her. Mom respected her immensely. Admired her tenacity, strength, and ability to love.

Mammaw’s biological son, Alan, became a brother to me. A father figure in a way. Only five years older than me, we grew up together. Time spent with Mammaw outweighed the time spent at home. I wasn’t allowed home alone and both parents worked so the majority of my time was spent at my grandparents’ house. Mammaw’s quiet strength intrigued me, held me in awe. She ran the catfish farm while Grandpa worked at the sawmill. Cleaned fish and taught me the same. We spent hours picking blackberries.

“Terra, make sure some of those are getting in the buckets and aren’t all going in your mouth. Two for the bucket, one for you.” I had a habit of doing the opposite.

When I became obsessed with training for track, being fast, she drove her car around the ponds for me so I could run alongside. We were peas in a pod and very close. Alan later took me driving on those same dirt paths in his VW Bug, teaching me how to drive a stick shift.

The memory of the summer day Mammaw drove us to visit one of the other kids, Kurt maybe-I’m not sure, comes back only in bits and pieces. I only remember the drive home, which seemed endless. Exhausted, I laid my head in Alan’s lap and fell asleep. An innocent act, one done thousands of times in the car and on the couch when I stayed overnight. I felt safe with Alan. My protector. My stand-in big brother. The only time I ever felt safer was with Mammaw. No worries plague me on this day, in this car, with both touchstones in one vehicle.

Brain fog fights back against the haze of the sun through the windows of the blue four-door Lincoln. Leather seats necessitate a blanket in the back seat. Leather gets hot. The heat of the sun, long drive, and feeling of security lull me to sleep. With my legs folded up in the center of the seat, my brother to the right, I lay, wrapped up by Alan, finding dreamland almost faster than my brother who immediately rested his head on the warm window and fell asleep.

I find myself mentally startled, thinking. “Not again. It can’t happen again.” Willing myself back to sleep, heart pounding, I hear Alan whisper, “Don’t tell anyone,” as he takes his hand out from under my shirt. I grunt, as if asleep and unaware. Never moving. Neither ever acknowledged the event, as if it never happened. But it did. I remember it. Clearly.            

Years pass, and I never once accepted this event as reality, so deep was the betrayal. Nothing like it ever happened again so it was easy to convince myself it was a dream. Locked in a box, I never put it to words or admitted its existence. Alan remained my big brother, looking out for me on the school bus and in the halls of our small school. Teasing me relentlessly because the crush I had on his best friend was immense. Mom and I sat while she smoked a multitude of times throughout her life, and not once did I bring it up. Never. The only semblance of something wrong came from my cutting him off when I became an adult, an event easily blamed on busy lives. The child in me never forgave him, though. Thinking about it now causes my stomach to turn in knots. He stood on a pedestal with young me. A pedestal that fell that hot summer day. Knowing I added to the betrayal by not telling Mom, even in adulthood, breaks me. She dealt with so much without my adding to it. I could never bring myself to subject the woman who gave me everything to any negativity. Standing firm in his banishment, however, alleviates some of that because I know she’d do the same. Writing about it also feels like finally tell her. She’d have done more, but I did what I could.