Chapter 4
Unhappy attending the large high school in Floydada, Willie Mae found it difficult to make friends. In Roseland, she knew everyone and was quite popular. She rarely had to form new relationships. She didn’t know how.One golden fall day after school, Willie Mae took refuge in the room she shared with her sister. When Ina Rae came in, she found her crying.
“What’s the matter, Bill?” Ina Rae placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder.
“Oh, Shorty. I don’t think people here like me. I try to be friendly and funny, but everyone already has their pals. I just don’t fit in.” Lying on one of the narrow beds in their room, Willie Mae turned her face to the wall, crying even harder.
Ina Rae sat beside her on the edge of the bed and rubbed her back. “I’m sorry. I thought you were excited about being in the pep squad.”
“I was, but the other girls were going to Blanche Hilton’s house after school to practice yells, and they didn’t invite me.” She turned back to look at Ina Rae, her tear-filled blue eyes full of resentment.
“Well, I don’t think you need a special invitation. Come on. We’re going over to Blanche’s house right now.” Ina Rae’s eyes blazed with blue fire. “If you’re in the pep squad, then you have to assume that you’re invited. You need to learn those yells. Now wash your face and comb your hair. I want to learn the yells too.” Her pretty face settled into a coaxing smile.
Willie Mae, who adored her younger sister and was in awe of her spunk, obediently did as she was told. They walked the few blocks to the Hiltons’. As they approached the low brick house with broad lawns, they could hear girls voices in the back yard. Willie Mae started up the porch steps to knock on the front door, but Ina Rae motioned for her sister to follow her around the side of the house.
In the back, they found seven girls in a line, kicking and side stepping to the rhythm as they chanted,
“You’ve got it, now keep it.
Doggone it, don’t lose it.
Your pep! Your pep!”
Ina Rae marched up to Blanche and announced. “Bill’s sorry she’s late. She has to take care of me, her little sister, after school, so she couldn’t come till I got home. Mind if I join you?” She lined up with the other girls and motioned Willie Mae to do the same, which she did.
Blanche blinked, then shrugged as Ina Rae started the chant again and all the other girls fell back into step.
By the end of the practice session, Willie Mae laughed with the rest of the girls when she missed a step, purposely escalating the misstep into a fall on the grass, then rolling over and sitting up with a goofy look on her face. As she and Ina Rae left, Blanche walked between them to the front of the house, holding hands.
“Do you want to meet me at the corner in the morning? We could walk to school together.”
Secretly thrilled, Willie Mae nodded happily.
The next morning, she and Blanche practiced their yells and marched in rhythm all the way to school. This was a start, Willie Mae thought, thankful for her bold little sister.
Through music Willie Mae made more friends and felt good about herself. All her life she liked to sing and had a sweet soprano voice. The a cappella singing at church prepared her well to participate in the school choir. She was chosen for the girls’ sextet, a niche where she really felt at home. Her favorite song was “My Blue Heaven.”
Her mother sometimes worried about Willie Mae’s moodiness. “You’re either too happy or too sad,” she told her. This surprised her. She didn’t think she was ever really happy since leaving Roseland. Some days she had no interest in anything. Willie Mae learned that if she clowned around at least she didn’t feel so sad. She guessed that’s what Mama meant when she said she was too happy.
She did well in language arts and social studies. Her brother, A.D., was her teacher for tenth grade U.S. History, which she liked well enough. However, Roseland school had not prepared her well for math and science. “I’m pitiful with algebra,” she groaned to Ina Rae. “And chemistry might as well be Chinese for all I understand about it.”
“Who needs to know that stuff anyway?” Ina Rae paused. “Are you going to go to college?”
“If I ever finish Floydada High School, I never want to sit in a classroom again.” It was one of those down days when Willie Mae seemed to be in a dark tunnel with no light at the end.
* * *
Willie Mae learned to drive, and one night her dad let her drive his Model T Ford to take Ina Rae and two girlfriends to a baseball game in Lockney. She parked by the board fence outside the field. They met some boys inside and had a good time.After the game, they found that one of the taillights on the car was broken. Dad was angry when she told him, and Willie Mae couldn’t convince him that she didn’t know how it happened. She never got over the horrible feeling that her dad didn’t trust her and thought she was lying. It changed their relationship, and she grieved for the days when they were so close.
* * *
He spoke in a low, urgent tone. “Dad, wake up. The elevator is on fire.”
Sid opened the bedroom door. His hair stood on end. He’d put on trousers and was pulling on a shirt over his undershirt. Suspenders hung beside his legs. He patted A.D.’s arm as he walked past. “Thanks, Son. I’d better get down there.”
A.D. followed him. “I’ll drive you, Dad. My car’s out front.”
As the two men hurried out the front door, Ina Rae came out of her room in her white flannel nightgown, rubbing her eyes and frowning. “What’s the matter?”
“A.D. said the elevator is burning. Come on, let’s see if we can see it.” Willie Mae ran to the front window with Ina Rae following. Mama was already standing there, her hand over her mouth, looking at an orange glow, making a silhouette of the water tower that stood between their house and Dad‘s business.
The girls burst into tears. “Mama, what will Dad do?” Willie Mae had never felt the kind of fear that gripped her chest as she watched the brightness and the black smoke billowing into the sky that was beginning to lighten into dawn.
“I don’t know what we’ll do, Girls. Let’s just wait and see what your Dad says when he comes home.” She put an arm around each of them. “God will take care of us. He always has. There’s not much we can do here. Do you want to go back to bed for a bit, or do you want a cup of hot cocoa?”
“I couldn’t sleep now. I’ll make the cocoa, Mama. Do both of you want some?” Willie Mae walked ahead of them to the kitchen.
The three of them were mostly silent as they drank the sweet beverage and waited for Dad to come home.
Two hours later, he and A.D. came in as Mama was getting a pan of biscuits out of the oven. She poured each of them a cup of coffee. They washed their blackened hands and faces in the sink and sat down at the table. Mama put plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and plum jam in front them. They both mumbled a grateful, “Thank you,” and started wolfing down the hot food.
Ina Rae and Willie Mae came in quietly and sat at the table. Unlike their dad and brother, they had little appetite. Finally Willie Mae got the courage to speak. “What happened, Dad? How did the fire start?”
A.D. spoke up. “Sometimes stored grain just starts burning by itself. It’s called spontaneous combustion. That’s probably how it started. We tried to get the account records out of the office, but they‘re all charred.”
Dad looked up. “Well, all the farmers know how much they owe me. I’m not worried about them paying. If I forget any bills I owe, I’m sure the businesses will let me know.” Seeing the girls’ somber faces. “Don’t worry, girls. Everything will be all right. I’m thankful no one was hurt.”
Mama stood up and walked around behind Dad and rubbed his shoulders.
“Thank goodness you got that fire insurance policy.” She bent over and kissed his cheek.
A.D. pushed his chair back. “We’d better get ready for school, right, girls?”
Willie Mae nodded, amazed that this day was going to be very much like any other school day, after such a strange night.
* * *
At last Willie Mae reached eleventh grade, which was the senior year in Texas schools in those days.
About this time her sister Felicia moved to a farm near Floydada with her husband, Lee Rogers, and their children, R.K., Sidney Lee and Joyce. With only their two youngest daughters left at home, Dad and Mama loved to drive their automobile out to visit their oldest daughter and her young family. Willie Mae and Ina Rae enjoyed going along to see their adored sister. They played with her slightly younger children and helped them with their homework. Joyce was a beautiful girl, and her two young aunts loved dressing her up and arranging her long dark hair into elaborate do’s.
Driving home from such a visit on a warm March Sunday, Mama turned to Dad. “I’m worried about Sis. She’s hasn’t felt well for several months.”
Dad frowned. “I noticed she looked poor. She didn’t eat much for dinner but she’s always been picky. She was sick all last summer.”
Mama nodded. “I asked her to let me take her to see Doctor Johnson. Thank goodness she agreed. I’ll get an appointment tomorrow.”
Later in the week, Willie Mae arrived home from school to find Felicia asleep in her bed. She went to the kitchen to look for her mother. “Mama, why is Sis here? Is she all right?”
Mama turned from stirring a pot of beans on the stove, with a very serious expression. “No, she’s not well. She’s going to stay with us for awhile. You won’t mind sharing a room with Ina Rae again, will you?” Seeing Willie Mae’s worried look, Mama hugged her, then stood back with a smile and ran her hands over her daughter’s carefully-waved short hairdo.
“I don’t mind at all, Mama. It’ll be fun, but what’s wrong with Sis? Who’s going to take care of her kids?”
“Their dad went with us to the doctor today. Lee said he could manage the children during the week while they’re in school. They can come here on the weekends to be with Sis.” Mama shook her head. “I just hope I can get her to eat more. The doctor thinks she has Pellagra.”
Willie Mae gasped, her hand over her mouth, remembering a letter several years earlier telling them that her mother’s aunt in Georgia had died of Pellagra. At the time, doctors thought the epidemic was caused by tainted corn.
Ina Rae walked in just in time to hear the last sentence. “Oh, no. I read about that in my nutrition book in Home Ec class. They’ve now discovered it’s a vitamin deficiency, niacin, I think. Why would Sis have that? Isn’t she eating?”
“She has no appetite and she’s too thin. Doctor Johnson said twice as many women as men have pellagra. He thinks something isn’t right with her female hormones that keeps her body from getting what it needs from her food.” Mama’s voice quavered as she turned back to the stove, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.
Felicia’s illness continued to worsen. Her hands and feet were covered with a red rash. She was sick with diarrhea and sometimes didn’t even recognize her family members. The family felt devastated when Sis died on May 2, 1930, at the age of 33.
Willie Mae was supposed to graduate later in the month, but didn’t have the credits she needed in algebra and chemistry. School didn’t seem important. She decided to “quituate”.
"Quituate" - Love it.
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