My Sweet Annie

9

JANUARY 4 2018

My father went to jail when I was 11 and never came out. By the time he was set up for parole, when I was nearly 30, somebody in the jailyard had up and killed him. We never found out why.

Before she died, my mother would send an envelope to him every week. We couldn't afford to visit him but a couple of times a year, so she would send him a letter like clockwork with a few paragraphs on what was happening at home. When he was still living at home, Royal would also send a page or two along with her letters.

I never had much to say to my father. He'd hurt somebody badly in that robbery, and he could have killed them with that gun. It scared me and still scares me to think that my dad, a perfectly normal man, known to me, loved by me, could be capable of something so dangerous.

I missed him, but I was angry with him for what he'd done and for leaving us. I very seldom wrote him. When my mother pressed me, I would send a drawing or write a little something, but it was always a struggle to think of things to say.

Mom had a hard time after Dad went to jail. At least she had the house. They didn't owe on it at all. I think the land was a wedding present from Mom's parents. Then they saved up and put up the house bit by bit, with Dad and a couple of his friends doing most of the work. Then he got hurt, and he couldn't work any more, and we were hurting for money, and he did what he did.

Ours was a small town full of "decent people" where everybody knew everybody. Though he'd done the robbery in Indiana, everyone knew what he'd done and we suffered a lot of gossip.

Mom was sturdy of body and, until her later years, she was sturdy of mind, too. She soldiered through with her shoulders squared. I think she carried a lot of shame over it all, but she'd have been damned before she let the world see it.

I think Dad being gone is a big part of why we turned more toward the church, but then again, it was the '40s-50s in Rural America: of course we were churchgoers. Even if we hadn't been religious ourselves, we might have trudged into town every Sunday just to fit in. But Dad's big sin had shamed us, even if Mom didn't like to show it, and she had to work hard to show the world that we were a good family, and that her children were being well brought up.

Not that going to church was good enough to prove to the community that we were upstanding citizens. The Elvers family went, and no one in the world had a good thing to say about them. Their family had been in the area since the beginning of time and people spoke about them as if they lived in a warren, breeding like rabbits.

Now Annie Elvers did have five sisters and three brothers, and that was a large family. But she was my dearest friend and I can say on my own authority that there was nothing wrong with the Elverses. If their clothes were a bit ragged it was only because it was the best they could afford. By the time a dress has been handed down through a few little girls, it's hardly held together at the seams. They were just poor, that's all, and people are cruel. Had there been more of us kids, or had my mother been unable to work once Dad went away, we'd have been in the same circumstances. I know that for a fact.

But I've gotten off track now. I do not want to write about Annie today.

I wonder what would have happened if Dad had not gone to jail. If he had not done that robbery. I don't think he was a bad man at heart, and I wish I could ask him now what I never asked him when I was a girl, why he did the things he did, why he put us all at risk. I want to believe he was desperate, just trying to find a way to support his family, but I'll never know now.

So instead of having a father I had a church and a brother who grew up to be a preacher.

I think we got on as best as we could. I do believe that.