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Diana Estill Synopsis Renee Goodchild

RENEE GOODCHILD

Chapter 1

I’ll bet you’d expect to find some kind of deliberate purpose for this ruinous decision, the one that cheated me of childhood and stripped away the last of my self-confidence. At bare minimum, you’d think I’d have relished the details of that fateful day well enough to recall them now; most would have. But to be honest, my initial offense has over time become far less memorable than its penalty.

All I can tell you is that it happened in a stand of live oaks, somewhere off a deserted county road in North Texas, one sweltering afternoon in August 1971. There in the blistering back seat of a Ford Galaxy, I succumbed to a young boy’s attempt to set my body and both our futures ablaze. Like a prairie grass fire, my reasoning followed no particular path. I simply yielded to his pent-up needs and our secluded setting – took advantage of a rural opportunity, if you will. And that single stroke of bad luck, or poor judgment, depending on how you choose to look at it, led me and Kenny Ray Murphy straight to the front door of the Second Baptist Church in White Rock, Texas, where Daddy was a deacon.

We didn’t exactly live in White Rock, proper, the largest town in Limestone County, population 5,090. But how else can I describe that physical location, a flat treeless twenty acres simply called "unincorporated land?" The parcel that Momma and Daddy owned looked like a child-size sliver cut from a whole buttermilk pie. For the most part, our neighbors, the Caldwells, with their 500-acre spread, owned the rest of that pastry. And every summer when the whirlwinds transformed those honey-colored strands into millions of miniature pompons, the Caldwells graciously, and no doubt jokingly, baled Daddy’s six acres of oats.

Anyone who saw our barbed wire enclosed grain field or puny, three-acre black-eyed pea patch must have known that Daddy was only a weekend farmer – not a serious sodbuster; heck, he didn’t even own a horse, much less a tractor. So he improvised by using me and my younger brother Carl for farm implements. It looked something like this: Imagine a horse-driven plow, the kind they used before the Industrial Age, and then substitute two kids for the horse. We walked abreast, pushing against a leather strap that crossed our ribs and pulling a giant spade behind us, praying that nobody we knew or would ever see again would spot us. Daddy claimed the contraption ingenious – but we called it downright humiliating.

I’ll be the first to admit that Daddy wasn’t fully dedicated to agriculture, but he was resolute about his religion and doing what’s right – which is why he took me and Carl out of the big city schools and moved us to a place so remote that even Marijuana couldn’t find us. Or so he thought.

At least twice, and sometimes three times a week, Daddy drove the eight miles to White Rock so we could witness Brother Sontag’s preaching. However, I seldom listened to the minister; he was always shouting about planning to meet Jesus when I was more interested in learning how to approach boys that I could see and touch.

But on the day that Brother Sontag said, "Do you, Renee Anne Goodchild, take this man, Kenneth Raymond Murphy, to be your lawful wedded husband?" the Reverend had my strict attention. For about a millisecond, I thought I might actually have had a choice in this matter, but then I remembered my Daddy was standing there with us.

Right then I must have been contemplating the outcome of my next response, because I recall holding my breath so tightly and my chest so high that you’d have thought someone had just yelled "AT-TE-EN-TION!" By the time I finally said, "I do," it came out sounding more like a sigh of exhaustion than an oath of commitment. But I was simply relieved to have said this without splitting a seam.

Momma had made my gown, which was no secret to all 26 of my guests, from a Simplicity pattern that she’d remembered I’d liked. She’d run out of white thread near the end, so she’d made do with beige on one sleeve – but she said no one would notice this or recall that she’d used the same pattern to sew my band recital dress the year before. The fact that Momma was even less a seamstress than she was a cook never seemed to stop her from trying at either. On her second attempt to master a basic shift, albeit satin, her sewing skills hadn’t improved much – unless you consider the facing, which she’d taken care to tack, this time.

Though I’m sure that dress fit me poorly, other than my memory, there’s no proof of it today. Our wedding photos, shot on Grandma’s Polaroid, failed to develop, so I guess I can truthfully say that our ceremony didn’t contain any Kodak moments. Grandma said the film might have been underexposed – unlike me. I was then three months pregnant.

It wasn’t the best of times for a marriage. I’m sure, however, that Momma and Daddy would have done more for us, have given us some money or something, if Daddy hadn’t lost his job five months earlier, during the beginning of what later became known as The 1971 Recession. Daddy had worked in electronics for the better part of his life, but new technology, he summarized, something he called "solid state," had suddenly surpassed his understanding of it. Kind of like his daughter.

Daddy was the type of guy my schoolmates would have called a "nerd," a man who read Engineering Today, listened to Hank Snow records, and voted for Nixon – both times. His hairline, which receded all the way back to his crown, and his oval face, made his nearly square black-framed glasses an ill-suited choice – sort of like the navy socks he sported with his royal-blue suede athletic shoes. He was the type who could tell you how your radio operated and yet remain dumbfounded when it played the lyrics to Light My Fire. So it came as no surprise that Daddy didn’t wonder how Kenny and I were going to make it after we married.

"Me’un your momma seen plenty of lean times," he said. "You’ll be okay, long as you cling to the Lord." His own momma had conceived him during the Great Depression, so Daddy might have thought I was merely carrying on a family tradition.

He didn’t know that by the time I’d turned seventeen, I’d already been accepted into the PWT club. At least, that’s what I heard others whisper when I cashed in the cola bottles Kenny had found at his job to buy groceries. "Poor White Trash."

"Look at her belly."

"Already hatching out another one! You know, that’s how they do."

"Ignorant little Jezebel."

They could stare and think whatever they wanted. I didn't care. Because I was planning to eat a sumptuous steak, possibly my first taste of meat in a week. Mmm. I imagined the smell of pork fat simmering in red-eye gravy. Yesiree, I could cook those thick pork slices – ones better grocers wouldn’t carry – until they resembled the finest beef cutlets Sizzlin’ Steakhouse ever served. My garage sale skillet could scald as well as any. I’d dust those strips with flour, salt and pepper, and then I’d brown the heavily-marbled meat in bacon grease that I kept stored in an old mayonnaise jar; never threw away anything that could be reused.

I reckon bacon grease was about the only thing we had that was plentiful, unless you count the stray dogs sniffing out back for scraps. Pork, our primary source of protein, was cheap – cheaper than cold cuts or yellow-fatted chickens. So every morning, about five-thirty, I’d fry up six pieces of bacon, the leanest I could find, for Kenny’s lunch. Two bacon and mayonnaise sandwiches – one to eat – one to exchange with his fellow sanitation workers.

Kenny always said, "You can’t believe what some of them boys’ll trade for a damn B-minus-LT." That’s what he called our version of the traditional sandwich, because ours never included any produce. Too expensive. However, lettuce or none, Kenny knew he’d stand a better chance of having some variety in his meals if he could trade up. "Ain’t exactly their favorite," he’d say of his fellow crewmen, "but a bacon sandwich’s about as close as I intend to get to pigs’ feet." Sometimes he’d brag that he’d made off with a family-size bag of Lay’s potato chips or a thermos mug full of hamburger stew, foods he’d have been hard pressed to find at home.

I couldn’t imagine how Kenny would feel like eating anything, sitting near one of those garbage trucks. I’d seen them, trash heaped upon their beds, moving parts compressing decayed animal carcasses with unnaturally colored foods, yellow lettuce and blue-green bread, unidentified dark liquids dripping from all sides, flies circling. There could have been a hacked-up human in there somewhere and I bet no one would have noticed.

The stench from those two-ton rigs leapt onto Kenny’s sludge-colored uniforms and followed him all the way home. I could smell him before he strolled past the front door, a pungent aroma of rotting fruit mixed with methane gas.

"Where’s dinner," he’d say right off.

And cupping one hand over my nose and mouth, stifling a dry heave, I’d set a couple of mismatched Melmac plates on top of our gray Formica dining table, the one Kenny had brought home from work one day. He found all sorts of worthwhile items on bulk trash days. If Kenny had a specialty, this was it: claiming what others didn’t want and putting it to good use.

The whole while I set out macaroni and cheese or beans and cornbread, our standard fare, my stomach groaned with confusion. Many times, I didn’t know which I wanted more – to eat or vomit.

On better days, Kenny would wash his hands before he sat in one of the two folding metal chairs we used for dining. And then I’d fill a plastic tumbler with Lipton Tea, his favorite liquid refreshment other than beer, and set it next to the T.V. schedule he insisted remain on the table at all times. I’d moved it once, and he’d hollered, "Leave it be. How you ‘spect me to plan my evening?"

My nights, though, didn’t require much preparation. Given the options, clean house or watch cop shows, the choice was easy. I’d pretend I was Kenny’s personal servant, gathering uniforms he’d shed throughout the house, pants that could practically stand alone and shirts that reeked of rancid waste. But I was spared the challenge of washing them because once a week Kenny lugged his work clothes to the City, where they were laundered, starched, folded and returned looking like they’d arrived new from some big-name department store.

For the most part, I performed my domestic chores responsibly, including washing Kenny’s hair in our kitchen’s old farm sink whenever he insisted. This wasn’t an inconvenience, really; more like self-defense. He only asked me to do this about once every other week – and by then I was ready to perform a full baptism if it might improve his appearance or smell. Dutifully, I’d run his bath water in a tub that still had legs and sponge him all over. I guess I thought this proved me a good wife, unlike the ones in those soap operas Momma watched. Those starlets were nothing but a bunch of self-centered, loose-legged, motor-mouths – pretty to look at, but tragically useless, as far as I was concerned. I’d studied them, wishing to look the way they did in their fancy, store-bought clothes. But I suffered no delusions; being a small-breasted, blotchy-faced, uneducated girl, I felt sure my only hope was to become a decent wife and mother. And I feared what might become of me if I succeeded at neither.

I’d quit school in the eleventh grade because the thought of my classmates teasing about my condition was more than I could bear. They’d already humored themselves enough at my expense. And until my neighbor showed me a newspaper article about my high school band, I hadn’t given much thought to becoming a dropout. I couldn’t believe the headlines: White Rock’s Marching Band to Perform at Mayan Pyramids.

Pyramids! I’d always dreamed of standing on top of one and gazing, like some kind of princess warrior, into the vast distance. But it looked as though the closest thing to a pyramid I would see, right then, was sitting on top of our Admiral T. V. – a pair of rabbit ears linked by a single strand of aluminum foil. And the only picture coming into clear view was the chance I’d missed.

I remembered David Lassiter, first-chair drummer, and wondered what he might be doing now. Was he somewhere gently holding another girl’s chin the way he used to cup mine whenever I’d look away? Would he be heading to college after high school next year? Or would he, like so many others, settle for pumping gas at the local Fina station? Maybe work down at the roof truss plant ten hours a day, the way Kenny had after he failed algebra the second time?

I’d been David’s girl first, before I became blind to everything but Kenny’s Senior superiority. Kenny had practically guaranteed my acceptance with the cheerleader crowd, being two years older and all. And David’s ability to play a perfect In-a-Godda-da-Vida drum solo hadn’t been enough to compensate for his Freshman ranking. I mean, I didn’t want my classmates to question my social maturity since already most of the boys were making fun of me. They’d bark at me when I passed them in the school hallways. "Arf, arf," the sports jocks would shout. And then Benny, one of White Rock’s star track members, would yell, "Hey! You know you’re a real bow-wow?"

Yeah, I knew. My unruly brown hair was thick with waves that went every-which-way, but not together; nothing at all like Cher’s. And my eyebrows, a mocha-color three shades darker than my frizzy bangs, refused to arch but agreed to meet at the bridge of my nose. The surface of my face changed daily, depending on the number of colas and candy bars I’d consumed. And with both my knees pressed together, you could still pass a basketball between my thighs. So I wasn’t about to give these unmerciful ambushers any more excuses to launch one of their embarrassing attacks. As it was, I already had to avoid the north wing, the one leading to the school gymnasium. If anyone had thought I was dating a Freshman, I might have had to remove ceiling tiles and crawl through rafters to escape torment between classes.

Other than David, no boy would have dared to risk dating me. I imagine it was more acceptable to join the canine patrol. If romance was to become a part of my high school experience, I knew I’d have to search for it outside of White Rock High; and that’s exactly what I’d done.

Kenny lived in Lolaville, a town named after a popular hot spot that had stood in its midst for a half-century – Lola’s Fruits & Vegetables. This small settlement of farmers, quarrymen, misfits and social renegades was 12 miles southeast of White Rock, and thankfully, in a different county and school district. So Kenny wouldn’t have known of my reputation as White Rock High’s Sophomore class joke. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the County Line Skateland, situated halfway between these two rural communities, I’m sure we never would have met.

I’ll always believe Kenny’s lack of insider knowledge accounted for his willingness to notice my pathetic existence. And as for David – I don’t know how to explain his attraction to me – other than to say he might have had a thing for Cocker Spaniels. Long after I’d kicked sand into the flames of his first romance, he’d refused to forget about me. "If anything ever happens to him," he’d say about Kenny, "I want to be the first to know." He’d made me promise, and I’d agreed, though neither of us had imagined the significance.

Diana Estill Synopsis Renee Goodchild