Strange weekend. My kyla has been unexpectantly benign. I suppose I should be happy about that. So happy that it does not choke. Ufff.
Strange weekend. My kyla has been unexpectantly benign. I suppose I should be happy about that. So happy that it does not choke. Ufff.
I took a ride with Amy last night. Amy is my cousin. 10 years my superior. We paused for a delicious meal in Arlington (Indian). Our conversation centered around something I have rarely discussed with anyone in my lifetime - that is, our relationship with our parents. And especially the rodina of my father and her mother. I will begin with an instance she explained to me concerning a great uncle by the name of Lynn who used to live in Walla Walla Washington (or so I am told). It shocked me.
Lynn was my father’s father’s brother. Apparently, he had a daughter who’s name I have forgotten. Something beginning with an E. One day, when E was walking home from school (it was not far from home), she was joined by a black girl her age - in her class - a friend, I assume. These girls were 10 years old at the most. They paused for some moments outside of E‘s house to finish their conversation. They dawdled there for some moments, enough for the household (Uncle Lynn) to take notice. The black child left finally and E, I would like to think, smiling, rapped at - or just opened - the front door to enter her home and perhaps do her homework or even prepare for dinner. I do not know the details. Nor did Amy. Uncle Lynn was outraged. E was caught by the scruff of her neck like a misbehaving bitch and dragged into the bedroom where she was beaten until her breaths came in gasps. I imagine the pain suffusing her body. Uncle Lynn used a belt… the normal sort that even a kind man might wear about the waist. I believe she was hospitalized, but I do not know the entire tale. It is a sort of black folklore in my family.
Along with martens, goulish goats and the rippling fen -
these writings 1993-2023
by Bob Murry Shelton are licensed under
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