St. Louis - Perryton

Whoosh!

We left Brasil and landed in Miami. Men in white coats escorted my mother away. Two strangers took my little brothers and left. Two other strangers led my little sister and me to a car outside the terminal and held the back door for us to get in. One of them drove and drove and drove and, eventually, we stopped at a big house on an enormous yard.

We were in St. Louis at the home of my mother's sister. I think the plan was that we'd stay there until my mother was released from the asylum. Nobody told us nuthin. But we upset her kids. We were not cool. We did not speak real English. We spoke Portuguese to each other.

So, before long, we were taken to a normal-sized house on a normal-sized lot in Perryton, TX, the home of my father's oldest sister. She had two kids of her own but they were grownups. One was in college and the other had already graduated! We were not going to bother them.

Aunt Cile and Uncle Buck! If there is a God, then God bless'm! They loved us like we'd never known. Our parents were locked in some battle that didn't involve us. Aunt Cile and Uncle Buck had time and space and love for us. I think we needed it. I think we wallowed in it.

In Perryton, I started the sixth grade, I think. I had only ever heard of baseball and American football. I knew soccer but American kids had never heard of it. I didn't know how to talk to girls. That had been forbidden at the Collegio Americano Batista in Recife.

I wound up crying in frustration and felt very picked on that Aunt Cile thought I was homesick.

"No! I'm here-sick!" I told her. She hugged me and got it.

But I slowly learned my way in this new school with new rules and new customs and conventions I'd never imagined. You don't know how much of your world is implied or inferred until you're thrown into a different one.

I never reached comfort or even acceptance, but I learned to play their games poorly and I learned to talk poorly with girls, some girls.

And then, sweet Jesus! My father showed up with the woman the asylum sent back. She was not my mother but she sorta looked like her. She didn't talk or move right though. But my little sister and I were told she was our mother despite the evidence of our eyes and ears. And soon we were packed and my father was driving us to Stamford, TX, where we picked up our equally unsuspecting little brothers who had concluded we were all dead. They were very uncertain about this resurrection.

My brother, Charles wrote about this incident:

I remember the long drive from Sherman to Stamford. The night before, out of the blue, Uncle Coleman had said to Bill and me, "Guess where we're going tomorrow?" We guessed, "Fishing?" And he said, "No, we're going to see your parents and your brother and sister!" I remember the long drive through Texas because I had thought our family was dead and gone, and all the way to Stamford I wondered with considerable trepidation whether you were all ghosts. Would I be able to see you? Would I be able to see through you? How scary would you be? Would you do whatever ghosts do to people who are still alive - would you kill us? We arrived in Stamford (I have the photos to prove it), said a mournful goodbye to Coleman and Lois, and looked around at everyone. I still wasn't sure you weren't all ghosts, because I knew that ghosts could trick people, and everyone was acting strange. To me, Mother didn't seem any stranger than anyone else there. The whole situation was awkward. But in the middle of it all, someone gave Bill a cap pistol and holster and gave me a teddy bear. From then on, I focused on the bear. I knew it was friendly. I could tell by the way it smiled at me.

It didn't matter. My brothers were also told that the woman the asylum sent back was our mother, and soon all six of us were on our way to Clovis, NM.

Why? My father had an explanation. God had called my father to be the pastor at the First Baptist Church there, and that church had a house waiting for us, a house plenty big enough for six normal people in a normal family, but cramped for six strangers trying to find their way into family-ness.

We were not a family made in Heaven, but there we were.

Connections:

more connections: