I know I turned seven on Plum Street; I remember it because I got the chickenpox that winter, sometime between my birthday and Christmas. By then my mother had a job as a waitress at a restaurant called White Pines in the next town over. She had to be there at six every morning, so she’d wake Matthew and I up in the pitch dark, dress us, bundle us into sleeping bags, and drive us fifteen minutes outside of town to my grandparents’ house.
At one point in time, my father’s mother babysat all her grandkids in this manner. At five o’clock she’d get out of bed and move to one of the couches in the living room, and at five-thirty we’d start to arrive: Derek and Lacey, Brittany and Trisha, me and Matthew, RJ and Dustin, my second cousins Nathan and Stephen, and Heather, the little girl from next door. When her younger kids started having babies, she took them, too: Alyssa, Julina, and Austin, Jazmine and Jacob, Taylin. If I had to guess, she’s babysitting the greats now. My Memaw never worked outside the home as far as I can remember: her job was raising babies and farm animals. I’ll never know whether or not she minded, because I’ll never have the guts to ask. But she worked hard, that’s for sure.
She’d bed us all down as soon as we came in and make us keep quiet till sunup. Then she’d get up and make us all breakfast. Even with all those kids the woman took orders, like she was a short-order cook at a restaurant. Oatmeal, rice pudding, cinnamon-sugar toast, eggs. She drew the line at bacon and sausage – it took too long to cook with all of us clamoring around the kitchen bickering with each other and griping about being hungry.
After breakfast, she’d go out to feed the chickens and slop the hogs while we watched cartoons. She only got one channel back then that carried morning cartoons, so there was no fighting over what we were watching. It was Gargoyles and Duck Tales, period. We used to take turns getting up to thump on the TV set and adjust the rabbit ears when the picture went out.
When it came time, she’d get us school-aged kids all bundled up and send us down the driveway to the bus stop in twos: we had to hold hands so no one would straggle and get left behind. In the winter, you could see your breath in the air. We’d shuffle in little circles and beat our hands together inside our gloves to keep warm while we waited.
One morning, the ritual proceeded as usual: tumble out of bed, dress in the dark, get zipped up in your bag and carried to the car, the ride to Memaw’s, our orders to lie down and go back to sleep or at least rest our eyes. Sometimes, if I promised to be extra, extra quiet, I could get out of the resting-lying-down part. My grandmother snored like a pack of chainsaws, and it drove me nuts. I have always hated repetitive noises. Dripping faucet? Ticking clock? I won’t sleep. I’ll toss and turn and grit my teeth. Snoring? Same. If I ever marry someone who snores, we’ll have to sleep in separate rooms or I’ll go absolutely frothing mad and commit murder by suffocation just to get them to shut up. I used to make so much noise lying there on the extra couch just trying to keep from throwing something across the room to the noisy blanket-lump on the other side that Memaw would finally mumble, “Fine, child. Just don’t wake anybody else up.”
I wouldn’t. In all fairness, I was very quiet. I’d cross to the corner of the room where my grandfather had his study and stare raptly at the bookshelf.
I have always loved to read. At seven I was reading at a third-grade level, and for the rest of my school career I was at least two grades ahead in reading comprehension. I couldn’t add to save my life, but I could read like a child genius. I loved my grandfather’s books: the dusty, moldy smell of them, the tattered covers of cloth and cardboard, the titles embossed in gold on the spines: Tarzan of the Apes, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island. These, of course, were too much for me at seven, but I’d start reading them soon enough. My favorite was Swiss Family Robinson. I’d read it three times by the time I was twelve.
The books I read when I was six and seven and eight were actually a set of children’s encyclopedias that had been published in the late 60s or early 70s. They had hard yellow covers, and the pictures were faded. Some of the pages were colored on, presumably by my Dad and his brothers and sisters before me. I loved them. I could never decide on just one: I always picked out two or three. I’d make a beeline for the chair under the reading lamp with my chin on top of the stack so nothing would fall, and spread them out across the table and my lap so I could open all of them at once. I didn’t want to miss anything. I pored over those books like they contained all the knowledge in the world.
Often, I brought my own books. I usually carried books everywhere I went. I went through a kick where all I wanted to read were the Beezus and Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. On the morning the mysterious itch started along my arms and on the back of my neck, I was reading about the tragic death of Beezus and Ramona’s cat – called Picky-Picky – for about the three thousandth time.
I thought it was my sweater at first. I hated that sweater: it was dark green and made of wool and it prickled. I scratched and kept reading. Then the itch spread. I began to squirm, sliding my shoulders against the rough upholstery of the chair to scratch them. I scratched my belly through the sweater. Then I lifted up the sweater and saw all the red bumps. Uh-oh.
“Um, Memaw?”
My grandmother choked on a snore. “What?!”
“I’m itchy.”
“Well, scratch then.” She pulled the blanket up over her head.
“I did. I’m still itchy.”
“Well, scratch some more.”
“I did. I’ve been scratching forever. And I have spots.”
There was a pause. Then my grandmother sighed, kicked off the blanket, and reached for her glasses.
“Let me see.” She shuffled across the room in her slippers and squinted at my belly as her eyes adjusted to the light. She stood there looking for a moment. Then she said, “Where else does it itch?”
“On my back. And on my arms. And everywhere.”
I really was tormented by then. I had started to pout. I could barely sit still, I was itching so bad. Memaw pushed up my sleeves and inspected my arms. She had me turn around so she could lift up my sweater and look at my back.
“Chickenpox.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s really itchy, is what. Don’t worry, everybody gets it sometime. Sit right there. Stop scratching.” She went off to the bathroom to get the calamine lotion.
Of course, having the chickenpox was a thoroughly miserable experience. By the end of that first day, I had oven mitts taped to my hands because I just couldn’t resist digging my nails into those torturous spots no matter how many times I was told to rub, not scratch. I got the pox like a plague: in my hairline, on my tongue, between my toes, on my eyelids. I had so many spots, my spots had spots. It was awful – but this most unpleasant childhood illness actually led to one of the best days of my young life.
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