The Birthday Gift

It wasn’t supposed to end this way. It wasn’t supposed to start this way either…

Born and raised in the Carolina backwoods county of Oconee, my family lived crammed in a clapboard shanty for most of my childhood. Six kids, one bathroom, and a septic system that had a propensity for flooding the side yard with shit. We were the poorest people I knew.

Daddy would sit up all night with the .22 rifle to pop off the rats that ran freely through the walls. He saved the shotgun for killing our yearly Thanksgiving turkey. We thanked God when his aim was true. Otherwise, we had to bite careful or we’d chomp down on a missed pellet. Nothing says thankful like leaving the table with no cracked teeth.

Mama patched our clothes, patched our blankets, and patched our lives together with whatever bits and pieces she could find. We were homeschooled, but many days she would lock us out of the house while she yammered on the phone for hours at a time to her church friends about who was doing what.

We children lived and breathed in the fresh air of wide-open pastures and densely thicketed woods. Wild and free, we built huts, foraged berries, and went home at the end of the day with dirty hands and skinned knees and big dreams for tomorrow. This was our life, and we were happy.

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All I wanted for my birthday was a pair of soft pink slippers with a satin bow. My girlish heart yearned for the soft frills of lace and ribbon instead of the heavy weight of hand-me-down black oxfords with thick rubber soles. I dropped hint after hint, and when that didn’t seem to be working, I outright begged and pleaded.

When I woke up on the morning of my eighth birthday, I could see my breath puff up in the air. All four of us girls shared a bed on the floor with a heavy patchwork quilt that never quite kept us all warm in the unheated bedroom. I jumped up and ran shivering in my threadbare nightgown to the living room where our wood stove radiated heat to the room. Us kids always fought for the best seat. The old wooden rocking chair right beside the stove was prime real estate, and the first one up usually claimed it.

I didn’t care about the rocking chair today. I was eight, and I was dead certain there would be a pair of pink slippers with my name on it at the dinner table that night. I ate my bowl of oatmeal, dressed in my heavy denim jumper and warm turtleneck, and prayed to God that he would make the day fly by.

That night after a rare meal of fried chicken (we got one leg or thigh each), I looked expectantly at my parents. My heart sank as they glanced carefully at each other, unspoken words hanging in the air between them.

Mama left the table and came back with a small rectangular package wrapped in old newspaper and sealed with masking tape. I knew immediately there were no slippers, but I kept a smile pasted on my face even while my eyes turned shiny with unshed tears. I knew before I opened it that there was no money spent on this gift. It was a book, or calendar, or some other handout, likely given to my dad by his boss, or passed on to my mom at the bank or some other business.

I carefully unwrapped the gift, mindful that I didn’t want a scolding for tearing the newspaper which would be re-used another time, for another gift, for another child. I slowly pulled out a small black book filled with lined pages. It was smooth to the touch, and as I opened it, I caught a slight waft of crisp, clean, new paper. I rubbed the cover lightly, intrigued in spite of my disappointment. What made the book so soft and leather-like? I thanked my parents and took the book to my room, tucked it away in my drawer, and cried myself to sleep that night.

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Life goes on. Little disappointments gather and breed bigger and better disappointments. Daddy left Mama, and I got a job scrubbing pots and pans at a little bakery up the road. I worked from 6am to 3pm for two dollars an hour. My arms would be beet red from the scalding water, and I’d come home exhausted from bending over the steaming heat of the large sink for hours on end.

I wanted to cry, but crying didn’t help. I wanted to run, but there was no where to run to. And so I began to write. I pulled that little black book out from the back of my drawer and sharpened an old square carpentry pencil I found in the attic, and I poured my anger and hatred and fear and longing and hope out onto those crisp, clean white pages.

I woke up before dawn and scribbled. I stayed up late and scrawled. I let all the emotions, all the pain, and all the joy of my life seep into the pages. It wasn’t much, but nobody needs much. It was enough, and that’s all we ever need, is enough.

When my sister left her job working for a doctor and his wife, I took over the role as housekeeper. The wife kept mostly to her bed, popping Ambien and reading trashy novels. But she was fascinated by my home life, and she grilled me often about my education, or lack thereof. She asked if I knew how to write an essay. I said I wasn’t sure, but I could try.

I wrote her a story about the time we tried to catch a mouse from under the house by hanging a little ball of cheese by a thread through a hole in the floor. After she read it, she looked at me for a long while. Then she handed the story back to me and asked if I had any more. I brought her the little book and left it with her. I thought no more of it.

Several weeks went by, until one morning I pull up to the house, and there was a shiny black car sitting in the drive. Two men in classy suits were sitting on our brown sofa with the wooden frame, and they both stood up when I walked in. They asked me my name, and then asked me if I had any more stories. They told me they were from a publishing company owned by a friend of the doctor I was cleaning house for.

They wanted to buy my stories. They wanted to publish a book with my stories. To this day, I’m still not sure what they saw in the rough sketches of my upbringing. But they saw something. And after the book was published, the producers came knocking. They offered me twenty thousand dollars for the rights. I signed the dotted line. I was fifteen. I deposited the check that would change my life forever.

The first thing I bought was a pair of soft pink slippers with a pink satin bow.