RUNNING

A young girl dealing with alcoholism in her family.

 

           ...."If that screen door slams one more time, I'll!"....but Merlyn was out the door, and even though she hesitated, once out of the house, she didn't have to worry about what her mother would or wouldn't do.

She took off running the two blocks down the brick alley to Bowers Market where she knew she would be welcomed with a smile.

It was Tuesday and her mother would be ironing the laundry she had washed and hung to dry the day before. While she ironed, she would listen to her station WBVP talk shows on the radio that sat on the kitchen shelf and sip from the quart of Iron City that sat on the kitchen sink beside the ironing board.

Little sister Glory was visiting their mom's sister Dorothy for a play day with their cousin Carol, so, with that concern gone from her mind, Merlyn felt safe in pursuing her own day, most of which would be away from home until 5 p.m. when her dad arrived home from work.

Just knowing he would always be there was her mainstay. She would come through the door and kiss him on the back of his head, he'd be in his overstuffed rocking chair reading the evening paper and always act surprised, and then she'd run into the kitchen, take silverware from the drawer and place a fork on the left and a knife and spoon on the right of the dinner plates her mom had already set. Supper wplaced it over the iron shaped mark ould already be bubbling away on the stove for their regular 5:30 p.m. meal. It was what she could count on.

Two of the many jobs Merlyn's mother had taught her were how to set a proper table and how to iron a man's shirt in the correct manner AND ironing had become one of Merlyn's favorite chores until the day her mom had had too much Iron City, misread her daughter's use of a paring knife and laid the hot iron on Merlyn's outstretched arm when she was reaching for an apple.

As soon as she had realized what she had done, her mom ran for the kitchen sink, wrapped a washcloth around icecubes and placed it on the iron shaped mark that was getting pinker by the moment.

"Oh, Merlyn, I'm so sorry!" she kept repeating while Merlyn kept sucking her breath in and peeking under the cloth to survey the damage.

From that point on, although Merlyn couldn't control her mother's actions, she made a conscious decision to control the amount of time she spent wih her.

And so, she began her effort to fill her time each day until she knew her father would be home and she and her little sister would be safe. Not safe from her mom because her mom loved her family and her family loved her, but from the person she became when the Iron city bottle was emptied, or in later years, the burgundy always hidden under the sink among the detergents, or finally, the stronger stuff, the Imperial whiskey that her mom had said had fueled some of her best paintings.

"Give me a bottle, my paints and leave me to it and I'll give you a masterpiece," she remembered her mom saying, and always wondered if she had said those words to anybody else and if she had, what had been their reply.