Intro
These are the things that always were: Mama, Daddy, my big brother Danny, my little sister Renee. Mama said I was born in St. Charles, Missouri. She said we moved to Yakima when I was one year old, but Yakima was all I remembered. Yakima was part of the things that always were.
I remembered my baby brother Sammy coming home from the hospital with Mama, me sitting way back on the couch when Mama laid Sammy in my lap. But now it seemed there never was a time without Sammy. Sammy was one of the things that always were.
The photo album held a picture of a small house on a dirt plot, and written on the back, “Danny and Annie, St. Charles, 1952.” Danny stands beside me as I crawl on the dirt, and Mama sits on the porch steps. But I only knew the white house in Yakima. At the corner lot on the other side of the street was the green two-story house and the great big tree that grew up past the second story. This tree was the perfect climbing tree because its branches started low enough to the ground so I could reach my arms around the lowest branch and pull myself up into the first fork of its trunk. At least I could when I was five and allowed to cross the street.
One day I climbed that tree so high. I put my arms around the low branch, lifted my legs and wrapped them around the branch, pulled myself over onto the top, scraping my legs and the undersides of my arms a little on the bark. The tree trunk, so sturdy where I leaned my back when I rested, was part of the things that always were. I stood up wrapping my arms around the tree trunk, then reached up for another branch. I stepped on a knob of the tree, then another branch. The branches were closer together towards the top but some of them were not so strong so I just rested my foot on the part right next to the trunk to keep my foot from slipping and used my hands to pull myself up.
Danny came into the corner lot. I watched him from the high branches. He walked from the sidewalk, over the tiny hill and under my tree, then started over to the sawed off tree trunk. The top of Danny's head was round and smooth, fuzzy crew cut, and his T-shirt was a patch of white. Danny stopped at the tree trunk and turned slowly around, all the way around, looking.
“Annie,” he yelled.
"Danny, " I called, "Danny, I'm up here.” I wanted him to see me so far up.
Danny walked back under the big tree and tilted his chin up, looked at the lower branches, tilted more to see higher up, still not high enough. Danny's eyes opened wider when he finally looked up high enough to see me, but he just said, "Mama wants us home for lunch now."
I looked down, and it was so far. I couldn't see the next place to put my foot. I said, "I don't remember how to get down."
"Mama wants us now." Danny tipped his head back so his face was almost flat on top of his white T-shirt and walked around the tree. "Ok," he said, "around the trunk, just a little to the right, move your right toe down there."
Grasping the trunk tightly, I moved my right foot from the safe branch and stretched it out to the right, feeling with my toe.
Danny said, "Down just a little. Okay, just a little further down."
My toe found the knob.
"Ok," Danny said. "Move your arm down to the branch on your left."
I did it.
"Now you can reach the next branch with your left foot."
In the middle of moving to find the branch I remembered how to get down the tree, at least my arms and legs remembered.
Danny said, "Okay, .."
I said, "I can do it now."
Danny said, "Just step.."
I said, "I know how."
When we got home Mama asked what took us so long and Danny told her. Mama said I wasn't allowed to climb that tree anymore.
But I kept right on climbing that tree.
Danny never told.
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These are the things that always were: Mama, Daddy, Danny, Renee, Sammy, Yakima, the white house, the big tree on the corner lot, my body remembering how to climb down the big tree and Danny never telling.
The white house was part of the things that always were, and the new kitchen that Daddy built. Daddy added the new kitchen and a bedroom to the white house. Then you could run from the kitchen, to the dining room which used to be the kitchen, to the living room, to the hall, past two of the three bedrooms, to the bathroom, then out the new bathroom door to the kitchen again. We didn't do that when Mama was there. Just when Daddy was alone with us, like one evening while Mama worked the evening shift at a grocery store in Walla Walla. Daddy cooked us hamburgers and they smelled so good and I was so hungry, waiting for Daddy's hamburgers. Danny and I chased through the house, around and around again. Danny had left his bow from his bow and arrow set, wedged between the bathtub and the toilet, so every time on my way around I jumped over the bow. Except one time I forgot to jump, tripped on the bow, fell forward and hit my chin on the bathtub.
We were out of big Band-Aids, so Daddy put little ones on my chin, the blood seeping out from the little Band-Aids, so Daddy put more little Band-Aids on my chin, about 10 or 15 little Band-Aids. All the little Band-Aids on my chin moving up and down while I ate the hamburger that Daddy made that tasted so good.
Then Mama came home and yelled at Daddy and took me to the emergency room at the hospital.
These are the things that always were: Mama, Daddy, Danny, Renee, Sammy, Yakima, the white house, the big tree on the corner lot, running through the house when Mama wasn't there and Daddy putting all the little Band-Aids on my chin and Mama yelling at Daddy about all the little Band-Aids.
The white picket fence, the new kitchen that Daddy built, the back porch and the swing set and slide and sandbox that Daddy made, and how we all rode out to the sand works to pick up the sand to pour in the sandbox, in the black car with the running board, the black car that was part of the things that always were.
The sand in the sandbox was like the sand on the beach in the summer where we went for vacation. Danny and I built sandcastles and tunnels. The wet sand clung to our arms, got under our fingernails.
You have to stick in your arm as far as you can to make a proper tunnel, and the other person digs from the other side 'til that moment when you break through, a finger hole first, then, if you stretch as far as you can, and he stretches, you can clasp each other's hand. My hand. Danny's hand. The tunnel is finished then, or it collapses.
These are the things that always were: Mama, Daddy, Danny, Renee, Sammy, Yakima, the white house, the big tree on the corner lot, Mama yelling at Daddy, the black car with the running board, the sand, Danny's hand, my hand.