Mamma Lied

First, let me say I never remember a time when I didn’t appreciate girls. No matter what they say on television, I have a hard time believing that little boys don’t like girls. I always liked 'em. I’m sorry if this sounds bad, but women make the world go round and I like the world round.

In the summer of 1966, I was 6 years old, and we lived in Milledgeville. I was in love with the girl next door. I still think of you, Margaret, and I always will.

At my house, I’ve always done the cooking. I think it started that summer. I decided to cook hot dogs for the girls of the neighborhood. So I liberated some hot dogs from their captivity and stole a few matches. I then rounded up a handful of girls and headed out into the woods. Even then I was trying to use cooking for evil. It set an unhealthy precedent.

We moved up into the woods and found a little spot that wasn’t visible to any houses. This was the first time I ever started a fire. I pushed a bunch of dried leaves into a pile in the middle of a bunch of dried leaves and struck a match.

I remember very distinctly that I didn’t know how to start a fire. I remember being scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it, and I had an audience. That’s another one of God’s lessons, or little cruelties, perhaps. If you need to start a fire to keep from freezing and your life depends on it, it can be terribly hard. If you don’t want to start one. Well, it’ll just jump up, run around the block a few times and then burn like it’s in Israel. I only had to consider for a moment that I might not get it started, because I swear before the match hit the leaves it took off.

This was my first fire, my first attempt at cooking, but it was also my first chance to try out my dancing skills. I danced and stomped at the fire, doing about as good as any clogger I’ve seen since. The girls took off headed to get help instead of helping. I don’t think it would’ve mattered much, I’d never have put it out anyway. It was going to town in a fast car, and I wasn’t driving. I stayed with it as long as I had the nerve and then lit out for the house.

I slipped through the woods, carefully avoiding my mother and other women as they made their way to the fire. It now burned out of control. I went straight to my mother’s room, the only one with a lock on the door and locked myself in. There was no fire department to call back then, and all the men were gone to work. So, as I cowered in her room, she and the other women of the neighborhood fought the fire in the heat of the summer trying to save one third of Baldwin County.

She and two of the other women were pregnant. It took them more than two hours to get it under control and then to put it out. I’d sat in her room shaking the whole time. My little sister kept coming and sitting outside the door giving me progress reports. I had it in my mind that this bedroom would be my home for the rest of my life.

Soon after it was out, my mother was at the door demanding that I open it.

I was too stupid to start a fire, but smart enough to keep one from spontaneously combusting on my behind. She then tried to sweet talk me. She had lost her mind, or thought I had lost mine. Changing again, she convinced my sister that she wasn’t going to beat me. Moving away, she left my 4-year-old sister to break me. My sister believed she wasn’t going to beat me and soon I believed it, too. I opened the door and walked into the living room sheepishly.

She stood there covered in soot, her face blackened and sweaty. She smelled strongly of smoke. She then proceeded to start a fire on my back side with the same amount of enthusiasm she had recently shown putting out the other one. I’ll never forget how clammy she felt as she swung blindly, hitting anything too stupid to get out of the way. And that would include me. At that moment, the smell of smoke was being firmly linked to stupidity.

I learned several lessons that day. God doesn’t care how cold you are, you’ll work for a fire if you need one. God will teach you some big lessons with a little match, a few leaves and some stolen hot dogs. Oh yeah, and the biggest one, a mamma will tell a lie in a skinny minute and you best remember it.