D-a-a-a-dy! Daddy, come see the awful dirty ring!
My wide-mouthed holler, shrill with glee, rings out loudly. A giggle sits in my throat as I anticipate my fathers’ approving grin. If my hands were not already busy clutching the bath towel wrapped around my small, almost five-year-old body, they would surely be clapping with excitement. This was all about a shared joke and well-rehearsed bit of bedtime silliness.
I am standing in our pale pink enamel bathtub filled with water reaching somewhere below my grazed knees. My neck and ankles –magnets for dirt – are still a mottled bright red from the rough scrub of Mom’s sudsy washcloth. The water I am standing in is grey and dotted with the odd floating soap bubble. All around the inside of the tub and just above the waterline there is a perfect ring of black dirt and sticky soap scum. This is the “awful dirty ring” the likes of which my despairing Mom bends to scour after most of my cleanups. I am betting that to Dad this one will be a prizewinner. Quite possibly my most awful and dirtiest ring yet.
As we hear footsteps approaching across the kitchen floor Mom pulls back the vinyl accordion door and exits the bathroom to look back from the doorway. There is not enough room for two adult bodies in between the toilet, small sink and tub. Poking his head through the door Dad sits down on the closed cover of the commode pulling his knees up tight and barely squeezing his shins in against the low edge of the tub.
Carefully inspecting the scene from one end of the tub to the other, Dad shakes his head slowly from side to side with the raised eyebrows and wide eyes of exaggerated disbelief.
Geez, Jo, is this really all yours?
Yes, it is Dad. All mine.
I emphasize the truth of my words with a firm up and down nod of my head. The glow of accomplishment wells up from my belly even if all three of us know there is a playful tease underway. Teasing was always my father’s way of showing fondness.
But I am so much bigger than you and my bathwater is never this black. How in the world does a little girl like you manage to get so dirty?
We played hard, as hard as we could, today. Out back. In the scrub. Me and Jimmy.
Well, that’s good, Jo, but I think you and I need to have a talk about that.
Taken by surprise my eyes lift to meet his, my lower lip drops open. This is an unexpected turn in our bath-time banter.
Yup, you get into your pj’s and then we’ll have ourselves a talk.
I glance towards Mom but her face is set and giving nothing away. That tells me there is indeed something she knows about “the talk” but isn’t letting on. With the disappearance of adult smiles our lighthearted bubble is punctured and a sombreness enters the room. Suddenly, my wrinkled fingers and toes are chilled, and I am ready to get out of my damp towel and the cooling mire.
Once changed into my nightie and having winced through Mom’s struggle to comb through the knots and tangles of my wet blond hair, I climb into my chair at the kitchen table. It is a plywood sawhorse table made by my father to fit into the tight corner inside our back door. Dad is already seated with two small bowls both containing blackstrap molasses and crumbled saltine crackers. Picking up my spoon, an image of the overturned barrels of creosote under the raised shed in the trainyard next door flits across my mind. The railway crossties walked so often by Jimmy and I were all darkened by the same smoky concoction. I am thinking if they were spilled side by side, the molasses and the tar would look exactly alike. I make a mental note to tell Jimmy that we could pretend those barrels we discovered were spilled taffy in our next make believe. I am already sifting through possible scripts, maybe they could be the spilled barrels of a cookie factory? a sticky molasses trap for catching an elephant? when Dad interrupts.
I heard from Uncle Stuart that you and Jimmy were down at the loading docks today.
My Dad’s stern voice jerks me back to our kitchen. I had put getting caught at the factory earlier in the day out of my mind. It seemed so long ago. Now I recalled an image of my usually gentle Uncle Stuart waving his arms and shouting harshly at Jimmy and I to go home. Terrified, we ran as fast as our short legs could carry us, shortcutting across several sets of railway tracks to jump the wide ditch and fall panting on the mowed grass of our front lawn.
You know that you are not allowed to go near the shop. The drivers of those big trucks can’t always see you. It’s dangerous being around the machinery down there and I don’t like hearing from Uncle Stuart that he had to chase you home. What in the world are you doing down there anyway?
Picking up scrap, I whispered. Jimmy liked to use the remnants from the rubber products of the Goodrich plant as a unique addition to his sandbox tunnels and roadways. To me, the junk had no value other than as an excuse for some adventuring with my playmate. I didn’t even have a sandbox.
Well, no more. You and Jimmy have plenty of place to play this side of the tracks. You’ve got a back field to run around in. That scrub is all yours. Don’t let me hear again that you’ve been down to the shop. Do you understand me?
Yes, I squeezed out, tense. By the time I was five I had learned there are times when few words and a small voice were called for. Even the slightest hint of back talk was best buried deep.
With the clink of spoons rattling in our bowls, the talk ended. I couldn’t believe my good luck. No spanking, no threat of the rod unspared. No real sting of punishment at all. The boundaries my father set were simple and clear using markers familiar to my five-year-old map of the universe. There would be no more car weather-stripping plugs or bits and pieces of rubber tires but, much more importantly, I had been formally handed the keys to a paradise still new to my explorations. To the pulsing brush and brook that were a delight for every one of my wide-awake senses. To the dirt that already oozed from my pores. To a first friendship that was still new and enormously dear to me.
And so, I may not have stood any higher than three feet and some inches but I already knew about the happiness lodged in the meeting of what was required and what was desired – in the harmony between a father’s law and the longing of a child’s heart.
‘Night, Dad, I murmured distractedly as I stood and used both hands to casually maneuver my chair into a position that would hide the now sticky linoleum at my feet.
I crawled up the stairs leading to the steeply slanted walls of our second floor. Wearily I mumbled my “now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep” and burrowed into the shallow indent on my side of the mattress I shared with my older sister. As always Mom left the bedroom door open “just a crack” to allow for a thin sliver of light from the hallway while I, surrendering to the warm dark, slipped readily into the deepest of deep sleeps.
More dirt tomorrow.
(Joanne)