Chapter One: The Orchard, The Yellow House, and a Farm
As a child, a teacher asked our class to create a family tree — I don’t remember what grade or which teacher, only that it did not end as the teacher probably expected.
In reality, my family tree looked more like an orchard.
In fact, I think the teacher took pity on me and let me color instead of completing the assignment. I had the first clue that my family might be untraditional.
The makeup of my family has, like many, changed over the years. We had marriage, divorce. And then remarriage. Then divorce. Remarriage again. Another divorce. Step-siblings, some of consequence, came and went. Both of my parents married four times, each for different reasons. I have no “full” brothers or sisters, only half-sisters and half-brothers. Like most siblings, we cared less about that and more about who appeared to be getting more cereal in their bowl or who would get to ride in the coveted front seat of the 1971 Ford LTD that dominated our driveway.
My relationships with my siblings depended mostly upon who lived in the house with me and the age gap between us. In total, dad fathered five children:
- Robbie (1962)
- Shelly (1966)
- Randy (1968)
- Me (1974)
- Courtney (1985)
My mom birthed three children:
- Roger (1964)
- Karen (1966)
- Me (1974)
Of all six of my siblings, Karen lived with us during my most formative years. That probably explains the quirky nicknames that we still use, texting photos of thrift store finds of things that we had in our house, and the close relationship that we still share. Robbie, Shelly, Randy, and Roger would often appear around holidays and birthdays, but almost always joined us for summer camping trips, at least until they were old enough to make other plans.
My extended family teemed with cousins but, like my siblings, there was enough of an age difference to put them just out of my grasp as playmates. In fact, I broke my arm on Easter, 1982 because I played a serious game of ball tag with my siblings and cousins, even though I had been expressly forbidden. “You’ll hurt yourself!” they cautioned me, the words flying in one ear and out the other so fast that they barely registered. For six weeks the cast served as an itchy reminder that I was too young to fit in with rest of my family.
The Yellow House stood as the backdrop for most of our not-quite-Rockwellian Polaroids. The brightest house on our street, it sat on a corner lot adorned with flower beds of tiger lilies, snowball bushes, and marigolds, with Easter flags planted along a side fence that separated us from Old Lady Reed. The yellow stood in stark contrast to the neighborhood of white clapboard houses and occasional brick home. To me it was just home, dichotomously full of laughter and tears, love and heartbreak, safety and terror.
Probably even more so than The Yellow House, my Uncle Ira and Aunt Shirley’s home was probably where my siblings, cousins and I spent most of our together time. Aside from the Easter when I broke my arm, most of my memories of their house centered on New Year’s celebrations. The adults, and sometimes my cousins Jeff and Rocky, would be seated around their kitchen table, smoke hovering at the ceiling, playing poker. For some unknown reason, I vividly remember Jeff dealing a hand. “Five card stud; one-eyed jacks are wild,” he proclaimed confidently. I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded so cool. Most years, though, Dick Clark and I hung out alone in the living room until midnight.
I don’t know if any of my siblings or cousins know how much I idolized them. Or that years later I would walk down the hall by Mr. Nelson’s classroom, where the senior photos of each graduating student hung in a frame with their classmates, and gaze wistfully up at their faces. On days when school had me roughed up, when I felt inadequate or afraid, I would amble down that hall and stop in front of the graduating classes of 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1986. Knowing that my siblings and cousins had walked the same halls I was trudging somehow gave me comfort.
Life remained, if not idyllic, normal — at least my then-understood normal. I stayed naively unaware that other kids probably didn’t sleep in socks, their tennis shoes next to their bed, listening for the nuance of the door closing. If it slammed, I put my shoes on. If it closed quietly, followed by quiet conversation, I would try to go to sleep. The socks never came off. Even now, on most nights, they still don’t. It’s funny, the things that stick with you.
Any sense of normalcy, though, came to an end when I turned 10 years old. My dad had been having an affair with a teacher at my elementary school. I don’t remember exactly how my mom found out, only that Mom, the teacher, and I shared an awkward early dinner at Kennon’s, a restaurant on the main street in town with dining room booths framed by large picture windows. It must have been a shock for my dad, driving home from work, to see his common law wife, son, and mistress sharing a meal. But probably not as shocking as when he came home from work some evenings later to find that Mom and I had moved all of his belongings one block down to the teacher’s house, piling paper IGA bags of my dad’s flannel and Levis onto her front porch. At age 11, shortly after the arrival of my half-sister Courtney, and without any ownership of the only home I’d known, Mom, Karen, and I vacated The Yellow House. Mom and I moved to the housing projects between the high school and the old (supposedly haunted) Bust mansion. Karen, no longer burdened with fear for mom’s or my safety, moved in with her dad.
Our time in the projects, though brief, was not without fond memories. A few duplexes down, my cousin Jason lived with his family. He and I spent hours with our BB guns, exploring the grounds of the Bust mansion. A few walls still stood, some with staircases attached. When I visited it a few years ago, most remnants of the mansion had disappeared, save some loosely formed rock and concrete that must have been part of a porch.
Mom had begun dating a farmer for several months who lived eight miles outside of Potosi in the community of Ebo. Worried about me living in the projects for too long, or perhaps sensing there was no more of the Bust mansion to safely explore, she married the farmer. We moved to his home that sat on 122 acres of farmland occupied by cattle and, for just one year, pigs. He had a daughter, Beth, who was younger than me by just a few years. For a while, I had great fun. We had a dune buggy to chase wayward cows back into the correct pasture, a grandma who lived two houses down to play rummy with, a creek to play in, and a small country church to attend.
I had no way of knowing just what a formative time in my life this would be. It led me to a lifelong passion for music, a religion that would ultimately lose me, and friendships that still sustain me.
And then in 1987, I turned 13
This essay is one part in a memoir series documenting the loss of my oldest brother to AIDS, the void that only deepened as I recognized I was also gay, and my search to find him through his friends and loved ones who knew him outside of my family. If you’re interested in reading this chronologically, start with “Prologue: Robbed” and then follow the chapters in order.
