Fiction
My Mother Pinchy
Learning the facts of life
I was eight years old when I found out the person I thought was my mother was not really my mother. Since I could talk, I’d been calling her Pinchy, like everyone else in my extended family but I thought she had given birth to me. I didn’t understand how getting babies worked at eight. Neighbor ladies had babies after an extended period of growing them in their stomachs. I surmised this was how I came into being. Riding around in Pinchy’s hard, flat stomach. And for sure I didn’t really look at the structure of other families. I thought we were as normal as everyone else even though I knew my Daddy and Pinchy were siblings.
Before I started school, my Granny Jeanne lived with us. She had been married to my Granddaddy Flint, for whom I was named. Flint was killed in an accident when he was out fishing on Big. G.’s boat. Pinchy and Darwin were on board and were saved by the Coast Guard. Big G., my Grandaddy Flint's best friend, was found in the water holding onto a floating fish cooler a day later. Some fishermen pulled him onboard their boat and took him back to shore.
The same week I started kindergarten, Granny Jeanne married Big G. She moved out with the four of my Uncles still young enough to be in school and still in need of mothering. My Daddy (Darwin Waller), Pinchy, and my…
