In Tale 1 two weeks ago, I wrote about a “Forbidden House,” and now in Tale 3, I write about a “Forbidden Room.” These are some of the childhood incidents that were the beginning of my writer’s life. There were many prohibitions in place during that time! Namely, almost everything.
In “Tale 3. Forbidden Room,” the room was a tiny garage storeroom. It contained glass bottles of soda (known as “pop” in Kansas) to fill the water cooler in the grocery store—also cans of oil for cars at the gasoline pumps. I was to never enter the room because of all the dangerous objects for a child. Tools like a vice, saw, hammer, nails, a can of orangey-red high-gloss enamel paint, and paint thinner were on the worktable. There were also boards. It had decades’ worth of dust mixed with the oil used for the wooden floorboards.
I was a feminine little girl who played with many dolls and baked many mud pies. However, that didn’t stop me from boyish activities, such as building a birdhouse from old boards and transforming a kitten and my dump truck into a covered wagon and horse. Both activities caused me physical grief. Iron filings had to be dug out of my eye by a doctor and deep scratches on my hands and wrists from rescuing the kitten stuck in a cast-iron fence.
I was not keen on my grandmother finding out about my clandestine activities, so I coerced my grandpa into running interference for me. She delivered only a mild spanking. Given my physical condition, the spanking was a formality.
Following is a poem about this incident from my song cycle, Prairie Girl.
II. Forbidden Room
A scrap of wood, some old red paint.
Makings of a fine birdhouse.
Earning “The Grandma Seal of Disapproval!”
In the dark, grime-encrusted land of boy-dom,
the broken-toothed hag of a saw buckles.
Eight years of might sweats over callous wood.
Vise, wood, saw
Crash through to Kingdom Come.
Crossly dragging his leg,
cane in hand, white head shaking,
Gramps sighs wearily at my birdhouse fantasy.
Watery eyes gaze at lost hope.
Pounding harder! Nails bending!
“Damn!” he cries. Finger exchanged for nail.
By alchemy, kerosene, and rust-filled sludge
turn into red-orange smelly drips.
Masterpiece completed.
Misshapen, malodorous, streaked.
Like my boydom, imperfect.
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