The were Beans were Brown. The Cockroach was Brown.
I was thinking about the bravest thing I ever did when I was a kid.
It got me to wondering about you guys. Every single one of us has a
"bravest thing I ever did when I was a kid" true story. I've decided to
put together a book of somewhere between ten and thirty true stories
about our bravest childhood moments. Please, if you've got a story to
share, leave it in the comments section or drop me an email.
I'll start with my own bravest childhood moment. It may seem like
nothing to adults, but I'm as proud of it as I am of any thing I've
ever done. I had to think fast and break my own rules and my mothers in order to do the right thing. That's scary. I did it anyways. To me, that's brave. :) We've all got that bravest moment in our childhoods. I think it's good to take them out, dust them off and remember that sometimes even we, ourselves, are pretty wonderful. Here's mine.
My father was a master mechanic, electrician, heavy equipment operator
and a periodic alcoholic. He'd go on the wagon and stay for a year, two
or three, then fall off hard, drink up every penny we had, get thrown
in jail, get the car impounded, lose his job and be gone for weeks.
My mother weighed over 400 pounds. It prevented and or limited so many of her healthy pleasures in life, there wasn't much left besides food, family and TV. Food was
especially important to her so our cupboards were always full.
But when I was eleven, Daddy fell off the wagon even harder than usual. Food was being
eaten daily, but none was being bought. Finally we got down to our last pound of dry pinto beans. My mother called us into the living room
to give us our instructions.
"Today, this day, more important than any
other
day in our lives - we must not let the beans scorch
or stub a toe while adding the salt."
We were to
check them every ten minutes like clockwork. If we ruined the
beans we would have NOTHING to eat and that had never happened in our
lives.
My older sister, Kaye, 12, put the beans on with some bacon grease and the last little piece of onion we had. There were three kids and we took turns checking on the beans. After they'd cooked long enough to soften, my mother told me to add some salt. I opened the cabinet directly above the beans boiling gently on the stove to get the salt.
A cockroach was on the inside of the door of the cabinet and it fell neatly into the center of the gently boiling beans. They were brown beans. The cockroach was brown.
I thought I saw it two different times. I held my breath as I dug frantically through the boiling beans searching for the roach. If I could only find it, no one need know and we would have food to eat. But the beans were brown. The cockroach was brown.
"Lollie?"
"Yeah, Mama?"
"What are you doing in there?"
I grabbed the salt and quickly added about a tablespoon to the boiling beans. "Just adding the salt like you said."
"What's taking you so long?"
"Oh nuthin." This was a huge lie and I was not a liar. But I was shuffling through my mind trying to decide what to do. I knew for a fact that by my mother's rules I should tell her. Hells bells, by MY rules, I should have told her. I also knew if I told her it would devastate her and she might have us throw the beans out. We might very well go hungry for the first time in our lives. Never mind the trouble I'd be in. It didn't matter it wasn't my fault. My mother's negative emotions had been ramped up for weeks. This was no time to expect her to be understanding.
"I'm getting some water, you want some?"
"No. Just hurry up and get back in here. I need you to turn the channel on the TV."
"Okay." I had made my decision. I wouldn't tell her or the other kids about the cockroach. Instead we'd have a cockroach lottery. One of us would bite into a cockroach that night. I felt like no matter who got it, it was a small price to pay for all of us to be able to eat. I wondered if anyone had ever had a cockroach lottery before and kept that big a secret all day. I wasn't even sure I could do it. I just knew I had to try.
Supper was a matter of profound anticipation. It was the first secret I kept entirely to myself in my life. I was an obedient kid. It was rare for me to break my mother's rules, even more rare for me to break my own.
Every bite each one of us took, had the tension of opening another briefcase on 'Deal or No Deal.' I'd get a spoonful of beans, look for the cockroach, seeing no legs I'd take a bite and while chewing, would look around the room at my mother, brother and sister. I was waiting to see that look on the face of the one who got it. I'd never tasted a cockroach, but I figured they probably tasted pretty horrible.
Come to find out, after a roach has been cooked with beans for over an hour, you can't see their legs. But my eyes water up with the memory I can never erase, the moment I bit into the belly of the cockroach. Even though seasoned perfectly with bacon grease, salt and pepper, come to find out, a cockroach tastes every bit as bad as you might expect.
The taste though pales in comparison to the feeling of the resistent surface belly (skin? I don't think that's the correct term, but whatever) and into the soft squish of it's insides.... IT WAS HORRIBLE!!
It was one of the three most horrible moments in my childhood. And it was about to get just a little worse.
"Lollie? What's the matter with you, why do you have that look on your face? "
And the girl who was not a liar, chewed quickly, swallowed, took a big drink and said "What look? I don't know. I'm fine."
And really I was fine. It was a horrible couple of moments, but Momma didn't find out, which means she didn't have a screaming, crying fit and have us throw supper out. And really it was the fairest thing. I was the one who opened the cabinet door. I never told them about it until I was an adult. But I was always proud of it, just the same. It was a complex dilemma and I still believe I did the right thing for all of us. I also finished the beans in my bowl. I had to, to get the taste of that cockroach out of my mouth.
It seems so small now. But at the time it was huge. So again I ask you, "what's the bravest thing you did when you were a kid?" I guarantee you, we've all got one.
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