LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 6

Just a week after Tammy, Buddy and I moved into the apartment on River Street....after our two week stay with Nick and Helen...on Friday after work I decided to go visit my uncle Lee and his family. What a shock I got! Lee had left his family for a woman he met at work. His wife and kids had been living alone for several weeks. She didn't drive and they lived in the country in Sumpter, several miles from Belleville. It was a two mile trip to the nearest little grocery store. Which didn't do them any good. They had no money. The electric was shut off for non-payment. They were nearly out of coal for their coal cookstove. And Martha had a pot of soup beans on the stove that they had been eating for several days. She kept it hot so it wouldn't spoil.

I could not leave them there, so I helped her pack up their clothes and took them home with me...Aunt Martha and her two children, Toby and Karen. Toby was 13 and Karen was just 6. I lived in a small apartment...one huge studio-style bedroom, living room and kitchen. We were crowded, but we made do. The studio style bedroom had two full beds and a couch that made into a bed. The living room couch also made into a bed. My kids and I slept in one bed, Martha and Karen in one and Toby on the couch. A couple weeks later my brother, Jimmy, also came to stay with us. We still made do.

I worked and Martha stayed home with the kids. Then after a couple of months, Martha started getting help from welfare and she moved into an apartment in the same building. At this time, both Avanelle and Phyllis had apartments in the building, too.

The previous winter Tammy and Buddy had both been in the hospital in Battle Creek with bronchial pneumonia. I was so worried about them getting sick, I kept them inside all winter. That was no problem with all the relatives living in the same building. I don't think they left the building from November thru Feb. Actually, this was more due to us not having a car probably. My car tore up not long after Martha moved in. I had to walk to work, about two miles. No easy trick in high-heels. But we were all in the same boat...none of us had a car. Not Avanelle, nor Phyllis nor Martha.

The kids loved it there. Tammy and Buddy loved their cousins and always had someone to play with besides just each other. And, between us, we always had plenty of food. I was the only one working, Phyllis and Avanelle were on welfare also...or what was called ADC...Aid to Dependent Children. Believe me, there were many days I was tempted to quit work and join them, but just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Even though it sounds like we were one big, happy family, we still had our own apartments...mine was on the second floor, Phyllis was on the first floor, Avanelle was in the basement and Martha's was around back with its own separate entrance. Yet, we could and did, go back and forth all the time. It was nothing for me to end up with Debbie in bed with me and Tammy and Buddy....or go bed by myself because both kids were staying with Avanelle.

Martha only lived there a year. She decided to go to Lexington to be near her family. It was hard saying good-bye to her and the kids. But, she was not able to work...she had epilepsy and had to do what she thought best for her them. Avanelle and Phyllis and I with all our kids went to the bus station with them the day they left. Seeing them get on that bus was hard...both Martha and I, as well as our kids, were bawling our eyes out. Thank God for Phyllis and Avanelle. I only saw Martha a few times after that. When I went to Prestonsburg about once a year I would often stop to see them, if I could find them home.

I can't describe how angry I was with my Uncle Lee. He was Mom's brother and had always been around all my life. He was always available to take me anywhere I needed to go when I was a teenager. He taught me to drive. I cried on his shoulder when I had a fight with a boyfriend. I felt more than anger...I felt betrayed. He had been a constant in my life...and always seemed to adore his wife and kids.

Lee loved me, too. I had no doubt of that. The day after I moved Martha and the kids in with me, I went to Lee's apartment and confronted him. Of course, his girlfriend was there, too...and I said some pretty unpleasant things to both of them. Eventually, after Martha left, Lee came around to see me and we kinda, sorta, patched things up. I still loved him...just not as naively as I once had. I even grew to like Syretta..after he married her. I will say one thing for him. When he was married to Martha, he was a "good-time joe". Always joking and kidding around, seldom serious about anything. He worked every day...but yet his family never had much beyond the essentials...what he spent his money on, nobody knew, but it sure wasn't his family. After he married Syretta, he changed completely. Always serious, seldom joking and kidding around with anybody. They both worked and saved their money and bought a big old farm house and spent all their time and money remodeling it.

Once when he and I were alone on his front porch, he tried to explain to me about the Martha episode in his life. They had married when he was 20 and she was 16. They had two kids...but he said he had never grown up. When he fell in love with Syretta, he said, all of a sudden he wanted to be a man, not a boy playing house. My reply to him was that even though I understood what he was saying, it still did not excuse him walking out on them and leaving them with nothing...not even food to eat. Look at those two, I said pointing to Tammy and Buddy playing in the yard...By the time I was 20, I had two kids...was a single mother by 21. I'm just 24 now....and they are my life. I could quit working and go on ADC and be home with them all the time, that would be the easy way. But that's not the way I want to raise them. Working and worrying about baby-sitters is no picnic. They have forced me to grow up. I can't understand why your kids didn't do the same for you.

Lee said I'm not saying what I did was right...I know it was wrong. All I can do is ask forgiveness...from Martha, Toby, Karen and God. And you. The others have all said they forgive me...can you? Of course, I answered...but forgetting is altogether a different thing. We never again discussed it...and my kids and I were frequent visitors to his home until he passed on.