My Lineage of Listeners

As far back as I can remember my lineage of listeners did not begin with my family.

I recall a particular neighbor in 5th grade. Her name was Nova Groom. She was tall, made even taller by her hair done up in a French twist that surrounded her perfect face. Our family lived next door to her family. Nova asked my Mother one day as they were chatting outside if I was available to help her with housework? Mom hired me on the spot, she told me later I should make some money and buy my own school clothes. Nova had 3 children named Brad, Cindy and Tim. They all had red hair and freckles, wore clothes that matched. They smelled like soap. They came in when they were called.

Her husband Bill worked nights, and slept during the day. He had a brush cut and didn’t smile. One Sunday he came out of their house to water some bushes, us kids were playing quietly nearby when all of sudden he started squirting us with the hose and chasing us around the yard, we all screamed with high pitched yelps, gleefully running around like wild ponies to escape. Nova came out glaring at Bill going up to him in hushed, controlled tones to “stop doing this”! She did not approve of this display of wildness on what was to be a proper, quiet Sunday.

So, a couple afternoons a week after school I would show up at Nova’s house to work. I was excited and nervous. This was my first job.

I remember when I rang her front door bell, the chime sounded like a church organ, this made me smile. The wide front door opened slowly and Nova appeared, she looked like a Goddess. Speaking softly, she asked me to remove my shoes. When I crossed the threshold into her world there was a stillness with pure quiet. The air cool fresh, clean. There was no clutter to be seen anywhere, no forts of towels and blankets hiding the living room couch and chairs, no droning siren from my brother Steve’s firetruck hiding upside down in an un-findable location. No headless, naked dolls to step over. No breakfast table remains of dirty dishes, left out milk, part eaten toast and a box of cereal spilled all over the floor in an effort by someone desperate search for the prize inside.

Nova’s place was unlike any where I had ever been before. I think I was in Awe.

At our house next door, it was never quiet. Someone of us 5 kids, was either crying, fighting or whining or playing make believe with sound effects. No one cared If you took off your shoes. The air smelled like trash left under the sink too long, tuna fish and stinky diapers. The dryer and washing machine could be heard droning on and on in a duet of eerie singsongs voices, offering up endless and overflowing laundry baskets of diapers, rubber pants, and inside out clothes.

No one at our house was tall enough. And no one looked up.

When my chores were finished. Nova would invite me into her den, it emitted a kind of pinkish aura. I will never forget its softness as I entered. Something inside there made me feel held and safe. I was asked to sit on a very white sofa. I wasn’t sure I should. Nova brought me a small, pretty, glass of Tab cola with ice.

Something in my young heart knew this was special.

Nova sat there next to me like a queen, her huge smile unceasing, her large white teeth glistened in the soft afternoon sun. The white sofa reminding me to sip very carefully…. I began to talk, telling away gossipy stories about my family, how my father was leaving my mom for his secretary, who was young and who looked like Anne Margaret. Her name was Fredrica. Mom said she was a whore and a bitch and she that she hated her and wanted to kill her. I went on to tell how my mom had to get a job as a church secretary at the Gethsemane Lutheran church because her friend Nancy, who she’d known since first grade was able to put in a good word for her. Mom said that we were going to be poor, because her new church secretary job didn’t pay shit. Mom said she ran the whole damn office, but that pastor Hallberg was a nice man and that was worth something. I thought he was very handsome. Mom complained that our rotten father wasn’t paying hardly anything in alimony and child support because of his new bitch wife and their little bratty bastard named Fredrica Ann. My mother said she despised us. I didn’t even know what that word meant.

Mom told us kids we were all going to have to do more work around the house because she couldn’t do it all! “You kids can take out the trash and mow the lawn and vacuum and remember to clean out the tub afterwards so she didn’t have to clean the soap scum ring and flush the dam toilet! Pick up your own crap. On and on she’d go. She was mad all the time, her face looked all squinty and mean, especially when she had her hair wound into tight mounds of pin curls fastened by black, steely bobby pins. Her lips pinched small into repeating, lip-stickless frowns of disapproval.

I went on and on with the telling’s, the white sofa holding me, the pink room praying. Nova just listened with her soft eyes and patted my hand.