Sample Anthology Memoir

Red Flower: A Memoir of Mother

Red Flower

It was a cold winter’s day in January 1947 when my mother decided to move us to the small Gulf coast town of Corpus Christi, Texas. She had three of us in tow on the long journey by train and bus from Chicago: my infant brother, four months old, my older brother, six years, and me, just turned five. Stumbling from the bus, groggy from travel, I felt the sudden bite of a north wind and clutched my small suitcase tightly. But this trip was nothing new.

Our family had been on the move from the start, living from pillar to post, while my father tried unsuccessfully to find himself in one job after the other. Homeless again, we’d just left cramped quarters with two sets of grandparents in Illinois where we’d bunked off and on since summer. All that time my father was away, working in Chicago on a job that didn’t last long either. Now we were to wait in Corpus Christi until he sent for us to join him in a Texas town along the Rio Grande where he’d found work—again.

Pushing a large black buggy that was the crib, playpen and stroller for my baby brother, my mother fought the wind that blew across the bay as she looked for our motel. My older brother and I hurried along, carrying our meager belongings, glancing at the dark sky that threatened rain. We turned down a sloping street and saw the motel cabins set in a row near the water, dilapidated and mostly vacant, meant for summer vacationers.

I remember the modest cabin vividly as I do much of my early childhood. Perhaps because we were all on the alert in new environments, I would carefully observe strange people and places and attempt to adjust quickly. This vigilance has given me clarity of recollection since I can recall not only physical settings, but my emotional state at the time. That day I remember we opened the cabin door to four bare white walls and freezing cold. Fighting back tears, I could only stare at the miserable place.

If my mother was disappointed in such a pitiless shelter she did not show it. She parked the buggy next to a windowless wall and looked for a source of heat. My brother and I placed the suitcases on the only bed in the room, a high double bed with a threadbare white coverlet. There was no heater in the summer cabin, no need for one in the usually benign weather of south Texas. My mother poked around the kitchenette along one wall and examined the small gas stove. Lighting the gas oven with a match, she let it warm and soon opened its door.

I kept my winter coat on and wondered how long we’d have to stay. It was a drafty single room with a tiny bath for the four of us: no phone, no radio and no toys, certainly no television. And we knew better than to complain. My mother did not tolerate whining children.

The grinding poverty of the Great Depression and the deprivations of the war years had prepared my mother well for marriage to my father. As a young single woman living in Chicago during the ‘30s, she’d shared rooms at the YWCA and rented tiny apartments, grateful for the minimum wage she earned as a secretary. During World War II, she, along with hopeful millions around the world, had sacrificed and endured.

“Mommy, I’m cold,” I finally managed to whisper.

“Well, take off your shoes and get in bed,” she said while unfolding extra blankets from a closet shelf. “Once you warm up, the room will be warm from the oven.”

Though my mother’s stern tone indicated I could have thought of this myself, I was content enough to cuddle in the covers and find some comfort just as my baby brother began to cry and need attention. Eyes closing, I felt my older brother silently climb onto the other side of the bed. At least the room was not on wheels and that was a relief; we slept and recovered from our long arduous trip.

Conveniently, our ramshackle motel was within a few blocks of downtown shops. As the days wore on, we’d all take walks together when the weather permitted to a small grocery store for baby formula, boxes of macaroni and cheese, milk and cereal. One day we stopped by the public library.

A rare treat for our family, we were welcomed and allowed to check out a few books. With advice from a kind librarian, my mother choose some books for reading aloud, one of them The Jungle Book by Kipling. No doubt my mother was desperate for a way to fill the cold lonely days.

To my mother, libraries were an equalizer, a benefit of the ‘30s, the WPA and Carnegie grants, and part of her American dream. She claimed libraries, their books and knowledge, as a citizen’s right, to identify with and achieve all that was great. It was her naïve idealism and that of entire post-war America. To my mother’s way of thinking, our family was on its way to greatness, even if the road ran right through a rundown summer cabin in the middle of winter.

Tucking the books carefully in the baby buggy, she was confident knowing that she’d chosen among the great classic books for children. And it was with keen anticipation my older brother and I returned to our cabin with a few purchases and our new library books.

Late in the afternoon with my baby brother asleep, the three of us bundled in bed for warmth, my older brother and I on either side of mother. She was propped up on pillows with the Jungle Book in her lap as she prepared to read the first story, “Mowgli’s Brothers.” I lay on my back at first, staring straight up at the white ceiling and fixating on the cracks in the plaster. But soon I was lost in images of the lush jungle of India and the dark cave of Mother Wolf with her four tumbling cubs. The bleak whiteness of the cold cabin receded as my mother read aloud.

A petite woman with dark hair and deep set, dark brown eyes, my mother was quite proud of her strong voice and precise diction. Most of her childhood had been spent in a small town in Illinois after World War I when German immigrant families were often singled out with suspicion. She was determined that no one in that town would detect a German accent in her speech. After all, her birthplace was Lead, South Dakota, USA, where my Grandfather Ludwig worked the Homestake Gold Mine. So, my mother learned to enunciate words as if she’d gone to finishing school. She insisted on perfect English grammar as a show of loyalty to America, a way of belonging. I’m certain that she read Kipling’s poetic language with all the skill she could bring to the printed page.

Now Rann the Kite brings home the night

That Mang the Bat sets free…

Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all

That keep the Jungle Law!

She conjured the animal characters so they lived and breathed for us: the jackal, Tabaqui, who slunk into the wolf cave to tell them of Shere Khan, the lame tiger, who’d come into their part of the jungle to hunt men. We heard the tiger charge and then a howl from Shere Khan who’d missed his kill. And we met the survivor, the man’s cub, who crawled into the Wolf’s cave and was accepted by Mother Wolf as her cub and who named him Mowgli.

“Mommy, how could the wolves take care of a little boy?” I asked.

“They could if they were gentle with their teeth,” she answered.

“How old was he?” my older brother asked.

“About two, I think,” she said. “He was just starting to walk. But listen.”

We now heard the roar of Shere Khan as he demanded the man cub as his kill. We saw how Mother Wolf sprang up to protect and claim Mowgli and then learned of her awful prophecy that Mowgli would one day hunt down Shere Khan. What danger, I thought, how frightening. I immediately identified with the man cub-wolf child, Mowgli, and snuggled deeper into my pillow.

All through that long afternoon, my mother read on to what would become to me the most memorable part of the story. Bagheera, the panther, warned Mowgli, now grown, that the Pack and Shere Khan would turn against him and kill him. The only hope was for Mowgli to steal the red flower, fire, from man’s village, since all jungle animals feared and dreaded it. That would protect him.

When Mowgli snuck into the village at twilight, my own eyes grew wide. As he looked unseen into the window of a hut, I looked with him. I saw Mowgli watch the family sleep all night as the hearth fire went white and ashen. At dawn Mowgli observed the man child of that family fill a pot with red lumps of charcoal to take with him to the herds and I had lumps in my throat. I wondered how Mowgli would manage to steal it. But Mowgli just walked around the corner of the hut and took the pot from the boy; he disappeared into the mist and the boy howled in fear. What calm courage, I thought. To me, Mowgli was heroic and strong; he could live anywhere.

My mother finished reading that story and put down the book, still open, on the bedside table. She rose to prepare our supper, mixing a box of macaroni and cheese with water to warm in a pot that the three of us would share. But I lingered by the borrowed book, concentrating on the printed words. I’d not seen many books before; we always traveled light. As I stared at the open page, I suddenly understood that the different words on the page made separate sounds. In a brightly lit, ah-ha moment, I knew what reading was. My five-year-old self was overcome with this great discovery on that chilly evening in a bare room. I picked up the book and fingered the words, thinking I already knew what they meant. I found myself sounding out “that” and “the.” In the next several weeks, I quickly learned to read.

By the time we left Corpus Christi, the stormy weather had passed and a warm sun returned bringing soft breezes from the Gulf of Mexico. Our small family once again boarded a Greyhound bus, this time headed towards the Rio Grande Valley. My mother asked to be dropped off at an address on the highway outside of town. There we joined our father in another motel cabin that barely housed the five of us in a single room. But it was a cheerier, warmer place with burros in a nearby pasture where we flew kites and hoped for better fortune together.

What my mother taught us then and throughout our underprivileged childhood was that the intangibles of art, culture and learning were our wealth, our only wealth. It was the creative urge that transcended time, place and class and belonged to us if only we could appreciate it. That was the fire within.

For my part, not only did I fully engage in Mowgli’s story, I was motivated to penetrate the great mystery of the written word. With nothing else to distract me, I focused completely on the story, on the book, on its words. Kipling’s tale sunk into the marrow of my bones and fed me. Strengthened by the idea of the wolf child, the ultimate survivor story, I felt bolstered and celebrated. I knew our family was not like others—that we were on the edge of things, looking in. But if Mowgli could steal the fire pot, I could too.

Submitted by Kate Farrell