Orphan Girl by Beckham Lila

Author:Beckham, Lila [Beckham, Lila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-26T18:30:00+00:00

Three

Roll Papa into the Icehouse

Spring 1944

“You said that your father died before you learned to read. I am guessing that you were still a child when he died. Did you go to live with relatives after he died?”

“Papa died in the spring of 1944, and I reckon if he hadn’t had me to take care of, he would’ve had to go fight in the war… No, after my papa died, I went to live in the poorhouse or orphanage as they liked to call it. I never knew if Mama and Papa had any kinfolk around here- neither one of ‘em ever talked about kinfolks, and no one came a calling before or after they passed. I am sure they had some kinfolks somewhere. I just know that no one ever came to visit except the man from the bank; he came once a month to collect what little money Papa could scrape together for him. He was the one that took me to the nuns that run the poorhouse. There were a lot of folks there; sometimes, there were whole families in that place, mamas, papas and children.

There was one bunch of children when I got there that had lost their mama and papa too, within a month of each other. They had relatives, but none of them could afford to take in five orphans. They also had three older brothers, but the brothers had to work and support their selves, they couldn’t look after the younger ones.”

“What happened to your father?”

“After Mama died, Papa took to drinking. I smelt that bad smell on him, more times than I care to remember. After Mama died, he wouldn’t mean to me- maybe afraid that I would die too and then he‘d be all alone.

After she died, I cooked and took care of the house; Papa worked the fields. It seemed like the more time that passed, the more he drank, even while working; I think that was what killed him- the liquor drinking.

I had cooked dinner and was waiting on him to come in to eat- when he didn’t come to the house to eat dinner, I went looking for him; I found him dead. I could see the mule standing still out in the field. When I got to where the mule was, Papa was lying on the ground behind him. His hand was gripping the reins so hard that I had to go get a butcher knife out of the kitchen and use it to cut the reins loose. Of course, I couldn’t cut him loose until after I used the mule to drag him to the front of the icehouse. Unharnessing the mule proved to be harder than getting papa’s hand loose from the reins.

He was too heavy for me to try to bury him myself, so I rolled Papa into the icehouse and waited. There was enough food for me to live on, and I knew that the man from the bank would eventually show up for collection.

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