Jenny lived across the street with her sister and her parents. They were super nice people. Jenny was a few years older than me and for some reason she didn’t play outside with us. Even though she was a kid, she was also friends with my mother. One day we were at her house, and we played hide and seek. I hid in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed. Jenny called time out because she had to use the bathroom. As fate would have it, she went into the bathroom where I was hiding and closed the door. I heard her sit on the toilet and in a panic, I said her name. She told me it was too late, and she relieved herself. She had diarrhea. She finished, washed her hands and left the room. She did not flush the toilet. I peeped into the toilet, and it embarrassed me. I felt sorry for her.
There was another kid on the street named Sterling. He wasn’t allowed to play with us. He was very polite and wore a CPO jacket very similar to the one Eb wore on Green Acres. He had the whitest complexion and for some reason I remember his parents looked older than my grandparents. And further down the street was Mandy. Mandy’s parents seemed like my parents except they had their shit together. I remember walking to her house one day. I was excited that I was going into the third grade the next school year. I was going to carry a briefcase to school, do homework and ask Mandy if she would be my girlfriend. I was so excited. But life had other plans. My dad was advancing in his career, and my mother was sinking into her addiction. Life on Wildwood would change.
I had to get even with Fred. We were playing in the street, and I don’t remember why, but he chased me. I ran as fast as I could, but he caught up with me and pushed me hard! I lost my balance, slipped and hit my forehead on the step at our front door. It knocked me out. I am telling you; this kid was rotten to the core. The next thing I remembered was waking up on our couch with him and his mother looking at me. He apologized after his mother told him he had to. He said, “I am sorry Billy, and I apologize.” I looked at him and said, “it’s OK”. He didn’t mean his apology and I was being polite. It wasn’t OK. We lied to one another. His mother didn’t detect it. My dad did. I learned later that my dad witnessed Fred’s push and he and chased Fred home. I was so tired of Fred and the way he treated me and how he never got in trouble. All he did was apologize and bully me. But this time, Fred had to pay for what he did to me. I was patient. I wondered how I could retaliate. I couldn’t fight. Then finally, it came to me. I would make him drink my pee.
Back then the popular soft drink on our street was Hyde Park Ginger Ale. We bought it from the Big Star up on Getwell. I don’t remember if it was good or bad, but I remember everyone on Wildwood drank it. One Saturday morning I went next door to Aunt Miriam’s house to see if Chris was there. He was. I told him about my plan, and he went to the kitchen and got a bottle of ginger ale and we drank all of it. For some reason, without talking about it, we went outside and stood behind the bushes next to the house and urinated into the bottle. Success! It looked just like the ginger ale! So, we went to the curb, put the bottle down and played in the street. We knew Fred would come down. Now, I have to tell you, Fred did not bully Chris at all. Chris was tough and although I never saw him fight, I knew he could. Sheryl came out and sure enough, Fred came down. I don’t remember how she knew, but she was in on it. I think we played tag or something, I don’t remember. The truth is that while Fred was playing, we were setting him up. Soon after we stopped, Chris walked over to the curb, picked up the bottle and asked Fred if he wanted to have a drink. Fred took the bottle and right as he was about to take a drink, he told us it smelled funny. We all put our noses to it, and I told him that it was just warm because it had been outside. We lied and told him we didn’t smell anything. The three of us looked at him and shrugged and he took a sip.
As soon as it entered his mouth he knew. He knew it was urine, he knew he was betrayed, and he knew I was behind it. I was mortified and numb. His face turned brilliant crimson and for the first time ever, he looked sad. We made eye contact, and I kept it until he looked away. He yelled at me, “I am telling my momma!” and he ran home. Chris and Sherly and I started laughing and screaming. It was a celebration. I felt my body relax. I was in control. The neighborhood bully drank my pee! I ran inside and got my dad. I knew Fred and his mother would be back soon. And sure enough, they were. His mother, red-faced, yet calm, asked me if I was going to apologize to Fred. I looked at my dad for directions. My dad looked at me with love and concern and a hint of pride. I looked back at Fred’s mom and told her no.
Fred’s dad was drunk. I really shouldn’t know this, but my mother talked about him. She loved to talk about him. She would ask me to fetch the cookies from beneath her bed and talk about him. She kept a steady supply of Danish Wedding cookies under her bed along with potato chips and some chocolate weight loss candies called Ayds. I remember one day I was in the front yard playing with Percy the monkey and my mother came outside, which was unusual. She was not an outside person. It was late afternoon, maybe 4PM. She said she came to get me because Fred’s dad should be driving down the street soon and he would be drunk. Of course, she was in a nightgown and wearing a wig. Our mother had naturally dark hair and the wig was blonde, which I think upset Percy. He leaped on top of her and snatched the wig from her head and instantly climbed the tree in his yard. And sure enough, Fred’s dad rounded the corner in his old red pickup truck, driving slowly and swerving. He made it home safely. She glared at him as he drove, and she seemed to get angry that he made it home.
Distraught over her wig, she went inside screaming about Fred’s dad and Percy and how they ruined her day. I went to the tree and begged Percy to come down with the wig, but he didn’t. Aunt Miriam even came out and pleaded with him. But he ignored us and sat on a branch and tore the wig to shreds.
Wildwood Drive was the last street I lived on with my dad, sisters and mother. My dad sold health insurance and our mother was a stay at home parent. Our mother came from an affluent west Tennessee family that was connected to politicians and criminals. If you ran for governor, senate, congress, or president, you had to go through our grandfather. You were not going to get elected if you didn’t know our grandfather. He carried such weight around here that his nickname was Big. Big kept our mother in money and cars and paid for a housekeeper for our little rental house. The housekeeper’s name was Birdie and even though she came through twice a month, the house was always a wreck. Big’s life turned to complete shit in the 1980s and it killed him.
Wildwood Drive. The first memories I have of Wildwood Drive are of me standing in the carport with a boy who was making fun of me because I pronounced the word three as free and I also had a hard time saying Scooby Dooby Doo. I said Scooby Dooky Doo and dooky was a curse word. The boy wasn’t really a friend, but actually the neighborhood bully. His name was Fred. And for the entire time I lived on Wildwood he instigated fights, and won a lot of them, only to have his mother make him apologize to me later. But over time I got even with him. I was a slight and skinny boy with effeminate features. I couldn’t fight, but I could talk others into fighting for me.
My birthday is in October. I don’t know what it’s like now, but when I was a child, October birthdays were taboo or something. It really messed up the school year. I remember it so well. One day, Sherwood Elementary, I was sitting in 3rd grade, and they came and got me and put me right back in the 2nd grade. I went home and told my mother, and she just shrugged. My mother was a drug addict. She forged prescriptions and had doctors all over town writing prescriptions for little blue pills with OP printed on them. I remember her also eating green capsules with little white beads in them. The green capsules were so pretty. I learned later that the pills were speed, but my mother never got out of bed. I helped her from time to time by lighting cigarettes for her on the gas stove. I puffed on them sometimes when I walked back down the hall but never inhaled. Salem’s.
One day I walked home from school. My mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so I went to open the door, and it was locked. I peered through the front window and the house was empty. Everything was gone except for the ironing board. It was in the kitchenette. I remember the sun shining into the house from the back windows, everything looked yellow. The ironing board looked so lonely. I remember feeling so horrible about the ironing board. The fact that my parents and sisters were gone didn’t occur to me. Why did they leave the ironing board? That did not make sense! My dad used that ironing board all the time!
The best I remember is I walked next door to Aunt Miriam’s. Aunt Miriam wasn’t related to us. But she had a niece and nephew who she kept all the time, Chris and Sheryl. We were friends. She also had a monkey named Percy. Percy was also our friend. Aunt Miriam’s house was always dark and smelled of animal urine and cigarette smoke. I spent the night there one night and everyone woke up in the middle of the night because Jewel Dawn was home and Aunt Miriam was making fried squash. Jewel Dawn was Chris and Sheryl’s mom. She was an overnight telephone operator. It gets kind of blurry, but I am sure that Miriam found my dad and he picked me up.
The day I came home to an empty house, our mother was gone.
And so it was just my dad, my sisters and me. Seemingly overnight, we had a new house, a new school and a new life. I remember missing my mother because I thought I was supposed to, but the truth is that I didn’t. I woke up one morning in our new home to the sound of my dad unfolding the ironing board. Seals and Crofts were playing on the stereo. Summer Breeze. I was home.
Bill Webb, Jr. 