Photo by Bret Grimmius. One of grandma's favorite flowers, she called them her little angels.
Preface to Chapter One, THE SCREAM DANCE
His breath saved me.
I am once again writing stories, being nagged ever so kindly to do it. Kicked in the butt if I’m to be truthful because I realize now that there were genuine masters in my life and I ought to share what they let me learn. They didn’t come graced in fancy robes or wearing precious crowns, they were more clever than that. Smarter than that. They came disguised as common people, because always I was to believe that I could do it too. Let me say first that the memories that have been brought back to me are priceless. I am in awe.
Help, I am beginning to understand is always there, and when you are lucky you recognize it is already in you, because you have surrendered to it. Help is not only what it is that someone tells you to do to make something livable or bearable. It is first a perception of who you are and a glimpse of who you might become, in truth who you already are, if you have eyes to see and are still enough to let the energy of light and your breath bring focus. Acceptance and then doing become a clear and lighted path. Can a three year old do this, catch that glimpse and embrace it?
Come with me into the mind of me as a toddler. I must have been about three. Old enough to not need someone constantly hovering and since I was a child who pretty much stayed where I was put, not exploring the world like my own children did, well exploring it in a very limited fashion, it was a pretty good bet that I would still be beside the row of peas where my grandma had left me.
I think this is a children’s book if I could only draw.
Even Before Song
Chapter One, The Scream Dance
I am carefully picking peas, holding the branch and pulling on the pea pod, just so. I sit back holding my pea pod saying to it what Grandma says, “I have you now.” Press the pea right in it’s belly and carefully open it up. Just so. Now put each little pea in your pail. Pinch a little but not too hard. There. Plink. Plink. The sound of the peas hitting the bottom of my pail. I eat the last little one. It’s allowed.
Grandma needs to see all my peas. She’s gone to the pump to make sure the chickens have water. Chickens need water. I quickly get my feet under me. Sometimes my feet don’t stay under me. Sometimes I forget how tall I am and hit my head on the table. Grandpa laughs. Sometimes dirt climbs into my shoes and I have to play in the water. Sometimes a tick gets in my hair and grandma has to get her tweezers and a hot butter knife with no butter on it and put that hot butter knife on his butt so he’ll forget about making a meal out of me. He doesn’t each much, but we still don’t want him. Sometimes we eat a chicken though because grandma says she can only have so many chickens. We eat fish because thats what God made them for, otherwise Grandpa wouldn’t catch so many nice big ones.
Tall grass..........tall flowers........I can’t see where I am going and I start to scream. I hold my pail to my tummy and scream until I have no wind in me, then, big hands lift me up. Grandpa moves me away from him and I scream some more but he is just looking for his big white handkerchief. He reaches out with it and I become stiff as a board. He will hit me now and talk loud and not like me I know. Family people say I’m difficult and that word doesn’t mean good things. My mom says I just took to doing it one day. They say I’m too loud and I should be spanked good. They pinch my arm in their big hands and swat my butt or my face or they shake me. I don’t like this part.
Grandpa waits just looking at me until I settle a little. Very quietly he says to me, “It’s good that you scream.” He just holds me saying it over and over until I look at him. Now he’s breathing kind of funny. Long breaths in through his nose then out his mouth in a big O and the sound of a whisper. He does that and does that and then he taps me right between my eyes with two of his big fingers that are good for milking the cows and says, “This doesn’t help. This need to scream. We will breathe it away.” Then he starts to breathe again in that funny way, wipes my eyes, helps me blow my nose and says, “Now.”
Then he breathes again and I start to breathe with him, my mouth in an O. I can feel the shaking stop, but I still have more tears. Now, he holds me close. He smells like peppermint and the cows in the barn. He feels like all the good things about the sun and the summer day. I close my eyes and a big shuddery breath escapes me. The scream is gone. Time passes, he just holds me and my pail. Then...
“Let’s take the peas into Grandma.” I look in my pail, the peas are still there and I look up at Grandpa. “That’s a pretty good batch in there,” he says. That’s what he says when he is doing the important job of fishing and he looks in the pail to see if we have enough for supper. Now I feel good like I swallowed up the sun from Grandpa’s eyes. Picking peas was my important job. We will have my peas for supper.
Grandma is busy, busy busy in the summer kitchen which is a little kitchen on the porch and smells like kerosene. I know the smell of kerosene because Grandma and I put a little bit in tin cans and go out and pick the potato bugs off the flat green leaves and put them into the can. If we don’t do that they will eat the green leaves up until they are all gone and then we won’t have potatoes when it snows.
I wonder if she heard me scream and if she doesn’t like me now. “We brought you some peas to cook.” Grandpa says loudly and lifts me toward her so I can hand her the pail. She smiles at me as she turns the knob on the box that she wears so she can hear me. The war pretty near took her hearing. “Danka. I can cook these peas.” She’s does the important job of cooking. She stops, puts the pail down, dries her hands on her apron with the pink flowers, points her finger at us and says, “Hands up.” Grandpa and I put our hands in the air and I giggle. It is our game because sometimes Grandma tickles me before I can put my hands down.
Grandma grabs Grandpa’s hands and carefully looks at them and clucks her tongue and then she looks at mine, wiggles my fingers and says, “You two go play in the water.” She touches me on the cheek, “Put your wet hands on your cheeks, they like that.”
After supper Grandpa pats his knee and says, “Climb up. One foot on my shoe, one foot in my hand and up you go. Plenty of room.” We rock and I settle in to play with the buckle on his overalls. It's allowed. If I can get it open and put it back just so I can have one pink peppermint candy that Grandpa keeps in his top pocket where no bugs can find it. It has funny marks on it that I can make with a stick or my finger in the dirt, XXX.
“It’s good that you scream, then Grandpa knows to come find you.” I sit very still. “It’s good that you scream. Did you hear me call your name?” I shake my head no. “Well then your scream was too big. It filled you up. It was in your feet and your tummy and your hands and your mouth and your eyes and your ears.” He touches each place. “You can make the scream smaller so you can hear me call your name, and open up your eyes, then pretty soon you will see me coming.” I don’t move at all now. “I’ll show you how. Yes?” I nod yes, a big yes just once up and down.
“How?” I talk in my littlest voice. Grandpa wiggles his eyebrows and says very quietly, “It’s fun. It’s just like dancing.” I like to dance.
He reaches around me with both arms and grabs my feet. “You stomp your feet up and down like Topsy and Tom when they are out in the pasture playing, you wave your hands and shake them just like the chickens flap their wings, you put your hands on your cheeks to make an O so you can breathe, you open your eyes and then pull on both ears and shake your head real quick like. We’ll chase that scream right out, starting from your feet and out through the top of your head.” And then he does it again without the words, grabbing my feet first, then my arms, then my hands, pressing on my cheeks, gently touching my eye and then pulling on my ears shaking my head as he does.
“Now, slide down my long leg and let me see how good you are at making the scream small so you can hear me call your name and see me coming. Help me out of this chair first.” I pull on Grandpa’s wrists like he taught me so he would always have his hands free because you can never tell when you’ll need them quick like. And then we practice the dance over and over until Grandma has to come see. She says that I am really good at it. She sees the scream leave right out of the top of my head. She thinks that the scream will be as small as a baby chick when I need to dance the big scream out.
Then Grandpa gets out his concertina that he brought with him all the way from the old country so the Indians up the road could hear him play, I want the song about the blue skirt. I know my colors now. The three of us sing and Grandma and I dance, the waltz dance all around the room. I remember, big, little, little so my feet go in the right steps to the dance. We dance until I plop right down on my bottom because I am so tired.
They put me to bed on the little cot in the living room. They speak German. I understand most of the words but I only ever speak a few of them. Grandpa takes Grandma’s hand and he tells Grandma that when he picked me up he saw me in the big war. He tells the story about the girl in the war. He talks and talks about everything he saw and he gets angry. It is a sad story, Grandma cries.
I sleep that night dreaming of the big grey horses that Grandpa calls his draft team. They are playing and chasing around in the pasture shaking their big necks making the harness rattle, stomping their big hooves that are bigger than Grandpa’s hands. And I dream of the chickens flapping their wings at each other to get more food. Grandma calls them her ladies, “Settle down, ladies.” I’m too little to feed them but I’m not too little to feed the baby chicks that I can hold when they are done eating, and only when they are big enough to walk around. I like to see the tracks they make in the dirt, they are kind of like the tracks on the pink peppermint candy.
All summer I practice the Scream Dance. Grandpa says he’ll have to make some music for it with his concertina. I get very good at the dance. Sometimes I do it for real when I stop for no reason and feel the big scream wanting to fill me up and then sometimes filling me up. Grandpa says that’s how it is just before you’re good and done with the big screams, that I am doing it just so. If I know the big scream is there I can keep it as small as the little baby chick I can hold in my hand and I can hear Grandpa when he calls my name and I can see him as he comes. And then Grandpa is there and we funny breathe together. His breath saves me.
Epilogue:
Can you imagine how I felt the first time I heard Grandpa say, “It’s good that you scream,” in the memories that had been given back to me. History had taught me that there was something wrong with me because I was doing this screaming that no one liked, including myself. Then the little me was given a way out of the darkness. Grandpa didn’t question me about why I screamed because he knew it was a question that was impossible for a toddler to answer. And because he saw more than the child me. He saw what had come before.
There was the immediate fear of being lost and the need to scream because of what perhaps had been stamped on my DNA from a previous time. Throughout my life I have had glimpses, that deja vu feeling, but have never felt compelled to give the thought of it much of this life’s time. But how lucky I was to have been given this man in my life who could see more than most of us do. He saw it in living technicolor when he picked me up, during the memory I saw the abject look on his face.
Both Grandma and Grandpa had time for me. How precious that thought is. Throughout my life I have faced fear with a deep breath. How carefully and usefully I had been taught. I leave you with this thought: It’s good that you scream.
In loving memory of Charlie and Minnie Hohn first known as Carl Hohenzolleren and Wilhelmina Stohr. It was a port of entry thing, Grandpa said it was because he could speak no Anglais and he just kept saying ,"Yah.".
You're a very talented writer (much better than me I think). If I might offer one slight piece of advice... Keep it shorter. People here have short attention spans. If you had posted all three sections separately you may have done better. I love the imagery... Your childhood was the opposite of mine!
I know that's good advice. The avid reader in me always wants more, sometimes, steeling a few minutes in my day, 40 pages aren't enough. When the memories first started to activate inside of me I paced for hours, couldn't go outside, couldn't find a place to sit, I argued out loud with the "cousin" who's going to follow me through with this project, and he, of course argued back. All I could think was, what if this man, my grandfather, had not been in my life. My mother had taken to dosing me with cough syrup back when you could get the junk with codeine in it. Maybe I'll break this up and repost. When I ask my cousin what I am supposed to do with this he says, "Let people read it, of course." "Well, thank you very much!" But seriously, thank you richq11.
I hope that's the council on foreign affairs you were talking about... I have some real problems with the real one! (They ruined my life and they're the "Council" in my story)
Counsel totally tongue in cheek, which I think means what you really want to do is stick out your tongue and do a little nah, nahing.
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