[Authors] [Red Boots Album] [Excerpt]

The Screen Door

(c) 2002 Susie Kelly Flatau

"I hate this place," screamed Franetta as she bolted from the kitchen where the air was thick with hot grease and shame. Behind her, the screen door thwacked against its frame, but once outside, the crisp night air began to cool, to caress her anger with the softness of a silk scarf sweeping across her skin. Reaching deep into her blue-jean pocket, she wrapped her fingers around the turtle Daddy had carved for her when they lived in Liberty.

As if it were yesterday, Franetta saw him in the front yard of their old home sitting on that tree stump, elbows resting on spread-eagle knees, feet planted solidly. She heard the whippoorwill high in a towering cypress tree serenading granddaddy bullfrogs across the bayou, their piccolo-and-tuba songs echoing from bank to bank. She swayed to the lilt of Daddy's tune as he whittled this gift from the splintered tree limb knocked down during the morning storm. She stopped catching lightning bugs and stood in the shadows to watch.

Later that evening he had slipped into her bedroom to whisper sweet dreams, and when he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, the scent of Old Spice embraced her as he placed the wooden turtle with its notched and smoothed shell on the pillow. She smiled at the memory of it all. At the days when her daddy worked for the town carnival. At her friends back in Liberty. At the love long ago that rocked her gently every night before the dreamlike slumber between solid ground and fantasy flight would whisk her away.

But they had left Liberty and moved here, to Oak Ridge. To this hellhole of a place where they worked for Mr. Williams and his wife, two of the most mean-spirited people she had ever met. They disgusted her, that is for certain, but their two scab-faced boys, Bennie and Billie, disgusted her even more. She shuddered at the recollection of last night when they cornered her in the barn.

"They treat us like dirt," cursed Franetta aloud. She stomped past the chicken coop, past the barn. Started down the slope toward the lake, stooped to pick up a stone and hurled it at the coop. "I hope you chickens don't lay any eggs for tomorrow!" she screamed before remembering her grandmother's words. She pulled back her shoulders. "One of these days . . . .