Betty Whitaker Jackson

 

This is still a first draft, but for those of you who are following the story, you’ll notice some revisions. Writing is such a fluid process!

 

Chapter 1

 

Chapter 1

I’ve always loved butterflies. There’s something magical about how they hatch, how the change from squishy caterpillars to the jewel-toned beauties happens, how they choose the tiniest weed flowers and most outlandishly colored bougainvillea to visit, and how they can dance and flutter at will.

Now that I have my new body and live in this magnificent paradise called heaven, I’m glad to know there are still butterflies to delight me, but here they live in that transformed state of eternal beauty. No more do they crawl, like the evil serpent in the Eden garden was forced to do. No longer do they go through the painful cocoon stage, or emerge, transfixed, wondering what just happened.

There is no pain here, no anxiety, no sense of dread or questioning why things happen. Just as God promised me, and I only weakly understood, God wipes away every tear, restores everything to beauty. I can walk again. I can see inside, outside, the whole panorama of beauty just as God planned it in the beginning. I can sing Hallelujahs in tune, I can join with my son who has joined me here in paradise, and we can walk and talk and embrace and know we’re in the most amazing relationship we’ve ever had. With his dad, my beloved Loren, I thrive in our togetherness. No, not in marriage anymore, for that was certainly not total perfection like I know here, but just knowing that relationships are sanctified, that we know and love each other perfectly, that we can talk with the prophets and the clouds of witnesses who spoke truth to us in the other place. Yes, this truly is paradise.

And the best part, even language is unnecessary here. We never grope for words. As I writer, I was plagued with that frustration. It’s all gone. And now we can review our life-moments and see why things happened as they did.

We know our purpose here is to worship the Lord and revel in His majesty. All else fades into subjection to our joy in knowing we’re in the right place, we have no need to satisfy our personal desires. God has done it all, just as He promised.

I wish I could tell my fellow believers on earth that resurrection is real, that indeed there are no tears, there’s no pain of cancer, there’s no demanded separation from those we love, there is only the sweet reward Jesus promised. While I have plenty of company here, I eagerly wait to embrace my other three children, my gorgeous grandchildren who must find their own way through life with the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and my great grandchildren whom I never got to cuddle and promise my love.

I suppose you’re wondering why my life story warrants all these words. It’s because while we’re living life, the day to day, the birth to death, the restrictions of time and place, we were so very limited, so tied to what I now call the mundane, the affairs of the world, that we couldn’t get the butterflies’ perspective.

We forget where we’re going, we lose our way, but I see things so differently now. I remember reading St. Paul’s words which said that someday, meaning now, we would see things clearly. (By the way, we’ve met and talk sometimes. I love to hear him tell about his adventures, especially how God sustained him through the shipwrecks and the storms he knew in the old days) It’s delightful to see why things happened back then.

I hate divorce. It is not God’s way, I know. For me it meant tears, a feeling of abandonment, tears and more tears, and people coming and going in my life that I didn’t know, and relationships that made me anxious.

My mother had three husbands; my father had two wives. The only constant in my life was Grandmother Ross. I didn’t know any other grandmothers.

Now I know why my sainted grandmother, who now lives right next door in my mansion here in heaven, pretty much had to raise me. I didn’t know back then why everybody called me Sis. Was it because they didn’t like my name, Bessie? I didn’t like it either, to tell the truth.

Grandmother told me the other day that Buddie, my brother who was only a year older than me, couldn’t say Bess. B’s are hard for little kids to say. So he called me Sis, and after that, everyone else did. But I’ve learned that when people don’t know your name, they don’t know you. Maybe that’s the way they wanted it.

I know my father didn’t want me. He left when I was two. No Christmas presents, no birthday cards, no contact until I was about to start high school.

When I was seven, mother married Bruce Garland. I don’t remember much about him. Guess I was busy going to school, but we were in a place near Corpus Christi called Flour Bluff, Texas. Oh, I remember that place. Dusty, hot, and I missed Grandmother’s hugs.

I remember stuffing cardboard in my shoes, if I was fortunate enough to get a pair that year, so the Texas sun-drenched stones didn’t scorch my feet. Buddie and I even made stilts from some scrap wood we found so we could walk without touching the ground. I got pretty fast on those things.

I remember the feed-sack dresses and how they scratched my skin. I remember eating grits three times a day. I remember the relentless teasing at school, and the teacher yelling because I had no pencil or I couldn’t find a paper bag to cover my arithmetic book.

I remember lunch was a stick of jerky Grandpa Ross had managed to buy for his own lunch and divided it in half, sort of, for Buddie and me. Buddie got the bigger half. He was the boy and needed to grow up big and strong.

Then Grandmother taught me to think of Jesus whose disciples, fishermen by trade, had to ply their trade every day or they didn’t eat. I know what it feels like to go to bed, go to school, go out to play, go to church and hear my stomach grumble with hunger.

Even Buddie abandoned me. When he was seven or so, he didn’t want his little sister tagging along with him. When he got a bike, who knows where that came from, I was so envious. True, I had roller skates to clamp onto my shoes, but when the soles of my shoes were shredded, even the skate key couldn’t keep them from falling off.

I had perpetual scarred knees. Grandmother used pine tar on me, lots of pine tar, so now I didn’t know if I was peeling scabs or stuck on poultices from my bare knees. Everybody saw what a klutz I was. Finally, I stopped skating.

When Grandmother reminded me that all we needed was Jesus, the Bread of Life, she meant it. How’s a ten-year-old supposed to know about metaphors? That wisdom came much later.

My grandmother always told me that things happen to us be God’s design. She was a very devout Christian, and I remember her spending a good deal of time in prayer. She would sit in her old creaky rocking chair with her apron pulled up over her head, and I knew that was praying time.

She taught me all the Bible stories, she made them sound like great adventures. I’m sure that’s how I learned to write the stories I did say later in life.

Evenings we huddled at the foot of grandfather’s chair. The only lamp was lit. He read Jesus stories to us. His soft southern drawl put me to sleep, thinking that someday I would walk where Jesus walked. Sometimes I would find Galilee and Samaria and Jerusalem. They sounded so much better than the dusty street of Oak Bluff, near, but not near enough to Dallas, Texas. with the unpaved streets we knew, the outhouse, we used, and the torrid summer sun.

I saw the settings of the Bible stories and fantasized they were beautiful and places to visit. What I didn’t realize until I finally visited them, that there were dusty and how places there, that the beigeness was so like all the places in Texas I knew.

I remember that none of the houses on our street were painted, that there was no grass in the yards, and that absence of color and beauty made me treasure the rare chance to see a butterfly on a surviving roadside weed.

We were living in Dallas. Later My brother moved with my mother and my stepfather Garland to the Davis Mountains and then to Flour Bluff to work in their fishing club and on a boat that Bruce built. I didn’t see much of Buddie after that. I know he graduated from high school in Big Springs in 1936, and Bruce committed suicide in 1954.

I was so unhappy. My brother had left for Big Springs. Bruce Garland’s brother, Halbert, was making my life miserable.

I was afraid of my stepfather and also his brother, Halbert. He followed me around and tried to rape me. My mother didn’t believe me. I looked for a way to escape. Reluctantly, around Christmastime, I wrote to my father in New Orleans.

I cried every night, curled up fetal position on my little cot in Grandmother’s sewing room. I was tall enough now that my feet hung over the iron bar at the foot of the cot.

When I was sixteen or so, I became Bessie. Here’s what happened. In 1923 my father, E.E. Marriott, married Elizabeth Lang. She was thirty-eight when he married her. She wanted nothing to do with children, but  I remember her niece, Ruthie.

My father sent for me this letter dated December 28, 1933, just before my seventeenth birthday. He was in New Orleans.

Dearest Sis—

We received your nice letter today and were so glad to hear from you, and to know that you had a good Christmas.

Since writing you we have devised a scheme by which you may come here to go to school if you want to. Even though you would probably lose two weeks of school, we think you would be in a much better school here and you could take the subjects which you would need to take up the nursing profession  if that is what you would like to follow. The schools here are beyond question the best ones in the South, and after you have finished high school, we are in a position to be able to exert some influence toward your getting in either one of the two largest hospitals here by knowing several of the leading surgeons here quite well. Aunt Bess would be a great help to you in that work, and we believe it would be the best thing you could possibly do.

If this strikes you favorably, and we sincerely hope it will for your own good, let us know and by return mail we will send you a ticket to come over.

You will have to have a list of credits from your present school, about which I will go into in detail in the next letter if you decide to come.

What grade are you now in? This is only a note written hurriedly at 11 p.m. today, so let us know at once, and we will arrange the balance.

Lots of love to you and Buddie, and please write a soon as possible.

Yours lovingly,   Dad.

Grandmother urged me to go. She knew nothing about higher education. She had finished sixth grade, I think. So, I went, leaving Bruce Garland and his evil brother Halbert behind.

I had a huge learning curve. It was like going from one stressful existence to a bigger one, but I was never one to shirk a challenge. I had learned resilience, and it has served me well my whle life.

Aunt Bess tried to teach me to be a lady, a very hard task.  I remember her hands, long elegant fingers shapkling with diamonds, nails always polished. She wanted me to be like Ruthie, her niece, and definitely her favorite. I never measured up, yet again.

Later on, I loved to watch “My Fair Lady.” I was the Eliza Doolittle. Aunt Bess was unlike any other woman I had ever known. She treated me like she was my stern Professor Higgins. No love. No respect, but I was expected to listen, to learn, and to become a lady. From grammar, to hygiene, to table manners, to doing chores (yes I was expected to earn my keep), she became the mother I never had.

Just as I was getting settled in, my father accepted a new job in upstate New York. He lived in Claverack, in Columbia County. Talk about a culture shock. I entered high school in 1934. I was older than my classmates, stuck out like a sore thumb with my southern accent and backward ways, and struggled with academics as well. While Aunt Bess did her best to teach me manners and etiquette,  a favorite teacher, Miss Hughes (bless her. I found her again here in heaven and thanked her repeatedly) tutored me most afternoons so I could read and write as well as her other students.

By the time I was a junior, after the first people who bullied me unmercifully had graduated, I was not only accepted, but admired. My accent was fading a bit, and I took on a leadership role by beginning a home economics club, and as a real honor, I was on the Senior Prom committee. I had discovered I enjoyed learning about cooking and sewing. In the school newspaper, they called me an outstanding senior, and with my picture, they wrote:

Bessie Marriott:

Domestically inclined, Bessie Marriott has used

her talent to the best advantage by founding the

Home  Economics Club, Sigma Kappa. At the first

award assembly, students saw Bessie present a

banner which she herself had made to  Marion

Hallock, advisor.

When Bessie entered school from the South,

she brought with her a definite sense of good

hospitality with which she has impressed every-

one. Her numerous appeals for food and cloth-

ing for the needy have awakened a latent gener-

ous spirit In the high school students.

Bessie is a member of the Senior Prom Dance

Committee for an obvious reason—she is a depen-

able worker.

“The Owl”  Hudson High School, June 17, 2938, p.4

 

Meanwhile, Dad was still encouraging me to consider nursing as a career. As a senior, I was accepted into the Hudson City Hospital School of Nursing.

And then, as Loren and I were remembering with thanksgiving, we met at church. He tells me he was supposed to marry Marjorie, a family friend. But when he saw my grey-blue eyes and heard my southern drawl, he knew he had found his wife-to-be.

Dad despised him. Called him every name in the book, forbade me to see him,  thinking he had no future. I never could confide in Aunt Bess. She was distant and obviously under my strong Dad’s influence. And he could be mean.

When I had finished my first year of nurse’s training, and my sweet Loren had gotten a meager raise in salary at Pitcher Accessories Auto Parts Store, we asked his brother Ken and his wife Nettie to stand up for us, and we were married in our pastor’s office.

Dr. Murphy agreed to marry us over both sets of parents’ admonitions, and we began our life together on 9.9.39. Very soon thereafter, in the end of June (yes, people were counting their fingers!) our first daughter was born, perhaps so that she could tell my story.

 

 

 

Chapter 2

I wrote this story when I was seventy-five and I felt liberated enough to reveal some of my past. I called it “Bridging the Years.” It was a class assignment. I was studying creative writing at our local community college. The assignment was: Write an interview piece between two people, and emphasize the setting description. It must have two distinct parts, and remembering Flannery O’Connor’s quote, “I write to discover what I know,” it should include an element of autobiography. It is due in two weeks. Class dismissed.

I knew a lady from church who collected angel figurines, as I do. I made an appointment to interview her. The place is real. My story, the rest is all too real, and I get tears every time I think about it, even though there are supposedly no tears in heaven. It touches my heart, and perhaps the reader’s too.

“Bridging the Years”

Part 1

I grabbed my laptop and hurried over to Maggie’s magnificent home, gated community and all.

“I agreed to meet you,” Maggie said, “to show you my collection, but, because you’re a writer, now at the age of seventy-five, I feel secure enough to tell a story which is going to step on some toes, and perhaps crush them. However, the story must be told before memory fails me, and it is lost. I trust you to record it just as it happened.”

This confession served to whet my appetite for a juicy story, one filled with sex and violence, and all the ingredients of good prose. The woman didn’t look the part of one who had lived a mysterious, even scandalous life. Her snappy gray-blue eyes sparkled. I was eager to listen to the secrets of her life,  if only to turn in the best piece of the semester, longing to be admired by my classmates.

“You may think it odd that I’ve waited so long,” she said, “but I have reasons for doing so. You see, most of the people with whom my life was involved are dead, and those who have survived really have nothing to hide. The truth is, my life has been an example of God’s diligent, continuous efforts of protection, guidance and love.”

Now I could related to that. Mine was no picnic, for sure, but thanks to Grandmother, I had a source of strength that buoyed me through circumstances I hesitated to share too.

Right there and then I knew my story of juicy scandal was shot, although, as it unraveled, that assumption was wrong. She had a few spicy spots too. The dramatic plot unfolded.

“Where shall we begin?” she asked, as she walked the circle around the sunken living room of her elegant spacious home. The room, if you can call it that, was most unique. So was my client.

The twenty or so feet of circle was three steps down from the hallways which led to other parts of the house. There was a heavily stuffed snow- white brocade sofa piled high with colorful pillows built into half of the circle. A huge curved glass coffee table nestled close  and served as a depository for many items: magazines, books, coasters, jars of nuts, candy, and a bucket of popcorn. The edibles indicated to me that the woman liked snacks, although her large frame did not carry extra weight. It also showed me she spent most of her time in this room, probably admiring her trophies, the objects of her affection.

Behind the sofa, and rimming the half-circle, was a gray marble wall about two feet above the top of the sofa with mirrored shelves on which were displayed twenty pieces of her prized angel collection, all Lladros. No expense spared here.

On another opposite curved wal was a built-in twenty-foot glassed case. It extended from the floor to the ceiling, and was well-lit. In it were over a thousand angel figurines of every shape, size, and description.

The rest of the inner circle housed two black leather chairs, with beautiful needlepoint pillows, done in rich black, white, gold, green, and yellow flowers. The chairs were we eventually sat were separated by a built-in cabinet, topped by a white marble chess set. The chessmen were onyx.

The black carpet with pile so deep that light played games making it silver, gray and purple, as the chandelier scattered its light, reminded me of the sea at nighttime, with moonlight shimmering over its surface.

The opposite wall beyond where I sat in one of the black chairs, was covered with black velvet, the background for at least a hundred hanging angels suspended in space on nearly invisible filaments. Lighted from above, and moved by a gentle breeze, they appear to be in flight, in constant motion. Soft harp music, indistinct melody, completes the fascinating environment.

Maggie was energetic. Pacing the area, in strides belying her seventy-five years, she reminded me of a silver fox, liquid, agile, defensive. In control. Her short-trimmed gray hair had a nondescript casualness about it, accentuating her well-shaped head, and her bright snappy eyes and pleasant, softly-wrinkled face.

Her makeup was done with careful light tones, and her long well-manicured nails accented charisma and charm with her gestures. Her softly draped lounging slacks and black Patchington blouse were topped by a loosely fitted blush-pink pullover vest.

She wore several rings, sparkling diamonds and sapphires and opals, I noticed, and huge gold-looped earrings studded with diamond inlays bobbed and swayed as she talked. She scuffed through the carpet with bare feet. She appeared to be enjoying the comfort much like a child wading in the surf. She paused and looked at me, trying to begin the conversation. It was as if she was hesitant; she impressed me with the elegance of her home. But that was not my purpose in coming.

“Do you like what you see?” she asked, in a charming, sweet voice.

“Yes, I do,” I answered, a little embarrassed that she caught me staring.

“You must understand that I’ve waited all of my seventy-five years to do what I am doing now. All my life,  I have lived to please others and have had to wait to enjoy what I want to do. Now, by the Grace of God, the time has come for my turn. I want you to tell my story.”

You have been noticing my collection of angels. Well, fifty years have gone into this hobby, and what you see here is the beginning of the first Angel Museum in the world. There are more than two thousand items relating to angels here, and the entire collection will be left to a precious daughter, who may, or indeed may not,  cherish them as I do. You, my dear, are one of the few who have been invited here.”

My curiosity aroused, and seeing an opening to get her to share with me, I asked,

“How did you begin the collection?”

Maggie has finally collapsed into the sofa, crossed her elegant long legs, clasped her graceful hands on her right knee, and leaned forward. I balanced my laptop and began  to write.

 

Part 2

“My grandmother really started it. I was about eight years old when she began telling me about the angels in the Bible: how they were kept busy doing what God commanded them to do. My fascination about them kept me reading about them, and then collecting them. Whenever I saw an angel, I bought it. As my family and friends noted my interest, they added to it. Soon there were so many the cataloguing them became necessary.

Now the collection, as you can see, has crowded that wall, and throughout the house. This house was built for them, and they have emerged from storage forever, and are here for all to enjoy. That is, for all who enjoy angels. My husband does not!” she laughed. “Not everyone enjoys them. They think I’m some kind of  nut. . .” she said.

“I don’t,” my answer was sincere. The angels wee beautiful, and she was too, I thought. She’s the most beautiful among the angels; she has the radiance of Christ, and the voice of an angel. I’m going to enjoy writing this story!”

“My parents were divorced when I was four years old. They should never have been married, but my mother was pregnant with my brother, who was eleven months older than I, and my grandfather made my father marry her. Today, they wouldn’t bother, but remember, this was back in 1914, when the wronged female had rights.

“Some say children cannot remember what took place when they were very young, but I remember my dad coming, flashing a gun, and threatening to kill my mother with it.  You see, he had found out about her lover.

“My mother was the grocer’s mistress. When my dad was away from home, Buck came around. My mother’s signal for him not to come was turning the light on and off, and that night, my dad came home unexpectantly. Even I knew the signal, and I was only four years old.”

“Is this something you want me to put in the story?” I asked.

“Yes, Why not? This is something that still goes on wrecking families. Yes, do. It might straighten out another family situation by telling. Who knows?”

“Obviously, there was no murder,” I said. “Or was there?”

“No. After their fight, and they had made love, everything was peaceful until the next time. My brother and I got used to being shoved into the other room where we either played until we were put to bed, or we fell asleep on the floor.”

Didn’t your father live with you?”

“He lived with us whenever he was in the area. You see, he was an electrician, and it was in the early years, when lines were being stretched between cities, and my dad was one of the men who doing this. He came home when he could, but, remember, there were no highways then, just dirt roads going through fields, especially in wide open Texas where we lived, and there was little transportation.

“We lived in a suburb of Dallas called Broadmore. Imagine my mother not having a way to get around and having two little kids to tag along. Even walking was a chore, especially having to carry packages of groceries. This is how the affair got started. My mother would ring up the grocery, and Buck delivered the food, and my mother didn’t have money to pay for the food. The arrangement worked until my dad walked out. Buddie and I were dropped off at Grandmothers, and my mother ran off with Buck.”

“Where did your grandmother live?”

“401 Center Street, Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas. I went back to see the old homestead twenty-five years ago, and the house had been torn down and there was a dry-cleaning business there. I was so unhappy, I cried. I guess that is progress, but what beautiful memories I have of living with Grandmother.”

“Her name was Mary Irene Reeves Ross. Everyone called her Reenie.  My middle name is Irene. What a saint she was. She raised four boys and two girls, the oldest of whom was my mother. She not only raised that family, but there was never a time that Grandmother did not have other children and adults around. Buddie and I lived with her most of the time until I was twelve and he was thirteen. She also had some of my cousins, uncles, and my aunt, who in later life was extremely ill, and Grandmother took care of her until she died. As a matter of fact, she also took care of my mother until she died., but I’m getting ahead of my story.

“Let me tell you, that I was the most fortunate of children. Looking back, I am sure that God arranged the whole thing, because Grandmother gave me the insight to trust Jesus, the Christ. I wanted to accept Him when I was eight years old, and she thought I was too young. I wasn’t. The Lord knew this, and He has lived in my heart all of these years.”

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I get emotional when I talk about my Grandmother. She is the second person I’m going to look for when I get into heaven.”

I did not press to know who the first one was. I knew.  I thanked her for talking to me and for allowing me to see her collection. We embraced, and I thanked her for telling my story and sharing my dream that afternoon.