When we were little and would get bored, especially on freezing winter days, Mother would tell us, “Make your own fun!”
Much of the year, that was easy. Little sister Cindy and I had endless ways to have fun outdoors.We even turned an ant colony in the sandy ditch by our driveway into an ant farm of sorts. We watched the ants work for hours, building ant hills and carrying things. We even named the two biggest ants Queen Ant and King Ant and used sticks to create “roads” for them – which they refused to use properly. Ants are hard to train.
But the saving grace of the Elsenpeter house was the huge attic. It was one large expanse without walls, the size if the floor below. Its only occupants were a few boxes of old clothes, which we used for dress-up. It became our indoor playground. The only problem was Andrea.
Our older sister had enjoyed the perks of being an only child for four and a half years before I came along. Then Cindy followed so closely, I’m sure she thought she was being overrun by hordes of babies. She resented it. But she found ways to make it work for her.
A lot of the time, she ignored us. By the time we started to evolve into people, she was in elementary school. By the time I entered school, she was approaching puberty. By the time I entered high school, she was graduated and living away from home.
In the meantime, she loved to boss us around, and if we didn’t comply, torture was her backup plan.
Sometimes, she got us into trouble. The old farmhouse was so cold in the winter, Daddy bought long batts of brown-paper-clad pink fiberglass insulation and stuffed the batts down between the studs to help insulate the second-story bedrooms. Andrea decided these batts would make good horses. We thought that was a pretty good idea! So we pulled them up, tied baling twine around the “neck” and behind the “saddle,” slung the twine over our shoulders like suspenders, mounted up, and galloped them around the attic like a charging cavalry. When winter came and the upstairs was still bitter cold, Daddy went up to the attic and found our insulation “horses.” He was not pleased, and we got a good scolding at a very loud decibel.
Andrea even tried to do away with us once – at least once.
Mother never left us with a babysitter, but one day she had to drive to a nearby farm to buy eggs, and left Andrea to babysit us. Andrea was about 11 that summer, so I would have been 6, and Cindy was 5. Mother told us to behave for our sister, that she wouldn’t be gone long, and told Andrea to do the lunch dishes.
As soon as Mother left, Andrea ordered Cindy and me to wash and dry the dishes for her. We refused.
Andrea got a butcher knife out of the drawer and chased us with it. Cindy and I raced out the back door, headed for the “swinging tree.”
You know how, when a tree is cut down, sometimes it sends up lots of smaller saplings from the cut stump? Well, there was a tree out back of the Elsenpeter house like that. Its branches were spindly, but quite tall, forming a hollow ring around the old stump. It was fun to swing on them. Cindy and I clambered up like squirrels. Andrea was too big, and the branches bent when she tried to climb them.
She tried snapping the branches to fling us off, but we held on like caterpillars. She tried cutting them down, but it was going to take a while with a butcher knife, so she went back into the house. Cindy and I prayed for Mother to come home soon!
Andrea came back out with a sly smile, a trash can and matches. She dumped it on the stump and struck a match!
Luckily, it took her quite a few tries before she got the fire started. Cindy and I were choking on the smoke, ready to come down and take our wrist burns or whatever punishment our big sister had in mind, when Mother came home. Our prayers were answered!
She didn’t leave us with Andrea again, that I recall.
It didn’t matter. Andrea found other ways to torture us behind Mother’s back.
Cindy was seriously claustrophobic. One day, when we wouldn’t be horses and pull Andrea around in her “carriage” – an old red wagon – she stuffed Cindy in the doghouse and sat in front of the door. Cindy screamed and I clawed at her until Mother came out and made us “quit all that racket.”
“She wanted to get in there,” Andrea said, pulling Cindy from her smelly prison.
Andrea was good at looking innocent.
Years later, after we moved, Andrea got a real horse. She saved her money and bought a palomino quarter horse and boy, did we have to fetch and carry for her in order to get a ride!
Mother would say later that Andrea kept us so busy, she could never find us to do chores for her.
Well, busy and scared.
Afraid of her threats, we rarely told Mother about the tortures we endured – or thought we did – at Andrea’s bigger, stronger hands.
Next: A Baby Brother!
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