Chapter 6: In the Beginning

From earliest memory my little sister, Cindy, was part of me. I was sixteen months old when she was born, like me, in Oklahoma City. Daddy, who was selling real estate at the time, did what he usually did. He dropped Mother off at the hospital entrance to have the new baby. He never was with her during any of our births. He didn’t like “stuff like that.” So he took a couple of days off of work to take care of big sister Andrea and me, then picked Mother up at the hospital with Cindy when it was time, dropped us all off at home, and immediately went back to work.

Mother says I stood in my crib, my dark eyes peering over the top bar, staring at her blonde hair and blue eyes in the bassinet next to me. When Mother fed Cindy, I climbed on her lap, a rubber nipple from my old baby bottle stuck on my thumb and my Blankie tucked under my chin, to snuggle and watch them.

“You took possession of her right away,” Mother used to say. “Like she was your baby.”

I tried to help feed her in her high chair, getting as much food on me as in her, and probably helping myself to a few bites of baby-food pears along the way. I helped her take her first steps, and one of her first words was “Ninda.”

All our names were too elegant – Andrea, Linda and Cynthia – for the last name that accompanied them. I always felt we should have been named things like Wanda Jean or Billie Jo. She had high hopes for all of us. You’ve got to give her that.

She had toyed with the idea of naming us after movie stars because, as I have said before, she loved the movies. We thanked our lucky stars that she hadn’t named us after Hedy Lamarr, Myrna Loy or Merle Oberon – none of which goes real well with Pigg. Like anything did.

So as much as we came to bemoan our last name, we at least kind of liked our first names, and eventually all married and dumped the maiden name. No hyphenating for us!

As soon as Cindy could walk, we went everywhere together, holding hands much of the time.

By the time we moved to Wichita, Kansas, I was 4 and supposedly old enough for kindergarten. I wasn’t ready. I was bereft to be separated from my kid sister. I cried myself to sleep at naptime each morning. Miss Kinkaid, the crabby kindergarten teacher, finally just left me asleep when the other kids woke up, and told Mother I wasn’t ready for school. So I was a kindergarten drop-out, and happy to be one.

It was also about this time when I took to hiding.

One summer day, Daddy was working in the garage, Mother was in the kitchen, and Cindy was taking her nap. I was playing outside with our dog Queenie and noticed a sliver of dark, shadowed space behind a sheet of plywood standing up against the studs inside the garage. I slipped behind it and stood there, enjoying the cool spot.
Mother came out of the house.
“Have you seen Linda?” she asked Daddy.
“I thought she went in the house,” he replied.
They began searching for me, calling my name, casually at first, then more frantically.
Soon, the next-door neighbors became involved. They wandered up the street, calling my name. The more they searched, the more frightened I became. I didn’t want to be discovered. I began to sweat, and wanted to cry, but I couldn’t come out.
I don’t know why.
Soon, lots of people were calling me and looking for my little body, doubtless drowned in a ditch or hit by a runaway car. Finally, Daddy pulled the sheet of plywood away from the wall, little expecting to find me there, and I burst into sobs. Tucked between the studs, itchy and sweaty and crying, I don’t think he knew whether to hug me or spank me. While he was deciding, a frantic Mother snatched me up, hugging me and crying all the way to the house.
“You scared us!” she kept saying.
A few months later, during a family gathering, I got bored. Cindy was sitting on Daddy’s lap and Andrea was playing with our cousins. So I wandered away from the boring adult chatter and went into my parents’ bedroom. I never went in there by myself. The closet door stood ajar, and I peeked in. There I saw Daddy’s tall leather hunting boots. I loved those boots. I squirmed my way past long winter coats and Sunday dresses, and stepped into them. They came up to my hips. The clothes fell shut in front of me like a theater curtain. I was trapped. Yes, I could have just as easily gotten out as in, but now I was hiding.
Soon, Mother began searching for me.
“Where’s Linda?” she asked aunts, uncles, cousins.
No one had seen me.
The search was on.
This time, they were as much angry as scared.
“Where are you?” Mother’s voice had an edge to it that said I was in trouble.
I surely couldn’t come out now.
I stood in that hot, suffocating closet for at least an eternity. I sweated, silent tears rolling down my face, wiping at my snotty nose with my fist, afraid they’d find me, and afraid they wouldn’t.
Several people looked into the closet; it wasn’t till my father finally parted the clothes to find me standing hip-deep in his tall leather boots that the search was over. I cried so hard, I got the hiccups.
“Why do you keep doing this?” Mother asked.
I didn’t know then and I still don’t. But I quit hiding after that. It was just too stressful!

It was the same with having my picture taken.

One of my earliest memories is getting spanked by Daddy because I wouldn’t pose for a Pigg family portrait. An extended set of relatives had gathered for some event – perhaps one of my grandparents’ birthdays. All the adults and children – maybe 30 or so of us – were going to be in a photograph.
I’m the only one crying. Cindy has her head tucked, shyly, into my shoulder and she’s holding my hand.

Cindy and I spent our days playing with our dolls, exploring our neighborhood and following Mother around asking questions. Once, we made mud pies in the back yard after it rained. They looked pretty good, so we tasted them. And we got pin worms. You don’t want to know the details!

One day, I spied workmen in the street lifting a lid right out of the pavement. They sent a hose down the hole it left to do some other mysterious stuff. I wanted one of those lids. After they left, Cindy stood guard while I went out and lifted the manhole cover out of its moorings and carried it the few steps to our driveway. Then I dropped it on my big toe. Hey, it was heavy and I was a scrawny kid.

Cindy cried as hard as I did, as if she, too, could feel the pain. We did that a lot. My toenail turned black and fell off, eventually. Mother and Daddy never did figure out how I did it.

Mother always said Cindy and I had a silent form of communication. Without a word, we’d just look at each other, both jump up and head to our room at the same time.

But Wichita was just another stop on Daddy’s search to find … something. So we moved again. And we heeded to Missouri, his home state. As usual, he left Mother behind to sell the house, pack everything and move it all and three little girls to our new home.