We had finally done it. For years we had rented, but now we had managed to put enough away to buy our first home. Mother had worked off and on at the slacks factory for a few years but it had only been when we had needed some extra money. Now she had decided she would go to work full time there to help with the house payment. Ours was a small town and the only opportunities for women to work were either as a waitress or in the slacks factory. Mom had a god reputation as a worker so she was going in as an inspector.
We were a pretty close family and mom had always talked to us like were adults so she flat told us that this was very important and let us know she couldn’t be coming home to settle squabbles and we would have to handle a lot of things ourselves. You see, the factory’s management felt that once there you were theirs. If you were a minute late you were docked a quarter hour’s pay. And if you were late too often, or if you had to leave early much, then you were gone. Like I said there weren’t many jobs for women and for every job in that factory, there were five women waiting to get on. We understood all too well what mother had said to us. If she lost her job, we could lose our home.
So it rocked it along smoothly for a while and we worked a lot of things out among us as to who would do what. But one day at school it changed suddenly. We were at school one afternoon at recess when my buddy found me and told me my little sister had hurt herself on the swing. She was only six and had fallen out and hurt her wrist. I ran over to see what had happened and when I got there I was thankful no teacher had shown up. She was sitting on a swing and holding her wrist like it was broken. I looked at it and couldn’t see much swelling and she could move her fingers, so that was a good sign. I asked her if she would be okay till we got home and we could take her to the doctor then. I knew she wanted to call mom and she could only nod because it hurt so badly, but she agreed to wait. So my other sister and I took turns sitting with her. My other sister was only 8 and I was 10 at the time and knew we had to keep that wrist from swelling so a bunch of us got our cartons of milk that we got every afternoon and used them to try and keep the swelling down. Then my sister sat there and held her till I could get back to her when school let out for me.
You see we knew we couldn’t tell the nurse, because she would have to call mom and mom would drop everything to come to town and take her to the emergency room. And we din’t want to lose our home. We had helped to paint it. We had helped build the fence around the pasture for our animals. It was our home and we wanted to keep it so badly we would have done anything. So my little sister sat there holding her arm while my other sister sat there with her. Some of our friends gave their milk to help too because some of their mom’s worked there and we all knew the cost of our moms leaving their job. So we helped each other and kinda looked out for each other whenever we could. Well she managed to make it till the bus picked us up and took us home. By the time we got home you could tell she was hurting bad so we got her inside the house and started icing down her wrist. By the time mom got home from work and picking our other sisters, my sister’s wrist was starting to feel better from the ice. Mom took one look at it and loaded her into the care and rushed her to town.
She was gone quite a while so while waiting we had started supper and we were doing our home work when we heard the car pull into the drive. I knew that there were going to be words when mom got in after I had seen the look on here face as she got out of the car with our sister. So I sent Lee Anne off with our younger sisters and waited to face the music. And, from the look on her face, I knew I was in for it. “Why didn’t you have them call me? How could you let your sister hurt like that? Her arm could have broken. Would you want to sit there and hold your arm all afternoon like that?” she demanded. “Well, answer me”, she said. “We didn’t want to lose our home”, I told her. “What do you mean?” “Well, we were afraid if you came to town the factory would fire you and we would lose our home”. You know I was ten years old and had seen my mother cry only once before, but she just collapsed into a chair and broke down completely saying over and over between wracking sobs that no house was worth this. But I put my arms around her and told her that we had done the best we could and I was ready to be punished for not calling her. She just looked at me through those tear filled eyes and just smiled and said my punishment was to go into the kitchen and get my sisters a piece of cake and to get a piece for myself.
We managed to keep that home for quite a while and from that incident our family grew much closer than most and we still are to this day. Though mom has been gone a while; we are still very close to each other and if one of us needs help, there are five us ready to stand by the one that needs help.
