Broomsticks and Bedboards

"There are," my Aunt Lizzie warned me, " Spies among us."

Aunt Lizzie lived next door to us with her one son, Kenton. She had been bedridden for as long as I could remember and spent her days on a small cot in the kitchen, close to the stove. Nana said she was perfectly capable of getting up and around but simply chose not to. Kenton, a tall, gangling 40-ish bachelor with a pronounced stutter, badly crossed eyes and one leg considerably shorter than the other, took care of her. He was what Nana called "not right" and we kept our distance from him. We would see him chopping wood in his red and black flannel loggers cap and rubber boots, his glasses hanging by one earpiece and saliva dripping down his chin. When he looked in our direction, we fled - terrified by his unkept appearance and wild eyes, more terrified that he might try to speak. He was I came to finally realize, my version of what a child molester or pervert would look like and although Nana constantly reassured us that he was harmless, I was never persuaded. Retardation and incest were so common that they were taken for granted but something about Kenton was wrong, almost menacing.

"Would you like a chocolate?" Aunt Lizzie asked politely, offering me a hand towel.

Nana said Lizzie had raised Kenton alone, that he had been a difficult child and that Lizzie had often found it necessary to lock him in the closet beneath the stairs for long periods. He was very nearly blind, she said, a result of being kept in darkness so often and for so long and completely unsocialized as Lizzie had never allowed him to go to school or interact with other children. She had taught him to read and write herself, and if he did poorly, she beat him, breaking his fingers on several occasions. When I asked why, Nana shook her head and muttered about unnatural relationships but she would explain no further except to say that the real monster was not Kenton, but his frail, invalid mother.

"Mind that spider, " Aunt Lizzie said, pointing a shaking finger toward a knitting basket, "It bites."

Neither Lizzie nor Kenton ever left the house and no one except Nana ever visited. Mail and groceries were delivered,

sometimes there were packages from the Spiegel catalogue. Lizzie survived several small strokes without medical attention and when Kenton broke his leg one summer, it was said that he had fashioned a splint from broomsticks and bedboards and tied it off with rope from the clothesline all because his mother would allow no doctor in the house. Though it healed, the bones had knit crookedly, resulting in a deformed limb and a lifelong limp and as Nana said with a scowl, likely chronic and severe pain.

"The horseshoe will only fly on Thanksgiving." Aunt Lizzie told me sadly, "Give me your thimble, dear, it's quite early." In a rocking chair on the sunporch, Kenton rocked himself to sleep while Lizzie raved on.

Some lives are lived entirely in pain and tragedy.