The Apple Tree(Janice) I was born in 1960, the younger of my other two sisters. My dad was married six years to our mother, Francine Alsept Walters, who was at the age of fifteen when they married. I never saw my mother until I was eleven, because she had left my dad when I was only eighteen months old. My dad re-married again to a woman named Gay Green, who was also only fifteen years old when they married, and my dad was thirty five years old. I guess back then it never mattered much about age difference like it does now. Daddy gave my older sister and my middle sister away to my grandmother to raise. Jeanette and Julie were close in age, only eighteen months apart. I was the one daddy wanted to keep with him and Gay. I don’t remember a lot of things until the age of four years old. But I knew one thing at four years old... I hated living with my dad and step-mom.

I was a petite child at the age of four, with blond hair and my skin was pale with my big green eyes. I always had short hair because of Gay never wanting me to have long hair; she said it was too hard to take care of. When you're only four years old you do as you're told, and living with a step-mom, who I was so scared of, made it worse for me. I remember my dad never being home and I was always left there with Gay. She was mean. She had dark hair and she looked like she had never seen sunlight her skin was so white. I never paid any attention to the color of her eyes. I hated looking her in the eyes. She had a loud mouth always yelling at me. I endured a life with her that I truly hated, but no one really knew how much or what was going on inside that small lime green house.

I remember my fifth birthday and going to kindergarten and wearing shoes with holes in them. One day it was pouring rain outside and I had to walk over a hill to get to the bus stop. It was a cool crisp morning and I was wearing my sleeveless dress which had a rip down the side. I hurried down the hill to the bus stop when I felt the rain drops hit my skinny little arms. My feet were walking as fast as I could go in hopes the bus would get there when I did. I clenched my hand over my ripped dress to hold it together and it was hard to do all day at school. My shoes were made of plastic and my feet were damp from the rain and I shivered feeling cold at school in mid-October. Kids in my class would stare at me and talk behind my back and I would hear them laugh. I knew they were talking about me as they looked at my dress and my shoes. My teacher really never paid much attention to poor kids like me and I really never thought about her.

When it came to lunch time I could not wait to eat, I could hear my own stomach growl. I would eat as fast as I could because I knew we could always get free milk. I never had friends, just kids I would speak to and really never thought about it. I dreaded when school was over and had to go back home, never knowing what I would encounter with Gay. I knew one thing that always happened when I got home, and that was to go to my room, if you could call it a bedroom. "No supper for you", said Gay, as she said, "go to bed". My bedroom had no door and my bed was close to the window. My bed was along the wall with the window above it and the curtains hang down close to my where my head was. I would lie down and shut my eyes and think about faraway places, and making them up as beautiful places with lots of food. It was then I opened up my eyes as I could smell fried chicken. I slowly got out of the bed and peeked out to see Gay cooking, and she had invited my uncle and Aunt over to eat supper. I had a half sister who was almost four years old. She saw me peeking and watching everyone and suddenly she grabbed a fried chicken leg and sneaked it to me. She hurried away from my bedroom because she was also scared. I ate that chicken leg and placed the chicken bone in a place I thought it would not ever be found.

I hurried and got back into my bed and slowly drifted off to sleep. The next morning I was woke up with a shout to get up and the same old words, "you’re in trouble again.” I would always pick the hem out of the curtains in my sleep with no idea I had done it. Every morning I would hear the same words, "you're getting a whipping you little witch.” I slowly turned my head toward the curtains, it was something that confused me how I could do this every night without knowing it. I should have got used to it by now, it was every morning. I sat in the middle of the half size bed thinking to myself, I better hurry and get out of her way. It was too late. I got a good smacking and was told to get dressed and get over the hill before I missed the bus. I was dressed in minutes and out the door running. The air was cool and I remember when I got to the bus stop we had neighbors who had moved in the house above our house, and I even thought to myself, they are poor, really poor. I was poor, but what made me think they were much poorer than me is the way a kid thinks.

The little old woman who had walked her little girl to the bus stop had walked over the hill too. They both stood there and looked at me with my short gapped hair and my torn dress which happened to be the same one I wore before. I hated that dress, it was really too short and if I bent over you could see my panties, and that day I had to be extra careful. My panties had a big hole in the back where you see my whole butt if I were to bend over. I had to be careful all day long and stoop down to pick up anything at school. It was the worst day of my life with that dress and the big hole in my panties. It was such a stressful day on a little girl. That was one day at school that always stood out in my mind because of the dress with the rip and the hole in my underwear.

It was time to go back home and I noticed that when the bus stopped and me and the little girl got off the bus, the little old woman was waiting on her little girl. We all three walked up the hill together. The little old woman was really skinny, and she had long dark hair with dark skin. Her little girl walked beside her mother and it was that day she said something to me and asked me my name. I looked up at her and told her, "My name is Janice and I live in the lime colored house", or at least it was the color I called it. She spoke soft and said she knew where I lived and I could see pity in her eyes for me, and I did not want pity from her. I felt pity for her, she looked sickly and she was poor as I was, except her little girl never had holes in her clothes or shoes. No matter to me. I just knew that little old woman was sick the way she coughed. I was just a child, but sometimes you can just sense things.

I was at my house and she told me good-bye and walked on over the hill toward her house she rented off of a man named Rollie. Those days were memories to me. Every day I walked over the hill to the bus stop with the little old lady and her child. Then one day they both never showed up and I waited at the bus stop and the bus came and they never showed up. When I got home that day I overheard my dad telling Gay she had passed away. I walked past them as though they were not there and went straight to my room to cry. I figured she was in a better place than having to walk over that cold hill every day with her child. I sat and thought about so many things about life and death and wondered why people were born, and then you die sometimes, I never figured anyone lived forever. I had heard all this talk from my grandparents whenever I could go see them and my sister’s. I loved to see granny and pa and visit and hope one day I could be there with my two sisters who seemed to be happy.

I had a half sister who had not started school yet. I had noticed Gay’s belly was getting big and I was no dummy, she was going to have a baby. I remember daddy wanted a boy, but in the late sixties there was no way of telling what sex the baby was going to be. My life went on the same as always and it seemed each time she was pregnant she was meaner. Patty was too young to play with, but her life was not going to be a bed of roses and she was Gay’s own child.

I was so happy that school was out for the summer but hated it because there was nothing to do. I was made to stay outside all day long and it was then I fell in love with that wonderful apple tree. The apple tree was my friend and a place for me to go and sit under while its small leaves made a shade. I would sit there all day long leaning up against the medium size trunk. I would even talk to that apple tree and it had become a part of my life. I would sit there nearly all day until I was yelled at to come inside. I remember one time talking to the apple tree and playing like it was real and Gay heard me and shouted out the door, "you're acting crazy talking to a tree, stop it you little witch", that was her name for me, "little witch". I thought about why she always called me a little witch. I knew I was little, but I was no witch, to my understanding a witch was a scary old woman who flew around on a broom stick in the sky. Maybe she called me little witch because I was ugly, but not old yet, just little. My mind wondered about some things and other things I would just not think about.

I remember one evening my daddy was home for a couple of days, or at least I thought he was. I never seen him much and it seemed he was never around. His life to me was like a dream, or a person who really never existed. I can’t explain that part of my life, or the part I was called a witch, or why I never had a birthday party or presents like other kids. It seemed like my own life was a bad dream. It was summer time and my daddy would always go foxhunting and he was never around. I had no relationship with my dad.

During the summer and fall and some of the Winter I would sit under the Apple tree. I loved that old Apple tree that was planted before I was born. Our house was a lime colored green. It was small inside and the hallway was short and had one closet in the entire house which was the door at the end of that short hallway.

I had dreams and I was a day dreamer and I considered myself a good hearted person, always heard if you had a good heart it would get you to heaven. I knew heaven had to be better than living with my stepmom and dad. Summers were great only for the reason there was no school and no more kids to make fun of me. I hated being called names and hearing them whisper behind my back. My hair was always cut short and my clothes were full of holes and my shoes hurt my feet. I always was cold in the winter when I walked over the hill to catch the bus. Summer was good for me because I had a friend, an Apple tree, an old one at that. It had many apples hanging off its branches. They were the yellowish green colored ones with small brown spots in them. They were sour, but I would eat them every once in a while, especially when I was really hungry. School had at least one good reason to go and it was the food. I always had breakfast and lunch at school.

It was a hot summer day and I remember never getting to sleep in like most kids would on a Saturday or Sunday. I was up waiting on Gay to eat and feed her youngest child and I would go in later to eat the left over’s and do the dishes. I would stand up in a chair and wash dishes. One morning I began feeling ill while washing dishes and had to sit down and wipe the sweat from my forehead. I felt dizzy and lightheaded. I remember it went on for many days of feeling weak and faint until daddy took me to the doctor. He told my daddy I had low blood and put me on some little red iron pills to take every day. I soon was feeling better and my chores were always waiting for me. I hated doing all that dirty laundry. It was piled sky high, and most of it came out of the closet, the one at the end of the hallway. Whenever clothes were dirty she would throw them in the closet until it was piled so high, one time I opened the door up and clothes fell everywhere, all dirty and smelly. Whenever she bought herself new clothes she would hang them up in the cedar closet that stood in her and daddy’s bedroom.

After all my chores were finished, off to the front yard to my favorite place, with only me and the apple tree. All day I would sit there, until I would get so thirsty I would run fast as I could go to the house. On one side of the house there were two bedroom windows. I would lean up against the house and scoot along the side of it, hoping she would not see me, but there she was. I could feel her eyes upon me looking at me. I would slowly turn my head toward the window and there she would be looking at me, and the same thing from the other window, and when I reached the last window she would take her finger and point it at me, and shake her head. I knew it was for me to get back to where I was, and that was my safe place, the apple tree. On that one particular day I was so thirsty I felt dizzy and when I looked up at the branches on that apple tree there was an apple bigger than most. I reached and picked it and ate it and it was so juicy. It was like the tree knew how thirsty I was. But of course it was only a tree, a wonderful apple tree. When I was hungry I could eat an apple and thirsty I could eat the best juiciest apple around and it stopped me from being so thirsty.

It was under that apple tree my life was saved from being so angry and from becoming a mean violent person, and helped me to keep love for others. It was under that tree I talked to the Lord and asked him questions and would fall asleep and dream. When I was frustrated I would talk to the apple tree and it felt like that old tree would listen. I felt safe under that wonderful tree and I believe it was there for me.

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