So, when she hadn’t seen her for a bit, she was concerned. She called the house from church and there was no answer. “Come on, Jess,” she said. “Let’s just check on her.”
You could hear the baby crying before you even got to the door. Wailing. Mom knocked and there was no answer. “Jane?” she called. She looked at me for one second, and some mom instinct in her kicked in. The door was unlocked so she let herself in.
“Jane, it’s Tina,” she called out as she made her way to the room with the crib. There was no answer. The baby was left all alone in the house. He was on a plastic sheet, not even a real sheet, and he was covered in pee and poop. When mom went to lift him, she realized that he was literally stuck to the bed.
“Jess, go sit in the living room,” she said.
I did as I was told as my mom ran to the bathroom and took every towel and washcloth she could find to run under warm water. She brought them to the crib and used the warm wet towels to unstick the poor baby. She lovingly cleaned him as we both cried. She went to the kitchen and made a bottle of formula just from the muscle memory of motherhood.
“You’re okay,” she whispered to him again and again, as he took hungry gulps. “You’re okay.”
When he was finally calm, she held him in the crook of her arm and went to the phone on the wall.
“Joe, I’m at Jane’s,” she said. “I’m bringing this baby home.”
She left a note for Jane saying the baby was safe and asked her to come to our house. When she showed up, my parents didn’t judge her. My parents were always good like that. They were just doing the best they could, too. Jane wasn’t a bad person, she just needed help with her depression. She would not be equipped to parent until she could take care of herself. If she had a family, my mother explained to her, they would see how she was struggling and step in. Jane didn’t have that, but she had us. That’s the power of faith in action. It’s not about talking and judging. It’s about doing.
Jane’s baby lived with us for six weeks, and I thought I had a new baby brother. I know my parents were prepared to formally adopt him if need be. As we cared for the baby, my father got Jane into therapy, and my parents helped her reconcile with her family. Soon, she was able to take the baby back to Iowa with her.
My mother tried to make it a joyous thing for us. Jane was going home to be reunited with her parents. “The baby is going to be where he needs to be,” she said.
I felt a real loss, though. As I remember it, she just up and vanished with the baby, which of course isn’t true. But tell it to a six-year-old. I loved him—the way he slept with his hands up, totally at peace as a little boy in Ashlee’s hand-me-downs. The first morning after he left with Jane, I briefly forgot he was gone, and I felt that all-body disappointment that kids can experience. Your shoulders sink with your heart, and you think you’ll never get over it.
I did. I had to. With the same fervor that my mom now flips houses, my parents fixed people throughout my childhood. We took in people who were sick or neglected, and it wasn’t always fun. Sometimes it was a chore to share my parents with others. Our family time was always with others, whether they were there physically or talked about in our prayers. “To whom much is given, much is expected,” was what I heard. I understood, but sometimes I didn’t feel we had much to share.
NO MATTER WHERE WE MOVED, NANA AND PAPAW’S HOUSE IN MCGREGOR was home base. The five of us cousins—the children of the Drew girls, my mom and her two older sisters—would play outside from the second my parents pulled into the driveway. The oldest were Debbie’s kids—Zeb and his younger sister Sarah; then Connie’s son Drew; then me and Ashlee bringing up the rear. At six years old, I was exactly two years and three days younger than Sarah, who I idolized as more of big sister and best friend than a cousin. Sarah was already so effortlessly cool that I loved anything she loved. She liked pigs, so I liked pigs. When her family visited us in Colorado, we made snow pigs instead of snow angels. She went horseback riding, and, well, I tried.
Now that we were back in Texas, we made the hour-and-a-half drive down to McGregor all the time. McGregor is a small town next to Waco, the buckle of the Bible Belt. My grandparents lived on Leafy Hollow, named for all the tall skinny trees that reached so high to the sky. The trees created clouds of white flowers in the spring and a canopy of green throughout the summer. There were at least a dozen in the front yard alone.
We cousins played in the creek behind their house, and all of us wore our McGregor Bulldogs T-shirts. Even Ashlee, about to turn two, danced around in her size small T-shirt, swirling in it like a princess dress. This was in tribute to Papaw, who was the beloved line and strength coach at McGregor High. Acy Drew was Ace to everyone when he made First Team All-State as a quarterback in high school, then played football for Baylor. But by the time I came along, everyone in town called him “Coach,” stepped aside for him when he passed and never once thought about cussing in his presence for fear of what he would do. Believe everything you’ve heard about the reverence for football in Texas. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Hail Mary pass . . .
He’d been a tough man, but he’d softened with age. Men don’t normally change, I know, but they can. I like it when they do. The only thing he loved more than his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was us kids, and he would casually patrol the creek while we were out there, keeping watch for snakes. If he spotted one, he’d pick it up and squeeze its neck, even the rattlesnakes.
My Nana, Dorothy Jane, was my prayer warrior. She held firm to her Christian faith and did all things through He who strengthened her. Her steadfastness was almost a response to her mother. Bertha Dee died a couple weeks after I was born, but she was a legend to me. “She was full-blooded Indian,” I grew up hearing in whispers from cousins and my mother. My great-grandmother read people’s fortunes and aligned her gardens with the stars. This was always said before a long, dramatic pause. Nana never wanted to talk about her. If I said anything about astrology or being a Cancer, my grandmother would go move quick to hush me.
I heard different stories about my great-grandmother, cautionary tales about what could happen if you leaned in hard on that intuition. I don’t know the full story, but I also know that she was a card reader in Waco, Texas, at a time when that was not done. She was considered crazy by a lot of people in town. That buckle on the Bible Belt can come down hard and leave a mark.
But I’d stare in the mirror at my brown eyes and high cheekbones, convinced I was Native American. More than that, we Simpson girls, my mother included, all seemed a little witchy. A nicer word would be intuitive. We had a good sense of people from the get-go and we often knew what was going to happen before it happened. Sometimes we chalked it up to our faith that God would provide, sometimes to just paying attention. But often it felt like we knew what was destined to be. Everything that happened in my life just felt preordained. Still does.
If we weren’t at Nana and Papaw’s, the family usually met up at my cousin Sarah’s house. Her dad, Uncle Boyd, put up a tire swing while I was in Colorado, and when I got back it was all me and Sarah wanted to do. Sarah loved the swing, and, like I said—I loved anything she loved.
Aunt Debbie, Sarah’s mom, was even more of a devout Christian than my parents, and while Sarah and I ran outside, she would listen to one of her evangelist tapes. Sermons all the time, loud so everybody could hear. You’d dip in and out of a deep, solemn voice rolling across the yard as we played. “Now, I want you to turn with me to 2 Chronicles, the 33rd chaptah . . .”