Started with a lie

Chapter 4: Keeping secrets and memories begin

We have never figured this out. And now, the struggle to keep the secret safe. Not to tell anyone about my pregnancy. I start having memories.

I was 7, my brother 10, my mom in her early 40s, my grandmother (her mom) in her 60′s. So we were all cogent. No one was too young or too senile to not recall this nonsense. Yet, still no bloody answer.

I lived on an isolated country road in NC that was named after a family since they were the only crazy idiots who lived on the land for about 1000 acres. And I *do* mean crazy. We have stories about relatives that start with, "You remember that time Uncle Bob was in the ditch with a shotgun?" "WHICH TIME?!"

My house has been louder for several weeks while I'd been in my boyfriends house more often, but we were all over the state, spending the week with Brady before going back to my house. The house is in the foreal country, literally over train-tracks, past a salvage yard and her nearest neighbor (a cousin - everyone is related to everyone who owns a house on the road) ain't within screamin' distance. Yes, that seems to be a real system of measurement - "screaming distance."

It's early in the AM, like just before daybreak. We're awake because these are dysfunctional idiots who wake at the crack of dawn from to many problems. Me and Brady are eating cereal when we hear someone pull up outside. Curious, we run to the big picture window that looks onto the front yard. There is a strange truck there. No one seems to be behind the wheel, though the engine is idling. The truck is... well, old, for one thing. It's old-timey like from maybe the 1930′s? You could picture the Joad Family heading to California in this thing. It's rusted but it was probably once painted blue.