P. S. Save the best for last - my favorite gift was the story you wrote about "Rowdy." I read it out loud to David Wayne and he thoroughly enjoyed it. I've also loaned it out to Barbara - I don't think Suzie would appreciate it. Thank you so much for sending it.
As promised, here's the story my grandmother wrote about Rowdy. She originally wrote this story for her college English class in February of 1966, when I was three years old. (My grandmother started college in 1932 at the age of 16 but didn't finish, then she completed the requirements for her bachelor's degree in the mid-1960s after I was born.)
The story of Rowdy was then published (with a few minor changes) in the Fall 1967 issue of the Daedalian Quarterly, a publication of literary and artistic work by students at Texas Women's University that was first published in 1906.
"Rowdy" is one of at least four stories she had published in the Daedalian Quarterly in 1966 and 1967. With any luck I'll have reason to publish others as part of the Letters from Linda project. Below is the version published in the Daedalian Quarterly.
To help set the stage, my mother was born in 1941. She had an older brother (Wayne) who was four years older and a younger brother who was not yet born when this story took place.
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Rowdy by Eloise Mordecai
“Mama, this is my friend. She has come to play with me today.”
With these innocent words spoken by my three-year-old daughter began one of the most memorable episodes of my life. When I was introduced to her friend, I nodded vaguely to the right (or was it the left?) of my little girl's shoulder and smiled a welcome to the invisible guest in my house, thinking briefly that I wished there was another little girl of the same age in our neighborhood. Boys we had plenty of, but no girls except Linda. Not that she minded this inequality of numbers; she could ride her shortened broom stick as far, draw her trusty six-shooter as fast, and track Indians with the best of them. She could also give away more secrets, upset more traps, and howl the loudest. And fall the hardest. She was, during this time in her life, a colorful child -- a study in shades of deep purple, light blue, pale green, and tawny yellow, depicting the progress of her many bruises.
A little girl near her age would solve many problems for me as well as for Linda. I could not always find time to "play house" or help with her mud pie baking. I could get her started with her play, but she invariably became bored and restless and wanted me to give her more time, especially when the boys went to play in the next block or in the big empty field north of our house where she was not allowed to follow.
Most of the time all the children played together happily, but sometimes the boys were fed up with a three-year-old little sister tagging along at their heels. And sometimes they were just mean to her, not allowing her to join them in their endless games of cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or truckers that hauled countless loads of sand over their carefully constructed roads in my back yard.
At such times I had to quit whatever I was doing and be a playmate, a friend, another little girl. But a grown-up, even a mother who plays "dress up" and bakes mud pies with her little girl, is not really a satisfactory substitute for that longed-for little friend who comes to play. And so, out of her longing for a friend of her own and her overactive imagination, Linda created a playmate.
At first the imaginary friend came only occasionally - on long hot summer afternoons when it was too hot to play outside or when the boys had flatly laid down the ultimatum that she could not play with them. I listened to little-girl conversations with a tolerant attitude. This was not my first acquaintance with imaginary people that my children invented. Wayne, too, had had a friend, a Mr. Sam, with whom he went fishing, and I had done considerable research on the problem of the invisible people that children invent, more to assure myself of my child's intelligence than for any other reason.
But the difference between Wayne’s friend and Linda's soon became quite clear: Wayne had talked about his friend; Linda talked with her friend, naturally, conversationally, sensibly.
Assuming that it was a phase that she would soon forget, I did not attempt to dissuade her friendship with the little guest in our house. I recognized her need and was just a little bit proud of her ingenuity. Didn't all the books say that only a child of superior intellect had the imagination to create his own friends?
But her brother, who had forgotten his fishing excursions with "Mr. Sam," thought her invisible friend was the funniest thing in all his experience.
"What is your little friend's name, Linda?"
"You get out of my room and leave me alone."
"Why can't I play with you?"
"Boys don't play with dolls."
"Girls don't play with guns, but you play with us," he pointed out.
"Mama," Linda would shriek at this point, "Make Wayne go outside and play. He's bothering me and my friend."
And I would make Wayne leave her alone, temporarily at least. But there would come another time, another teasing, another show of temper. Gradually, Wayne’s teasing hit a hard core of stubbornness hitherto unsuspected in his little sister. Instead of relinquishing her new-found friend, Linda added bits and pieces of information about her. As the weeks passed, the friend became a permanent visitor at our house. And she acquired a name: Rowdy.
She also acquired a family, a father who was in the Army and a mother who was in the Navy. I could understand the father's position; most fathers were in service during World War II. But I never quite figured out how the mother managed a hitch in the Navy, leaving her very young and invisible child in Linda’s care. Later, when Rowdy brought her baby brother to live with us, I wondered how the Army-Navy parents got together long enough to produce a child! But Linda never bothered with minor details or explanations that should have been quite clear.
Rowdy also acquired a personality. She was always a quiet (very quiet) child, clean and neat. I often overheard Linda discussing with her the various problems of the day: what shall we wear today? do you like chocolate pie better than apple? which doll do you want today? Linda enjoyed playing hostess to her guest, seeing that she had the prettiest dress, the best kind of pie, and the doll of her choice. She saw that she ate at the table with us, setting a place for her next to her own. When Linda finished the food on her plate, she calmly switched plates with Rowdy and ate her lunch for her. She let Rowdy sleep in her bed, carefully occupying only half the space in order to give her guest plenty of room.
Instead of using her imaginary playmate as the scapegoat for her own mistakes (the books explained that this was often the case), Linda fiercely defended Rowdy against all insinuations, accusations, or suggestions. When anything was lost or broken in the house, she was always quick to say, "Well, it wasn't Rowdy who broke it." Or, "Rowdy didn't do it mama. I don't know how it happened, but I just know Rowdy didn't do it."
With a name, a family and a definite personality, Rowdy became an accepted part of our household. Sometimes she would disappear for days or even weeks; sometimes she would be with us in a very active capacity. During the lonely hours when Wayne was in school Linda learned to amuse herself in many ways, always with the assistance of Rowdy. I was guest at many of their tea parties where we ate imaginary food from Linda's best dishes. I invited them to tea and served them cookies and hot chocolate, but they never seemed to notice the difference between my food and theirs, and I often had the feeling that their food was much more delicious than mine. On one occasion I asked Linda if she and Rowdy would like to come to my house for tea and Linda answered, "Well, I shall be glad to come, but Rowdy is not here today, you know; she has gone shopping with her aunt."
Knowing when Rowdy was present became more of a problem as the months went by. We always knew vaguely that she was "there," but we never knew "where." We were not blessed with second sight (as a matter of fact, we never had the first sight), and so we had to take our cues from Linda, who had no trouble at all. A friend of mine dropped in to see me one morning and, not wanting to interfere with my work of cleaning the children's rooms, sat down in one of the little chairs that were a part of Linda's "table-‘n-chair" set. Immediately Linda screamed, "Now look what you've done! You've sat on Rowdy!”
Another incident that stands out in my memory is the time that Rowdy went to town with us. I had no idea that she was with us until I reached out to help Linda on the high step of the bus. She, in turn, reached out to help her friend, saying "Come on, Rowdy, let's get on the bus and go to town with mama." She carefully helped her on the bus, led her to a seat (politely letting her sit next to the window, which was more than she ever did for me!), and sat down with her. She chattered to her all the way to town, pointing out the school, the church, the old house that looked like a castle -- all the places that might interest a child.
Sitting in the seat behind Linda and Rowdy, I listened idly to her chatter; I was accustomed to her conversations with Rowdy. But, sitting across the aisle from Linda, were two elderly ladies who, with sympathetic nods and smiles of pity, let me know in no uncertain terms that they thought I was the mother of a mentally retarded child. Unaware of the pity evinced by the ladies, Linda took Rowdy to town, showed her the sights in the stores, bought her some candy, and brought her home again on the bus. I think they both had a wonderful time, but I was struck for the first time with the realization that some people might not understand Linda's friend Rowdy who had become such an accepted part of our family.
Inevitably, but with no great dramatic farewell, Rowdy left us. We never knew the moment of her departure, of course. I doubt that Linda knew, although she knew everything else about her. Almost two years after Rowdy's first appearance as a guest in our home Wayne asked one day, "Linda, whatever happened to Rowdy? Does she still live with us?" (I had long ago definitely put an end to his teasing Linda about her friend.)
"Oh, no, she went home. Her daddy came home from the army, you know."
We smiled at each other, Wayne and I; the daddy at our house was coming home too.
"And did her mother come home too?" persisted Wayne.
"Oh, Wayne, she came home before her daddy. She had to take care of the baby. Rowdy and I just couldn't do everything, so she came home. Then her daddy. So Rowdy decided she had better go home too."
And that was the end of Rowdy's visit with us. Shortly after her explanation to Wayne, their daddy came home from the service and we were a complete family again. Within a short time some new neighbors (with twin girls!) moved in the next block. Then it was time for Linda to start to school.
But Rowdy, although we no longer have to worry about sitting on her, is still part of our family through the stories we tell about her. Unfortunately, Linda's father never knew Rowdy or ever quite believed her; but Wayne and I remember her quite well, I for the tea parties and the little-girl talk that helped Linda through a lonely period, Wayne for the answers and explanations that Linda was never without.
My chubby little three-year-old is now grown and the mother of her own chubby little three-year-old. (Where did the years go?) And yet, sometimes on a special kind of day, a very perceptive day -- a nostalgic day? -- I look at my daughter and see just to the right (or is it the left?) of her shoulder that little alterego, that charming little house guest of her childhood, that little Rowdy.
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