Prologue
1954
Just off Highway A1A, near St. Augustine, Florida, on a cold December day, a rusted, worn out ’48 Oldsmobile Straycat Convertible with its V-8 engine roared like a rocket into the red clay, earth-packed driveway in front of a shotgun shanty. The warped brakes screeched loudly as the shuttered and stopped. The sky, the color of pewter, looked ominous and foreboding with the dark clouds pregnant with the promise of rain.
The tired young woman threw open the heavy car door and stepped out. A cold wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean reminded her to pull her collar up to her earlobes for added warmth. The trim figure was neatly dressed in dark blue work overalls, with crisply starched creases, her name neatly embroidered in pink on the white background of the oval label, right under the Grumman Factory name.
Shivering, she reached beside her on the front seat and drew the large, wriggling, blue-eyed baby boy close to her heart, giving him another kiss and reassuring hug while sliding a blue hand-crocheted blanket over his black curls to protect him from the cold.
Once out of the car, the diminutive woman balanced the cherub-faced boy on her hip, readjusting the blanket each time the wind blew it off. Still clutching her precious bundle in her arms, knee bent, her small foot flat against the car door, she quickly slammed it shut.
With a steely look of determination on her face, and her last small burst of energy, she cautiously made her way up the wooden steps carefully avoiding all the rotted boards and stepped gingerly onto the weathered, dilapidated front porch.
In response to her urgent knock, the screen door already half off its hinges, with patches stitched on it as neatly as needlepoint, made a loud, protesting screech as the drunken, unkempt, middle-aged man threw it open.
“What the?” he said startled to see his pretty, dark-haired ex-wife at the door with the youngest of their four children in her arms. Standing there in front of him, Barbara had such an innocent doe-eyed look about her it almost made him wish he hadn’t divorced her.
But before he could say anything more, his Mother, a large, rotund Russian Orthodox Jew, lumbered up behind him. Looking with sheer contempt at the pretty young woman standing before her, she opened her arms wide and grinned at the beautiful, robust baby boy, all the while cooing at him.
Mo recognizing his beloved "Babushka," takes his drool-covered fingers out of his mouth long enough to give her a crooked smile, flashing several pearly while teeth on the bottom row, then pops them back in.
“Here!” “Take him!” “I can’t take care of him no more, Jim,” the look of sheer desperation on her face. “ I’m workin long hours now, and what with you not givin me any money, I can barely feed the other three as it is.” “So, here!” Barbara burst into sobs as she thrust eighteen month-old Mo into his paternal grandmother’s eagerly awaiting arms. The baby now startled by his Mother's loud voice begins to cry.
Barbara’s voice softened a bit looking at the toothless, old woman showering her youngest grandson with hugs and kisses, murmuring something reassuring to him in Yiddish, the only language the recent immigrant knew.
“Jim, I know your Mom’s never liked me much, but I know she loves Mo.” “She’ll take good care of him,” she said more to reassure herself than anyone else.
Sobbing, she leans over and kisses Mo on the head, habitually rearranging one of his wayward black curls one last time.
Running off the porch in tears, she glances over her shoulder and shouts “I love you, Mo.” “I’ll come back and git you as soon as I can!”
And, with that she climbs back into the still-running Olds, puts the car in drive, and sped away as quickly as she came, leaving a cloud of red dust and a part of her heart behind.
Copyright © 2006 Deborah Gibson Taylor
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