The HouseThat Built Me

By Liz Alley

It’s still there in Tiger, and although it has another owner, it will always be my house. A small home in the scheme of things, with three bedrooms and two baths for my parents and their five children. Since I am the youngest of the five, I don’t remember the early days of moving in, but I do remember when my sisters, Lisa, Lynn, and I shared a room. Every night when we got into bed after Mama had come in to say our prayers, Lisa would say in her meanest voice, “Hands up and Feet down!” Lynn and I would comply, starting our sleep out like prisoners of war while Lisa flopped all over us. Across the hall, in Chip and David’s room, things were no better even though only two were in bed. Their covers were messy because they wrestled all the time, mostly David, I feel sure, as Chip was, in his own words, “a lover, not a fighter.” And their room held a particular odor of feet, which was why Mama always opened the windows there every morning. Mom and Dad’s room had a tiny bathroom, no bigger than a thimble, so most of the time, the five of us used the one-hall bath. This bathroom took a beating literally as whoever had to go banged on the door to the current occupant unmercifully. When the door lock broke from all the jiggling, we were forced to open the cabinet drawer beside the door to provide us with a bit of privacy. Still, those two inches available from door to drawer were used to throw rocks and hurl insults if one of us took too long.

Mother, bless, she tried. She bought us the green and white encyclopedia set that was displayed on our bookshelves along with all the Readers Digest books. I did many homework assignments from those books. However, they were the bane of my existence as dusting was usually my job, and Mama made me take every book off and polish the shelves with lemon oil. My other job was to take a small scoop of mayonnaise, a soft rag, and polish all the leaves of our house plants, and I hated that job even more. I was thrilled when one day, we got an aquarium filled with colorful fish and a boat that looked shipwrecked. Not so much because I liked the

Liz Alley was born and raised in Rabun County in the city of Tiger. She loves to write. She is an interior designer specializing in repurposing the broken, tarnished, chipped, faded, worn and weathered into pieces that are precious again. She is the mother of two daughters and has three grandchildren. She divides her time between her home in Newnan and Rabun County. Liz would love to hear from you, drop her a line at Lizziewrites0715@gmail.com fish but because it took up much of the room on the bookshelf and cut my job in half. One day, I was mayonnaising the houseplant leaves, Lisa was sweeping, Lynn was cleaning the living room windows, and Mama was ironing when Chip and David came tumbling through the front door. They were fighting and rolling around like a couple of hoodlums, with Mama yelling for them to stop, and she meant it! About that time, the front door knob slammed up against the aquarium so hard the whole thing shattered, and out came gallons of water and little fishes flopping around on the floor. What I remember next is Mama grabbing the broom from Lisa, and let’s just say she parted the waters in something akin to what God did for the Israelites and the red sea, but she did it on the behinds of Chip and David. It was not good when David started laughing; Mama’s spankings never hurt, her heart wasn’t in it, but his laughing only made matters worse. It was usually during a time like this that we were all sent outside, and Mama had a good cry. I told you, Mama tried.

The house in Tiger withstood a lot. It bared the scar of a patchedup chimney when a woodpecker decided to do his best pecking in the middle of the night. A night that Daddy simply opened the window and shot at him, hitting the chimney, maybe the woodpecker too, since I don’t remember him coming back. The house survived the time my friend Judy and I decided to paste our colorful crayon drawings onto Chip and David’s bedroom wall; it was, I must say a hot mess. When David saw it, he chased us to the Roane’s barn, where we hid in the hay. I told Judy it was a good thing he didn’t find us. There has been so much refiguring of the house that it’s hard for me to remember the original layout. Our house looked the best when Mama hired Lorette Roane to decorate it. She did this after all of us kids moved out, and I don’t blame her one bit. My kids remember this house, the one that is calm and peaceful. The one with frilly curtains over the kitchen sink tied back like two ponytails while my mother washed dishes and looked out at Daddy’s garden. I love that house, the chaotic one and the peaceful one. When I’m home in the mountains, and I drive by our house, for a moment, I think I see Mother’s silhouette in her Shadowline nightgown waiting… in the house that built me.