All In The Family    

The exasperating part is that it starts out as the good dream, the warm and comforting one that I conjure in counterpoint to my nightmares. I’m feeling deeply content, basking in the warmth and security of the soft white clouds, when the dreadful truth manifests itself. I have wet the big beautiful bed that Aunt Addie has carefully prepared for me. I try to remember how I got to her home in Ohio. It must have been very late at night, or shortly before dawn, when Daddy roused me from the sleeping cab of his truck and carried me into “Unka” (short for Uncle) Harlan Hogan’s house. Just before I was placed in the large soft bed and fell back to sleep, I vaguely recall adults talking and Daddy saying goodbye. And now, I’ve awoken in a strange place to realize that I have defiled the bedding and shamed myself.   

To delay the evidence of my indignity, I feign sleep for almost two hours. I’m aware that from time to time, heads poke into the room to check on me. I can smell the sizzling bacon downstairs and sense the bright sun taking the chill out of the room. Shivering beneath the damp covers, I feel the evaporating pee sting my inner thighs, the pungent odor competing with the bacon. I’m entertaining the cockamamie notion that if I stay in bed long enough, the damp bedding, the big wet spot, and even my sleep clothing will dry, mercifully sparing me the humiliation of discovery. 

Aunt Addie enters the room and sits on the bed beside me. She strokes my hair and says in a comforting voice, “Kayla, honey, you kin get up. There ain’t nobody here now ‘cept for me and Ellie. I know you wet the bed, child, but it don’t make no never mind. I got me one of them washing machines, and I kin fix it right up.”   

Exposed, but released, all I can muster is, “OK.”  

Aunt Addie stands up, points toward a chair near the dresser, and announces cheerily, “I got these here clothes I want you to try on, and then you come on down and git yerself some breakfast. It’s just me and Ellie downstairs, and she’s a-dyin’ to meet you.”  

I nod in assent, and Aunt Addie is considerate enough to leave the room. I’m embarrassed, but thrilled with the new shorts and blouse she has laid out on the chair for me. There’s even a brand new pair of white cotton underpants that fit perfectly. I don’t know what to do with my wet sleep clothes, so I scrunch everything up into a ball under the covers. That afternoon, I figure Aunt Addie is some kind of Angel of Mercy, because when I come back upstairs, the clothing is cleared away and the bed is freshly made.  

Breakfast, unfortunately, is not quite so serendipitous. I’ll never forget that first meal in the Hogan household. Aunt Addie has told the truth—Unka is at work and my cousin Willy-boy is attending a special school, where he receives tutoring and physical therapy. I find out that Aunt Addie refuses to send Ellie to school because she does not trust that anyone will look after her in a good way. (She’s likely right.) Blessedly, this first morning, my appearance is only for Ellie and my aunt. Aunt Addie greets me at the bottom of the stairs and guides me to the kitchen where I’m about to take a seat at the table. Instead, I stand frozen in place, because I get a peek at my cousin Ellie, who is outside the screen door to the kitchen, grinning and staring in at me. I recall that Ellie is almost 18 years old, and has some kind of brain damage, but, at only nine years old, I’m not in the least prepared for the actual specter of my cousin. She’s not just fat, but huge! Though Ellie’s hair is fixed up with a pretty yellow ribbon and barrettes, she’s wearing a man’s baggy shirt, loose droopy shorts and odd-looking leather shoes with thick white socks. And she has body hair, in some of the exact wrong places. 

In a deep manly voice, the first horrifying thing she says to me is, “I wet the bed, too! I wear a diaper ever’ day. I’ll git one fer you.”  

Aunt Addie quickly jumps in to the rescue with, “Now, Ellie, you hush up. Kayla don’t need no diaper. She jist had a mishap last night, that’s all.” Noticing that I’m both petrified and ashamed, Aunt Addie moves to block Ellie, who has pushed the screen door open and is moving toward the table where I continue to stand immobilized. My aunt addresses me in a gentle way, “There ain’t no need to be scared of Ellie. She don’t mean no harm. Why, she’s jist like a big old baby. Jist talk to her like you would your little brother Cody, that’s all. She’s a-tryin’ to make friends with you.” 

Ellie slips around Aunt Addie and begins roughly tugging on my blouse and tapping my shoulder with thick fingers as she announces, “I got baby dolls—three of ‘em, and I take care of ‘em all by myself. I put diapers on ‘em, too. C’mon, I’ll show you right now.” 

At this range, I also get a whiff of Ellie, who, being incontinent and in a cloth diaper, emits an odor somewhere between the outhouse and dead crawfish. Mortified, I turn my ashen face, in supplication, toward Aunt Addie. 

“Ellie, you git back outside right this minute and let yer cousin eat breakfast. And no, you cain’t eat again. You already had two breakfasts. You kin show Kayla them dolls o’ yers later.”   

Ellie reluctantly obeys, and Aunt Addie has me sit down as she fusses over my breakfast, explaining more about Ellie’s condition and her son Willy-boy’s polio. “They’s my babies, and I jist love ‘em to pieces. The Lord sent them to me for a purpose, and I aim to fill it.”   

With Ellie lurking on the kitchen porch, I’m fighting back tears and swallowing so hard I can barely taste the food. I miss my smart brothers and my healthy cousins in Kentucky. Why did Mama send me away to this awful place? Why did Daddy just leave me here alone in Ohio?   

After breakfast, Ellie is allowed back in the house, and Aunt Addie escorts me on a visit to Ellie’s room, which, like the kitchen, is located on the downstairs level. In addition to dolls, Ellie has plenty of stuffed animals and picture books, and her very own bed with a railing, so she won’t roll out at night. Patting a spot on the bed, Ellie informs me, “You can sleep right here with me.” I manage a weak smile. “I like them corncakes the best,” Ellie continues, apropos of nothing, “and we kin take a bath together. I ain’t never had me a sister before. This here’s my number one baby doll. Willy-boy cain’t touch it, but I’ll let you hold her sometime. Do you know that story about the little engine? I think I can, I think I can. That’s my favorite. Also about the little red hen. Mommy tells that story real good.”   

From my own Mama, I know the story of the Little Engine That Could and the Little Red Hen, but I’m not about to acknowledge any bond between Ellie and me. Aunt Addie stands by smiling and nodding, then, abruptly excuses herself, saying, “I reckon it’s time you gals got to know one another.”  

As Aunt Addie slips away, I lodge myself in the doorway with one hand gripping the frame so I can readily make a run for it. Forcing a smile and trying to be polite, I stand rigid while my strange cousin prattles on. Pointing toward an adjacent wall, Ellie points at photos of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, cowboys that she has cut out of magazines and taped up. She announces, “I like them singin’ cowboys. I got married to Gene Autry. He’s my favorite more than Roy Rogers, who already got himself a wife. See, this here’s my baby I had with Gene Autry.” She holds up a silly-looking rag doll. “I like how Gene Autry sings real pretty: Back in the Saddle Again. Do y’all know that song? Roy Rogers, he don’t sing so good and he got him a wife, so I didn’t marry him.”   

I have to suppress a laugh and feel like I can release my grip on the doorframe a bit. I decide that the best thing about being around cousin Ellie is that you don’t have to answer or say anything—ever. Shucks, you don’t even have to listen. Ellie shows me everything in her room and proposes endless activities for us to do together. Over the next few days in the Hogan household, I spend considerable time in the company of my cousin Ellie. When I take to ignoring her size and view her as a little kid, I relax, and actually begin to enjoy her company. She often says very funny things, just like a baby, and she’s really playful. Before long I’m taking care of Ellie, and I’m not at all scared of her. By the time I’m ready to go back home to Kentucky, Ellie is like a dear baby sister to me. I even got used to the way she smells; well, some of the time, anyway. From getting to know Ellie, I learn a good lesson about not being afraid of people just because they’re not the kind you’re accustomed to.  

Ellie is not the only member of the Hogan household to teach me about appreciating and receiving from different types of people. I’ve never seen married people get along the way Unka and Aunt Addie do. Unlike my parents, they exchange real affection and truly seem to like each other. In all her busyness, Aunt Addie is a tiny little thing that sometimes brings to mind an elf. I like to watch her deftly wield a hairbrush as she fusses with Ellie’s hair. Aunt Addie even takes to fixing my hair, in a gentle way, not the way Mama gives my hair a lick and a promise as she yanks impatiently at the tangles. Addie is always in motion, making or doing things around the house—churning butter, canning, baking, sewing, or quilting. And, also unlike Mama, she is patient and takes her time explaining things. She lets Ellie and me mix the biscuit dough with our hands, but only allows me to stir the cake batter, because, as she reports, “Ellie will keep lickin’ the sweetness off the mixin’ spoon.”   

My favorite activity with Aunt Addie is churning butter in the old stoneware churn with the hand-carved paddle that has been passed down from Unka’s great grandmother. Making butter is a chore that requires patience and perfect timing to assure that the clabbered cream will “gather” and yield sweet butter, not mushy half-soured milk or hard rancid little balls. Aunt Addie teaches me to savor the sharp, thick flavor of the buttermilk remaining in the churn after the fresh butter is removed. Even Ellie manages to stay still as Aunt Addie rhythmically maneuvers the plunger in the churn to work the butter, while recounting both sad and amusing stories about growing up in Kentucky during hard times. The stories make me homesick for Mama and my brothers again, but I don’t let on in front of Aunt Addie.    

I never quite know what to make of my Uncle Harlan Hogan, who refers to himself as “Unka Harlan,” a name that the family shortened to simply “Unka.” Harlan Hogan is not a handsome man, but he is determined and able-bodied. Aunt Addie says that Unka likes to play the fool, even though he’s smart. He always insists that the world began in his Kentucky birthplace and that all the important people in the world can trace their ancestors back to Kentucky. Places on the map like Ohio, he instructs, are just “stuck on.” When he acts like a simple, good-natured hillbilly, folks treat Harlan Hogan kindly, if not respectfully. Plus, he works hard and minds his own business. By drawing amusement towards himself, Unka also distracts attention away from the oddities of his children, whose afflictions, I can tell, pose a hard reconciliation for him. I’m especially uncomfortable that Unka makes cruel and denigrating references to Ellie right in front of her. My cousin doesn’t always understand people’s words, but she can surely sense the judgments behind the snipes.  

I thus develop an uneasy affection for Unka. He calls me K-possum, teases me about my skinny legs, and starts singing, “Here she comes, Miss America”, whenever he sees me coming down the stairs. Unka is very good to his son Willy-boy, though, and is certainly dedicated to Aunt Addie, as well as to his job. In 1937, Harlan Hogan had set off on Route 23 from Kentucky to Ohio, and, through the WPA, found steady work at the New Boston Steel Mill in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. His resourcefulness and tenacity enabled him to buy a home in the emerging suburbs for Addie, his child bride, who was also his double second cousin. (Addie is the youngest surviving sister of my mother.) My Appalachian relations consider Unka a rich man.  

During my short visit in 1954, Unka and Aunt Addie, and especially Ellie, make it clear that they are pleased as punch to have me with them. In contrast, Willie-boy, my cousin crippled by Polio, has rather mixed feelings about my stay. It’s obvious that he considers his sister Ellie a bother and a burden, and he’s not sure having another girl around the house, even a healthy one, will have any benefits for him. When Willy-boy comes home from his special school on my first day with the family, he barely acknowledges me. It’s right off clear to me that William Dean Hogan, at age eleven (two years my senior), is king of the roost in the Hogan household. His legs are weak, but his mind is sharp as a tack and his will is made of steel. Like Ellie, he says whatever’s on his mind, but he actually makes sense—sometimes more sense than I can keep up with. Quickly catching on that I have trouble with reading and writing, he exposes that relentlessly, while acting nonchalant about it. I hate him for that, and I’m always a bit mistrustful of him. During one of our first private conversations, he adamantly instructs me that I’m to call him Will—not Willy, not Billy, and most definitely not Willy-boy. I don’t really blame him for wanting a more respectful name, but since the family refers to him as Willy-boy, I am self-conscious and cautious whenever I’m around him.   

Will is very smart, and, I have to admit, handsome. After he tests me for a while and determines that I’m docile and respectful enough, he takes to me a bit. If nothing else, I’m useful for diverting his sister, Ellie, away from his things and space. Will is proud and protective of his room, which is filled with material for science experiments, space paraphernalia (ray guns, rocket ships, pictures of flying saucers and UFOs), an erector set, and all sorts of books. His favorite book series is The Hardy Boys, stories about two young brothers who actually solve crimes. Taped to the door of his room is a photo of New York Yankees’ slugger Joe DiMaggio.   

The most astonishing thing about my cousin Will is how he gets around without the use of his legs. With leg braces affixed, he uses crutches much of the time, and he has a wheelchair for outside; but none of that slows him down. He hangs out with the neighborhood boys and accurately shoots baskets from the wheelchair, a feat he has perfected through hours of practice with his daddy. Inside the house, Will employs his highly developed upper body to scoot up the stairs, and he slithers down the waxed wood steps like a lizard, head first, on his belly. Dragging his limp legs along, he’s able to ramble about the house without the crutches, and, in contrast to Ellie (and horrifyingly, to me at night), he’s never incontinent. No diapers or soggy sheets for Will. He’s perfectly capable of dressing, cleaning and caring for himself, and I have total admiration for the various ways Will maneuvers and balances by himself.   

One day Unka pays for Will and me to go to a local swimming pool, where Will removes his braces at the edge of the pool, and, like a seal, slides right into the deep end. Supporting his lower body with a small float, he glides across the pool, while I play it safe and splash about in the shallow end. This day Aunt Addie stays home with Ellie, who sobs mournfully because she’s not allowed to go along. Will is not at all sympathetic; he rejoices that no one in diapers is permitted in the pool. He also keeps enticing me to chase him into the deep end, though he knows I’m just learning to swim.  

Though Will finally somewhat accepts me, I certainly never see him extend his affection, or even much attention, to his older sister, Ellie. She’s forever in his way—an intrusion, an embarrassment, a scapegoat, and, most of all, a convenient distraction from the travails of his own disability.  

Aunt Addie, on the other hand, never seems to resent staying home with Ellie. I can tell she cares for Ellie out of love, not duty. She’s instructive about Will’s treatment of Ellie. “Don’t pay Willy-boy no never-mind. He’s had a hard life and he knows he ain’t gonna get no better. He loves Ellie, but she shames him. He acts real mean to her around his friends, but he won’t let nobody hurt her.” That assessment helps me understand my cousin Will better, and also makes me feel a little guilty about judging him so harshly. 

One activity that the Hogans enjoy as a family is going to the Toledo Speedway to watch the stockcar races. I’m amazed that there is a sport where even the adults (very few of whom feign any real interest in the competition itself) are actually hankering for a disaster, even hoping that someone will get killed. It’s obvious that the spectators are gleeful and intent on paying attention to the race mostly during the multiple car pileups or fiery crashes. In contrast, at those times Ellie cries or hides her face in Aunt Addie’s lap. I have to admit I’m fascinated by the crashes, too, but I think Ellie’s response makes more sense. Still, I steel myself like one of those racecars and I won’t give way to real emotions the way Ellie does.  

The two weeks I stayed with the Hogan family delivered many new perspectives to my childhood. Preparing for sleep my second night in Ohio, I felt very alone and extremely anxious about the possibility of wetting the bed again. Aunt Addie took me aside and reassured me. “Thar’s a rubber sheet under the bedding, so ya don’t gotta worry at all about another accident.” It was embarrassing to be told that, but I was immensely grateful for the security. I still cried myself to sleep, but the rubber sheet somehow helped me control my urination. I didn’t wet the bed again during my stay in Ohio. The bedtime rituals of the Hogans similarly comforted me. I expected the lengthy prayers and Bible stories demanded by overnight stays with Aunt Gladys Patrick in Kentucky. Instead, Aunt Addie and Unka made the rounds to the bedrooms of the children, including me, to tuck us in, wish us sweet dreams and kiss us goodnight.  

The first Sunday morning I was downright shocked that the Hogan family did not get up for church. Aunt Addie explained, “We find Jesus in our own way. I reckon He forgives us for not dragging these young-uns out to appear with the so-called righteous all decked out in their finery.” It was the first time I gave consideration to the notion that good people don’t have to go to church and say prayers to be holy, and that they don’t need to be anointed to serve. 

Sadly, Ellie will outlive Addie by almost fifteen years and will have to be institutionalized. She will never stop crying for her Mommy. As for Will, he will not make it out of his late twenties, though he will manage to get a scholarship for college, marry, and have a healthy son of his own. Aunt Addie’s unconditional love was interwoven through all the Hogan family, and, during my brief stay in Ohio, I was lucky enough to get a few lasting strands for myself.   

Author’s Biography

Karen Beatty was reared in an impoverished family in Eastern Kentucky and later served as a Peace Corps Thailand Volunteer. She finally settled on the Isle of Manhattan, where she trained as a trauma-informed counselor and taught police officers, firefighters, immigrants, and veterans. From her youth Karen has dedicated her life to pursuing peace and justice. Her short stories and essays have appeared in over 30 publications and her first novel was published by Paper Angel Press in September, 2023.