From the Other Side of the Tracks: A Memoir

by Eva Elle Rose

Overview

From the Other Side of the Tracks is the true, first-person account of Eva Elle Rose. Abandoned by her mother, beaten by her stepfather, and reared in abject poverty, Eva nevertheless survived to lead an accomplished life of real meaning. For this, she credits a force at work behind the scenes, bringing people and events into her life out of seemingly nowhere that collectively steered her in the right direction, even away from a suicide attempt on the lowest night of her life. For believers and non-believers alike, From the Other Side of the Tracks is a deeply moving, inspirational journey of triumph.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491822500
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	10/11/2013
Pages:	138
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

Read an Excerpt

FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS

A Memoir

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By Eva Elle Rose, Joshua Allen

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2013 Eva Elle Rose
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4918-2251-7

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CHAPTER 1

ELLIE AND EDWIN

MY MOTHER'S MAIDEN name was Smillie, an alias my grandfather adopted, first because it was his nickname (he reportedly was always smiling) but, more importantly, because, well, he needed an alias. Alexander Jefferson Kessler, soon-to-be Alexander Smillie, had most probably killed a man – his brother, as it happened. James Kessler was ten years older than his little brother Alexander and married to Pearl Katherine Henderson, with whom he had a son, James, Jr. But when James, Jr. was five years old, Pearl began having an affair with Alexander who was all of 17.

My guess is that Pearl and Alexander were exceptions to their respective family names and not standard representatives. Both the Kessler and Henderson names were presumably well-respected ones. There are records of the Kessler family emigrating from Ireland around 1750 and the Henderson family coming over from Norway, leaving through England, in the 1800s. Both families were educated and upper class.

But whatever esteem the names might have held, it surely was lost with Pearl and Alexander. Early on the road to lifelong alcoholism, the two were in their regular neighborhood Kentucky saloon one evening when James walked in and confronted his brother about the affair Alexander was having with Pearl. Probably adding insult to injury for James was the fact that Alexander and Pearl were there with James Jr. A brawl broke out. In the melee, Alexander grabbed a chair and smashed it over James's head, cracking his skull open, most likely killing him. Pearl and Alexander didn't wait around to find out. They scooped up James Jr. and lit out from the town on horseback, riding west across the countryside with nothing but each other and the clothes on their backs. They didn't stop riding until they reached the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, where Alexander Kessler became Alexander Smillie, the new husband of Pearl and new father of James Jr. Rumors persisted that James survived the blow, but Pearl and Alexander, and James Jr. for that matter, never saw James again.

Alexander found work with the city of Arvada as a maintenance worker, and he and Pearl soon started a family of their own. In all, they would have six children. The fourth would be named Ellie, born in October 1930. As a teen, Ellie was placed in a home for troubled girls. Somewhere along the line she had a baby that subsequently died. At age 16, Ellie married.

Her husband Edwin, 10 years her senior, grew up on a farm in Kansas, one of ten children. By the time Ellie was 16, the couple had a baby girl – Kaitlan. The next year, another baby girl – Dorothy. In a few years, a boy followed – Samuel. At that point, Edwin had had enough, and Samuel was followed by a vasectomy. But a mere seven months after Samuel was born, Ellie gave birth to a third girl, prematurely. The baby was not Edwin's, a fact that was never lost on him. When the baby was finally ready to come home (she'd spent her first few weeks in an incubator at Rose Memorial Hospital), Edwin made it plain that the baby girl was not wanted. My mother brought me home anyway.

I was, in other words, the love child of a promiscuous young woman who was the daughter of a fugitive killer. And she was also drinking heavily by then, following in her parents' footsteps. God only knows why I was so eager to come into such a family that I was willing to arrive a month early. Meanwhile, Ellie wasn't finished. Ten months after me came Alexander (much to the vasectomied Edwin's continued chagrin). Counting the baby who had died at birth, Ellie had given birth to six children. She was all of 24.

But I felt loved by Ellie, at least as a toddler. She was both attentive and protective, the latter a necessity from Edwin. Edwin hated and frightened me and I would seek shelter under my mother's long, flowing skirts. But if my mother wasn't around, Edwin, a small man with a Napoleonic need to compensate, would find any excuse to scream at me and hit me.

Edwin was a milkman and probably tried his best to provide, but life was a struggle and we lived in poverty. Our house in Commerce City was tiny and there was never enough to eat. We were perpetually hungry. Mother was industrious, always canning food and crocheting. But she and Edwin would start drinking the moment he came home from work.

We kids played in the street and I was often dressed in nothing more than ragged underwear. Sometimes the neighbors would take pity on me, especially a couple who lived a few doors down from us, Edna and Luis Garner, who would often bring me into their home and feed me and sometimes even buy me clothes. I remember pretty little dresses. The Garners had three children. Their oldest, Clay, scared me. He was 18 and played on his high school football team and seemed huge to me. Typically, Clay wasn't around. But one day I happened to be at the Garner's when Clay was there, and on that day Edna and Luis decided to run out to the neighborhood market and leave me with Clay. Luis went into Clay's room where Clay was lying on his bed listening to music and told him to keep an eye on me until they got back. "Sure," I heard Clay say, "I'll keep an eye on her."

I ran after Luis and Edna to tell them I wanted to go with them, scared of being left alone with Clay. I stood at the screen door, barely tall enough to look out the window of the door and I watched them get into their car and drive off. Then I waited there, with my two hands on the window, watching for their return. Soon, Clay called me into his room to tell me he had something to show me. I remained motionless at the door. Then his voice rose and he sternly told me to come into his room. Reluctantly, I walked towards his door. He was on his bed, covered by a blanket and he told me to come closer and when I did so, he pulled the blanket aside. I was probably not even three. The sight terrified me and I ran out of the room. Luis and Edna came home soon after and Clay, of course, behaved as if he'd been doing nothing more than listening to his music in his room. I never said anything, but I distinctly remember never going over to the Garner house again when Clay was around. Soon, Clay went off to college where one can only hope his attention gravitated more toward coeds and less toward little girls. For me, it wouldn't be the last time as a little girl that I'd find myself the target of a warped mind.

Around the house I adored my mother as little girls do, and she adored me, at least in her own way. I was her baby doll, and she'd fix my hair in curls like Shirley Temple. But her interest and attention progressively waned as I grew from baby to toddler to little girl. Her interest in Edwin had waned years earlier, and I remember being no older than three and seeing my mother repeatedly leave in the evenings for places unknown, coming home late at night. Often Edwin would lock her out and I remember a few nights in particular when Mother rapped on the basement window where my bed was, pleading, "Eva, please go unlock the door and let me in." But Edwin would see her, see her being dropped off in front of the house by yet another strange man, and as I would run upstairs to the door, Edwin would threaten to spank me if I so much as made a step towards the front door. Please let Mommy in! I would cry, but it was wasted breath. Mother would eventually leave and where she ended up going on such nights, I have no idea. Probably back to whatever bar in which she'd been drinking to find someone to spend the night with.

I also remember, at about that same age, a tall man coming to the house one afternoon and talking to Edwin on the front porch. Words were exchanged and Edwin seemed agitated by the conversation. I remember the man's car out on the street in front of the house, and I remember him asking for me by name, and I remember Edwin yelling for me to get away from the door and to get back in the house. Later in life I would put it together and realize the man was my father. In my late twenties, sometime before that snowy night in Denver with my suicide kit, I would try to find that man.

As Ellie and Edwin's marriage began to disintegrate further, things quickly became physical. One night, when I was three, Edwin knocked Ellie's front teeth loose, punching her squarely in the mouth. I have no recollection of what brought the fight on. Probably it had to do with Ellie's new boyfriend – George Duncan. Whatever the reason, Edwin hit Ellie about the head, and the hairpins she was wearing penetrated her scalp. Blood flowed down her head and from her mouth. The neighbors heard the commotion and called the police, who arrested Edwin and took him away. I don't know why Mother wasn't taken to a hospital. Maybe she was treated at the scene, I don't remember. I just remember all of us kids sitting in a semicircle around the bathtub as she lay in the tub washing the blood off her face and body, doing so slowly and calmly, with the demeanor of someone who might be taking a bath on a Sunday morning before church.

Edwin spent a couple days in jail and when he was released, Mother, fearing for her life, knew she had to get out. There was no telling what Edwin might be capable of doing. George came by and got her. She walked out the front door with her suitcase in her hand and me hanging onto her skirt, sobbing and pleading for her to stay. She didn't say a word and I remember having my fingers pried off her by my brothers and sisters who were crying, too. "Let go," my mother finally said as she yanked her skirt away from me. "Take me with you!" "Please mommy," I screamed. Then she got into a car with George and the two drove away, leaving me and my siblings alone with Edwin. I wouldn't see my mother for years.

CHAPTER 2

LIFE WITH EDWIN

EDWIN CRIED WHEN Ellie left. He was genuinely overcome. It was the only time I ever saw him display any emotion besides anger. That very night he asked one of my older siblings to get the Bible out and to read it to him and for us to pray for Mommy to come back. But Mommy was gone.

Worse still, she had taken all of whatever money there was in the bank account. Edwin tried to continue to provide for us, reluctantly so for my brother Alex and me since it had always been clear that we were not his. I never knew what happened to his milk route but it must have ended because it seemed to me as though every six months or so Edwin would take another manual job somewhere. Eventually, we moved out of the house we were in and ended up living in a small place on Sheridan Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in Denver. Edwin got a job with a lumber mill, working all day and going out at night to try to find a replacement for Ellie. Meanwhile, the five of us kids were always left alone. We had no mother and, essentially, no father.

One afternoon Edwin came home from work early for some reason and he found Samuel, Alex, and me – none of us any older than probably six – playing on the roof of a single-story storage shed behind our house, tossing old, displaced shingles around. Kids, just being kids. Alex had accidentally hit me in the eye with one and I was crying and covering my eye.

"Get the hell off that roof now!" Edwin screamed. We slowly started climbing, one by one, down the side of the building. Samuel was first down and Edwin grabbed him tightly by the wrist and with his belt doubled over, hit him with it countless times, on the backside, legs, arms – wherever the belt happened to land. Samuel was like a rag doll in his grip. Alex and I stood and watched, petrified, as Samuel screamed and pleaded with Edwin: "Please, Daddy! Stop!" The pleas meant nothing to Edwin. Then I had to watch as Alex took the same punishment. The watching only made it worse. My turn inevitably came and I heard myself scream the same things to Edwin as Samuel and Alex had screamed, and with no more of an effect. But things got worse for us. The belt was followed by a paddling with a heavy piece of wood that had been lying in the yard, Edwin swinging it with all his force into our backsides. "Dumb assholes!" he screamed as he swung the wood. "Worthless morons!" When the beatings finally stopped, we limped and crawled into the house and I curled up in a corner, sobbing and holding myself. I wrapped myself up in an old tablecloth, stretching it over my head and I cried myself to sleep.

I developed a fear of the dark at about that time and much to my siblings' annoyance, I began to plead with them to precede me into any dark room to turn on the light for me. At night I began to wet the bed, the single bed shared by my two older sisters and me. There was no change of sheets available so my sisters would put towels over the wet area. Eventually they got their own beds. Alone in my bed, I would get under the covers and move to the very foot of the bed where I felt safe, and sleep in the fetal position.

But Kaitlan and Dorothy would often terrorize me at night. My fears amused them. "Eva," one of them would start, in a scary voice, "there's someone outside. We can hear him. He's near the window." There were no screens or curtains in our tiny room with our double bed and I would scream and pull the covers over my head and begin crying. "There he is!" they'd continue. "He's at the window, Eva! He's at the window!" I'd crawl to the foot of the bed, to my safe place, curling into the tiniest ball I could make of myself while Kaitlan and Dorothy would laugh hysterically.

I had very few articles of clothing, and what I had was worn and ragged. When my underwear would get wet, I would hang it up and try to dry it out. Often, I wouldn't have enough clothing to go outside. I would borrow my sisters' clothing on occasion, at least the clothes my sisters were no longer wearing, although they were also typically in a state of disrepair, sleeves torn or buttons missing, and usually way too big. I would scour the house for safety pins to take up the slack. I begged Kaitlan to sew a new button on a pair of her shorts one time so that I could wear them outside. "I just want to go out and play," I pleaded.

My best friends, my only friends, were animals. I tried to rescue stray cats and dogs but I never had enough to feed them and they'd either die or run away. I picked up a little chick one time that I found outside near the sidewalk and brought her home and loved her and named her Nuisance. She followed me everywhere, my one faithful companion. At night I kept her in a small cage outside since Edwin wouldn't allow her in the house. One night I accidentally left the cage open and in the morning she was gone and I never saw her again.

With Edwin unable to support us, we soon moved into government-subsidized housing, around Colfax and Meade – the projects. We were one of the few white families to live there. We lived among the drug dealers and the prostitutes. We ate whatever food Edwin could manage to put in the cupboards, typically spam or saltines. Occasionally we would have milk to drink. My brothers and I would play in the big trash dumpsters behind the rows of housing and we'd walk the streets looking for pop bottles to sell. You could get two pennies per bottle and there was a candy store close by on Colfax with penny candy. We had no supervision. Nobody to watch us, nobody to protect us. By then I was in second grade and I'd walk home from school all by myself; Cunningham Elementary was blocks away.

Without boots or gloves, the winter months were particularly harsh when walking to and from school. My feet and hands would often freeze. I watched my hands turn purple to white as I tried in vain to warm them with my breath. For a time, I kept a picture with me. Folded in my pocket. It was of a young girl with fur around her clutched hands. I found it one day while playing in the dumpsters. I didn't know what the fur ball was in the girl's hands, but imagined the fur kept them warm. I never got up the nerve to show the picture to anyone. Years later I would discover that the fur ball was called a muff.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS by Eva Elle Rose, Joshua Allen. Copyright © 2013 Eva Elle Rose. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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