It was raining hard that night we drove from Texas to Oklahoma. It was more than the usual rainy summer night of these southern states where such weather this time of year was common. It was a full-blown storm, with driving rain, gusting winds, thunder, and flashes of lightening. Tears ran down my mother's face, like the raindrops on the side windows of the car.
If I had been old enough to drive, I would have. Where my mother was frightened of the prospects of the future, I looked to the inevitable changes with a sense of adventure. While she chained smoked to keep her nerves under control, I hung over the back of her seat telling her stories and jokes to make her laugh through her tears, keeping her focused on the road and awake as we drove through the storm in the middle of the night on unfamiliar roads. More than once she patted my hand with an expression of thanks that I was awake, optimistic, and kept her from swerving off the road.
We followed behind the old truck that held the belongings we couldn't or choose not to sell that my stepfather and stepbrothers were riding in ahead of us. Mother focused on the red taillights to serve as her guide on the road we couldn't see in the darkness of the early hours of the morning and blinding rain.
My new baby brother slept peacefully on the front seat next to Mother, oblivious to the storm and our mother's anxiety as we drove, unlike my cats, who were huddled terrified underneath the front seats. I smiled fondly at my little brother, and spoke in a soothing voice to my cats.
Traumatic changes in our family preyed on my mother's mind, making her nervous and anxious about the future that awaited us in the city and state to the north of the home we were leaving in Waco, Texas. My new stepfather worked as a factory worker in the petroleum industry, and he had been offered a transfer to Tulsa with a new company different than the one he had worked for in Texas with better pay and prospects of advancement in the company.
My mother continued to try to warn me about the changes I would be facing, especially in the type of people we would be associated with in our new neighborhood. She told me, "Now, honey, the type of neighborhood and people who live there will not be of the same educational level of what you have been used to."
I thought, "How bad could it be?" We had been living in a different part of Waco, though I took a bus to keep going to the same school, it was not the in the same district as the one my stepbrothers attended.
My father had died suddenly of a heart attack while at work. Our family had been in the oil business. So my life until he had died had been comfortable, and I had no concerns beyond what my clothes look like for school and getting my homework done on time.
My parents did not get along, and my father worked all the time and was rarely home. When my father passed away suddenly, he had not left my mother any of his money or life insurance in his will. Instead, it was safely secured in a trust fund for me when I reached the age of 18. Until then, it was untouchable.
My mother, suddenly free of my father's dominance of their 15 year marriage, explored sides of herself that she had never been allowed to discover when my father was alive. She had gone from her family growing up with her father as the dominant male figure in her life, to getting married right out of high school to another dominant male force in her relationship with my father.
After his funeral, Mother found a friend in a woman who had worked in my father's oil company, and she invited her to parties at her home. When she attended these parties, I was left at home and I had little idea what went on while she was gone for most of the night, and did not return until after midnight.
She seemed happy in her new found freedom, and she began to bring home bottles of wine to share with me, her eyes lighting up and our conversations now open between each other more like friends than as mother and child. I would worry about her being gone, but she was only a phone call away at her friend's house, and she always brought me home food and wine from the parties to share with me.
I would stay up until she returned safely home, no matter how late it was. Once she was home, we would stay up and talk until dawn, even on school nights. I didn't mind, as I read novels while she was gone and then had the privacy to dress up and act them out while no one was watching…something probably childish for someone in junior high, but it was my favorite thing to do. My main obsession at the moment was with Homer, and I loved to act out the scenes that involved the dialogues of Achilles or Odysseus. I always loved how the men were faced with the challenges of honor and duty, and were able to adventure and fight in the world. The thought of being a Helen, a passive beauty men fought over, disgusted me, and it was something I could not relate to with other girls my age. Not that girls my age were interested in Homer and classic literature, anyway.
And so our lives were not overly disrupted immediately by my father's death. He had not been home very much, so though I missed him, it wasn't much different than when he was at work or away on business for overnight trips. And now it was peaceful in the house…no fighting with my father gone. And quiet at night with my mom enjoying herself at parties instead of crying or ranting at me. It was a nice and welcome change.
Then my mother one night did not go out to her parties. Instead she began to sleep a lot, and the crying started again.
When I finally walked into her massive white bathroom when she didn't answer my quiet knocks, she was sitting down on the toilet, her heads in her hands, weeping as if her soul was breaking.
"Mother, what's wrong?"
"I'm pregnant!"
I had smiled at the thought of a little brother or sister. I had been an only child for a long time, and always wonder what it would be like to have siblings. I even prayed each night to have brothers, especially, because I just couldn't relate to girls and guys wouldn't even talk to me. I wanted to understand boys better, and I wished I had a brother close to my age to talk to. Not that a baby would pop out at my age, and I had chuckled to myself at the thought of it.
"Rebecca, it isn't a funny situation!" my mother had yelled at me, her face and eyes red and puffy from crying, misunderstanding why I was chuckling softly. "You have no idea how serious this is. What this means!"
I tried not to smile.
"Relax, Mother. It's ok. So you will have a baby. I always wanted to have a brother or sister! Don't worry; I'll take care of you and help you with the baby. It will be fine."
She sat back down, her head back in her hands again, moaning, "No, it won't. What am I going to do?"
Later on I found out what she was so panicked about. Her family disowned her, cutting her off from their financial support, when they found out. It was a disgrace to the family for their daughter to be running around with lower class people, staying out all night at parties, and sleeping around to get pregnant by a man not her husband. And within a few months, the money she had in savings began to run out. The bills piled up, and food became scarce in the cabinets. We had no prospects for an income. I began babysitting for neighbors to help as much as I could.
Mother became depressed, and I had to start hiding the wine bottles we had left from the parties before from her. She no longer went out. Her friend that introduced her to her new lifestyle that got her in the family way no longer called her on the phone to invite her out or even to chat. My grandparents stopped checking up on us, and the neighbors avoided us. Mother began sleeping all day and not getting out of bed to get dressed.
I finally asked her one-day, "What about the father? Don't you know who he is?"
"Yes, dear, I do know who the father is! I wasn't sleeping around with multiple men. Just one," her voice conveyed insult and bitterness.
"Well, why not ask him?" I suggested.
"Ask him what?"
"To help you."
"He can't. He…oh, dear, how do I explain this to my child? He isn't like your father…which is why I like him."
"Does he even know, Mother?"
"No."
"Shouldn't you tell him?"
"No!" she almost shouted. "He is a single father, raising two boys about your age. They can barely survive as it is. He doesn't need to add me, you, and an infant to his problems. This is my problem; not his."
"Mother," I began, trying to get her to see logic and reason, "We can't survive like this much longer. I am too young to work. Even barely surviving is better than not surviving at all. He needs to be told, and then you can get married to him."
"I can't marry him, Rebecca! I like him. He is sweet, and fun to be with, but I can't love him! And I will not marry again for survival or because it is expected; I will not make that mistake again."
"So don't marry him. But maybe he can help us in the meantime. Somehow."
"No."
She was adamant.
So I took matters into my own hands.
After school the next day, I looked up my mother's previous friend in the phone book, and then took a bus to her house. I waited until she got off work, sitting down doing my homework on her front porch until she came home.
She was startled to see me, and I demanded of her to tell me the name of the man my mother had been with at her parties. I guess she was in too much shock to be confronted by a thirteen year old, because she didn't hesitate with his name, though I think if she had time to think about it she would have denied knowing who he was or made up a story. I knew the man to be a close friend of hers, having heard about him when my mother told me about her nights at the parties. No one name had stood out in her stories above any other, and he was only mentioned in passing. I had not been able to tell by her statements that there was any man, not even this one, she was particularly drawn to.
I again walked to the nearest bus station, looking for a phone booth to look up the man's name. I bought a map at the station of the city streets, and looked up where the man lived.
The sun was beginning to set when I rode the bus to another side of town, very far from our neighborhood, and I had to walk several blocks from the bus stop to his house. He lived past the paved streets on dirt roads, in houses that barely looked like houses I knew. I knew I should have been nervous or scared, but I didn't want to think about it. All I felt was determination. I knew it was the right thing that this man should know about my mother, his child to be, and the situation we were in. My mother perhaps didn't love him, but maybe, perhaps, he loved her? At least would care about her? In my mind, a man raising two teenaged boys on his own could not be someone who was cold hearted, even if he didn't have much money.
It was hard to find the numbers of the address of the house. In fact, the house didn't even have numbers on the walls like in our neighborhood. Instead I found them under the dust on the mailbox.
The house that wasn't really a house, but I had no idea what it was to be called, had a dusty yard with no grass and no flowerbed, like in the neighborhoods I was used to. I could see a couple of tumbleweeds that had been blown to a halt at the walls of the home in the quickly descending darkness. In the dirt driveway was a beat up truck, and two cars that were missing wheels and engines, but looked like they were being worked on because of the tools that I tripped over on the ground as I walked towards the front door.
My heart now began to pound in nervousness, and I suddenly realized what I was actually doing. I was in a strange neighborhood, on the other side of town, on a street I didn't know and that didn't have any lights, at dark, and the buses will have stopped running by this time. I hadn't even thought of how I was going to get home.
I was a thirteen year old girl, out alone, at a stranger's house, a man who had gotten my mother pregnant and had two teenaged sons…the age of boys at school who didn't even talk to me and I knew nothing about.
Lights shown in the windows, and I stood on the porch uncertain of what to do, and listening with all of my being to what was going on inside as I tried to will my heart to stop pounding.
It was very quiet inside. There was no music, no conversation, no laughter, no television. In the few moments I listened there in the dark, they didn't even have a porch light on, I heard soft footsteps walking back and forth, and the water in the sink running a few times.
I finally got my courage up and knocked on the door. My knock sounded shockingly loud to me in the darkness, but it wasn't loud enough to be heard by the men inside. I knew that. I held my breath, and tried to decide if I was brave enough to knock a second time, or if I should just walk back home…somehow. Doubt began to settle in, and I tried not to think about my fears, and instead reminded myself why I was here in the first place.
Quiet footsteps came towards the door. And then they stopped. I held my breath. I stood there a long time, it seemed, wondering what would happen next. What was I going to do now?
And before I could come up with an answer, the door opened, and light from inside lit up the porch I standing on.
"Well, hello," the man who stood there said, his voice surprised, but not unkind. "Is everything ok? I thought I heard a knock, but I wasn't sure, it was so quiet. Is there something I can help you with?"
I stood up straight, the way my grandmother was always telling me to, and I announced to him, "I am Rebecca, Anne's daughter."
To my surprise, he smiled.
"Come in! Millie called and said you were looking for me earlier, that you were at her house earlier today. It's nice to finally meet you; I have heard a lot about you. How is Anne? I haven't seen her in quite awhile, and your phone is disconnected when I have called. I have been concerned, but I figured she decided not to see me or anyone else again."
The house inside was very plain, and out of date, but orderly and clean. It had an unusual smell, one I had never smelled before, and I had no idea what it indicated it could be. A big hound dog came up and tried to smell me under my skirt, and I kept pushing it away. He was introduced to me as Redbone, as the man named Jack Reed, pulled the dog back by his collar, which made him start barking at me.
Two boys about my age came out to see what was going on as the dog barked. Mr. Reed ordered the older boy, named Harry, to take the dog and put him in his room. He then introduced me to his younger son, named David.
David and I said a shy, "Hi," to one another as we were introduced. David and Harry both had white blond hair, and blue eyes. David's eyes were bigger than Harry's, I noticed, when Harry came back from putting Redbone in the back bedroom, where I could still hear his barking.
Jack Reed was not blond like his sons, but had the same blue eyes, only older and slightly darker. They were kind and smiling. His hair was chopped short and hung straight, a bit greasy like he hadn't washed it in a couple of days, or maybe he had oily hair that went limp at the end of the day even if he washed it daily, like I have heard girls complain about with their own hair. His cheeks were red, making his blue eyes seem to be a dominant trait. He was smiling at me, studying me in a curious way, but also with obvious happiness. My mother must have said nice things about him to me. It made me blush he knew who I was, when she didn't even talk to me about him in any special way. And I also felt my face go hot, knowing what my mother had been doing with this man to get her with child.
The two boys looked at me, their expressions blank and unreadable. And they didn't say anything.
I finally took a deep breath and said to him without preamble, "My mother needs your help."
Mr. Reed's face grew serious, and he told the boys to go to their rooms, which they did with a quiet, "Yes, sir," in response.
Mr. Reed had me sit down on his couch, and ask if I would like something to drink. I politely asked for a glass of water, which my family had told me to do whenever offered when visiting friends' or strangers homes'. He poured himself something from a glass canister, and sat down in a chair across from me.
"How can I help?" he asked.
It didn't seem right for me to tell him he was to be a father again. My mother should do that. So instead, I told him about how she was disowned from her family, how we had no money, and she was all alone with no friends.
He then smiled, patted my hand with affection, and told me not to worry, that everything will be all right.
I liked him immediately. He was obviously a very kind man, and it was obvious he cared about my mother. He didn't question me at all, and instead told his boys he was going to take me home to Anne, and they were to take care of themselves.
He then offered me to get in his truck, and I told him how to get to our house. Along the way, he spoke of things my mother had told him about me, and how he was happy to finally meet me. He again said how he didn't think Anne wanted to see him again, but he missed seeing her. And he was glad I came to him for help, that it was a very brave thing for a girl like me to seek him out like that all on her own.
When we got into our neighborhood, and I showed him our house, he expressed how nice of a place we lived in. He said he always knew my mother was "classy." I think he was honored that she had paid him special attention. There was a hint of awe in his voice, or maybe it was something else I didn't know how to identify.
I knocked before I entered the house, just to let my mother know there was someone beside myself with me.
She was actually up, showered, and dress, but it was obvious she had been crying. She had just started to head out to the police department to have them start looking for where I could be. She gaped when she saw who was with me.
She glared at me with anger that I had sought out Mr. Reed on my own, but it warred with her obvious relief that he was here, and there was a flicker of hope in her soft brown eyes for the first time in so many weeks.
They went upstairs to her bedroom, and I stayed down, turning on the television as I read my book, letting them know I respected their privacy.
Mr. Reed and my mother eloped to the courthouse to have a private wedding ceremony performed by a civil judge. I had had the feeling that Mr. Reed would do the right thing when he found out my mother was expecting his child, and my mother, despite her wishes to not marry because of it was expected of her, really had no choice in the matter. It was only proper, after all. I tried to keep my smiles secret from her, but she was happy again now that Mr. Reed was her husband.
She was even cheerful as we sold off all the belongings we could and the house. She now had her own money, and I think that helped with her sense of independence and freedom.
We moved into the little house that Mr. Reed and his sons lived in for about six months until my baby brother was born…the boys had to sleep in the living room, trading off each night who slept on the floor and who slept on the couch, because I was required to take their small room they had shared, since there were only two rooms in the house.
Jack was very nice to me. He told me he had always wanted a daughter, and we got along very well. He was very nice to my mother, even when she would yell, scream, and cry at him throughout her pregnancy. He always remained calm.
He was very strict with his boys, though, and at night he would threaten them and I would hear the sound of his belt cracking against their backsides. However, my brothers always just grinned the next day good naturedly, and would tease their dad about how much it hurt or didn't hurt, daring him to make it harder the next time. I didn't understand this type of discipline, what they were getting in trouble for, or why it was made to be a joke the next day.
My new stepbrothers were very respectful to me when our parents were around, but when we were alone, they spoke crudely and used profanity. I would ask them what it meant, the words they were saying, because I had never heard many of the words and phrases they used. At first they laughed at me, calling me names like "goody-two-shoes," but I was never offended, just curious. And one day they just stopped teasing me. I asked them why.
"Because you are really nice."
"So? What did it mean, those things you said to me before?"
"You aren't meant to know."
"Why not?"
"It's not your kind of language."
"Why is it your language and not mine? What makes us different?"
"Nevermind. If you don't know, then you aren't supposed to know."
"I don't get it."
"It's good that you don't."
"What do you mean by that?" I wanted to know.
They just shook their heads, smiled, and walked away.
One day, they were shooting BB guns in the backyard when our parents were in town at my mother's doctor's appointment.
I always wanted to learn how to shoot a gun. I wanted to learn how to hunt, but my family said it wasn't something for girls to learn how to do. I had hoped my brothers would teach me.
However, when I stepped outside, they were nowhere to be seen, hiding somewhere among the bushes that grew wild in the dust of the property.
I called their names. In turn, they would stand up, shoot at the ground near my feet, duck back down, and laugh.
I laughed with them, and called out I wanted to play, too. Asking them to teach me how to shoot.
Harry called out, his voice mocking, "You want to play?"
"Yes!"
"You can be the target!"
They both started laughing.
"Okay," I replied calmly. I was going to do whatever it took to be involved with their hobbies, and I would do what they asked of me to learn to shoot, no matter what it was.
After I answered, "okay," I heard their voices turn serious as they whispered to one another behind the bushes where I still could not see them. Their voices were so low I couldn't understand what they were saying. David sounded worried. Harry's voice was confident. I waited patiently for them to tell me what to do.
Then they both stood up.
Harry looked amused and determined. David looked concerned and worried.
"Alright," Harry instructed me, "now to be the target, just stand there with your arms out to your sides."
"Like this?" I asked, putting my arms out into a cross.
"Yeah," he smirked, "Just like that. Now stand still…"
David gasped a little, while Harry put the rifle to his shoulder and squinted one eye as he aimed.
I knew he was only trying to scare me off, and I wasn't afraid. I knew he really wouldn't hurt me, or he would get into a lot of trouble with his dad and my mother.
I stood still.
"Ouch," I said, surprised by the sting that hit my right arm, but I didn't move.
"Oh, shit!" David gasped, "I told you not to do it, Harry!"
Harry's face was no longer joking, and he ran to me, concerned.
"Shit, Becky, I didn't mean to hit ya! Are you ok?"
"I'm fine; keep shooting."
"Shut up. Let me see…"
He helped me look at where the BB pellet had hit me. It was just a tiny little bruise, a little dot on my skin that was becoming a black-blue.
"It's fine, Harry. Just a little dot, see?" I told him.
David's face was white with terror.
"Oh my God, Harry! I told you not to shoot at her!" he was shouting.
"Shut up, David," Harry told him coldly.
To me, his voice was gentle with apology.
"I seriously didn't mean to hit ya, Becky. Are you going to tell?"
"Why would I tell? I agreed to be your target," I replied reasonably. And I wondered if David was concerned because I got hurt, or because he was afraid he would get in trouble. Not knowing was something of a curiosity to me.
"Yeah, and that was stupid," Harry was talking to me now like I was actually a person, something he had never done before. "And if you told, it wouldn't matter to my dad. We would still get punished for it. Why did you agree to it, anyway?"
"Because I want to learn," I explained.
"Now what?" David asked. Was he asking me, or his brother? I couldn't tell.
Harry shook his head.
"I could have blinded you, Becky," Harry told me. Only my new family called me Becky. I had always been Rebecca before, and it was what my mother still called me.
"Nah," I replied, "Only if you did it on purpose. I know you must be a better shot than that."
"How would you know I wasn't aiming at your eye in the first place?" Harry wanted to know.
"I know you were only shooting to scare me. I don't scare easily like that."
Harry grinned at this point.
"I guess not. You want to learn how to shoot?"
"Yeah." I never said yeah, but it felt right I should to my new older brother. My mother would never let me answer anyone else like that, but she wasn't here. It felt good to say something that was forbidden.
"And you are sure you are ok?"
"Yeah."
David made a small grunting sound of warning.
"And you promise not to tell?"
"I promise."
"Alright," Harry agreed. "I'll teach you to shoot."
David made a strangling sound, and Harry pulled him away from me, and they whispered too low for me to hear among themselves. I waited, standing where I was, ignoring the stinging type pain on the skin of my arm, until Harry called me over to the bushes.
And he taught me how to shoot. I fancied myself a version of Annie Oakley as Harry called me "a natural" at it. After that, they still didn't really talk to me, but Harry would smile at me in a friendly way, though David would glare resentfully at me or look frightened.
Another time, David and I were walking alone together after picking some apples in an orchard that was located a few miles away. We both carried a grocery sack of apples to take home and share with the family.
We passed by a house where a boy called out to us, "Hey, David!"
"Yeah," he yelled back.
"Your sister is a…..and I am going to…..to her…"
I didn't know the name he was calling me by, or what he was planning to do to me.
"What did he say, David?" I asked.
His ears had turned bright red, and he no longer looked friendly where the boy was concerned. He put his head down and walked faster.
"Ignore him. Just keep walking, Becky. Do…not…turn…around."
It was hard not to turn back and look at the boy who had called out, and was saying something again.
"Hey, David, man, did you hear me about your sister? Come here…I have something to show you…"
"David, isn't that boy a friend of yours?" I asked.
"Not anymore, he ain't," David replied, his voice hard and angry.
"Hey, David…you a pussy now?"
"That's it!" David exclaimed, throwing the bag of apples down on the ground, and turning around, his body tense, his face red with anger.
The boy across the street starting whooping and hollering with delight.
"Yeah, man, that's more like it!"
I put out a hand on David's arm to stop him, wondering what he was so mad about.
"David, are you going over there to fight with that kid?"
"No, I am going over there to bash his head in! It won't be a fight; just a slaughter!"
"Why?"
"Why?" David was shocked I would ask such a question, "Why?! Becky, did you hear what he called me?! Not to mention how he insulted my sister…even if you are…oh, nevermind, let me go!"
"I heard him call you a pussy. So what?"
"So what? Do you know what that means?! What he is implying?!"
"Sure," I shrugged, wondering what the big deal was, "He said you were soft, like a pussy cat, a kitty cat. So what? It is just sophomoric name-calling. Ignore him, like you were to begin with."
He stared at me in disbelief, his anger forgotten, though the boy was still laughing and calling out to him.
"No, it doesn't mean a kitty cat, Becky. If that was what it meant, I wouldn't care. It means…" he hesitated.
"What does it mean, David?"
"Never mind! Oh my God!"
He snatched up his bag of apples and grabbed my arm.
"Come on; I gotta get you out of here. Dad and Harry was right about you, after all."
I then had to run a little to keep up with his pace. The boy was still yelling, his voice growing desperate in an angry way, but it was fading behind us.
"What are you talking about?" I asked him, trying desperately to understand.
"Do you have any idea, Becky, what a reputation means? Why it is important?"
"I guess," I answered, thinking about my mother being disowned by her family.
"Oh, god, no you don't," he growled with a sigh. "You have no idea. Come on, hurry up! I need to get you home, so I can deal with what happened here."
"David! Are you going back to beat up that boy? And you can't right now because I am here? Is this what you do when I am not around? Why? Because he called you a few names? Do you know how stupid that is?!"
"Becky!" he yelled at me. Then stopped for a moment, letting my arm go, then clenching his fists. "Look, just shut up, ok? This is…a boy thing. Boys fight; we have to. You're a girl, and you're…not from this neighborhood. In fact, here, take my bag, and just go home. Tell mom and dad I will be back later…"
"David! I will not! I cannot carry your bag and my own as well. And, you have no business fighting! Boys do not have to fight! You did the right thing for walking away, and…"
"God, just shut up, will ya!" he yelled at me. "Fine! I will carry the bag home, just do not say another word, because you just do not get it!"
"Fine!" I seethed back, and started walking fast and angry.
We walked home in silence, both of us nurturing our angry thoughts, not speaking to one another. How was I supposed to understand anything about boys if they didn't explain it to me? Instead of brothers enlightening me to the mystery of boys, it only left me feeling more confused and frustrated. Why was I excluded from certain things only because of my gender?
I tried to win the boys over by cooking good dinners with whatever supplies we had in the kitchen. Often, there were things I had never seen, and Harry would teach me how to make dinners I had never experienced before…the dinners of the poor and low class he joked. Though simple and not appetizing to look at, they were surprisingly good. I had never had potted meat before, or had potatoes as the main course, and I adjusted to the change in diet with a sense of adventure of experiencing something I had never had before.
After a time, instead of trying to make full meals, I focused on making different batches of cookies for my brothers to try. They loved every batch, and even David's face would light up with a smile of appreciation whenever I was in the kitchen cooking up every type of cookie I could find in a cookbook or my mother's family recipe box. Even if they were undercooked or overcooked, they never complained, and just expressed gratitude for my efforts. I felt I had finally earned my place in their lives as a family member.
Now we were moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma to a new house, a new neighborhood, and Jack had a new higher paying job. Our baby brother, Joey, was just a few weeks old now, and though all three of us took care of our new sibling, being the girl, I was the main babysitter and housekeeper.
Jack would take my mom out to the parties again, and she was once again happy before she found out she was pregnant. She may have been afraid of getting married, but she was happier than she was when she had been with my father. And I liked Jack and my brothers.
Moving to a new town would be great! I thought. A new school where no one knew my life before, a school where David and I would be in the same grade, though he was a year older; he had been held back a grade in elementary school. We would all have our own bedrooms at our new house, some old style house on the eastside of Tulsa.
The rain had stopped by the time we entered the Tulsa city limits. I was really excited to see that the city had hills, trees, and a large river…not like the flat and boring landscape we had been driving through most of the state, or most of the cities of Texas. Everything would be great! Things would be different now…I was definitely right about them being different.