My Extraordinary Ordinary Life by Sissy Spacek, Maryanne Vollers Read Free Book Online Page A

south side of the first floor, across from the little booth where Jewel Thomas—we all called her Sister—operated a snack concession. Sister had some sort of affliction, probably cerebral palsy, that twisted her up and made it hard for her to get around. But she was sharp as a tack, and everyone loved her. I used to save my nickels to buy a Coca-Cola from her, sometimes with a bag of peanuts. I’d drop as many of the peanuts as I could into the thick glass bottle and let it fizz up a little, then suck down the salty soda and the deliciously soggy peanuts. I thought I’d invented something new until I learned that kids all over the South were doing the same thing in their small towns in the 1950s.
    Mother worked with five others in the typing pool, but the most memorable was Claude Bruce. He was a little different, a nervous man who wore his shirts buttoned at the neck and wrists and who jumped back whenever he was spoken to. He was so terrified of dirt and germs that he scrubbed his hands raw. This was a problem for a typist, because the ribbon ink would get all over his fingers and Claude would have to run to the sink every few minutes.
    “Claude, don’t wash your hands again,” my mother would call after him. “Just do like this!” she’d say, licking her fingertips to wipe off the smudges. But somehow that didn’t work with Claude. Luckily he was a good typist, and he had other amazing skills. He remembered the name of everybody he ever met, along with each person’s birthday. And if you told Claude what day you were born and which year, he could tell you what day of the week it was in the blink of an eye. I’ve heard it told that when he was in the service, he could recite the dog tag numbers of every man in his battalion. I guess today we’d call him a savant. But to us he was just a real good guy with chapped hands and a great memory.
    Their boss, Don Roberts, was also unusual. He walked with a wooden leg and wore a patch over one eye, just like Long John Silver. He had a big voice that echoed up and down the corridors when he was visiting the courthouse. He’d had lockjaw when he was younger, and that caused all of his physical problems. “That’s what can happen if you don’t get a tetanus shot,” my parents warned us.
    One day my mother showed me a broken office chair that she had been trying to fix and asked me if I could give it a try. I was just a little bit of a girl then, probably about six, but I was famous in our family for fixing things. Toys, roller skates, oscillating fans, alarm clocks—I somehow knew how to put them all back together again. So I had gotten down on the floor and started fiddling with the wheels when I heard a booming male voice—it may have been Don Roberts himself.
    “Sissy, you get away from that chair!”
    I left the room long enough for everyone to go back to typing, then crawled back through the door and slunk along the floor underneath the desks until I reached that old chair and fixed it. I was good at sneaking around, too. In fact, my dad gave me a nickname, Snooter, which was some sort of variation on “snooper.”
    Nobody ever found out, but when I was five or six years old I used to slip into our neighbor Edna Lipscomb’s house when she wasn’t home. I’d watch until her car pulled out of the driveway, then look all around and let myself in the front door, which was always unlocked. Once I was inside I would walk quietly through the darkened rooms, just looking at things. I was curious to see how she lived. The only time I touched anything was when I took one piece of candy from her candy dish. I figured that was for visitors anyway. Although probably invited ones.
    But my favorite place to explore was the courthouse. With the summer days long and the adults all focused on their grown-up jobs, a clever enough child could become almost invisible in its nooks and crannies. I would sneak into the courtroom and sit in the judge’s swivel chair when nobody