"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty, Delta day..." came on the radio, and I turned up the volume because I loved 'Ode to Billy Joe' and wanted to hear it properly.
My parents were in the kitchen with my father's sister, Aunt Helen, having coffee and talking. Suddenly, the door to my room burst open, and my father immediately went to the radio and turned down the volume. He stalked out without a word, and I instantly went to the radio and turned the volume up, even louder than it was before. I was older now, and tired of adhering to his bullshit rules & regulations.
Back he came, like a bolt of lightning, and turned the radio completely off. Then he said, "If you do that again, that radio and YOU will be in the back yard. Do you understand me??" (We lived on the third floor...)
I did, but no longer cared. The second he left, I returned to the radio and BLASTED it as loud as it could go. In what felt like a split second, he returned to my room like Raging Bull, and went CRAZY. I held the hot iron up and told him to not come near me, that I'd smash it in his face. Didn't matter. Within seconds, I was down on the floor, him kicking and punching me until he was out of breath.
He flung the radio across the room, shattering it, and left me, bruised and as broken as that radio, on the floor. Aunt Helen and my mother tried to intervene ~ he just threw them aside like they were rag dolls.
I could never again hear one of my favorite songs of the Sixties without conjuring up that awful memory. I didn't know how I was going to work the next day, but I managed to pull on opaque stockings to camouflage the ugly bruises on my legs, and went to the office, on the verge of tears the entire day.
"Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge..."
