In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

  In the parking lot where we met, Jacob told me it was my fault he had acted like he did. Somehow, it was a drama he felt forced to play, and the role of my father had been forced upon him. But he wanted me to come back. You belong at home, and so does our son, he told me.

  I took another day or two to think about what he said. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened, it seemed so surreal. Just after he kicked the walker, part of me wanted to stop and talk to Jacob, to say, Okay, this is ridiculous, we don’t have to do this, this is not who you are. Like the time I thought I could stop my father from whipping me, when I realized that I had done nothing wrong and that it was unfair. I had thought better of my father than he thought of himself—I believed his reckless violence was beneath him and not his true nature.

  None of it made sense to me, but maybe I had subconsciously provoked Jacob. I was always filled with so much guilt, I accepted that I had magically orchestrated everything he ever disliked about his life. I was lost inside myself, certain of nothing good about me other than the fierce and selfless love I felt for my baby. To my friend’s dismay, I went back.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Whore

  Within a few weeks of the fall semester starting, I found that I was right to be concerned about getting to my classes. My childhood fear returned, that of being trapped and not allowed to leave, isolated from the rest of the world in a beautiful prison. One day we were in town, and I had someone watch the baby while Jacob and I ate at the Mexican restaurant. We walked down the street afterward, holding hands, and things felt so pleasant, I thought he might understand what I told him next.

  I had used some of my student grant money to put down a deposit on an apartment in town, within walking distance of the college. Jacob dropped my hand and stopped walking as I explained—I wouldn’t be able to get to classes from the holler, and it was so important to me to finish my degree. No, I wasn’t sure what I would do with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Yes, it was just a piece of paper. But for whatever reason, I felt like it was necessary that I finish, that I prove myself.

  I told Jacob he could live in the apartment with us if he wanted, and we could just go back to Rockcastle County as we pleased, and after I graduated, we would be there for good. Or he could come and go as he wished, as my husband, staying in town sometimes and in the holler whenever he felt like it. He could take care of the baby while I went to class, or I would pay a babysitter—he didn’t have to do anything. Eventually, he seemed to accept the arrangement, though he was not happy about it.

  One of his best friends, Greg, was living near me with his wife and their child, who was born just before ours. Jacob arranged for them to watch the baby sometimes, and I would drop him off on my way to class. I brought the baby’s food already cut into pieces so no one would accidentally give him too big of a bite. When I could, I came back between classes to nurse him, and I pumped milk so he would have bottles when I couldn’t be there. Jacob showed up to watch the baby less and less, so when I didn’t have anything else arranged, I often ended up taking him to class with me in a baby backpack. He grew so big, people constantly remarked that he was bigger than me.

  My professors were as understanding as possible. I brought him to my weight-lifting class one day when Jacob didn’t show up, and the coach sent me outside to walk laps around the track with my son pulling my hair and drooling on me. He was quickly bored, so I bounced around the track, trying to keep him entertained, wondering how I was going to make it work. I brought him to my senior-seminar class another time, and he fussed so much, I ended up nursing him to keep him quiet and to not have to leave the room. There were two other students in the seminar—both male—and our professor was male. I was well covered while I nursed, but they kept their eyes fixed to mine, and they took everything I said about Wittgenstein seriously, which almost kept me from being embarrassed. I was a research assistant for another philosophy professor that year and once nursed the baby in his office during a meeting—the baby only nursed briefly but then spat it all back up onto the professor’s carpet. The professor refused to let me clean it, and I didn’t cry until I was outside his office again.

  Jacob still came over and spent the night, usually a couple of days a week. During one of the many arguments that seemed to always happen, I looked at our son’s face and saw he was still playing happily, unaware and unaffected. I just kept washing the dishes. I decided in that moment that I wouldn’t fight with Jacob and that I would never again let our son hear us arguing.

  I wanted to go out on Halloween that year—I hadn’t spent much time with friends in a long while, especially without the baby. He agreed to watch the baby so I could go to a Halloween party, but when I returned, he was back at it, telling me how I was a terrible person, a horrible mother. I told him if I was such a negative person in his life, he should leave me. By that point, I couldn’t think of any reason he would want to be with me. I knew he wanted to hurt my feelings, but I didn’t understand how he could hate me so much. I had done everything I knew to be a good wife.

  He stood up and told me he would leave me. For a moment, I thought about everything that meant and then said, Okay. He walked out and came right back, pleading with me to work this out. I told him that he deserved better, that I was making him miserable. I wasn’t sure I was so bad, but he had been so insistent just moments earlier, I figured agreeing with him and apologizing would be the quickest way to end the painful evening. I was emotionally and mentally exhausted and didn’t feel like I could do any more mental gymnastics to determine who was the worst of us, where all the blame for our lost love should be placed. And yet, we talked into the night.

  I moved to a one-bedroom apartment soon after—I couldn’t quite afford the two-bedroom apartment I was living in, and the downstairs neighbors were young men who loved heavy-metal music and who didn’t care how many times I banged on the floor or went to their door, asking them to be quiet. Jacob kept a few things at my new apartment until I finally told him to take them home—his nice kitchen knives, a cookbook, that sort of thing.

  He was over one day before work, and I began vomiting—I was too weak to walk to the bedroom, so I slept on the couch in between vomiting. He put the baby to sleep in the playpen in my bedroom—the playpen served as a crib—and started to leave. Please don’t leave me, call in to work—I can’t take care of the baby like this.

  But he would not miss work. When the baby woke up, I was too weak to stand, and I crawled to his playpen, trying to comfort him. My downstairs neighbors knocked on the door at the top of the stairs between their apartment and mine—we shared a washer and dryer that sat on their floor, at the bottom of those stairs. I crawled to the door, the baby crying in earnest now.

  Do you need help with your baby? They had never heard him cry so much. I told them, Yes, please—he just wants to be held, and the woman came in and picked him up and soothed him, then took him to the far end of the living room, which I had set up as a play area with toys and bright pictures to counter the dark wood paneling of the apartment. I don’t remember her name, but I wish I could find her and thank her for that. I could often hear her boyfriend’s booming voice—he always seemed to be yelling at her—but she came into my house that evening and wasn’t a bit worried about getting sick herself.

  Jacob and I were no longer together, but he came to my apartment one day and found another young man there—he was a friend, and we had been intimate once, but that’s not why he was there. Still, Jacob was mad at me and asked, So this is who you leave me for? That boy? He also read my journal when he got a chance and had nothing but disdain for me.

  During the first year after I moved out of Jacob’s house—he was always clear that it was his house, his money—the people around me seemed to change. I had lived in Berea for almost four years and had my college friends who were mostly my age, but I also had a group of older, hippieish friends who were involved in sustainable living. I had met most of them when I was a freshman an
d had always been welcome to go swimming with them in their private ponds, and to attend their potlucks and parties.

  But after I first moved out, before we really split up, Jacob told me that he and his lesbian friends had discussed my leaving him, and they all decided I must be a lesbian. These were women I knew, a couple that I had thought of as matriarchs in the community, though they weren’t that much older than me. I had not told anyone but my closest friends what he had done, the things he had said to me, but he apparently told all kinds of stories about me to anyone who would listen.

  About a year later, one of those women happened to see me at a mutual friend’s on a summer day. I brought my son with me to this older couple’s house, quite a ways from town. They had a large, deep pond—more like a lake—and I was allowed to come there and swim whenever I wanted. When I arrived that Sunday afternoon, I found there were a lot of cars parked along the gravel driveway and quite a few people swimming. Some were naked, some were clothed, but I didn’t own a bathing suit at the time and always swam in my friends’ ponds naked, as did the owners. After we swam around for a little while, someone mentioned the trampoline that sat in the field and how much we would enjoy it, so I wrapped myself and my son in towels and went to the trampoline alone. I didn’t bother with shoes—I loved feeling like I was part of nature again, and the path was mostly soft. I let him jump for a few minutes, and we were quickly dry, so I wrapped us both up and headed back toward the pond.

  I had never been out to that field before and, until I was walking on gravel, didn’t realize I had taken the path to the left, which led to the rest of the driveway and another small house, rather than the path on the right, which headed back to the pond. I suddenly found myself walking on sharp gravel, carrying my son, surrounded by a lot of people I knew and a few I did not. The house owners had thrown their annual party that weekend, and most of these people had spent the entire weekend there. The mood was relaxed and cheerful as people chatted, and some drank beers and smoked. The wife of the couple soon came up to me as I tried to walk down the gravel road and return to the pond.

  Are you naked under there? she asked me.

  Yes, I’m really sorry. I took the wrong way back from the trampoline. I’m trying to get back to my clothes, I told her.

  Oh no, honey—we don’t mind that kind of thing a bit here. You look like Eve in the Garden of Eden. Go sit down—I’ll get your clothes and shoes for you.

  And with that, she walked off, and I was free to put my son down, a one-year-old who was big for his age. The guys on the porch offered me a chair, and I sat, relieved and embarrassed, but also heartened to hear the owner’s compliment. After a few minutes of sitting and drinking a beer, I thought it was reasonable to take my towel off and sit naked, rather than pretending I wasn’t basically naked already. I chatted with some of the guys, and plenty of people wandered about. My son played in the dirt, and for a moment, I thought I was in some kind of heaven—where being natural was not just accepted but encouraged. The men kept their eyes aimed toward my face, and since I thought I was so ugly, it never occurred to me that anyone would think anything about me other than I was a tomboy who happened to be naked, but so were a bunch of other people at the pond, and most of those people had seen each other swimming around naked anyway.

  I was wrong. Jacob’s lesbian friend showed up at the party and was all of a sudden walking down the same road that I had come up, heading to the field with a few other people. She turned and looked at me, said hi, and turned back around without stopping. A couple of days later, Jacob said, She told me she saw you out there, naked and sprawled out for all the men to see what they could have if they wanted it. I didn’t know how to defend myself, didn’t have the words to say, I was like Eve in the Garden, not a whore. I thought that was freedom. And didn’t you all decide I was a lesbian anyway?

  Some months later, I was buying a couple of groceries in the health-food store—the same one I had worked in for a time—and I ran into Jacob’s friend Greg, whose wife had babysat for me. Greg walked up to me, and my stomach knotted with dread, but he told me he owed me an apology.

  For what? I asked.

  Jacob told us that you were such a bitch, and we believed him. He said you wanted to sleep with other men but didn’t want him to sleep with other women, and that’s why you split up. He said that you were a terrible mother and that you didn’t care at all about the baby. Soon after, Greg’s wife echoed what he had said and told me, I believed him for a while, but you were always there for the baby, bringing his food already cut up—she laughed—I told my husband that this is not a woman who doesn’t love her child.

  I called Jacob and asked him whether he had said all those things, and he said yes. I told him he knew that wasn’t true—I had never wanted to be with anyone else when we were together. He reminded me that I had told him I thought an open relationship was a good idea.

  I told you I believed that when I was seventeen, and it didn’t work for me.

  Well, I can’t help what people say about you, he responded.

  Yes you can, if you stop telling them lies and tell them what you said isn’t true.

  But of course, that was not going to happen. For that first year or two, I lost one round of friends. That’s okay, they weren’t my friends anyway, I told myself. But I missed being able to go to the potlucks and the outdoor parties with the other hippies and homesteaders.

  There would be another wave of loss later, when I tried to fight for my son in court. When I was ready to file for divorce, Jacob told me he wanted to keep the baby half the time and not pay child support. I didn’t know then that he had gotten that idea from another man, someone I would end up dating. Jacob had been giving me a couple hundred dollars each month, which I had thought was really good. But he had insisted that I couldn’t keep either of the vehicles that we bought with the five thousand dollars from his parents’ wedding gift—that money was going into the land and would stay there. He agreed to give me seven hundred dollars, and other than some fancy CorningWare baking dishes, that’s all I got of the property we owned together.

  I signed up for legal aid, a free attorney who would represent me in court, and refused to take my granny’s money when she begged me to go hire a good lawyer. I felt like I had taken so much, it didn’t make sense to spend her money on a lawyer when I could get a perfectly good one for free. I didn’t want Jacob to take our son back to the ramshackle house in Rockcastle County overnight, so far away, but he insisted. When he brought him back, I asked how it went, and with an edge to his voice he told me they were fine but would say no more. When Jacob first mentioned keeping our son half the time, I insisted he couldn’t because the baby was still nursing, but after spending some nights away from me, he quickly weaned himself.

  Soon after the baby turned one, Jacob told me that his dad had advised him to just take the baby and move back down to Atlanta, where they were from. I asked him what his mother thought of that idea, and he said she didn’t approve of taking the baby away from me—I was glad, since I had spent that past Christmas with them just so Jacob wouldn’t be away from his son for his first Christmas—but I got the message loud and clear that I was in no position to fight Jacob, who had his parents’ money at his disposal. I met with a couple of lawyers for consultations—not the free lawyer, because there was a long waiting list—and they told me that in Kentucky, since we were still married and there was no custody agreement, Jacob could take the baby whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted, and not give him back to me. And if he did that, it could be a year or more before I saw my child again. So I agreed to the equal time sharing and began drinking when my son was away, trying to drown my grief.

  CHAPTER 30

  Pretending

  The day I graduated from Berea College, Jacob held the baby while I sat through the ceremony. My mother and stepfather came, and my granny came with my dad. After it was over, I got my son and looked for the rest of my family. I found Granny and Dad, and they
told me they were leaving—though it was early afternoon, Granny didn’t want it to get any later before they drove the hour and a half home. I never found my mother, but when I called her later, she said they left immediately after the ceremony ended, so she wouldn’t run into my father. I walked out of the gym, where my friends and classmates were hugging their families and taking pictures, and went home with my baby.

  I was scared after I graduated—I realized I needed to find work immediately but had no idea what I could do or how to land a real job besides waitressing. My stepdad told me I should go to a temp agency in Lexington, so I did, and I was able to work a couple of short-term jobs through them and made enough money to pay the bills. One of those short-term jobs led to a long-term, but still temporary, position as an administrative assistant in Lexington.

  I felt like I didn’t know how to do anything, so I worked as hard and fast as I could at everything. The director of the department found out that I liked to write, so she had me help edit the newsletters the company sent out to customers, and soon I was drafting articles and learned to do the layout as well. I picked up on how to write macros in Excel, and anytime someone asked whether I could do something I couldn’t do, I said yes, then learned how to do it. Eventually, they offered me a full-time job.

  I constantly worried about how to make ends meet and wondered what would happen to me and my son if I failed to make it in this new world—the world of working and babysitters and commuting and flat tires on the interstate. Since the time I had moved out when I was seventeen, my mother had given me money only once—when one of the struts broke on my car. I was surprised—she usually wouldn’t even lend me money, but she and my stepdad paid the garage that fixed it, so I could drive my car to work. At other times I asked for help, and if they lent me money, I had to tell them the exact date I would pay it all back. When another of my cars spewed oil everywhere right before I started a new job, they wouldn’t lend me their extra vehicle—neither a lender nor a borrower be, my stepfather reminded me.