My Dead Parents

by Anya Yurchyshyn

  After dinner, I walked to the subway. Third Avenue was crowded with college kids ready to get drunk. I wove between them and sped through crosswalks, holding my hand up when taxis honked.

  I thought about Ruslan’s stories and tried to find connections to what I’d learned in Minnesota. What froze in the blur of so much movement? What could my father clutch, what was there when he opened his hand? Himself. No one had to tell my father that if he needed another self, and a place where he could be that self, it needed to be kept inside, where it was safe. For years, his parents had demonstrated how to survive; he’d escaped with them, stayed tense with them, quiet. He knew how easily home could be destroyed.

  My father had adapted but never to the point of losing his true self. When you don’t want to give in or give up, when you refuse to relinquish what you love or even hate, when whatever you are doesn’t fit or hurts too much, you bury it somewhere secret. You always protect it. An intruder, anything dangerous, is cause for retreat or attack.

  Perhaps my father thought he wouldn’t need such a place when he met my mother. From their letters, I could tell that she didn’t just give him a feeling of love; she made him feel safe. She might not have known that he had somewhere inside of himself where he could disconnect and disappear. In the beginning of their relationship, he’d had no reason to withdraw and protect himself. But when problems arose a few years later, this place was still available. She wouldn’t know where he’d gone, or how to reach him.

  When my mother was twelve, she went to visit her father. My grandfather Roman had left my grandmother Helen a second time, for good, after my mother was born. My mother and her family stayed in Chicago while Roman moved to the suburbs with his new wife, Josephine.

  My mother didn’t tell anyone she was going. There was nowhere she was expected to be after school; no one would worry or wonder where she was unless she missed dinner. She was fluent enough in public transportation that she could get herself into the suburbs by bus and find his home, though she’d never been to it.

  Like every other house on the block, her father’s had a narrow patch of lawn. She rang the bell and waited.

  Roman opened the front door.

  “Hi, Dad!” she said. She spoke with an announcer’s boom and cheer to play up the surprise.

  His tight face went slack when he saw her. Before he could say anything, Josephine came up behind him in a dress from a nice store.

  My mother said, “Hello, Josephine.”

  Josephine nodded, whispered in her husband’s ear, and disappeared. Roman brought his face to the screen. “You can’t be here.”

  My mother held his gaze.

  “We have company, and they don’t know about you. You have to go.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. He shut the door, trusting she would leave.

  She did.

  My mother needed to tell this story at least once a year. “My own father!” she’d rage to me, my sister, whoever her audience was that time. “His own daughter!”

  I met Roman and Josephine only once, when I was about ten. My mother and I and were visiting Aunt Arlene, who then lived in the Chicago suburbs, during the summer. Arlene had managed to create some sort of relationship with Roman and he knew my older cousins, though not well. My mom didn’t ask me if I wanted to meet him, she just told me I was going to one morning as I ate breakfast. I slumped in my chair. “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to,” she said coolly. “They’re picking you up this afternoon.”

  “Are you coming?”

  She took a small sip of coffee, then shook her head.

  “Why do I have to meet him?” I wanted to hang out with my teenage cousin Susie, play in the backyard, read, do anything else. I pushed my cereal bowl away.

  “Because it’s important,” she said, and nudged the bowl back. Perhaps she’d surprised him by insisting that we meet. As she had when she was young, she was forcing him to acknowledge her, and her daughter as well.

  My mother and I waited for Roman and Josephine in front of Arlene’s house. Tension locked her body when they arrived, and it rushed into mine as her hand gripped my shoulder. She greeted them from her position on the stoop, then shoved me toward their car.

  Roman was small and grumbly, Josephine pretty and polite. As he drove, Roman asked me short questions about school. I gave him short answers. I was good at talking to adults and knew I was supposed to ask them questions as well, but even basic conversation seemed dangerous. What was I supposed to know or not know? How could I trust any of his answers? I knew it was important to my mother that I be there, though I wasn’t sure why, but also sensed that I wasn’t supposed to like him. Instead of asking about the wrong thing, or saying something bad, I tried to look fascinated by whatever was on the other side of the window.

  They took me to Santa Land, a small Christmas-themed amusement park that blared carols even in summer. Every time we approached a ride, Roman asked if I wanted to go on it, and I said yes, even the ones for little kids. “If I go on them all,” I thought, “we’ll have to leave.” I rode alone as he and Josephine watched with stilted grins. He tried to buy me a snowflake T-shirt, a stuffed elf, and ice cream, but I wouldn’t let him.

  When we pulled up in front of my aunt’s house at the end of the day, I said “Thank you” and leaped out of the car. My mother opened the door for me and waved quickly in their direction.

  “How was it?” she asked as I kicked off my sneakers.

  “Boring,” I shouted, then went to the kitchen to look for snacks.

  My mother learned of Roman’s death in 1998 through her cousin Chrissy, who saw his obituary in a local Chicago paper. She mailed it to my mother, and I was home from college when she received it. She read it on the couch as I sat next to her, then crumpled it in a ball and tossed it on the carpet. “It says he’s survived by his wife Josephine and his stepdaughter, Teresa. No one bothered to mention me or Arlene, his real daughters.”

  “Well,” I ventured, “that’s not really a shock, is it?”

  Anger fixed her face, then a ripple of heartache disturbed it. She swiped a cigarette from a crumpled pack, lit up, and took a drag. After a long exhale, she sniffed. “What an asshole.”

  I put my hand on her knee. She kept her gaze on the far wall, then she stood with a jerk and said she needed a nap.

  I looked up Roman’s obituary, thinking it might reveal something about the man who had betrayed my mother and her family, while preparing to visit Chicago. It was cursory and brief—a list, not a life. The only helpful information it offered was the full name of Josephine’s daughter, Teresa. A quick search revealed that she was still alive and living in Chicago. I wanted to know more about Roman, his illness, and his life with his second family, so I wrote her a letter explaining who I was and what I was hoping to learn, and sent a copy to the two different addresses I found online. With enough warning and explanation, I thought she might be willing to meet me while I was there.

  As I had with Aunt Lana, I’d called Aunt Arlene and Chrissy and told them I wanted to know more about my mother. Arlene told me she’d be visiting Chrissy in a few weeks; they both suggested I join them in Chicago. I was relieved they were open to having me monopolize the time they’d planned to spend with each other.

  Chrissy lived in a large suburban house that reminded me a bit of my parents’ because it was filled with Asian art and fancy rugs. When I pulled up in front of it, Chrissy and Arlene bounced out to greet me with squeals, and we hugged eagerly.

  I hadn’t seen either of them since my mother’s funeral four years before.

  I’d always known them to be cheerful and fun. They were constantly teasing each other and cackling so hard that they ended up gasping for air.

  The three of us spent days in Chrissy’s small kitchen, draining bottles of white wine, looking at pictures, swapping stories and theorie
s about my mother, talking over one another, making long digressions, and jumping between topics as I grilled them for details about my mother’s life.

  My mother’s family lived on Chicago’s west side in a predominantly Polish neighborhood populated by factory workers and plumbers. Their small two-bedroom apartment was above a drugstore and across from a bakery where Arlene and my mother bought strawberry-filled paczki on Saturdays.

  Arlene was three and a half years older than my mother, and Chrissy was a year younger. Chrissy and her older brother lived in a nicer part of town, but Chrissy always begged to stay with her cousins because she wanted to be with the girls. The three of them often spent summer days at Riverview Park and North Avenue Beach, or playing in alleys.

  When I was a child, my mother frequently reminded me that she grew up very poor. Arlene and Chrissy confirmed that. “My family didn’t have much,” Chrissy said, “but your mother and aunt? They had nothing.” They would never have been rich, but they had “nothing” because my grandmother was a single mom and worked a menial job at a candy factory.

  Helen and Roman were introduced by my great-uncle Eugene, who knew Roman from high school. Eugene was seeing my grandmother’s younger sister, Genevieve, and he set up Helen with his friend in the hopes of increasing the chances of his own dates being sanctioned. Helen and Roman married after a year of dating.

  Roman had gone to welding school, but he hated welding and working in general. Arlene believed he may have left his job while my grandmother was pregnant with her and was still looking for work when she was born in 1941.

  After Arlene was born, Roman went into a manic state and bought a lot of things the family didn’t need and couldn’t afford. “I don’t know how you could buy things on credit in those days,” Arlene said, “but he supposedly bought six suits, an organ, and a boat—”

  Chrissy interrupted. “I heard he went out to buy a new refrigerator, because he and Helen were living in this small place and had a little tiny refrigerator. He wanted a bigger one for his growing family.”

  “Fine, he bought a boat and a refrigerator.”

  “No.” Chrissy giggled. “He left to buy a refrigerator but he came back with a boat.”

  When Roman’s behavior didn’t normalize, Helen had him involuntarily committed. He was institutionalized for somewhere between nine months to a year and a half. He never shared his diagnosis, but Arlene’s guess was that he was bipolar, though that term didn’t exist at the time.

  I asked Arlene if he’d displayed similar behavior before she was born. She said she didn’t think so, but her mom told her that she knew my grandfather was unhappy when she first met him, and she hoped she could change that by marrying him.

  “Oh God!” Chrissy sighed. “Don’t women always think that?”

  Roman’s mother went behind Helen’s back and had him released, and he stayed with his parents for a while. “My mom didn’t know where he was for a long time, but one day, he showed up,” Arlene explained. “And she took him back! Then she got pregnant with your mom. I don’t know if he got a job then or what. Maybe there was something with Western Union. Then your mom was born, and he left the next day.”

  Chrissy leaned toward me. “I don’t know if you know this. Your mom was a breech baby. The doctor had to break her clavicle in order to extract her from the birth canal. She was in intensive care forever. Even after Helen brought her home, your mother was so fragile that she couldn’t be held for several months.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, then I paused. “Did I? I don’t think so.” That seemed like the exact kind of story my mother would have loved to tell. She’d been a victim from the start, a broken baby immediately abandoned by her father. What life could she build on such a faulty foundation? The only reason I could come up with for why she hadn’t told me about her birth was that its difficulty reminded her of Yuri.

  I thought of her arriving into the world in a state of animal pain, needing so much comfort and only receiving the lightest strokes from my grandmother’s fingers. It could have had lasting effects on her personality. Babies who aren’t touched often struggle to form attachments, empathize with others, and regulate their emotions.

  When Roman left, my great-grandmother, whom Arlene and my mother called Buscha, moved in so she could supplement their income with her Social Security. She was a worn-down woman who took pleasure in wearing down others. She spoke enough English to complain to butchers and give orders, but she preferred going after people in gruff Polish. She and Helen worked at the same candy factory; Buscha worked the day shift while Helen worked at night. When Buscha arrived, she claimed one bedroom for herself, so my mom and Arlene moved into Helen’s room. Arlene slept on a thin cot with squeaking springs, and my mother shared Helen’s bed until she was fifteen.

  “Fifteen?”

  “Oh yeah. She didn’t get her own bed until I went to college, and even then, they still shared a bedroom.”

  When I thought of having to share my bed with my mother, my skin got sticky. I would have considered it an intrusion, even as a small child. But my mom may have found the warmth of her mother’s body comforting. My mother and grandmother always had been very close; perhaps sharing a bed for so long was one of the reasons why. When Helen died in 2005, my mother pulled her darkness even closer. Her mother died because she was old; at the time, I didn’t get why it was so devastating, but learning this made me see my mother’s reaction differently.

  Helen had dropped out of high school after tenth grade so she could help support her parents, but she was determined that her daughters would be well educated. She monitored their performance in school and expected them to go to college. She saved money in order to pay for ballet and Polish dance classes, and for horseback riding lessons in Lincoln Park. Though she worked five night shifts in a row, she took her daughters on long bus rides on weekends so they could visit art museums downtown.

  “We never just sat home,” Arlene said. “And Anita and I wanted to! Do you know how long it took for us to get to the Museum of Science and Industry without a car? We had to stand in the heat or the cold waiting for the El…Once we got wherever we were going, we had a great time, but we always put up a fight.”

  My mother might not have wanted to go to museums, but, Arlene told me, “she always wanted to be out and doing things. Your mom was always goofing off, telling stories, making jokes. We walked up and down streets, played kick the can, roly-poly, and hide-and-seek in the alley with whatever other kids were around. We’d be out all day. There was no adult supervision.”

  “Your mother was such a cutie,” Chrissy added. “I remember her running around in these silky magenta shorts that my mom made for her—not for me, mind you—with her curly blond hair, and thinking, ‘Wow, I wish I had her shorts, I wish I had her curly blond hair.’ ”

  Sunday was the only day both Helen and Buscha had off, and it was the one night that the four of them ate together. “Every Sunday,” Arlene said, “we ate together, and every Sunday we had a family argument.” Buscha would cook pot roast with gravy or sausage and potatoes, and she’d have a glass or two of wine while she cooked, and a few more during dinner. “Meals started off okay, but after some wine, Buscha’s mind just went pshh. She’d say all kinds of critical things about our mom to her face, and my mother would get weepy. I’d get upset and defend her. ‘Don’t talk to my mom like that, that’s not nice!’ But it didn’t make a difference.” Buscha was relentless, and she used Arlene’s protests as fuel, telling Helen, “Look at how your kids behave. No wonder your husband left you,” which caused Helen to cry even harder.

  Sometimes Buscha hosted a little party on Sunday instead of a miserable dinner. She invited friends of her husband’s and her cousins, Helen and Arlene’s uncles. They played bridge and rummy, complained about their bosses, and wondered if the Italians were moving in.

  Company meant my
mother and aunt could wear the frilly dresses their mother had made for them by hand. My mother was a ham, dancing until she got applause, practicing card tricks, and reciting the ads for toothpaste that played on their radio when it wasn’t broken.

  One of their great-uncles, the husband of Buscha’s dead sister, always asked my mother to sit on his lap. She did, and as he’d stayed in whatever conversation or card game was happening, he slowly worked a hand between her thighs and into her underwear.

  Arlene didn’t know what was occurring; my mother didn’t tell her about the molestation until decades later. She said the abuse never went any further, and that she didn’t even understand that it was abuse for years. Arlene confronted my grandmother about it, and my grandmother said she’d never had any inkling that was happening. My mother never told her, neither as a child nor as an adult.

  My mouth went bitter as I considered that my mother, fizzing with excitement and eager for attention because it felt like love, had been molested repeatedly in front of people who should have protected her. There really was no supervision, even when adults were around. Arlene kept talking, telling me that my mother had never seemed scared of this man—they’d both adored him. When he put on his coat at the end of the night, my mother would beg him to stay.

  It was hard to hear this. My mother could have hated what was happening but felt she couldn’t stop it. Or perhaps this man’s caresses made her feel special. Maybe any male attention felt like love and could briefly fill the space left by her father.

  As a child, I would have been scared and repulsed if I’d heard this story. Like when I’d learned about Yuri, I would have been overwhelmed to know how much pain my mother had endured and afraid of how her turmoil threatened my safety. Hearing about these incidents decades after they’d happened, and after witnessing what my mother did to herself, I went cold. I had to force myself out of fantasies where I appeared in my mother’s childhood kitchen in my clothes from the future and violently swept her off of that man’s lap, and him out of her life and family. I felt sick and complicit for not having stopped him. As I sat there, I understood that my mother had kept some stories to herself, ones that she should have shared with someone. Being abused, and not speaking about that abuse, could have taught her that her pain and body didn’t matter, and been yet another factor that would later lead her to alcoholism.