Her: A Memoir

by Christa Parravani

  “My mom had a way with men,” I liked to say, years later, raising a single eyebrow. “She ran as fast as she could toward the most obvious jackass in the room and then she married him in a hurry.”

  In place of a honeymoon beach vacation, Mom wrapped our dishes up in newspaper, gave our cat Randy to a new home, loaded the U-Haul cargo trailer, and prepared for a new life at Camp Lejeune. She waited for our father to bring us back from our trip, and when he did she packed us into the car, our belongings in tow; we sped down the highway, the furniture and dishes and toys bouncing about. She took us out of state and away from Dad. She sat in the front passenger seat with her feet up against the dashboard. What life would her girls lead if she didn’t take them away?

  Dad had thought we were moving in with our aunt to save money. He came for his scheduled visit with us the following week, our sixth birthday. When I was in my twenties and briefly in touch with him, he told me about this day, the worst of his life. He’d planned our celebration by buying us each our own ice cream cake and a cluster of festive helium balloons. He’d covered his dining room table with gifts wrapped in shiny pink paper, topped with bows. For weeks he’d left the gifts and party favors just as he’d arranged them, unable to bring himself to clean up after the party that was never to be and the relationship with us he’d never have.

  But in the car to North Carolina Mom was doing something I hadn’t seen in years; she was smiling.

  Chapter 6

  Mom said the trip to Camp Lejeune would take sixteen hours. We stayed quiet in the backseat. Mike stared out the windshield at the road and said we were making good time.

  The route was all road and stars, turn signals and crickets. Before long the toll collectors’ accents changed. Southern summers are too hot for travel in a compact car. The leather interior clung to our thighs. I tried to stretch my legs. Mike turned to the backseat. “You’re getting too close to me,” he scolded. My knee poked him through the seat, that’s how far he’d pushed it back.

  I tried to stay far away and small. When we stopped for breaks, we switched sides. Cara got the seat behind Mike. Being stuck behind him was like going to jail, but not for long. Mom said he had the bladder of a five-year-old and she was right. We’d learn to hold it: there was never enough time to make it to the bathroom and back if I wanted the seat behind Mom. The rule was to alternate, but neither of us was beyond stealing for legroom.

  “We are a military family,” Mike said like he was telling a bedtime story. “What that means is we don’t talk much about ourselves. Everything we do is for the whole family. We are not individuals anymore. We are a four-part machine and I want it well oiled.”

  Our birthday was soon. I thought six might be a lucky number. I thought of Grandpa singing, “When I was seventeen, it was a very good year,” and whistling the tune. Maybe for him seventeen was a good year. There was a war he told us that he fought in. It must have happened to him after seventeen. He said he had a very good year when we were born, but he didn’t sing about it.

  “Do you think we will both get very good years?” I asked Cara quietly.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

  “You know, Grandpa and his song about being seventeen and having a very good year?”

  “It’s just a song.” Cara stared out the window like she was looking for someone.

  “But it could be true, couldn’t it?” My mind started to race. “And what if we have to share one good year like we share a birthday cake?”

  “You miss home?” she finally said to the window, but she wouldn’t look at me. “I do,” she said without letting me answer. “But don’t tell.”

  Mike said we would have to move a lot for the Corps. “That means you will have to leave behind your schools and all the friends you meet just like we marines leave our families.”

  Mom looked upset. “Enough, honey,” she whispered. “They have been through enough today.”

  She looked over her shoulder at us in the backseat. “Girls,” her voice dropped very low. “One thing you need to know is that wherever we are living is an extra special secret. Don’t tell Grandpa. You will be able to see him sometimes but you can never tell him where your home is. Grandma can know and everyone else in the family can know, but not Grandpa, okay?”

  “Isn’t that lying?” I tried to pull my leg off the seat but the vinyl held on like a Band-Aid.

  “What about Dad?” Cara asked.

  “He’s the reason Grandpa can’t know. He’ll tell your dad. I can’t risk having him take you away,” Mom told us.

  “If Dad can’t know where we live, how will he be able to take us out for ice cream?”

  “You have a new dad now,” Mom said, “and we all live together. As for lying, well, sometimes you have to do it. Period. That doesn’t make it right. It just makes it the way it is.”

  Cara started crying right off.

  “I know, honey, it’s going to be hard, but Mommy knows you can do this for her because you love her so much.” Mom reached into the backseat and put her fingers through Cara’s hair until she stopped. “And Mommy loves you. That’s why she is asking you to do this for her, okay?”

  From the moment we’d taken off with the U-Haul that morning, I knew how different things were going to be.

  “I don’t think this is going to be a very good year,” I said to Cara.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “You should be sleeping, ladies,” Mom said.

  How could we sleep with Mike’s music on? He sang “Leader of the Pack” and honked the horn when the motorcycle crashed at the end. He played his tape over and over.

  Cara rested her head on my shoulder and eventually slept; I pressed my cheek against the window glass until I started to dream. The words to the music drifted inside me. I dreamed of Grandma Josephine. I dreamed of her big pink bed.

  * * *

  Both of our grandmothers were Josephines: Josephine Vivian and Josephine Marie. I often wished Josephine were my own name. With it I would have possessed the sass and determination and grace it implied. Life would be easier as a Josephine, I wrote in my high school diary. Cara and I both liked the name Josephine should either of us ever have a daughter.

  Grandma Josephine Vivian was Irish, round, and redheaded. Cara and I spent lucky hours of our childhood in her kitchen eating bland chicken and potatoes. Grandma loved us with ferocity, anticipating our every need and our every breath. She did this in the place of her son, whom she never forgave for not doing it himself.

  We played games of pool with her and Grandpa in their basement rec room, dancing around the table to Top Forty radio, scratching cue balls. She bought us pretty matching dresses in pink and blue. Our first trip to the ocean was with her. We went to Maine to a tiny rented cabin on the lower eastern tip of the state. There are photographs from the trip. Grandma is holding each of us in the waves. Cara hangs in a turquoise bathing suit with ruffles from one of Grandma’s proud arms, smashing the waves with her chest, all smiles, sticky saltwater hair caught in her mouth. I’m propelling from Grandma’s other arm, up to my waist in water. I’m more timid than Cara, and Grandma swishes me through the tide, my tiny feet kicking up sand.

  Josephine Marie was my mother’s mother: Italian, olive skinned, and stout. She dutifully did her job as a home chef after she was widowed, caring for her five children without help or complaint. She died when my mother was only twenty-one, a year before we were born. To us, Josephine Marie was only another face of the past on the wall of pictures that hung in my mother’s living room. Straight regal chin, knitted white sweater, wire specs that slid to the end of her nose; she smiled for the camera like a Mona Lisa. What did she know and take with her besides her recipes?

  Cara and I fought over the name Josephine like kids fight for the last piece of candy.

  We fought over the name long after we were kids.

  “When I have a daughter I’ll name her Josephine,” Cara told me matter-of-factly
as we sat at her kitchen table sealing invitations to her wedding.

  “I love that name, too,” I said, licking a gluey flap. “I’d always thought I would name my daughter Josephine.”

  “I guess you were wrong,” she said and straightened the messy pile of cards before her.

  “What if you only have sons?”

  “Then I have sons,” she smiled tensely. “But you still can’t have the name.”

  “Why?”

  “I would find that too upsetting,” she said as if that made a bit of sense.

  “You do realize how ridiculous you sound?”

  “I guess so,” she said, retreating. “I just can’t imagine it any other way.”

  At last, we decided the eldest should have first dibs. Cara had first right. She said that if I had a girl child before her, I’d better not take the name.

  * * *

  “The world doesn’t stop for you,” I heard Mike say once. But it does in a way; it stops. Your old world stops for you when you aren’t there.

  Did Grandma put her plastic curlers in her hair that morning? Or, was the dog next door still barking.

  “We are almost there,” Mom said when she saw that we were both awake. Her eyes were tired. Only Mike knew where we were headed. He’d picked our trailer out months before. He said it had a swimming pool and there were lots of other kids to play with. I saw Mike tickle Mom’s knee under the dash and I kicked Sister. “Gross,” I mouthed.

  “Stop it!” she yelled and pulled away.

  “Do you want a crack?” Mike raised his voice. His neck got big when he ate and when he yelled. A thick line lumped up and down when he bit down to chew things up. I thought: he wants to chew us up. A crack sounded like a new kind of candy bar to me, like a Whatchamacallit. Sister’s eyes got wide. I saw mine get wide in hers. Her face was my mirror.

  We didn’t know what a crack was. But soon we’d know, not because we got them, because we never did, but because a crack was so often offered.

  “Honey, really,” Mom said quickly.

  “Sorry,” he said to both of us.

  “I don’t hit my children,” she said. “I will be damned if anyone else will.” Mom stared at Mike across the car. I guessed Mom knew what a crack was. “Honey, I was just saying,” Mom apologized.

  “Let’s not talk,” Mike interrupted, and the rest of the drive was quiet.

  * * *

  The South is full of swaying pine trees and buzzing cicadas. To my ears it sounded like a jungle of fast-ticking clocks and TV static. Every house in the Pines was actually a parked trailer, metal siding covering the wheels beneath. This was temporary housing until Mike earned a house on base. Our trailer was mostly dirty white with dark brown trim at the roof and a little bit of orange on the sides. It was striped like a racecar and doublewide. There were cinder blocks stacked up as front steps.

  We all waited on the top step as Mike tried to unlock the door. The knob stuck, so he karate kicked it open. It was dark inside even though it was sunny outside. I noticed the windows rolled out with a crank instead of up with a push. When Mom turned the lights on, big black bugs ran for the corners to hide. “There are bugs the size of my hand crawling up the walls,” Mom screamed.

  Mike made a phone call. “We want them gone now,” he said.

  He really meant us, I thought. I looked outside. I didn’t want to be a pest. I’d heard about homes for girls with no parents or parents who didn’t want them. I’d seen Annie. I’m not going to one of those places, I thought. I’m no redheaded stepchild.

  * * *

  Our mother left our father, and then our stepfather’s career uprooted us. When we were children, Cara and I moved constantly. We were girls who felt on the outside of things, on the edge of each community. Was it too painful to integrate only to leave again? Whatever the reason, we never fit in. Identical twins have a difficult time adapting even in normal situations—they are curiosities to their peers; they are freaks.

  “Does it hurt Cara if I do this to you?” a kid at school asked once, pulling my hair.

  “Fuck you,” I said back.

  It was because it was partly true that I answered that way; not because the hair pulling was painful, but because our bodies were each other’s property. When she suffered, I suffered.

  “Does it hurt you if I do this?” I hit him, and split the skin of his lip.

  My sister, my twin, we fought like alley cats and then walked down the street together, wherever it was we were living, holding hands. We tangled each other’s hair, bloodied each other’s noses, bit and scratched each other. We knew who we were: We were best friends. We were enemies. We were all we had.

  MARCH 3, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Today my stepdad tried to kill a spider with a can of my hairspray. I was sitting on the toilet and it was behind me on the wall, all hairy and disgusting. It was the most humongous thing I have ever seen. It made me scream, loud, loud, loud, and we didn’t have any toilet paper, either. So my stepdad walked into the bathroom, all asking what was going on. I just had time to pull up my pants and drip dry before he saw the spider and screamed like a girl!

  MARCH 5, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Today was the best day ever!!! Me and my sister and Misty took a cab to a bar. We did it while Mom was out. My stepdad was at work and the neighbors were at bible school. We wore black sweat suits out of the house and did our hair in the car, teased it with our fingers. Finger test! Hair has to be as high as the middle finger on Misty’s hand. She is the biggest of the three of us, fat, with a witch’s nose. I hate Misty. She wears all black all the time and dresses like a fat ho bag. At least my sister and I are skinny. We look good with our hair and in our clothes. Anyway, don’t tell, okay? God, if anyone reads this I am dead meat, but who else am I going to tell? Anyway, we went to this bar to meet this band and we changed into our miniskirts and band T-shirts in the cab. I actually saw the cabdriver look at us in his mirror!! How gross is that? I mean we are only twelve. Anyway, so we went to meet this band and I flashed the drummer on a dare. He took my picture and hugged me.…

  JULY 1, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Tomorrow my sister and I are going to fly to New York for the summer to visit Grandma. Grandpa used to say flying is dangerous and that you have to be careful not to die. He used to say he would never get on an airplane and didn’t. I wonder what he would say now? I hate flying, too, but I pretend not to be scared. Grandma needs us to visit now that Grandpa isn’t here anymore. But my sister and I made a pact that if we do die on the plane, everyone will know that we love heavy metal. We are going to wear our Mötley Crüe T-shirts on the airplane in case it crashes so when they find our bodies, everyone will know we were fans and maybe the band will write a song about the girls who loved them so much they would die with band T-shirts on.…

  R.I.P.,

  ME

  AUGUST 7, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Life sucks. I am so grounded. Mom found you while I was gone and read about the bar. My sister and I put black lines with a Sharpie on white T-shirts and wrote INMATE on them. We are like prisoners so we figured we should dress like them. Mom says we are going to be grounded for at least a month. I feel like dying. She is such a bitch.

  AUGUST 20, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Mom and my stepdad have been yelling at each other a lot because he says she is never at home. My stepdad is a jerk. I hate him. He is always pinching Mom’s butt and calling my sister and me fat. He should be nice to Mom. She does everything for him but wipe his ass and for all I know she does that, too. Mom went back to college this month to get her degree. She said she is tired of waiting tables. I don’t think I’ll ever go to college. I don’t think you need a degree to be a rock star. Mom looks tired all the time.

  AUGUST 28, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  School started yesterday. One of my teacher’s names is Bunny. What kind of name is that? One of her legs is sh
orter than the other and she likes to pull herself up on two desks and swing back and forth in the aisle. She wears weird shoes. She is pretty okay but the rest of my teachers are idiots. By the way, I am still grounded. I took off my prison shirt for school and wore my Warrant shirt instead. I don’t want the whole world to know I am an inmate. One day I’ll get out of here.

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  My sister and I saw my mom kissing one of her teachers at the beach so we spit in his shoes and took a walk in the other direction. I am never going to tell Mom that I saw that. I think she feels guilty, though, because she gave us extra money to buy French fries and ice cream at the pier. We usually aren’t allowed to eat crap.

  MAY 1, 1990

  Dear Diary,

  Mom says our stepdad is leaving home for a little while and that we are moving back to New York, after she finishes college. She says the three of us can live with Grandma until she can save up enough money to buy a house. Mom didn’t say if our stepdad is going to live with Grandma, too. I hope not. I say don’t let the door hit him on the ass on the way out. He is not my real dad anyway. Mom has been crying a lot, especially to really bad love songs on the radio. We are not grounded anymore. Mom says she doesn’t have time right now to keep us out of trouble. If you ask me, no man is worth crying over, especially not a big Marine who walks out on his wife and kids and screams like a girl over something as small as a spider.

  Mike left our family on a North Carolina high summer afternoon. He wanted no more of the Marines, either, and didn’t reenlist; his plan was to move back to upstate New York to be nearer to family. He packed his clothes and his extensive collection of cassette tapes and paperback mystery novels into a car top carrier attached to his tan Nissan Sentra and pulled away. Cara and I did a dance in the driveway as his car crested a right toward the highway and out of our neighborhood. Mom wept on the living room sofa in a room full of boxes. He’d wanted nothing in the divorce but out.