What She Left for Me

by Tracie Peterson

  “I guess I see what you’re saying,” she finally replied. “Yet, being divorced or being widowed . . . I’m still left with nothing.”

  “Not true. You have the good memories and your baby.”

  “But the memories must have been false,” Jana said. This was something she had concluded only a short time ago. “Just because I remember them as good doesn’t mean they were. I thought things were fine. I thought we had a wonderful marriage with a great future. My memories are based on that, but apparently Rob had completely different thoughts on the matter.”

  “But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”

  Jana looked hard at Taffy. “We know he didn’t feel that way, because he just walked away. He’d been planning it for some time. He couldn’t have felt the same way I did about our relationship.”

  “Possibly,” Taffy said softly, “but does that invalidate your feelings?”

  Jana shrugged. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. To me it seems that I believed an illusion—something not at all real.”

  “And is that how you feel about God as well?”

  Jana turned away. “My relationship with Him seems as false as my marriage. I thought He was good and that He protected us from harm if we loved Him. I never worried about things even once in Africa because I believed God would care for me.”

  “But you don’t believe God will care for you now?”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” Jana answered honestly. She met her great-aunt’s face, fearful of finding condemnation in her eyes. Instead, she found only compassion.

  Taffy nodded. “It’s best not to try and reason it all out overnight. Give yourself time, and maybe instead of focusing on the past, you could focus on the future. Your child will need you now more than ever.”

  “I’ll try,” Jana replied. There was something about this coming from Taffy that made her sincerely want to try.

  Jana thought about Taffy’s words long after her great-aunt had left for her mountain trip with Stanley. Lomara sat in a tiny valley with mountains all around them, so Jana knew the couple wouldn’t have far to go on their adventure. She almost wished she’d gone with them—especially when Eleanor joined her in the living room.

  Jana acknowledged her mother, then picked up one of Taffy’s dozen or so magazines and pretended to be absorbed in an article about basket weaving. Eleanor looked like she was thoroughly captivated by a book on business, but Jana got the feeling her mother wanted to talk. That so surprised Jana that she put down the magazine and asked frankly, “How was it you came to live with Aunt Taffy?”

  Eleanor looked over the top of her book as if annoyed. She seemed to contemplate the question for a moment, then closed her book. “There were problems with my parents, and Social Services came and took me away. Eventually I ended up with Taffy and Cal.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about them?”

  “It didn’t seem important. I mean, what was there to gain?”

  Jana felt her anger rise and pushed it back down. “There were relationships to gain. I would have liked knowing them both—growing up with them as grandparents or grandparent substitutes.”

  Her mother clearly bristled at this suggestion. “Cal died shortly after you were born. There would have been no chance of knowing him.”

  “What about Aunt Taffy? That must have been a very hard time for her. Why didn’t you want to be with her? I mean, surely she would have relished having family around her. Unless, of course, there are other family members you’ve kept hidden from me, and they were comforting her.”

  Eleanor quickly looked at her hands. For several moments she said nothing, making Jana confident that she’d hit upon a truth. Could it be possible? Did they have relatives Jana knew nothing about?

  “Taffy had no one else,” Eleanor finally stated.

  “But there is other family, isn’t there?” Jana questioned. “You’ve kept other people—other relatives—from me.”

  “I did what I had to do to protect you,” Eleanor said, looking up. “Someday you’ll understand that when you find yourself working to protect your child.”

  “Rob had no one left in his family. He was an only child, and his mother died last year from cancer. His father died before I even met Rob. So I’ll have no need to protect or hide my child away.”

  “Then you’ll be blessed.”

  Jana felt complete frustration at her mother’s flippant answer. “Mom, what family members do I not know about?”

  “It isn’t important, Jana. They aren’t a part of your life and never will be. Why do you always insist on living in the past?”

  It was Jana’s turn to stiffen. She had spent most of the morning in a world of memories, so her mother’s words hit very close to the truth. “I suppose because I’m still trying to understand it. To understand us . . . you and me.”

  Eleanor shook her head and put the book on the table beside her chair. “That’s the trouble with people. They analyze things to death—always looking for answers. Quite honestly, sometimes there are no answers, Jana. Like with Rob and this situation. Do you really suppose you’ll find an answer to why he left? Why he was willing to forsake his vows and run away with his secretary?”

  “Yes—I need answers. I need to understand why.”

  “But that may never come. Can you move forward anyway? I never got the answers I needed either, but I learned to get on with my life.”

  “But you were never happy. Hearing the truth might be painful, but at least I’d know and then I might have some understanding.”

  “Understand what, Jana? That your father wanted nothing to do with you unless you were a boy? That we had to make our way on our own?”

  “But why? Why did my father only want a son? Why did having a daughter cause him to walk away from his marriage vows?”

  Eleanor looked away. “There are too many why’s in life. It’s better to ignore them. Sooner or later you’ll understand this.”

  “But my father didn’t want me!”

  “Well, mine did want me and it still didn’t make life good!” Eleanor declared a little louder than Jana expected.

  They fell silent then, each retreating to the safe haven within that they’d created for themselves. Jana had a million questions she wanted to ask. It was strange after all these years that now, here in this place, she should finally have the chance to speak her mind. And yet something held her back.

  Maybe it was the way her mother looked so childlike . . . so lost. She looks like I feel, Jana thought. She looks like the world has completely betrayed her and she doesn’t know how to go on. Yet here was a woman who prided herself in her strength and ability to need no one.

  Jana knew it probably wasn’t the right time, or fair either, but she posed the question that had been on her heart.

  “Mom, why did Social Services take you away?”

  Eleanor looked at her for a moment, and Jana fully expected a snide comment. But instead her mother closed her eyes. “My mother died.”

  Jana had often wondered about her grandparents but had never been allowed to ask much about them. “How did she die?”

  Eleanor’s eyes seemed to glaze over. “Why do you want to know?”

  Jana hadn’t expected this. “I don’t know. I guess to share it with you. You sound so sad. I know it must have been painful. You were just a kid.”

  “I don’t think talking about it will make it any better,” she said without emotion.

  At least she isn’t yelling at me. This conversation was much better than any Jana could remember having with her mother previously on the topic of family members. Still, if she didn’t want to talk about her mother’s death, Jana suddenly wanted to respect that.

  “Well, how about telling me about my grandmother? I don’t know anything about her—nothing,” Jana said, hoping her mother would open up.

  Eleanor’s surprise was reflected in her face. “Tell you about her?” She sighed. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
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br />   “Start anywhere. Tell me about a good day—a day when things felt right.”

  Eleanor leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I can’t say that anything ever felt exactly right. I was always different. Nothing like my parents. Even then, I wanted nothing more than to have order, and their world brought me mostly chaos.”

  Jana was intrigued. “So tell me about it.”

  Seventeen

  The memories rushed over Eleanor and swept her back to a time shortly after the police fiasco. They had moved the commune, which wasn’t hard to do considering many people lived in old campers, tents, and trailers. But it had started a sense of insecurity in Eleanor that she was hard-pressed to understand, much less deal with.

  “I don’t like this place as much,” Eleanor told her mom.

  Melody was an eternal optimist in most things. “This isn’t so bad. We’ve got a few trees and plenty of good water.”

  Eleanor looked around her at the scrub ground. “But there isn’t any good grass. Most of the yard is just rocks and sand.” She hated this desertlike terrain. It seemed so barren, lifeless. Even more, she hated the fact that they had fled in the dead of night like criminals eluding the law. Eleanor could still remember the feeling that they would be stopped and forced to turn back around. She was terrified that her father and mother would go to jail.

  Her mother seemed oblivious. She worked on a piece of macramé, sitting cross-legged on the ground outside their trailer. They were now living in her father’s former office. It was all they had and, though cramped, it was better than living outside like some of the folks who had followed them to this area. Melody’s cutoffs were caked with dirt from washing clothes at the river, and her T-shirt was torn in several places from years of wear. Still, Eleanor thought her a pretty woman. She didn’t worry about makeup or fancy ways to fix her hair, but her beauty was still evident. There weren’t even any signs of worry on her face.

  This was simply one more change in their life. It wasn’t like she desired any kind of permanency. Eleanor knew this full well, for her mother spoke about it all the time.

  “We’re just a vapor—a mist. Here today and gone tomorrow. Even the Bible says so,” her mother would say.

  “Why can’t we live in a house like other people?”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve lived in a house before.”

  “But I mean in a real town, with running water and television.”

  Her mother stopped what she was doing. “Why would you want the hassle? There are all kinds of rules and complications. I’ve lived like that before. It’s all about work and about money. You never have time to enjoy anything.”

  “But other people like it. I’ve heard some of the people talk about living like that. I think it would be fun to have all those neat things.”

  Shaking her head, her mother tried to explain. “People talk about owning things, but the truth is, things end up owning you. The more you have, the more time it takes. You, like, never realize it because it just sort of happens. Little by little. All of a sudden you realize you have to fix this and clean that, and pretty soon you need more money to get more things. It only leads to greed and envy. I know. I saw it all the time when I was a girl.”

  Eleanor sat down beside her mother. “Tell me about when you were growing up.”

  Melody shrugged and went back to the piece she was working on. “I grew up in a pretty big town. There were lots of people, to be sure. I had my own bedroom and lots of toys. I was born late in my parents’ life—after my mother had lost several babies.”

  “Lost them?” Eleanor asked.

  “You know, she miscarried them. They died before they were born.”

  “That must have been sad.”

  “It was hard on her, so when I was born she was extra excited. My sister was sixteen years older than me, so it was like having a new family. Kind of like with me and you—I was sixteen when you were born. My mother spent a lot of time with me. She used to take me shopping and to movies and symphonies. My father used to yell at her for all the time we were together. He said she was shirking her other duties.”

  “What duties?”

  “They were rich, so they had to attend a lot of parties and events. They were always doing something with someone, but my mom sometimes said she was sick so she could stay home with me.”

  “She lied?”

  Melody shrugged. “Something else was more important. Sometimes that’s the way it is.”

  “So it’s okay to lie?”

  Melody looked at Eleanor and appeared to think about her answer for a moment. “Sometimes it’s necessary. If Momma had told the truth, my father would never have allowed her to stay home. She wanted to be home, so she did what she had to do.”

  “Still, that doesn’t seem right.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “Well, if everybody goes around lying so that they can do whatever they want, nothing will ever get done.”

  Melody seemed unconvinced. “And what needs to be done now that can’t be done tomorrow?”

  “Well . . .” Eleanor thought about it for a minute. “What about Dad? He’s a doctor and people sometimes need him for emergencies. What if he tells that person that he can’t help them because he feels sick? But what if he isn’t really sick—he just wants to spend time with me?”

  “Then someone else will have to help with the emergency.”

  “But there isn’t anybody else. Dad’s the only doctor here.”

  Her mother sighed in exasperation. “Eleanor, you worry too much. Life isn’t all that complicated.”

  “I’d just like it to make sense.”

  Melody laughed. “Well, I doubt that will ever happen. Not with the way people act and think. Even my own parents were far from understandable. My parents sent me to boarding school when I was about your age. I hated it. They didn’t care, though.”

  “Why did you hate it?” Eleanor pulled up her knees and propped her folded arms atop them.

  “First of all, it took me away from my mother, and we were having a lot of fun together. I was scared too, but nobody cared. My dad said it was the way things would be done, and my mom told me to be brave and make her proud. I was depressed for weeks after I arrived at the school. I was a little bit chubby when I left home, but within six weeks they were worrying about the fact I’d dropped thirty pounds. I simply wasn’t eating anything. My dad ordered me to start eating and stop being such a big baby, so I did my best.” She shook her head sadly. “He never cared how I felt.”

  Eleanor felt sorry for her mother. She sounded so sad. “Why else did you hate it?”

  “There were too many rules. They told us how to dress—we had to wear this awful uniform. White blouse, long blue sweater, and blue skirt. It was so confining. I remember once I forgot to wear a slip under my skirt and got detention for a week.” She shuddered as though she were still wearing the thing. “They told us how we could wear our hair, and we weren’t allowed any makeup or jewelry. We had to do our homework at a certain time, in a certain way, and we could never question our teachers about anything.”

  “But what kinds of questions would you have asked?”

  Melody didn’t answer for a minute. “Well, I would have questioned their negativity toward Communism. They were so terrified of it that they blasted it at every turn. They were always speaking out against the Russians. Always telling us they were our enemies. But Russia wasn’t the enemy—they were. They couldn’t stand people being such free thinkers.”

  “But why? Isn’t free thinking a good thing?”

  “Of course it is. But it’s also a scary thing for people who think they have all the answers. The establishment of that school thought they knew the right—and the only—way to do things. They had their rules and they demanded everyone conform.”

  “Did your mom miss you?”

  Her mother stopped working but didn’t look at Eleanor. “I think so. I sure missed my mom. She and I were r
eally close until I disappointed her and made my own way in life. She grew hateful, just as my father had always been, when she found out I was pregnant with you. After that, she wanted little to do with me.”

  “Why would she be mad that you got pregnant? Didn’t she like babies?”

  “She was mad because I was so young. She said that I’d ruined my life—that I had the chance to become someone special. I thought I already was.” Melody looked at Eleanor, and Eleanor thought the expression on her mother’s face was one of regret.

  “But,” her mother continued, “she was right on the issue of age. I was too young. I don’t recommend having a baby at sixteen. You have no time to explore the world or do other things, because you have a child and some very heavy responsibilities. It’s not cool at all. It’s a drag because you’re always having to worry about whether they have enough to eat and drink and clothes to wear. And if you don’t have money to take care of the baby, that creates a problem.”

  “Did your mom stop talking to you because of me?” Eleanor suddenly felt consumed with guilt. She had caused her mother great pain and never even knew it.

  “She stopped talking to me—stopped associating with me—because I wasn’t married. It was a shameful thing in her society. People just didn’t do things like that, and she was really upset. I was only fifteen, and she was completely scandalized by the entire situation. Plus, the school kicked me out, and that made it rough for her with my father.”

  “What do you mean, you weren’t married?” Eleanor felt as though her mother had gut-punched her. “You and Dad weren’t married when you made me?”

  She frowned. “We never married, Ellie. I thought you knew that. We told my parents we’d eloped, mainly so they’d stop hassling your father. He was a new doctor helping at the boarding school and . . . well, I was underage when I, like, started sneaking out to be with him. Of course, this was against all the rules. He was so cool. Such a free thinker. I loved hearing his ideas and thoughts on the world. He hated that school as much as I did.”

  Eleanor’s mind was whirling. “Wait!” She jumped to her feet, little swirls of sand and dirt falling from her as she moved away. “You and Dad aren’t married?”