by Lynn Austin
“You need anything from the store, Kathleen?” he would ask as he and the boys piled into the rusted Ford.
“No, thanks.” My hair always felt dirtier when I washed it in stolen shampoo.
While the other kids went to football games and basketball games, I worked in the Riverside Diner washing dishes. With my mousy brown hair and skinny body and flat chest, I wasn’t cute enough or perky enough at age sixteen to be a waitress, so they kept me hidden in the back. The diner was the town hangout, and all the kids congregated there after the games for hamburgers and French fries and milk shakes. Sometimes I would hear May Elizabeth’s tinkling laughter above the roar of the dishwasher, and I’d catch a glimpse of her through the pass-through window when I brought the cook a stack of clean plates.
She was beautiful now, blonde and fair-skinned. Her pudginess had shifted around on her growing body and settled into voluptuous curves. She was always the center of attention, always animated and dramatic. I wished her well. I envied her. I knew I could never be like her.
I hated myself so much that I finally stopped looking in the mirror. I hated my scrawny, underdeveloped body and my stringy hair and my baggy, thrift-store clothes. I hated the way my clothes smelled and the way my house smelled and the way I smelled after working a shift in the diner’s greasy kitchen. I had no girlfriends, let alone boyfriends. I went to school, sat in class without ever saying a word, ate lunch alone in the cafeteria, and walked home alone. No one noticed that I never attended a school dance or a football game or hung around the diner afterward. No one said, “Hey, where’s Kathleen Gallagher? We should see if she wants to come along.” No one noticed that I stopped attending Sunday school and didn’t join the confirmation class and never went to church anymore. No one cared.
I hated my life.
I fought with my mother constantly. For as long as I could recall, she had taken my brothers’side in every argument and had looked the other way while they wrecked everything I owned. But the last straw came when the boys stole my new padded training bra and let Charlie Grout see it for a dollar. Thanks to Poke and JT, everyone in Riverside High School knew that Cootie Kathy wore falsies.
“I don’t have any privacy!” I screamed at my mother. “I’m sick and tired of sharing a bedroom with my perverted brothers!” I had entered womanhood, and I wanted to be able to shave my legs in peace without my brothers charging admission so their friends could peek through the hole where the bathroom doorknob should be.
“What do you expect me to do about it?” my mother said. “Build another room?”
I knew she would never take any action, so I took action myself. Uncle Leonard had moved in with his girlfriend after Daddy came home, so I decided that Poke and JT should sleep in our uncle’s old “bedroom” in the living room. I dragged their mattress and pillows down the hall and stuffed all their clothes, slingshots, matches, and other stolen loot in Uncle Leonard’s cardboard “closet” behind the couch. The boys didn’t seem to care in the least that they had been relocated. They slept on the living room floor half the time, anyway. A mattress simply made it more comfortable.
I had a small measure of privacy at last, and to celebrate I bought a hook-and-eye lock at the cluttered Village Hardware Store and installed it myself with Daddy’s screwdriver. Not that a lock had ever stopped my brothers, but I hoped it would slow them down a bit.
During my junior year of high school my figure finally began to change, and I outgrew most of my clothes. I barely had adequate clothing to begin with, but the fact that my mother didn’t have the money or the energy to go to the Laundromat on a regular basis made the situation critical most of the time.
“Look at this,” I told her, modeling the gaping buttons of my “good” cotton blouse. “I need new clothes.”
“I’ll ask Leonard to drive you to the thrift store in Bensenville.”
“I hate thrift-store clothes. They stink like wet sheep dogs! Why can’t I buy something new just once in my life?”
“You think you’re better than the rest of us? You think you deserve to have new clothes while we have to make do with secondhand?”
“You could buy some new clothes once in a while, too,” I griped. “Why do you have to look like a bag lady all the time? Why can’t you be like other mothers?”
“I’ve had about all I can take from you,” she said. “I don’t think you deserve a trip to the thrift shop. You can go without until you change your attitude.”
I might have gotten more sympathy from Daddy, but I refused to ask him. I knew how he “shopped,” and I didn’t want it on my conscience if he wound up back in the county correctional center because I needed new clothes. Besides, I would feel even more ashamed walking around in stolen clothes than if I wore clothes from the thrift store. As time passed, my wardrobe became more and more meager, my arguments with my mother fiercer and more frequent.
“Can you please sign this?” I asked her one afternoon. “I want to take driver’s ed next semester.” I showed her the consent form, holding my breath as she reached the bottom line and saw the enrollment fee and learner’s permit fee.
“No. We can’t afford it.”
“I’ll pay for it out of the money I make at the diner. Please… all you have to do is sign the permission slip.”
“I already said no. It’s a waste of time and money since we don’t have a car for you to drive.”
“Maybe Uncle Leonard will let me drive his car.”
“I’ve gotten by just fine without a driver’s license all these years, and so can you.”
The helplessness and hopelessness I felt enraged me. “I hate living here and I hate this family and I hate you!” I screamed. “I’m going to go live with Connie and Uncle Leonard.” I never thought I would say that; it was a measure of my desperation that I’d choose to live with my Communist uncle and his common-law wife. By now they had dated for almost seven years and had lived together at least half of that time. If Connie was still hoping for wedding bells to ring, she was in for a big disappointment. Uncle Leonard said marriage was for fools and capitalists.
My mother was unmoved by my declarations of hatred or my threats to move away. “That’s out of the question,” she said. “Connie Miller is a simpleton. There’s only one reason why men are attracted to women like her.”
I had a pretty good idea what that reason was.
I had to blame someone for the rotten life I lived, and since my mother was handy, I decided that it was all her fault. We had learned about alcoholism in health class, and I had begun to wonder if my mother secretly drank. Maybe that’s what she’d been doing in the outhouse all these years—although it remained a mystery to me how she could afford to buy alcohol when we couldn’t even afford groceries. Mom was always weak and exhausted, and her eyes drooped half-shut no matter how much sleep she got. She never had enough energy to cook a meal or clean the house or keep my brothers out of trouble.
I decided that if she wasn’t such a frumpy recluse, maybe I wouldn’t be ostracized in school. If she still lived in Deer Falls with Grandma Fiona, at least I would have a nice apartment that smelled like lavender instead of mold and urine. I was sullen and mouthy and bitter. No matter what Mom said to me, I had three standard replies: “Why should I?” or “What do you care?” or “I wish you weren’t my mother.”
Her response rang through our bungalow in a monotonous refrain:
“I’ve had about all I can take from you. …”
I hated my life. I would sit in my room for hours, crying and crying, unable to stop. No one came in to ask me what was wrong. I thought about running away at least three times a week. One of those times was because she refused to let me go to Washington, DC, on our senior class trip—even if I paid for it with my own money.
“I’m leaving home and never coming back!” I yelled.
“Go ahead. How far do you think you’ll get?”
“I’ll go to Deer Falls and live with Grandma Fiona.”
My mother got a funny look on her face. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was, then I saw tears glistening in her eyes just before she turned her head away, and I realized that it was grief.
“Your grandmother’s dead.” I heard bitterness in her voice.
I had only met Fiona that one time, but when I thought of my beautiful, elegant grandmother sipping sherry and listening to her scratchy phonograph records, I felt her loss as keenly as if I had visited her only yesterday.
“No! You’re lying! How did she die? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t we ever go visit her again before it was too late?” My voice rose in volume and pitch with each question. But my mother simply shook her head and went outside to her sanctuary, slamming the kitchen door. I went out the front door, slamming it, too.
I crossed the bridge and walked through Riverside, not caring where I ended up. I felt like lying down on the grass in the cemetery and waiting to die like Sarah Hawkins. I would have done it, too, but we didn’t own a cemetery plot and the groundskeeper would probably run me off for trespassing.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. My grandmother had made me feel loved—and loveable—and now she was gone forever. I was so mad that I wanted to beat somebody up. When I saw my uncle’s car in the street outside their apartment, I ran upstairs and banged on the door. They lived in two cramped rooms above the Valley Food Market, where Connie worked.
I confronted Uncle Leonard with the question the moment Connie invited me inside. “When did Grandma Fiona die?”
Uncle Leonard exhaled and all the life seemed to go out of his gangly body, as if the puppeteer had dropped the strings. He leaned against the sink in Connie’s tiny kitchenette. “More than four years ago—a few months after we visited her, in fact.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You hardly knew her,” he said defensively.
“I did too know her! She was my grandmother! I would’ve gone to her funeral!”
“There was no funeral. They’re a waste of money. Funerals are for fools who believe in God and an afterlife.”
That was more than I could take. To think of lovely Fiona, unmourned, unloved, thrown into the garbage bin—or wherever Communists stashed their dead loved ones—was a bitter blow.
“How could you do that?” I yelled. I was trembling with fury and grief.
“Grandma Fiona believed in God, and so do I!”
“For goodness’sake, sweetie. Calm down,” Connie said. She looked worried. “Take a deep breath, have a drink of water.”
“No! I want my grandma!”
Fiona had been the only person who had ever loved me. I could tell that she did by the way she looked into my eyes when she talked to me, and by the way she touched my hair and cupped her soft, wrinkled hand on my cheek. I remembered all the pretty things she’d had and how she had let me try on her necklaces and rings. Now she was gone forever, and I didn’t have anything to remember her by.
“What did you do with all her stuff?”
“I took care of it,” Uncle Leonard said coldly.
“Isn’t there anything of hers left? A bracelet… something…? ” My eyes burned and my face was slick with tears, but I couldn’t stop crying.
“It was all useless junk, Kathleen. It’s gone.”
“I hate you!” I screamed. I went after him with my fists, pummeling his chest, trying to hurt him as much as he had hurt me. He was stronger than he looked. He gripped my wrists so tightly they ached, as he held me away from him.
“I think I’d better take you home.”
“No, I don’t ever want to go home again,” I sobbed. “Especially with you!”
Connie did the best thing anyone could have done. She nudged my uncle away and pulled me into her arms and let me cry. “Go away, Leonard,” she said over my shoulder. “Can’t you see she’s heartbroken? Leave the poor girl with me.”
Uncle Leonard left. Connie made soothing noises as she held me tightly, listening as I vented all of my hatred and rage. When I finally calmed down, she made me a cup of hot chocolate and a grilled cheese sandwich. I slept on her couch that night.
The next day was a Saturday, and she made French toast with butter and syrup. She put a rock-and-roll station on the radio just for me, and we danced to the Beatles in our bare feet.
“Can I live here with you, Connie?” I asked when it was time for her to go downstairs to work. “I don’t ever want to go home again.”
“I would love to say yes, sweetie. I’ve always wanted children of my own, you know. But you need to go home to your family.”
“Why don’t you get married and have some, then?”
She smiled sadly as she slipped her shop apron over her head and tied it around her ample waist. “The only man I’ve ever loved is your Uncle Leonard. And he doesn’t want any children.” I could see that this was a painful subject for her, so I let it go.
“I may not see you again,” I told her as I hugged her good-bye. “I’m going to run away.”
“Please don’t do that,” she said softly. “I quit school and ran away when I was sixteen, and now I wish I hadn’t. I never finished my education, so I can never better myself. I’m forty-three years old, and all I have to show for it is a tiny apartment, a job in a grocery store, and a man who doesn’t love me enough to marry me. But you’re a bright girl, Kathleen—a pretty girl. You can get a college education and get out of this nowhere town and make something of yourself. That’s the best way to show them, honey… not by running away.”
I knew deep inside that Connie was right. Besides, I doubted that my family would even come looking for me if I disappeared. The nearsighted town constable would be no help, either. He’d be overjoyed to have one less thieving Gallagher in town. Not knowing what else to do or where to go, I returned home to my miserable life.
I used the money I earned at the diner to apply to colleges. I had straight A’s in algebra, trigonometry, geometry and calculus, and my math teacher, Mr. Mueller, encouraged me to apply to Albany State University and major in mathematics.
“Your Regents’exam scores make you eligible for a New York State Regents’Scholarship,” Mr. Mueller told me. “Depending on your family’s financial need, you might qualify for full tuition.” I assured him that I would qualify. The only problem would be paying for my room and board.
I was going to graduate third in my class, and with high SAT scores, I was easily accepted at Albany State. My goal was within sight. This would be the last year I would ever have to spend in Riverside, walking around with my head down. All I ever wanted was to leave home and never return.
Only one last detail remained, and I avoided taking care of it for as long as I possibly could, hoping for a miracle. No matter how many ways I added up my financial aid package from Albany State, there was still a gap between what I owed and what I had managed to save on my own. I had been awarded the mathematics prize at graduation and a small student council scholarship, but I was still short for room and board, plus books and various activity fees. The financial aid officer at the college had included student loan forms for me to fill out to cover the difference. All I needed was someone to cosign them for me.
I didn’t ask Daddy. The signature of a paroled felon probably wouldn’t carry much weight, and I was afraid that Daddy would be dumb enough to rob a bank for me if he knew that I needed money. After all, the last time that I had asked him for something, he had stolen a Christmas tree.
I didn’t ask Uncle Leonard, either, because I already knew what he thought of the capitalistic public education system.
“It ought to be free, like it is in Communist countries,” he’d said a dozen times. In his mind a free education was more important than freedom of thought or freedom of speech or freedom of worship. Yes, I knew better than to ask him. Or Connie. She was a sweet soul, but she would never defy Uncle Leonard. That left my mother as my only resource. I waited until she was home alone, then went to where she lay sprawled on the couch and handed her the lo
an papers and a pen.
“I need you to sign this for me. It’s for college.”
“What is it?” She looked at it through sleepy, half-closed eyes. She couldn’t seem to muster the energy to hold the pen much less sign her name.
“It’s for a loan that I can pay back after I graduate.”
“I thought you had a scholarship?”
“I do—for full tuition. And I can pay for most of my room and board with a campus job. But I need a loan to make up the difference.” She started slowly shaking her head, and I felt my temper flare. “I’ll pay it all back! I just need your signature!”
“Why do you want to go to a snooty, expensive school like that? What’s wrong with the community college over in Bensenville?”
“Mom, please! Albany State is a much better school!”
“You’ll be out of place there. It’s a school for rich kids. The boys you’ll meet there would never marry someone from our background. At least at the community college there will be others like you. You could live at home and save room and board.”
“No!” I wailed. I sank down on the living room floor in front of the couch. “I don’t want to marry someone from our background. I’d rather not get married at all! And I don’t want to live in Riverside for one more minute. Don’t you understand that? I know Daddy is a convicted criminal.” She appeared startled. “I learned the truth a long time ago,” I continued. “And I hate the way everyone looks at us and whispers about us behind our backs. I want to get out of here and go as far away as I can and start a new life all over again—like you did.”
“You don’t know a thing about me—” she began, but I shouted her down.
“I know that you left Grandma Fiona and ran away from Deer Falls and never went back! All my life people have been telling me to get good grades and get a college education so I could make something of myself— and now I’m so close! If you would just cosign this loan for me, you’ll never have to see me again as long as you live!”
