Family Secrets

by Zina Abbott

  “You do that,” Butter Bars sniffed as, shaking his head with disgust, he stalked away to join the other officers.

  Once the drama was over, most of the guys wandered away to see what they could learn about what was happening with Chuey’s body. I stayed. I suspected that Chuey’s death was no accident, that someone, maybe even Sarge, had shagged him. When we were alone, I turned to Sarge and asked, “Are you really going to conduct an investigation?”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you going to tell Butter Bars when he demands to know who shot Chuey?”

  Sarge raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. It wasn’t nobody’s fault. Accidental discharges happen. We’re going to go over again how to clean and handle our weapons. That’s all.”

  “Do you really think the COs are going to let it go at that and that’s going to be the end of it?”

  Obviously fed up with my questions, Sarge raised his voice and snarled, “Other than I think we’re not going to get mortared tonight, yeah! I think that’s going to be the end of it. Now, get on outta here!”

  I took the hint and, hiking my M-14 higher on my shoulder, I left to catch the latest gossip on Chuey.

  That evening, Sarge drilled us on the proper cleaning and handling of our weapons. And that was the end of it. Our compound didn’t get mortared that night or for many weeks afterward.

  We still let in the hooch girls to clean the living areas, but haircutting was taken over by Gillespie, whose father was a barber back in the Bronx. Problem was, he wasn’t as cheap and he didn’t cut hair as well as Chuey. Most of us didn’t get our hair cut as often once Gillespie took over.

  Like I said, the week following Thanksgiving was bad. The Tet Offensive, as it has since been named, was no picnic, either.

  Tet was a big holiday over there in Vietnam and traditionally, the North Vietnamese called a truce for the week of Tet. That January of 1968, the North Vietnamese announced that they were calling for the usual ceasefire. A lot of the guys got excited, thinking we were going to have a full week of peace no matter where we went. They looked forward to going into town to celebrate the holiday.

  Not Sarge. He suspected Charlie was up to something. He told everyone we’d be idiots to trust the Viet Cong. He didn’t grant any passes and ordered those of us not on a construction detail to stay in the compound and be ready to rock and roll at a moment’s notice.

  Sarge was right. On January 31st the Viet Cong sent forces against all the provincial capitals in South Vietnam at once. It was the most coordinated attack across the entire country that had ever taken place.

  I was on a crew building a new fire base when enemy fire started pouring in on us. I dove under my dozer, rifle in hand, searching in every direction trying to figure out where the shots were coming from. Pretty soon, I was joined by others from my squad. The day went downhill from there. There was no calling for outside help. Everyone everywhere in Nam was busy fighting for their lives. We barely fought our way out.

  I was a squad leader by then. After the Thanksgiving loss, Bravo squad and most of Delta was wiped out. Rather than fill those squads with all new guys, and then try to get them to mesh with the existing members of the platoon, Sarge pulled a few of us over to those squads and we waited for the new men to arrive.

  I almost never forgave Sarge for making me a squad leader. He even gave me a stripe and promoted me to Spec-5. I asked him why, and he said it was because I was there for them on Thanksgiving. I didn’t do anything except take Prescott’s place so he could eat turkey, but Sarge didn’t see it that way. The last thing I wanted was the responsibility of having a handful of men looking to me to get them through combat and help them stay alive to return home. But, there I was, doing just that during Tet and until my year was up. That worried me more than anything else.

  The Tet Offensive was Charlie’s all-out effort to drive us out of Vietnam. It didn’t work. We defeated the enemy, but we ended up paying in other ways.

  Chapter 20 - Christy

  “In here are some snapshots of you as a baby,” Aunt Pat said as she handed the first photo album to me.

  I exhaled deeply as I opened the cover. The first page was of a young and pregnant Aunt Pat. Grinning with anticipation, Uncle Leon stood beside her. The baby in the next set of pictures must have been of Amber because she was held by either Aunt Pat or Uncle Leon or the grandparents. Several pages later, in the second half of the album, along with pictures of a one year-old Amber with her short, fine pumpkin-colored hair, there were pictures of another baby. That baby was a fair, blue-eyed, almost bald baby.

  “Those pictures are of you,” my aunt assured me.

  The photos were held to the page with paper corners. I pulled the first picture out of the corners and looked on the back. Nothing.

  “I’m happy now I didn’t use those magnetic photo albums that were the big thing back then,” Pat commented. “Otherwise, as long as those snapshots have been in there, they might have become fused to the plastic cover. There would be no taking them out without the risk of tearing the picture.”

  I was glad, too. I worked each picture loose and then replaced it while doing my best to not tear the corners loose from the pages.

  Two of the pictures showed baby Christy held in the arms of a man standing next to a woman. I looked a little closer. The man looked like a younger version of my father. This one did have a notation on the back that read, “Mike, Sherrie and baby Christine Thanksgiving 1969.”

  I flipped the picture back over and stared at the woman. Her name was Sherrie. This was her. This was my birth mother. The picture had discolored so that the entire image had a distinct red cast to it. Yet, I could see that my birth mother’s hair was light, probably blonde. It was hard to tell if her hair was curly because of the way she wore it pulled back into a ponytail. A few pages later, there was a picture of her in profile. The hair falling from her headband down the back of her neck looked tucked under and pinned.

  I reached for my purse and pulled out my checkbook. I thumbed to the back page of my check register and wrote her name. Aunt Pat didn’t say a word, but gave me a questioning look that at first made me feel a little guilty about what I was doing. Then my defiant streak, which didn’t rear its head very often, came to life.

  “Dad doesn’t get into my purse and this is my own checking account. He has no reason to see my check register.”

  Aunt Pat said nothing in response.

  I checked behind each photograph on that page that included my parents and me to see if there was more information. Most were blank on the back, and the few on which Aunt Pat had written something didn’t give more information than what I had already discovered.

  The next few pages were mostly of Aunt Pat, Uncle Leon and Amber. There were even pictures of our grandparents and Amber’s other grandparents. I gave them a glance, but moved through them quickly, checking them mainly to see if I saw me or my own parents in them.

  Pat, Leon and Amber, age two, were at my first birthday celebration. Aunt Pat had several snapshots of me sitting in a highchair, my face and hair plastered with what appeared to be chocolate cake and frosting.

  I shook my head over the red hue that discolored all of them. I wondered what the pictures would look like in another twenty years.

  In one picture, Sherrie stood next to my high chair and leaned over so our faces were side to side; we looked like we both had strawberry blonde hair. This picture was taken either before cake or after I was cleaned up. I had Sherrie’s coloring, but not all of her facial features. Still, I could see the family resemblance between me and my birth mother.

  I searched the back, but other than the photo that had all of us but Uncle Leon in it, there was nothing on the backs other than first names and the date of my first birthday.

  One picture taken the day of my birthday caught my attention. Dad and Sherrie were sitting next to each other at a kitchenette table, their backs to the wall. Aunt Pat probably intended it as
a candid shot. That made it very revealing to me as I looked at it from the perspective of nineteen years later and with the little knowledge I had.

  Dad was leaning forward with his forearms on the table. He was staring ahead of him, as if studying something across the room I couldn’t see. His teeth were clenched in a frown and the skin around his eyes was taut. I recognized that intense look about him, although I had not seen it as much in more recent years. I learned early in life to stay out of his way when he had that look.

  Sherrie was leaning back in her chair far enough that he couldn’t see her facial expression, even in his peripheral vision. That was probably good for her. Her arms were folded across her stomach and, although she was facing forward, her eyes were focused sideways on Dad. Her face scowled as she glared at the back of Dad’s head with a look of pure hatred. I felt a shiver shimmy up and down my spine as I wondered what had prompted this scene. However, under the terms that Aunt Pat had set for showing the pictures, I decided against asking her if she remembered. I quietly turned the page.

  The wedding pictures Mom had shown me covered several pages of the second album. I moved through them quickly since Mom had already told me about them. There was a big gap in my age between my first birthday party pictures and the ones at the wedding. I closed the second album and sat quietly for a few moments, thinking about what I had learned.

  I was still clutching the photograph album in my lap as though if I were to let go, I would lose what little I had learned that day. I wondered if perhaps the reason there were no pictures was because this was when my mother took me away.

  I turned to face Aunt Pat.

  “Were my Dad and my birth mother married?” I asked. “Do you have any pictures of the wedding?”

  “Yes,” my aunt said cautiously as she reached for the oversized yellow envelope. “Here is the formal eight-by-ten wedding portrait.”

  Aunt Pat handed the picture to me. It had a clear cellophane window covering the photo. I removed it to get a better look. This portrait had not discolored with age.

  I recognized Dad who was wearing a light blue tuxedo with bell-bottom pants. He looked so handsome. But, the sight of my birth mother, Sherrie, in her wedding dress caused me to stop breathing. The dress was a long white lacy gown with a high neck, puffed sleeves, empire waist and a train. Her hair was pulled back from her face and finished with curls on top of her head which supported her veil. She was incredibly beautiful.

  “Sherrie hated her wedding dress. But, she wore it because her mother requested a more traditional gown,” Pat offered. “Sherrie preferred something more Bohemian.”

  “Bohemian?” I asked, not sure what my aunt meant by the term.

  “More like a peasant dress.” responded Pat as she handed me the next picture.

  “This one is of Sherrie with her mother and her mother’s sister. The aunt stayed with Leon and me at the time of the wedding and sent a very nice thank you card.”

  I studied the picture of the three women. This picture of her birth grandmother showed a woman who was an older, more conservative version of Sherrie except that her hair was light brown streaked with gray, particularly at the temples. She wore her hair in a French twist. It was obvious that Sherrie had inherited her mother’s eyes and nose. She was dressed in a dark pink knee-length evening dress with medium-heel fabric shoes that looked dyed to match. The aunt, dressed in lighter pink, had blonde hair like Sherrie. The family resemblance between the three of them was striking.

  I turned the picture over. No names were listed. Still, I knew that these women were my blood relatives. I felt an instant bond with them even though I did not know them.

  “I think Sherrie’s mother passed away because your mother said she stopped receiving birthday and Christmas cards for you when you were still quite young,” Aunt Pat continued. I jerked my head up and stared at my aunt. I didn’t remember receiving any cards from another grandmother.

  “My mother? As in, Jan Carpenter, my mother?” I asked. “She said Sherrie’s mother sent me cards?”

  “Yes. It used to really upset your father, and it was one of the few things they didn’t agree on. Your father wanted to break the ties completely since you were legally adopted by Jan. Jan felt that Sherrie’s decisions were not her fault, so the two stayed in contact with each other.”

  Sherrie’s decisions. What decisions did my birth mother make? Did my birth mother ever send me cards? I looked at Aunt Pat and waited, hoping she would elaborate. Instead, she quietly shook her head and began to rifle the papers on her lap.

  “I may still have the wedding invitation,” she said.

  Of course she had the wedding invitation. I had already figured out that Aunt Pat kept everything. Then, I thought of another question that had plagued me since I found out that Jan was not my natural mother.

  “Was Sherrie good at music? I mean, Dad always says he can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I’m not sure if there’s much music talent on the Carpenter side of the family.”

  “Oh, you inherited your beautiful singing voice from Sherrie,” my aunt assured me. “She used to sing and play the guitar all the time. In fact, I think that’s how she and your father met.” Aunt Pat hesitated and bit her lip, as if she thought she had said too much. Then, she must have thought better of it because she pulled a snapshot from the envelope and handed it to me.

  “Your father gave this to me before he announced that they were going to get married.”

  The picture showed a woman sitting on a park bench surrounded by grass and trees. If Pat had not told me it was Sherrie, I would not have been able to identify her. Her head was turned away and her hand held up to block most of her face from the camera. Her knees were crossed and a guitar was balanced on her lap. I noticed the bellbottom pants embroidered with flowers around the hem. The blouse was a cream color and gathered loosely at the neck. It looked like it also had embroidery on the yoke, but I couldn’t tell if it was done by machine or by hand. Over the blouse she wore a darker vest, also embroidered with flowers and what appeared to be a bird and a birdhouse.

  “I know you can’t see much of her face, which I pointed out to my brother at the time when I was trying to persuade him to bring her home to meet the family. But, it’s the guitar I wanted you to see. She liked to sing the popular folk songs of the day. I believe her family was musically inclined, too. Sherrie’s mother and her aunt sang a duet at the wedding. Beautiful!”

  Another piece of the puzzle fell into place for me. I began to feel whole again.

  “I think I look a lot like my birth mother,” I observed.

  “You do,” Aunt Pat confirmed. Then she stuffed the pictures and papers back inside the envelope, stacked the photo albums on the coffee table, and placed the large envelope on top. She stood and turned to me with a smile. “I need to take a quick break. We are probably about finished for today.”

  I stared at the envelope in front of me on the coffee table as my aunt disappeared down the hall. I suspected that inside that envelope was more information about my birth mother than what Aunt Pat had shown me. What did she intend? Did she expect me to be honorable and not touch anything that was not mine without permission? Or, like some shows I had seen on television, had she deliberately left things about my birth mother for me to see, but in a manner so that she could later swear to my father that she had never shown me the information? My curiosity and desire to know more about my origins overcame my training. I was not meddling into someone else’s business; this was about me. I reached for the envelope and searched the contents.

  The first thing my fingers grasped and pulled out was another large picture of my parents. I felt my breath catch as I studied it. In it, my father sat on a stool with Sherrie standing behind him, her arms draped loosely over his shoulders and her hands crossed gracefully across his chest. She was wearing the same peasant blouse with floral embroidery that she had worn in the snapshot taken in the park. Her hair fell in loose curls that framed a face aglow
with the most radiant smile I have ever seen. Her eyes were alight with happiness.

  She was my angel.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat as I realized that this was the woman in my childhood dreams. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it in the other pictures. But, knowing how she fit in this mysterious niche of my young past filled me with a sense of connection so much greater than learning that it was from her that I inherited my blonde hair, blue eyes and talent for singing.

  I quickly found a note card with a return address from a Sophie Anderson in Minnesota. Could this be the name of Sherrie’s mother? I pulled the card from the envelope and skimmed it. It was a thank you note. No, this was from the aunt, the one Aunt Pat said had stayed with her and Uncle Leon during the wedding. Aunt Pat said she thought Sherrie’s mother may have passed on, but could her sister still be alive? I grabbed my check register and quickly wrote down the address.

  I found the marriage announcement at the same time that I heard the toilet flush. I pulled out a white embossed card with a pair of silver entwined wedding rings crowned by lilies on the front. I knew I had only a few more minutes while my aunt washed her hands. If I hurried, I had time for this one last treasure.

  The inside of the wedding invitation read, “Ellen Grace Smith, mother of Sharon Grace Smith, cordially invites…” There was no mention of a father of the bride. But now I knew that the mystery birth grandmother, the one who for several years sent me the birthday and Christmas cards I had no memory of, was named Ellen Grace Smith.

  “Sharon? I thought my birth mother’s name was Sherrie,” I mumbled to myself as I recorded this new information, including my father’s first wedding date and location, in my checkbook register.