by Leigh Byrne
“Me too, but I have a son,” she said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you if you weren’t with Mindy!” she squealed. “You’ve changed so much!” She was right; I had changed. I’d been working hard on my appearance lately. I had grown my hair out to a perfect Farrah Fawcett style, and I wore a lot more make-up.
Mindy introduced me to the rest of the team. They were all pretty and warm like her. Surrounded by them, for a few minutes, I almost felt like I was living out the high school experience I’d always fantasized about. Like I was part of a group, a clique, one of the popular girls.
Everything was perfect until the game began, and my fantasy turned into a nightmare. Every time the ball came to me, I either missed it altogether, or hit it into the bleachers. The other girls on the team said it was okay, but they couldn’t hide their spontaneous expressions of disappointment and frustration whenever I screwed up another play.
I sucked so bad at volleyball, Mindy and the other women on the team probably wished I would quit, but I wanted to continue playing. For the first time in my life, I was an insider instead of an outcast, and I wasn’t about to give that up. But I didn’t want to cause the team to lose every game either, so I had to find a way to get good fast.
Volleyball became the obsession that replaced Molly’s pageants. I got Chad to buy me a ball, and I practiced by myself every day, every spare second I had. I hit the ball off the side of the house and threw it in the air and bumped it over and over again, hundreds of times. Even when the weather was cold, I still practiced with numb fingers. In a matter of weeks, I wasn’t a pro, but I was as good as everybody else on the team.
It was a Monday night; Molly was in bed and Chad was enthralled in a football game. I poured myself a glass of wine and slipped off into our bedroom for some me time.
Earlier in the day, I’d watched a show on television about a disfigured girl with a skin-hardening disease called scleroderma, and I couldn’t shake the thought of her from my head. Her physical and emotional suffering, and social struggles in life, had been far beyond anything I’d gone through, or could ever imagine, and yet, every time the cameras were on her, she was smiling and bubbly. Somehow this wonderful, but unfortunate child was able to gain confidence in spite of her predicament. She proved that what goes on inside your head—despite what you are on the outside—is one of the key ingredients in a happy life.
No matter what other people thought of me, what I believed was my reality, and I believed what I’d been told over and over as a child, that I was worthless and ugly and a burden to those around me. I knew I would never be truly happy from within, like the girl with scleroderma, until I found a way to build my self-esteem. “Happiness is a choice,” the talk show host had said. Sounded simple; but was I strong enough to pull it off?
I slid out from under the bed, an old shoebox of mementoes I’d collected during the first few years after I left home, at around fourteen. The box—I called it my box of memories—contained photos of my family that Daddy had given me, birthday cards he’d sent, and scraps of paper on which I’d scribbled rough renderings of what I remembered from my early childhood. As I lifted the lid, I saw a photograph of Mama sitting on the front steps of our house on Maplewood Drive. The photo was on top, because it was the one I always took out when I felt the way I did that night.
The last time I’d seen Mama was at Shoney’s over five years earlier, and since then, I’d lost all desire to have her in my life, and I’d let go of the hope that we could foster a meaningful mother-daughter relationship. The more I was away from her, the less I wanted to see her. Molly certainly didn’t need a grandmother like Mama. She had Aunt Macy, and Jimmy D., and Chad’s tightly-woven kin were always within shouting distance. And now there was Mindy, Joey and Charity, who’d become like family to Molly and me. We had love and support at every turn in our lives, so we didn’t need Mama around messing things up with her crazy ways.
No I didn’t want to see Mama ever again, and I didn’t want her anywhere near Molly. However I still had the same unanswered questions as always rattling around in my brain. On this night, as I pulled Mama’s photo from the box of memories, I had one in particular in mind: Why had she been so obsessed with the way I looked? Examining the photo, I wondered: Did she really think I was ugly, or was it her way of justifying her rejection of me?
Chad walked in. “Game’s over,” he said. He looked over my shoulder at the photo. “That your mama?”
“Yes, when she was about my age.”
He took the picture from me for a closer look. “You know you favor her, don’t you?”
After all she’d done to me, I should have been offended by his observation—appalled. But I wasn’t. Instead, my chest swelled with pathetic pride, recalling how beautiful everyone had said she was. “You think so? Really?” I said, almost giddy. “Then why did she tell me I was ugly all my life?”
“Probably because she was jealous of you,” he said, without hesitation, as if it was obvious and I was dumb for not seeing it. I’d always admired—and maybe envied—his it-is-what-it-is viewpoint. The way he was able to take life at face value and never over think a situation, like I had a tendency to do. To Chad, there were no gray areas, only his solid truth, and you either accepted it or you moved on.
“Jealous? But I was just a kid?”
“Maybe she wasn’t so much jealous of you as she was the fact that you’re a girl. You did say you were the only girl, didn’t you?”
“Except for my half-sister, Audrey.”
“Yeah, well she don’t count because she was crippled. You can’t be jealous of a cripple,” he said, as if it were some sort of universally accepted rule.
“Guess not.”
“That’s the only thing it could be, because you’re not ugly.”
I smiled, and enjoyed the moment, knowing it was the closest thing to a compliment I would ever get from him. He handed me the picture and walked away. “I’m gonna make a run to the liquor store to get some beer. Be back in a few.”
As he left the room, I considered his theory. True, it probably didn’t help that I’d been born a girl. From an early age, Mama had learned that in order to get what was important to her she had to compete with the females around her. She had to beat out the other girls in her school to win head cheerleader and homecoming queen. At home, she had to vie with her mother and sister for her father’s attention. Then as a woman, she had to use her beauty to find herself a husband who would be willing to take care of her and her polio-stricken child. Truth be known, she didn’t want to have a daughter in the first place, because it would only create unwanted competition for the attention of the men in her life. Had Audrey not become sick with polio she could have been at risk for becoming a target for Mama’s jealous rage. So, if Chad was right, in a way, being sick had saved Audrey. I pondered for a minute thinking about that. Would I have rather had polio than to have suffered the brutal childhood I did? I wasn’t sure.
Maybe when Mama gave birth to me, another girl, once again, her territory was threatened. Her jealousy and resentment of me could have been lying dormant inside her for years, and then awakened by her fall down the basement stairs. She wanted to believe I was an ugly child, both to justify, in her mind, her rejection of me, and also because she couldn’t bear the thought of another female getting more attention than her. She couldn’t risk the chance of me growing up to be prettier than she was, and that wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. After all, I had her genes. So to protect her territory, she first convinced herself I was ugly, and then she convinced my father and brothers. Then when I got older and became more of a threat, to make sure all bases were covered, she manipulated my appearance to make me as unattractive as she possibly could. That’s why she chopped my hair off and made me go for weeks without washing it, and sent me to school in hideous, outdated clothes.
Tipsy from the wine, as I studied the picture, I let down my guard and allowed my mind to wander back to a place I swore I’d never g
o again… The school bus is pulling away. With my book satchel pressed hard against my chest, I am running to catch the bus, cutting across yards to get there quicker. My scalp is numb and my hair is heavy, like I’m wearing a thick, wet wig. With numb fingers, I grope at my soapy, partially frozen hair. As I run, I scold myself: “How could I be so stupid to think I could wash my hair outside in freezing temperature!” Against the winter wind, I pull up the collar of the ancient “clown coat” with buttons like Frisbees that Mama had given me to wear. My running is clumsy and impaired by the two-sizes-too-big men’s boots I am wearing. Boarding the bus, dread engulfs me. I pass the driver, who stifles a chuckle and looks away, and then I turn to face the kids. “High Waters!” someone shouts—it’s the nickname they’ve given me because I wear pants that hit mid-calf—“What did you do to your hair? Did you fall in the water you were wading in?” Suddenly I’m surrounded by laughing faces and bobbing heads, and I want to disappear…
LEGACY DENIED
Chad wanted another baby. He was ready to shoot for a boy, but because he and I both had come from dysfunctional families, I didn’t want to push our luck. Chad didn’t understand my rationale, and kept trying to persuade me to change my mind, arguing that Molly, being an only child, would one day miss a sibling relationship. He made a good point. I, having been alienated from my brothers, often wondered about the special bond between siblings I’d missed out on. Because I didn’t want my daughter to experience this loneliness, I began warming up to the idea of having another child. I decided to go off the pill and see what happened.
Practically the next day after I stopped taking the pill, I became pregnant. In my conscious mind I knew it was going to happen, but still, like when I found out I was having Molly, my initial reaction was alarm. Even though I’d never felt an iota of inclination to do any of the sadistic things to Molly that Mama had done to me, and I’d learned to make a vigilant effort to monitor my discipline of her, I knew, because Mama hadn’t mistreated all of her children, I had not moved past the threat of inheriting her legacy of abusive behavior. And then there was the chance I would suddenly snap like she did. I was still aware of the anger churning around inside of me—anger that had caused me to attack Mama when I was a teenager, and throw Chad and his friend out of the trailer.
In the early part of my pregnancy, I had some morning sickness, but nothing even close to what I’d experienced when I was carrying Molly. My appetite was good and I put on weight at a steady rate. When I went for a sonogram, this time the sex of the baby was obvious. We were having a boy.
This was good news for Chad, who’d always wanted a son, and for me too, because I’d gotten the idea in my head that I would be less likely to abuse a boy. Molly was glad to hear she was getting a brother, that way she could be the only girl. Regardless of whether the baby was a boy or a girl, I had already made up my mind that I didn’t want any more than two children. If everything went well, Molly would have a sibling and Chad, a son. No more tempting fate. I asked my doctor to schedule me for a tubal ligation after my delivery.
For the most part, my pregnancy was uneventful. I felt good—sometimes better than when I wasn’t pregnant—and I had a healthy appetite. Having always been hungry as a child, now that I could justify eating what I wanted when I wanted, I became like a starving animal. Chad said I ate like a man, even when I wasn’t pregnant, and truthfully he was being kind, because I ate more than most men I knew. Now, eating for two, I sometimes put away as many calories as an Olympic athlete.
Because of all the work Mama had made me do when I was a kid, I’d developed a keen metabolism, and had never had to worry too much about gaining weight. If I did gain a few pounds, I was able to lose them in a few weeks. But my keen metabolism deserted me when I became pregnant the second time. Every day I woke up fatter than the day before. Chad didn’t seem to mind, and Bobbi kept heaping buttery mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese on my plate “to make sure that boy’s healthy.” Six months into my pregnancy, I’d gained so much weight I could no longer bend over to give myself a pedicure. Although I couldn’t talk Chad in to painting my toenails, he at least agreed to clip them for me.
Because we knew the sex of the baby, we began to consider boy’s names early on. Chad surprised me by saying he didn’t want the baby to be named after him. By the time I was seven months along, we had decided on the name, Daryl. I liked it because I didn’t know of any famous people by that name.
We knew exactly when Daryl was coming. Because my delivery of Molly had been rough, the doctor didn’t want our second baby to be any bigger, so he decided when I neared my due date, he would induce labor. The magic day was April 15, and when it rolled around, I was more than ready to unload ten pounds of the sixty I’d gained.
The labor wasn’t bad. The drugs were good, and the baby came out healthy and a boy like the doctor had said. Chad floated through the hospital with a big grin on his face. Molly was tickled with her new baby brother too. Bobbi and Big Chad were beaming with pride, even though Big Chad had to concede to being wrong when he’d said we’d have half a dozen “split tails” before we got a boy. “You got lucky,” he said.
Daryl was cute; he resembled Molly when she was a newborn, but with less hair. Despite my fears, in the months after he was born, I had no hint of an urge to do him any harm. He and Molly were my purpose in life, my salvation. Their unconditional love had begun to repair my fractured heart, and caring for them kept my mind from slipping back into the black hole of my childhood. Once again, my days were full, my life was full, and my heart was overflowing with joy. I had two healthy children and a husband who worked hard to support us. What more could I want?
THE OTHER GRANDMOTHER
Around Daryl’s first birthday, Aunt Macy and Edwin stopped in for a visit on their way to see some of Edwin’s relatives in Ohio. We sat in the living room, sipping lemonade, talking mostly about the kids. Every time I saw Aunt Macy she looked younger and happier. That day she was breezy and tan in a mint-green linen pantsuit, her hand locked in Edwin’s. As I listened to her bubbling about a Hawaiian cruise they’d recently taken, I knew I’d done the right thing by bowing out of their lives when I did.
Aunt Macy and Edwin were my first formal guests since we’d moved into the house. Chad’s family popped in from time to time—usually uninvited—and Mindy and her kids were always over, but Aunt Macy and Edwin were my first call-ahead-of-time visitors. I had made a pineapple upside down cake, which turned out to be one of my better efforts. With practice, my cooking skills had vastly improved since Chad and I were first married. I served the cake on new daisy-patterned Corelle dishes Chad had bought me for Christmas, and I’d found some daisy paper napkins at the Dollar Store that coordinated perfectly.
I handed Aunt Macy a piece of cake I’d chosen especially for her, because it had a full ring of pineapple with a cherry in the center. As I gave her a napkin, all of a sudden, a secret from my past so embarrassing I’d never told a soul, came back to me. My eyes met with hers, and then we both glanced at the napkin, and then back at each other again. I knew we were thinking the same thing. My face became hot and I returned to that night, sitting in her bathroom with a piece of toilet paper dangling from my mouth. At the time, I didn’t know the reason I ate toilet paper was because I had pica, a disorder caused from a mineral deficiency as a result of my poor diet. Now, even knowing it was not my fault, I would still have been mortified if anyone else found out. Aunt Macy was such an open, impulsive type; I was afraid she might innocently mention my stint as a goat to give everyone a good laugh. When she opened her mouth to speak, I held my breath.
“Doesn’t this cake look delicious?” she said. “And daisy napkins to match the plates! Nice touch Tuesday Leigh!” Then she winked at me, letting me know our secret was just that—our secret. I exhaled and winked back.
When Edwin announced they needed to get on the road, my heart sank, because I didn’t want them to leave. Right before they walked out the door, Au
nt Macy took me aside to talk. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she said under her breath. “But I’ve changed my mind, because I realize you’re a grown woman now, and I shouldn’t keep things from you to protect you anymore. You have a right to know, so you can make up your own mind what to do.”
“What is it, Aunt Macy. Is there something wrong?”
“Oh no, everything’s fine. It’s just that your mama called me the other day to try to get your phone number.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“Of course not, I’d never do that. I wasn’t even going to tell you because I honestly believe you’re happier without her meddling in your life.”
“Did she say why she wanted my number after all this time?”
“Yes, apparently her family is having a reunion in August and she wants you to come. Personally I think she only wants you there to look better in front of her family. You know, still pretending as if nothing ever happened.”
“Yeah, makes sense.”
“I told her about your kids and she didn’t seem too happy about the idea of being a grandmother. You know how your mama is. Anyway I said I’d tell you, but not to expect you to come. But you can make up your own mind what you want to do. Her number is the same if you want to call her.”
“No, you’re right Aunt Macy; I’d best stay away from her.”
“Well it’s for you to decide. Now give me a hug, because I’ve got to get on out of here before Edwin pulls out without me.” I hugged her a little too tightly, a little too long. We both had tears in our eyes when she walked out the door.
After they left, I told Chad that Mama wanted us to come to a family reunion.
Big Mistake.
“We should go,” he said.
