by F. E. Arliss
Nor had Sue Darla saved her children from the same incest that she’d experienced. Secrets were passed down generation to generation. Zhara thought perhaps most of her cousins and some of her other sisters had probably been assaulted too. It was all just so sad.
Carlton had kept secrets for a living. Perhaps that was why she’d married him. She’d been used to secrets. Now that he’d bumped his way down the stairs to a broken neck, all her memories of secrets had come flooding out. She didn’t feel like keeping them any longer. It was time to see a therapist!
Incest was a secret no one wanted to admit or talk about. Zhara’s sister Victoria had been the only one in the entire extended family brave enough to speak up when it began to happen to her. Instead of supporting her and helping her, the family - enmasse - had turned their backs on her. They’d labeled her crazy and difficult. They’d done nothing to help the victim except victimize her further. They were far too worried about what the tiny pisspot of a community they lived in would think.
Any sane person would have thought far better of them for having saved the victim then having covered for the pedophile that perpetrated the abuse. Alas, that is not how things work in this world, as the “me too” movement has shown. Perverts, rapists, sexual abusers and incest perpetrating relatives are everywhere.
Zhara herself had been the victim of a groping neighbor whom the entire community was sure was her “surrogate father” figure - as their father had abandoned them long ago. As soon as she’d bloomed into a lovely young pre-teen, his groping hand had insisted on sliding up her thigh towards her crotch.
Everyone just thought she’d outgrown the fishing trips they’d taken together for years during her childhood. In actuality, she’d simply hidden from him and spent the next few years of her life surveying the street before exiting the house in order to make sure she avoided him. Sometimes she even walked to school along the edge of the woods to make sure she wasn’t seen. No, she didn’t bother telling Sue Darla, that would have been pointless or perhaps have made things worse. Sue Darla had turned a bit perverted herself and Gertrude was pretty sure she had spied on Gertrude while she was kissing and petting with her high school boyfriend. Gross!
The fact that a beloved care-giver could turn into an abuser - had never been so starkly clear as it had been to Zhara after she turned thirteen. Sex turned trusted adults into perverts overnight.
Then there was a Methodist minister who often peered down the girls blouses when he acted as a substitute teacher at the high school. He was caught peeking into the Dubbins household’s windows late at night too. Zhara supposed a houseful of five women with no man around had proven just too much of a lustful fantasy to stay this minister’s peeping Tom of an eye. She had thought it almost hysterically funny when her mutt rescue dog had practically chewed his gonads off as he caught the minister in the act.
Finally, there was a camp counselor at the Girl Scout reserve who kept pulling his pants down and showing a six year old Zhara his junk. He’d wanted to look at her with her pants down too. Zhara had put up with that all of three seconds before she saw his hand reach out. Zhara, being nobody’s fool, pulled up her elastic waist shorts and ran him through a patch of poison ivy. She didn’t get it you know. Some people are immune and she just happened to be one of them.
Having told her mother that she’d almost had her pants pulled down by the young man who was working in the camp’s kitchens, Sue Darla had giggled and said playfully, “Now you just leave that young man up to me.” All Zhara knew, was that Sue Darla didn’t do anything bad to that young man. She should have. Perhaps that was the beginning of her instinctual self-preservation.
When she was older, Zhara realized exactly what Sue Darla had in mind. The young man never bothered Zhara again, he had, most likely, his hands full keeping up with Sue Darla’s lustful pursuits. No punishment was meted out to the perverted young man - only a whole lot of rewards from the mother of the child he’d tried to abuse. That was Sue Darla, totally and completely twisted and without an ounce of will to protect her children. To her, pedophilia and sexual abuse were normal - maybe even desired results of being born female. Sue Darla was insane.
The saddest thing was that the lack of judgement from her mother and grandmother about these acts of perversion, was very confusing to Zhara. She knew that what was going on was wrong, but they never said it was or acted upset in any way. None of the female cousins, also total wrecks due to her grandfather’s molestations, ever said anything either. It was as though the entire thing was accepted. Well, frankly, it was accepted. They did nothing to stop it or to control contact with the monster that was her ego-maniacal pervert of a grandfather.
That being the case, it took years into adulthood before Zhara actually truly realized how sick and perverse her entire family was. Well, really, it took having Carlton fall down the stairs and die. That act triggered the memories.
To this day the family cover it all up. They’re revolting. Her mother and grandmother were weak and culpable in all that happened. Most likely Sue Darla’s mother, Iris, wasn’t insane, just ashamed and too weak and uptight to ever do anything to protect her own children. Sue Darla hadn’t stood a chance to be a normal, whole person. That had been stolen from her early in life. The whole lot of them were a sad excuse for the protective mothers they were supposed to be. That wasn’t what most people wanted to hear when one described a mother and grandmother, nonetheless, it was true.
The year it had all gelled for Zhara in a stark and debilitating realization that her mother was irreparably damaged, stood out in her mind like a concrete pylon on the road to perfect-land. Weirdly, none of it had to do with abuse - just the emotional stunting that comes as a by-product of sexual abuse.
The first and most upsetting pylon of peculiarity happened only two months into Zhara’s marriage. Carlton, it turned out, had left out a few rather pertinent facts about his financial situation when he married Zhara. Not being a moron herself, she had questioned him at length about finances and how they would manage once she quit her job and joined him in The Netherlands. She had insisted on paper proof. In hindsight she realized she was no match in her naivete for a world-hardened manipulator like Carlton.
Suffice it to say, Carlton lied. Not just little inconsequential lies about irrelevant things, but big trust-shattering lies. Lies that cut to the very foundation of Zhara’s life issues - security and safety. He was broke. The nice house he was supposed to have was being repossessed by the bank. When Zhara finally found all this out, it was too late. She’d left her job, sold her car and her home. She’d moved across the world, married a man she didn’t really know and now, didn’t trust, and was homeless in a foreign country.
Zhara did what any normal girl would do. She called her mother. Who instantly went into raptures over the very thing that so hurt and wounded Zhara.
“So he lied,” her mother rhapsodized. “Isn’t it just the most romantic thing?” She’d squealed. “He wanted to marry you so much, he just said whatever he needed to in order to get you! I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so romantic!”
Zhara should never have spoken to her mother again. Sue Darla’s complete absence of any moral compass should have made that clear. But in a way that convinced Zhara she was just as emotionally ignorant as her mother in some ways, she gave Sue Darla another chance and then another, and then another.
At the end of that year Sue Darla had flown to Europe for a visit and Carlton had driven them from his post in The Hague to Normandy in France so that her mother could see the World War II beaches. Something she professed to have always wanted to see.
It was clear to Zhara that her mother could have cared less about the beaches. She’d simply wanted to be able to “say” she’d been to the D-day beaches because all the old guys back home were war vets and it was good currency for catching a man.
That was the sort of dunderhead her mother was. Her main interests in life were beauty and fashion. In reality, she o
nly had an interest in those things as a way of catching a man. Sex was her currency. The be all and end all of a woman’s existence was to catch a man. That - was - it.
In her mother’s eyes, Zhara had caught the man of the century. She didn’t have to work, she got nice things, she went to nice parties and she was coveted by even more men. By god, her little girl had gone and won the dang lottery. Sue Darla nearly swooned when she’d figured out just how connected good old Carlton was.
That trip to France had been the nail in Sue Darla’s coffin as far as Zhara was concerned. The first sign had been when they’d been to the D-day beaches and afterwards all Sue Darla wanted to do was go shopping.
Zhara had been so emotionally wrung out and depleted that she’d flopped onto the bed, placed one arm over her eyes and begged Carlton to take her mother away. Anywhere, as long as it was away. The beaches and their loss of life hadn’t affected her mother at all. Just a box checked to get the guys back home.
That night at supper, the second nail was hammered home.
They’d chosen to stay in a stately old chateau set in lovely grounds. Its raked gravel drive, pale-green exterior and geranium-studded window boxes simply screamed “french chic ancestral fabulousness”. The chateau came with a Michelin-starred restaurant and both Zhara and Carlton were looking forward to a lovely evening of good food, stellar ambiance and excellent service.
Nothing went terribly awry until the cheese course, though Sue Darla’s clear lack of knowledge about foods was enough to stun Zhara. She’d always supposed her mother was well informed about food as a home economics teacher. That was clearly not the case. By the time they’d gotten to the cheese course, Zhara just wanted to go to bed. It only got worse.
When the cheese tray arrived with its Continental selection of fruit and several varieties of cheeses, the night turned downright ludicrous. All she could say later was, “Thank God for dessert wine.” She’d downed four of the small glasses in the excruciating experience that surrounded - the cheese incident - as Carlton would later dub it.
“What is that terrible smell,” Sue Darla had squealed, lifting her nose and sniffing the air in a credible imitation of a junkyard dog.
“I believe it’s the Camembert,” Carlton said, gesturing in a gentlemanly fashion towards the beautifully presented cheese tray. “The Camembert is an aged cheese that has a pungent odor.” For all of Carlton’s debonair way with the ladies, he might as well have been speaking Greek to Zhara’s unworldly mother.
She’d simply stared at him blankly, then squealed again, louder this time. “What is that terrible smell!”
Carlton, taken aback by the absolute nothing that registered on Sue Darla’s face, tried again. “Aged cheese,” he’d enunciated slowly and clearly, “has a musky aroma.” He pointed straight to the Camembert and met Sue Darla’s eyes to make sure she understood.
Affronted, Zhara’s mother had reared back, squinted her eyes in fury and bellowed, “I know rotten cheese when I smell it! That smells like someone left it too close to a goat.”
Then, wanting to make sure that everyone in the room was aware that you couldn’t pull one over on Sue Darla Dubbins, shrieked again, “This cheese smells like it’s been too close to a goat. It’s rotten. It’s no good! I know rotten cheese when I smell it!” Darla repeated, pointing dramatically to the cheese plate.
People covered their mouths in shock. Clearly the woman was so ignorant she had no idea what she was saying. It was beyond embarrassing to Zhara, but she just couldn’t talk her mother around to reason.
No matter how many times they explained ripened cheese to Sue Darla, she wasn’t buying it. Her world and mind were simply too small to comprehend it.
By this time the entire dining room had ground to silence. Every diner and the entire waitstaff were staring at Carlton Terrance’s deranged mother-in-law. That was it for Carlton. Sue Darla Dubbins was quietly removed from the dining room, while Zhara downed a fifth dessert wine, grimaced and shrugged at the other diners and said deprecatingly, with a small shake of the head and sadness in her voice, “Alzheimers you know.”
They drove straight back to The Hague. Carlton couldn’t wait to get rid of his idiotic mother-in-law and each time she begged to stop for one more bowl of fish soup, a delicacy she’d taken a particular liking to and which Carlton found to be far more revolting then a simple aged cheese, his resolve to dislike the vacuous woman became firmer. Crafty, manipulative world-class liars and dictators, he could admire. Simple ignorance or stupidity, he could not.
For Zhara, the trip’s final moment of mother-failure clarity came when, in a desperate attempt to do something simple and enjoyable together, she’d queued up one of her favorite movies for them to watch on the DVR. Yes, they still had DVRs in those days.
She’d chosen “The Princess Bride”, a movie she adored and figured even a simpleton like her mother could understand. That was NOT to be the case. If you have ever seen this most venerated of movie classics, you know the story. A five-year old would understand it. Which is indeed, how it’s portrayed, as Peter Falk’s grandfather character reads the story to his ill, bed-ridden grandson. Sue Darla Dubbins did not understand it.
Sue Darla managed to follow along well enough, though her questions about things happening in the film made it clear that she had a difficult time processing things the film “inferred”. Things that a five-year-old would have been able to make the leap of understanding over, her mother could not. Still, she was coping, that is until Prince Humperdink appeared. Then, out of the blue, came the hiccup that would end the reign of “The Princess Bride” as a universal film that could be enjoyed by all ages together.
“Why is he wearing a dress?” The affronted Sue Darla Dubbins asked her daughter, her eyebrows raising even higher on the large expanse of her forehead. “The prince is wearing a dress! What kind of movie is this?”
Zhara, completely taken aback, said, “Mom, it’s a hose and tunic. It’s what people wore in those days.”
“I don’t think so,” Darla Dubbins stated firmly. “It’s a dress.”
“Mom, seriously, it’s supposed to be the Middle Ages in the movie, in a make believe land. It’s a hose and tunic. We can look it up on the computer if you want,” Zhara had said, shrugging her shoulders and trying to convince her not-to-be-convinced mother.
From that point on, “The Princess Bride” ceased to be of any interest to her micro-interested mother. If the men wore dresses, then she’d have nothing to do with it. After all, the entire focus of life was to gain the attention of men and win their affections. Men wore pants. End of story.
Even more ridiculous, Wesley and Buttercup declared true love and the two hadn’t even kissed. Only sex cemented a relationship. Everyone knew that.
Zhara, seriously unsettled by these instances of her mother’s ignorance and implacability, processed that week for years. When she realized that her mother only read novels set in the old west, she began to understand that her mother, a bachelor’s degree aside, could only process things that fit into her own world view. She’d been so twisted by the experiences of her early life, - the ingrained idea that having a man was the be all and end all of a woman’s existence, and that men had to be “manly” to be valuable - that she simply couldn’t process anything that belied that idea.
Years later the nursing home Sue Darla lived in took them all to see the movie Beauty and the Beast. It starred Luke Evans as the dumb, but manly, Gaston, and Dan Stevens as the empathetic beast. Sue Darla, no matter how many times it was explained to her, could never fathom why the stupid girl had fallen in love with the beast. Gaston was clearly superior in every way. The nursing home staff had finally given up on explaining and admitted that the movie was clearly wrong. Sue Darla was right. There was no point in arguing. That was when the staff finally began to understand what made Sue Darla tick. It was a vast help later on.
Sue Darla’s inability to process things that didn’t fit her ingrained idea of what a m
an was, helped Zhara see that this same pattern is often repeated in the world population in general. Many years later, Zhara would attribute this same phenomenon - an implacable insistance on ignorance, along with limited world knowledge, and lack of moral compasses in the American population at large, to the success of the most idiotic president the United States would ever have. People simply denied that which they didn’t understand.
Chapter Six
Shake It Off
Zhara, rather than dwell on her past, decided to get up and shake it off. She’d shower, make herself an omelet and sober up. Always so overrated these days, sobering up. Not that she was an alcoholic. Though, come to think of it, she’d met sober alcoholics. Her sister Elizabeth was one. A dry drunk, as they were called. A very bitter woman. She’d been a drunk for a reason, their family was excuse enough, and Gertrude/Zhara was very sure she’d been far happier in an alcoholic daze.
Zhara had a reason to be drunk now. She was sad. Carlton had taken a tumble down the stairs and even though she’d been furious with him at the time, she missed him. Lying, cheating, ego-centric bastard that he’d been, she still missed him.
