Don't Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

  Vera looks genuinely disappointed. I think, sure you are, you won’t have me to yell at and hit any more. They make a show of kissing me goodbye as if they cared. I stay close to Gram as we wave goodbye, terrified that they will come back and snatch me away. But the car disappears down the street. Gram, my savior, keeps her arm around me as we stand there waving. Now I belong to her.

  Enid and Aunt Helen

  Gram moves us to Enid, Oklahoma, a few months after I come back to her from Vera’s. The grand sweep of the prairie and the huge blue sky go on forever, knitting into a silvery horizon. Across the street from our little house on Park Street, an ancient cottonwood reaches its branches to the sky, the undersides of its leaves gleaming in the sun. Cows graze and moo contentedly. Everything is so peaceful. I can imagine Indians sitting under that cottonwood tree, horses’ hooves and thick clouds of dust, bows and arrows. Evidence that this place was Indian Territory less than one hundred years ago is everywhere: Red Chief Motel, Cheyenne Café, the Cherokee Theatre.

  Wheat fields surround the town, their graceful stalks wafting in the wind all spring, changing gradually from baby green to deep amber. I come to love these beautiful landscapes—the wheat, the wide deep-blue sky with great thunderheads building, the clouds that show you the shining underside of heaven.

  One afternoon not long after moving to Enid, Gram tells me to get dressed. We are going to visit her best friends, Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj, who live across town.

  “Which aunt is Aunt Helen?” I ask.

  “She’s not a real aunt; she’s my best friend. ‘Aunt’ is what you call someone who’s such a good friend, they’re like family.”

  “Why is the man called Uncle Maj?”

  “He was a major in the army during the war, so we call him Maj. His real name is Russell Claire, and we call him R. C. for short.”

  Gram puts on a good blue dress and white sandals, glosses on red lipstick, and fluffs on her powder. She always makes herself look nice. As we get in the car, I say hi to the cows grazing under the cottonwood. I’m still amazed to actually be living with Gram. I worry about Vera, sometimes wondering if she’ll figure out a way to burst my bubble of happiness, but I trust now that Gram plans to keep me.

  Off we go, bumping along on dusty Market Street with its red dirt blowing around us in great gusts all the way through the “Negro section.” The street changes from dirt to concrete when we hit the white part of town. The road crosses Highway 81, the route of the old Chisholm Trail. Gram tells me, “The Chisholm Trail is named after Jesse Chisholm. He drove cattle from Texas north into Kansas before the trains. It was the most famous trail in the west.” Gram loves history; her books are piled up all over the house. She likes to tell me about the past and says what happened then is a part of us now.

  Eventually Gram stops in front of a green-shingled house with a red front porch and an emerald-green yard set off by bushes of furling red roses. A smiling, red-faced woman wearing a pink striped dress bounces down the stairs, her arms out, her soft belly jiggling with laughter. “Oh, let me get my hands on that pretty little thing. God love ya, darlin’.” She squeezes me against her body and my nose is pressed so hard into her soft stomach that I can’t breathe for a moment. I don’t understand who she is or how she seems to know me. Her blonde hair is a curly mass around her head; her round cheeks blush with rouge or excitement—I don’t know which. “Ahh, lovey, look how you’ve grown. You weren’t no bigger’n a grasshopper the last time I laid eyes on you.”

  “You remember Aunt Helen, don’t you?” Gram beams at me. A ruddy-faced man with thick white hair bounces down the steps. “Great balls of sheet iron,” he says, clamping a hand on my shoulder, his blue eyes sparkling. He asks me to hold out my hand, where he places a beautiful red rose. I cup the rose in my hand and inhale its delicious scent. The adults start to chatter, Aunt Helen in her drawling Southern accent. Gram’s more relaxed and happy than I’ve ever seen her. We clatter into the house, and the smells of fresh coffee and homemade bread just out of the oven enfold us in cozy comfort.

  The house is a delight—a damask tablecloth on the dining room table, a pink rose in a silver vase, lace curtains being sucked against the screen by a gentle breeze. The back yard is like a painting, with roses in all colors—red, pink, yellow, and white—shimmering in the light. I gaze at the photographs in the bookcase: Aunt Helen when she was younger with a smooth face, Uncle Maj in his military uniform. I look at Aunt Helen, then back at the photo, comparing. She sees this and says, “Land sakes, girl, don’t be looking like that at me. We’re all older now, but the Duchess here,” she gestures toward Gram, “looks the same as she always did.”

  “Duchess,” Gram whispers, settling herself with cigarettes and ashtray at the dining room table. I can see that she loves that name. I have never heard her called that, so I ask what it means.

  Uncle Maj leans back against the chair and tamps down his pipe. “The Duchess—oh yes, oh yes. She was the Duchess from the first time we met her. At the hotel in San Antone she breezed in looking like a million dollars, dressed to the nines with ostrich boa, silk dresses, velvet shoes.”

  “Like a movie star. You shoulda seen her,” Aunt Helen huffs admiringly.

  “No one could hold a candle to Frances,” says Maj, puffing his pipe.

  “Frances? Who’s Frances?” I ask.

  Gram grins, gray smoke swirling above her head. “Frances is my middle name. Lulu Frances Hurlbut is my whole name. My second husband’s name was Hurlbut, but he died.”

  So much happened before I was born. “What was your name when you were young like me?”

  “I was born Lulu Frances Garrett. I married your grandfather Blaine, your mother’s father, and became Lulu Hawkins. When I moved to Chicago in the twenties, I preferred the name Frances. Lulu sounds so… well, so old-fashioned.”

  Aunt Helen arches an eyebrow and says, “That’s what your mama calls you—Lulu.”

  “Don’t call me that!” Gram says. She seems upset all of a sudden. “I’m Frances to you. To everyone.” Gram sashays to the window, carrying her cigarette aloft as if she’s posing for a picture.

  Helen continues the story. “She glided like a movie star through the dining room at the hotel. It was wartime. Maj was stationed there, a major. Soldiers were everywhere and, oh, a handsome lot they were. Always lookin’ at Frances. She was a looker, no doubt about it. What with her silks and satins, that cigarette holder, she looked like Greta Garbo.”

  Gram comes back to the table. We eat the hot bread, and they sip coffee with cream. Gram spoons coffee into my milk, so I can taste it. I keep looking at her, seeing her in a new way. It never occurred to me before that my grandmother had lived a long time before I was born, that she had her own history. I can’t wait to know more about her, and about my mother.

  Aunt Helen’s house is sunny and open to the air. The sound of children playing and the who-whoing of doves filters through the rooms. I wander off from the adults to explore the layout of the house. Uncle Maj’s bedroom is simple, plain, and neat. Aunt Helen’s has lace curtains swaying over her bed, which is covered with a white chenille bedspread. I perch at her dressing table, looking at myself in its oval mirror, trying out the various perfumes and powders. Earrings, necklaces, and bracelets spill from her jewelry box. I put some on and spray Evening in Paris on my wrists, enjoying how much I look like a fancy grownup lady in the mirror. Aunt Helen comes in and puts her hands on her hips. I put down the bottle, afraid she’ll be mad.

  “Oh darlin’, go ahead. You can have anything you want at Aunt Helen’s, you sweet thing.” She enfolds me in her arms again, and again I’m smothered against her. In her arms I feel safe and happy. For a time, all previous bad things melt away.

  Gram and I now spend most weekends at Aunt Helen’s house, where she feeds us her tasty Southern food—fried chicken and gravy, beef stew, hamburgers, and “glop” made of hamburger, canned tomatoes, and frozen mixed vegetables. On Fridays she makes homem
ade bread. Another weekly ritual is the bridge game with their neighbors Bob and Willie Jean. The grownups spend long evenings playing cards and talking about the war. Aunt Helen always serves coffee and homemade dessert. Uncle Maj doesn’t play cards, so he just sits in his chair and reads, wearing his specs, lamplight falling on his silver hair. At night, I fall asleep in Aunt Helen’s wonderful bed that smells of sun. In the mornings, warm summer breezes come in the window and caress my skin.

  Gram is always in a good mood at Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj’s house, and I learn so much about the life they lived before I was born—all about the war, the soldiers who went off to fight, some never coming back. I learn they are all in their fifties, and they say often, “Life begins at forty.” That seems so very old to me, a long time away for life to begin, and I wonder what they could mean.

  During the week, Uncle Maj walks ten blocks to his office. We see him walking down Broadway on our way to Aunt Helen’s on Friday afternoons, looking regal and determined, trustworthy and solid. In the spring, Uncle Maj introduces me to his roses and shows me how to take care of them: clipping, pruning, watering. He shows me all his flowers. “Look at lovely Miss Clematis. See, her flowers are like skirts fluttering in the breeze.” He cradles the flowers, with their delicate leaves and petals. Bees buzz and hummingbirds hover like helicopters. He introduces me to his mimosa with her frilly pink flowers. “They’re like ballerinas, leaves opening and closing.” All summer, I look forward to these weekly evenings with Uncle Maj, where I learn about the living world of plants and the particular delights of roses.

  Through Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj, I find a different world than the one my family inhabits. Unlike Gram, Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj are church goers, the First Christian every Sunday morning and evening. She’s a regular at the Wednesday night prayer meetings, and each week she takes care of sick old ladies, spreading her warmth with food and her big Texas smile. She tells me that she loves these old, lonely ladies. She has all kinds of sayings—“land sakes,” “well, I’ll be danged,” and “tickle me pink.” Aunt Helen is the sun, and the rest of us are planets that spin around her. She makes our world happy with food, her belly laugh, and her jolly Southern sayings.

  Gram leaves her English accent at home when we are with Aunt Helen and Uncle Maj. With them, I am Gram’s Sugar Pie, and we are all happy.

  Night

  Dark night has fallen in the house on Park Street. There is no light, no sound. I am crouched low in the dining room, so the monsters outside won’t see me and I won’t whet their appetites. Gram is silent over on the couch behind a long table that separates the dining room and living room. I can’t see her, and I’m worried. She always closes the blinds and turns on the lights sooner than this, long before it’s so dark. She’s never fallen asleep—I hope she’s just asleep—like this before, slumbering through the afternoon and into the night.

  I curl up as small as I can. Fear frosts over my arms and legs, as if I’m being slowly dipped in ice water. She’s not breathing; I know she’s not, or she’d be awake. I can’t cross the dining room into the living room to find out because the monsters will smell me. They lie in wait tucked under the window ledge outside, holding their breath, just waiting to come in and eat me.

  The wind blows against the creaking house. Its walls groan as if they will fly away, leaving me exposed in the bare air. I curl up even tighter on the floor, shivering. I can barely make out the imposing dark shape of the desk beside me, but I catch the smell of its polished wood. Across the room there is the half-moon of the mahogany dining table and beyond that the long table that separates the two rooms. Gram is so still, I am sure she is dead. I can’t hear her breathing.

  What will happen to me if she dies? I would cause my parents a lot of trouble by being alive if Gram is dead. An abyss opens in my stomach, a flap in time and space. I tumble into it, at the same time feeling the solidity of the cool hardwood floor. My mind ticks through what would happen: If Gram is dead, and Mother and Daddy don’t take me in, then some other adult somewhere would have to. It could even be Vera again. I know there’s nothing I could do about this, and now I’m really scared. The abyss is total for a few minutes, swirling me in black terror, but then I get my courage up and begin crawling, one hand and then one knee on the cool hard floor, my knee bones crunching, making my way like a prehistoric creature across the desert of that floor, keeping my head down, alert for movement at the window. If she’s dead, I’ll have to figure out what to do. What do you do when a grownup dies?

  At last I turn the corner and see her body lying on the couch in the glow of the streetlight, her hands over her chest, her mouth agape. Is this death? Her face looks pale and empty, and she is so still. I crawl quickly, the only sound now my heart beating against my chest. Trembling with dread, I lay my head on her chest and hold my breath.

  Gram’s chest is moving up and down, up and down. I am safe; she is alive. The flap to that dark world closes, but the edges of myself are ragged, torn like a piece of paper. I need to hear her voice. I need her to wake up and talk to me, but I don’t want to make her mad. Gently I stroke her arm and chest. She gasps a little and flutters open her eyelids. “Sugar Pie.”

  She smiles and holds out her arms. I climb up and hold on tight, her warm body against my own, her breath against my neck.

  Liebestraum

  The Great Plains is an inland sea. I am a speck in that sea, brought to the copper dirt of this place by a migration, as were fish now fossilized in the red rocks. The landscape is dotted with derricks whose steel arms pump oil up through layers of time. The whole town smells of oil. I stand outside to listen to the wind blowing the spirit of the past against my pale body. Dirt from some ancient era blowing against me, I bow my head to the power of the land, the wind lifting my hair and tickling my skin with pinpricks of bone too small to see with the naked eye.

  I lift my head at the sound of a train whistle from across town, a familiar ache of longing for my mother spreading under my left rib. Today I get to see Mommy for the first time since coming back to Gram’s. I can hardly remember her; even her face is blurry to me. I go back inside to check on Gram’s progress getting ready. She sits at her dressing table, smoking and staring in the mirror, her face drawn into an unhappy scowl. I can’t understand why she isn’t happy. After all, her daughter is arriving today in Perry, a two-hour trip by car. Gram pulls her face taut with her fingers, muttering about getting older. I try to get her to hurry. When she finally takes out her lipstick, I sigh with relief. I ask her why Mommy doesn’t visit very often.

  “She’s busy.”

  “Don’t you miss her?” I wonder if Gram misses her daughter the way I miss my mother. Gram doesn’t answer. Instead she asks me what dress to wear. I choose the one with the red collar. She plops on the bed and lights another cigarette. Gold dust motes and gray smoke filter through the Venetian blinds in the morning light. “You know, I still have a mother. My mama lives in Iowa. Mothers and daughters—they don’t always get along.”

  I have forgotten that Gram has a mother, assuming she is too old to have one. I nod, hoping she’ll go on.

  “And things happen that nobody—well, almost nobody—can help. And then one thing leads to another. Hell. I don’t know. Your mama, she ought to marry again, that would make her happy.”

  I remember my father and his new wife, but I never think about my mother getting married again. Then she might forget about me entirely. Secretly, I want my mother and father to be together again and have me with them, but I can never tell anyone this. It feels like an unspoken rule not to talk about it. I can’t wait to see Mommy. Still, I worry about her visit. I suppose that she’ll fight with Gram the way they did in Wichita. I yearn for her throaty voice and her fingers on my skin. Most of all, I can’t wait to find out if she’s happy to see me, if she misses me too.

  The road is long and straight across the open land. Dry grasses are pressed flat by the strong winds that blow day in and day out. We drive thr
ough small towns littered with broken-down cars and dilapidated buildings. Skinny dogs wander alone with haunted eyes.

  Perry is whispery quiet, its downtown built around a square with maple trees and a gazebo. A sign announces the Cherokee Strip. Gram tells me the land was stolen from the Indians. In a land run, some settlers stole a claim early, which is why Oklahoma is called the Sooner state. At the station, people wait impatiently for the train—it’s three hours late. Gram sashays to the office to ask about the schedule. The train man’s glasses slip to the end of his nose. “Ma’am, the train will be here in thirty minutes. It was late out of Chicago and had engine trouble in Kansas City.”

  Putting on her fake English accent, Gram asks for a light. Her “English woman” routine makes me squirm. The man comes out of his booth and flicks a match against her cigarette. She leans toward him, her eyes meeting his for an electrifying moment. I don’t understand the looks on their faces, but there’s something in Gram’s I don’t see at home. Aunt Helen says Gram is eccentric. I’m not sure what this means, but it can’t be good.

  Everyone gathers on the platform. I stand at the edge of the tracks for a moment before Gram hisses me away, gazing to the silvery place at the horizon where they meet, trying to imagine what is beyond. The whole day is magic—my mommy will be here soon and all will be well. People mill around, some women wearing housedresses, their hair in rollers covered by scarves. Both of my mothers always look beautiful in their stylish dresses and great shoes. A boy kneels down by the tracks to grasp the rails and cries, “It’s coming. I can feel the vibrations!”

  A beam of light hovers far off down the track. The train seems suspended for a moment as in a mirage, not moving; then the earth begins to tremble, and the whistle splits the air. The power of the onrushing train shocks me, makes my heart pound hard. People scatter as the steel beast roars in so fast I’m sure it will never stop. When the brakes finally take hold, the train keeps going for a few moments, metal screeching on metal. I put my hands over my ears. Finally, amazingly, the huge train shudders to a stop. Regular life begins for me again when men in blue uniforms throw down steel steps and help the passengers descend.