Don't Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

  Brown leaves hang from branches by a single thread, waiting for the gusts of winter to carry them away. My folkdance class is gathered around the radio, listening to a special news broadcast. The governor of Texas and President Kennedy have been shot. Everyone huddles in shock as terrible words tumble from the radio—rifle shots, blood, book depository, hospital. After a few minutes, a stunned Walter Cronkite announces the death of the president. A horrified silence envelopes us, punctured by sobs. We stare at each other vacantly, trying to make sense of it all. We don’t understand this kind of violence. It is not part of our world, yet.

  As if in response to the horrible news, the November wind now comes whirling around the building, stripping the trees. Everyone is running. Frantic for details of the event, we search for a TV. In the dorms, girls line up in rows to watch the swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson. Jackie stands by with bleary eyes, blood on her skirt. The casket is loaded onto Air Force One.

  Regular life is suspended for days. We gather in little knots, talking, wishing that recent events could be erased. Funereal music plays all day on the radio. Starved for information, we watch the constant coverage on television. For days, the dorm living room is full of girls munching chips, attempting to have a normal day while watching live coverage in Dallas. We watch Lee Harvey Oswald being led down a corridor. Suddenly there’s scrambling, a big Texas hat, a loud noise. Oswald crumples. The bad guy is dead, too. The news is full of photos of Lee Harvey Oswald, press conferences, and grim-faced men in dark suits.

  We line up again in the dorm living room to watch the J.F.K. funeral footage: the horse with the backward-facing boot, the stately walk down the wide streets of Washington. A long, black veil conceals Jackie’s face. When John-John salutes, there is sobbing in the room.

  Eventually, life returns to something like normal. During frosty winter evenings, Brad and I stay out late, kissing as the icy wind rushes through our coat sleeves, kissing as if it would make us immortal. We are, or he is, tempted to go beyond kissing, but I always bring us back from the brink. It is not only the Baptist voice that I fear. I am mortally afraid, afraid to cross a threshold I hold sacred. If you are not a virgin when you marry, you are a disgrace to your husband, no better than a whore. Some part of me still believes this.

  One night Brad goes too far, pushing past the invisible, shaky fence I have set up. Because he wants more, much more, than I can give, we break up. My few months of physical transgressions with Brad, and my keen enjoyment of them, ultimately have convinced me that I am a sinner after all. The crazy jumble of recent events and emotions—my confusion, my guilt, my fear, and the death of the president—send me back to church.

  This time, though, I am not alone. I am embraced in the fold of a family whose mother gathers me under her wing, the way I have always thought mothers should.

  Alma

  Alma is my boss at the music library, where I work ten hours a week. Every day, she sweeps in wearing fancy brocade coats and elegant linen suits, looking nothing like the other plain-Jane librarians. Who could know that one night when she invites me home for dinner, we will begin a friendship that will last for life.

  She lives in bare-bones student housing with her husband, a graduate student in philosophy, and their three children. The older two, a boy of six and a girl of seven, are wispy, blonde, affectionate children who share their school assignments, books, and drawings with me. The youngest, just a year old, nurses before and after dinner. I am somewhat shocked to see a mother openly nursing a child, embarrassed to see her bare breast.

  Next to Blanche, Alma is the most efficient person I have ever known. She holds the baby while she fixes quesadillas, food that I’ve never heard of before, all the while chatting about world events, politics, and philosophy with her husband and some of his friends. She quiets the children, supervises their homework, puts them to bed, then returns to clean up the dishes, seamlessly handling these mundane activities as she inquires about my life, my family, and how I am doing. I notice that she listens not just to what I say but also to what I don’t say. She responds to me on a more sensitive level than I’m accustomed to. Alma invites me to more dinners, then to brunches and breakfasts, where I find myself caught up in a sophisticated world of politics, philosophy, religion, and new friends.

  I discover that church, religion, and God need not be frightening, that maybe my transgressions don’t mean I’m doomed to a scary hell. I attend Episcopal services and learn about the origins of this quite different church, with its colors and symbols, incense and holy days. I like the fact that I can kneel to send my prayers to God or Jesus. I enjoy being still with my thoughts and feelings rather than being talked at. I enjoy the candles and the deep sense of connectedness and intelligence in the prayers.

  At church and at Alma’s brunches, I meet several interesting young men. I begin to date like a normal person, without restrictions, and learn once more that Gram’s dire predictions about men are not true. When Alma becomes pregnant again, carrying her large belly proudly in front of her, I see that a woman can manage this extraordinary event without struggle and drama. My Baptist skin begins to loosen and slip off. Alma and her family become my family.

  I still have to go home to Gram during the holidays. I steel myself to face her depressing form hunched on the couch. Gram’s life hasn’t changed—it has stayed bleak and black while mine has been transformed into something wonderful. Through my new experiences, and especially my involvement in Alma’s life, I see Gram in a new light. I understand now that she has turned her back on real living, choosing to exist in darkness, living a half-life. She goes out of the house only a few times a year, the rest of the time wearing her nightgown all day at home.

  I am pleased that I have learned to enjoy life, the simple pleasures of good food and intellectual conversation. These ordinary things are like miracles to me. The candles burning at church and at Alma’s promise life and hope, and I yearn for all the light I can find. At Gram’s I feel tired, exhausted, and angry at the darkness I was forced to live in for so many years. When I visit Gram, the shackles snap onto my wrists as she wields the same old guilt and shame with alarming skill.

  “So, have you forgotten your old grandmother? I raised you and gave you everything you ever had, and all you can do is send me one card. Why don’t you write more often? How can you come here and see how I am and just leave me like this? You don’t care what happens to me. You are selfish just like everyone else. I could die like this. You would come home and take care of me if you were really a Christian.”

  I have told Gram about my conversion to the Episcopal Church, hoping for her approval. She’d always complained about the Baptists, telling me that the Catholics had a closer ear to God, yet she never committed to a spiritual life herself and never attends church. Gram hunkers down, spewing smoke and hurtful words. It’s clear to me now that she will always criticize whatever I do, and this knowledge is a kind of shield.

  I’ve learned more about how life is lived, and can be lived, in the last three months than I did in all my years in Enid. There is so much more to the world than Gram’s little hole. Her dark side had hoped to control me forever, to keep me captive in her negative world, but I have broken free. Ironically, Gram’s other side, the part that wanted me to experience music and art, that insisted I study and go to college, helped foil her plans.

  I begin to question everything Gram taught me. If she is so cut off from life, so different from normal human beings, then everything I learned through her bears re-examination.

  Gradually, almost against my will, I begin to open my mind to my father.

  I Have Been Waiting and Hoping

  Early on an autumn evening in my sophomore year at the university, I stand at the window of the practice room watching the rain pour down in sheets. My friend Carlos comes in. His black hair and eyes show his Spanish heritage. He’s the first chair of the bass section, and he often teases me about being the smallest cellist in the ranks. He’s in
quired about my family, at first expecting the usual story—mother, father, brothers or sisters. He knows now about my divorced parents and my grandmother, and from time to time seems curious or perhaps confused about it all. Despite the fact that he’s an ex-Catholic, Carlos believes in the power of spiritual teachings and is always putting things in a philosophical context.

  He leans against the wall. “Do your parents ever come for the holidays?”

  I look away, the familiar ache starting in my stomach.

  “I’ve never seen my parents for holidays—well, once I spent Christmas with my mother. As for my father—I’ve given up on him.”

  “Oh?” Carlos moves closer to me, his dark eyes lighting up with interest. “How can you give up on your own father? Where did you get that idea?”

  “It’s been like that for a long time.” I wave my hand dismissively.

  Carlos doesn’t let things go by. “What made you decide you can just write him out of your life? How old is he?”

  “I suppose he’s about sixty.”

  “What if he gets sick or dies without you speaking to him? How would you feel then?”

  Suddenly, I can’t quite hear Carlos; his voice fades as my mind plays images of Daddy’s kissing lessons and Gram’s angry face as she fumes about him. I can’t remember the last time I wrote him—months ago. I start to feel shivery inside.

  Carlos sees that the subject is hard for me and takes his leave. On his way out he says, “You need to rethink your relationship with your father. A father needs to be forgiven. No matter what has happened, he is still your father.” The look on his face is sad, not judgmental.

  I pick up my bow and play “Kol Nidre”—a Jewish prayer for the dead, a beautiful melody that burns into my heart. I’ve buried my secret feelings and longings about Daddy deep so that Gram couldn’t see them. Any connection I might express, any hint that I was ready to forgive and forget, would have made her even more determined to destroy our bond.

  This heartbreaking melody of longing and loss penetrates the dark, tar-filled place inside me. When I have finished playing it, I wrap my arms around my cello and weep.

  As autumn passes, I think about the daddy I dreamed of for so long. I always wanted to know him, to have a father like other girls, but for as long as I can remember, Gram has made sure I wouldn’t have any chance to love him. Eventually she won her campaign of hate. I have become exactly like her, speaking ill of him, refusing any contact for months at a time.

  The next week, over coffee, I confide in Carlos about the fights between Gram and Daddy, keeping the kissing part to myself.

  “You think he should come to you?” Carlos asks, his voice neutral.

  “He’s the father,” I say self-righteously.

  “Perhaps if I were him, maybe I would. But he is different. Maybe he’s waiting for you to reach out to him.”

  “But…” I hesitate, looking down, avoiding his eyes. I can’t tell him I’m afraid that Daddy will leer at me or that he might put me on his lap to kiss me.

  Carlos must glimpse my deeper feelings in my face. “So, there’s more to this story, isn’t there? But he’s still your father. What if you talked to him in person? Maybe you’d see that things have changed. You’re not a child now. You can make it turn out different.”

  I leave the café wondering how Carlos came by so much wisdom at such a young age. The fall wind turns sharp against my skin. I look up at bare trees etched against the light of the rising moon and think: Maybe, just maybe, he is right.

  In mid-October, I finally write to Daddy, pouring out my regrets, apologizing for not telling him before that I managed to get away from Gram’s negativity and am attending OU. I watch the envelope slide down the mail slot with a special prayer in my heart, and hope for the best. Every day that passes with no answer tells me that it was a mistake, that he doesn’t care about me. Finally, a thick envelope arrives bearing his loopy, cursive writing. I tear it open and read hungrily.

  “I have been waiting and hoping such a long time,” he says. “Your letter was the answer to my prayers. I knew that you would grow up and realize your grandmother was wrong. I always knew you didn’t write those letters, that she made you do it. Of course I love you and want more than anything for us to be father and daughter. I am sorry for all the years that we have lost, but we can make up for it from now on. Let me know if you want me to visit and when, and I’ll come right down on the train.”

  My heart surges with joy. I fold and unfold, read and reread the letter. My secret cache of hope flares into full flame. I have a father after all. The bad and confusing memories are not gone, but they hover beside happier images of my father—our roller skating together, his exuberant hugs at the train, his great excitement about life.

  I imagine a perfect father and daughter duo—he’ll come to my concerts and we’ll spend holidays together. He’ll tell me all about his life. We have many years ahead of us to make up for lost time. He is sixty; he could live to be eighty at least. I am determined to do whatever it takes to have my father and even my mother belong to me at last. I vow to reclaim them, leaving my bitter grandmother smoldering in her self-made hell.

  I wait in Norman by the station, gazing at the tracks that meet at the horizon, at that infinite point where the future resides. I face north, toward Chicago, the magic city where we all came from. The trains of my childhood came hurtling from that city in the clouds. The old stomach ache is there again since I opened up to my secret longings.

  The train men drive carts of luggage and people buzz around like bees, waiting for the silvery horizon to produce the magic light of the train and the whistle that announces other times and places. The train sound is deep in my blood, ancient as cell knowledge.

  All at once I hear it as a rush of wind sweeps my hair. Tears bubble up from buried wells. The train ritual has me in its grip now, with its language of arrival and departure, the language of my life. I am ten years old again, and Daddy is coming. My old childhood joy surges, along with my tears.

  I’ve seen my father only twice in the past seven years. As I watch people clambering down from the train, my stomach in knots, I wonder if he will even recognize me. Finally my heart leaps, as if his blood is calling to mine, and then I see him. He runs toward me, his coat flapping, his shoes slapping the concrete, crowing my name. He sweeps me up in his arms and around we go in our whirling dance of old. His beard feels the same on my cheek, his Old Spice is as comforting as it has always been. After a moment, he stands back and looks at me. “My girl, my girl,” he murmurs, and clutches me to him. A missing part of me slips back into place.

  We take a cab to his hotel. I perch on the edge of the bed talking about my life, telling him all the wonderful things I am learning, hoping he won’t touch me except for the proper kind of fatherly hug. Joy and fear play tug-of-war battle inside me.

  What a miracle it is to be with my father in the flesh, watching him hang up his clothes, doing ordinary tasks that normal families share. How little I know him, this stranger whose blood I carry in my veins. He looks older, with a slight double chin, yet trim for a man his age. His head is shiny and bald, with a fringe of dark hair. His eyes sparkle with joy as he looks at me.

  “I play golf every weekend,” he tells me. “I love going out there on the green. Maybe that’s my way of worshipping. Nothing like the early morning dew on the grass, clouds against the blue sky.” Daddy’s eyes glow as he talks. He is still so alive, so passionately, thrillingly alive. No wonder I wanted so desperately for him to come see me when I was younger, to give me a strong dose of life as it can and should be lived. I needed his vitality to combat Gram, who I knew was sinking into a kind of soul death and trying to drag me along with her.

  Daddy rushes about, his voice running up and down the scale of emotions. He is a passionate man—in some bad ways, but in good ones, too. Maybe I can have less fear and more courage now that I’m a grownup, be optimistic instead of worried. At dinner, he orders himself a
beer and a coke for me. He leans toward me and rushes through the stories of his life, as if trying to fit in all he should have told me through the years. I understand his underlying message, that he needs to have me in his life now.

  “You could go to school at the University of Illinois. You’d still be an in-state resident, and not so far away from me. I could show you Chicago. It’s so terrific, all the wonderful buildings and museums. The city is almost a college education in itself. It’s exciting, with new developments and research going on all the time. Growing up on a farm an hour away from Louisville, I thought Louisville was the cat’s pajamas. But Chicago—there’s really nothing like it.” He bangs his fist on the table to emphasize his point, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Remember, it’s your life. Make your own decisions. Decide what you want and go for it. That’s how I got to be an executive at the L&N. I came from nothin’, just a freight boy with his first pair of real boots. I decided I wanted to escape the farm, and I did. Not many people do that.”

  He fleshes out his story. When he was sixteen years old, my father started working in the freight yards of a small town in Kentucky, and later moved to Louisville. His father owned land, but lost everything late in his life. Daddy loved being free of the burdens of farming, and worked his way up the ladder at the L&N Railroad. In his twenties he married for the first time. His brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles—whose names I know, though I don’t remember meeting them—all lived nearby. His parents died before I was born. Daddy always believed in hard work and the school of hard knocks, but he thinks college is good, even for a girl, because now education makes a difference. I wonder how much my mother knows of his story. I know that she still cares for him. This whole saga involves all of us.