by Byrne, Leigh
“I know you are!” Bruce said. “Aunt Rose never lets you play with us, and you’ve always got to sit on the floor all by yourself. I asked my mom why, and she said she didn’t know either.”
“It’s been that way since I was eight. I guess I’m used to it.”
Bruce got up and went outside to join my brothers in a game of badminton.
Eva stayed with me. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
She looked up to me, probably because I was a few years older, and I knew she would do almost anything I asked her to. I took advantage of it. “They have any dessert in there?” I asked.
“My mom brought sugar cookies with icing—red, white, and blue stars! Want one?”
“Sure! But you’ll have to get it for me, remember I can’t get up,” I said. “And you’ll have to hide it from my mama too.
She doesn’t allow me to have sweets.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Eva asked.
I knew exactly what to do. I’d become a master at sneaking around, and I had no problem giving her instructions. “Go into the kitchen and get a cookie for yourself. Then when nobody’s looking, stick another one under your shirt and bring it in here to me.”
Eva jumped up from the floor and ran off into the kitchen. A minute or two later, she came back, her shirt bulging in the front. She had the goods.
She brought me three cookies that day and stayed with me until we left. She even ate her meal right beside me on the floor, balancing her plate on her lap.
This aggravated Mama, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it, because she didn’t have any control over Eva’s actions. It delighted me to know she was not the boss of everybody.
My birthday came and went without a celebration, or a cake, or even a mention of the special occasion. The rest of the summer was better for me that year, because Mama was trying to put on appearances for Social Services. Mrs. Blackburn was still dropping by the house now and then to check on how everything was going with me. Sometimes she didn’t call first, so Mama had to make sure I was always cleaned up and fed, just in case. On the days she knew Mrs. Blackburn was coming, she let me play outside; the rest of the time I spent in my room.
40
Whitmore Junior High had gray, drafty halls, high ceilings, and exposed pipes. It was much bigger than grade school, and I felt small and insignificant within the cold, concrete walls.
Never before had I seen so many kids together at once, and I hardly knew any of them. I had hoped Kat and I would have some classes together in the seventh grade, but I was disappointed to find out we didn’t. Every day I searched for her among the countless strange faces in the halls. Somehow we lost each other forever in the crowd that year.
Once I had adjusted to my environment, gradually I made some friends. School was my only contact with other people, so I thought in order to get them to like me I had to make an impression in the short time I was there. I did a lot of talking in class, and often got into trouble for it. As a result, once again my behavior grades were not good, and neither were my scholastics.
Aunt Macy had sent me a few cute outfits for my birthday the previous summer, and I was surprised, but delighted, when Mama let me wear them to school. Mama also gave me a pair of her then-fashionable go-go boots, because I had outgrown all my shoes. For the first time, I was allowed to bathe regularly, and I wore my dark blonde hair long, straight, and parted in the middle, like most of the other girls my age. There was no longer a reason for the kids to tease me about my appearance.
Now, a handsome young man had become the focal point of my fantasies, replacing the mean, dwarfish, creatures that I’d imagined had lived under our house on Maplewood Drive. The young man had black hair and dark, penetrating eyes. He was tall and strong, like Daddy, but unlike Daddy, he was not at all afraid of Mama. In my fantasies, he confronted her, and laughed in her face, calling her crazy. He told her how beautiful and desirable I was, and how old and ugly she had become. Then he picked me up, whisking me away to his castle to be his wife, and I fell, breathless and weak, into his arms.
That year I started paying more attention to the boys at school, and my new look provided the dose of confidence I needed to start flirting with them. I had my first real boyfriend in the seventh grade, a shy, lanky kid named Jerry Stevens.
Except for being tall—the tallest boy in junior high school—his appearance was the direct opposite of my fantasy man. He had frizzy, white-blonde hair and pasty skin, and if it weren’t for the faint blue in his nearly transparent eyes, he might have been mistaken for an albino. I thought he was the best-looking boy in the seventh grade, and I welcomed what others may have perceived as imperfections. To me, they were part of his appeal.
Because Mama still wouldn’t allow me to go out socially to the skating rink or the theater, like the other kids my age, Jerry and I only saw each other at school. Our relationship was limited to occasional, brief conversation in between classes and passing notes in study hall, which was the only class we had together. He was content, though, with the way things were, and he never asked me any questions about my life at home.
Jerry rarely said anything at all, and when he did talk, it was about embarrassing and ridiculous subjects, like his ability to bite his own toenails off, or his talent for drinking milk and then blowing it out through his nose. Whenever he was around me, and did get up the courage to say something, his face always went scarlet, and he stuttered.
One day in study hall, he passed me a note asking me to meet him after class, because he had something he wanted to give me. I knew it could only be one thing, what all the guys gave their girlfriends—his ID bracelet. Only a handful of girls my age were “going with” somebody, and only a select few wore their boyfriends’ ID bracelets. I was so thrilled, I could hardly wait for class to be over.
I spotted Jerry from far off in the hallway, his big pale head protruding above all the other kids. I made my way to him. He stood before me, red-faced as usual, and smelling strongly of Brut cologne.
“What did you want to give me?” I asked him, coyly, pretending as if I didn’t know.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, like he had forgotten, and shoved his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Hand shaking all the while, he pulled out and offered to me a shiny gold identification bracelet. “I w-was w-w-wondering if you w-wanted to w-w-wear this.”
I tried to act cool, like it was no big deal, but I was about to burst. “Sure, I guess so,” I said.
“D-d-do you w-want me to help you p-put it on?” he asked.
I extended my wrist to him, and he wrapped the bracelet around it, but his hands were shaking too much to fasten the clasp. “That’s okay,” I said after a few failed attempts. “I’ll do it.” I pulled back my wrist, took the bracelet from him, and put it on. “I love it, Jerry! Thanks!” I gushed. “We’ve got to go now, or we’ll be late for our next class.”
As I walked down the hall on my way back to class wearing Mama’s go-go boots and Jerry’s ID bracelet, I held my head high, smiled, and waved at all my friends as they passed. For the first time since I was eight years old, I felt like I was the same as everybody else.
41
My parents had been discussing the possibility of leaving Spring Hill ever since the incident with Social Services. But I never thought they were serious until toward the middle of my seventh grade school year, when out of nowhere they announced we were moving to Kentucky.
Daddy had accepted a position as personnel director of a government-funded youth rehabilitation facility in a place called Uniontown, in Western Kentucky. His new employer wanted him to start right away. They agreed to furnish him and his family with a place to live, free of charge, until he found a suitable house in the area.
I knew Daddy’s new job wasn’t the real reason we were leaving Tennessee. We were leaving because ever since the incident with Social Services, Mama had become paranoid that people were talking about her. I heard her and Daddy arguing about it
almost every night. Even though nothing more ever came of the report of child abuse, she still thought Kat’s mom was bad-mouthing her around town and pressing for a more extensive investigation from Social Services. She wanted to leave the rumors behind her and start over somewhere else, and she thought moving to Kentucky would solve all her problems.
I didn’t want to move away from Spring Hill. I was happier there, at least at school, than I had been in a great while. I liked the new friends I’d made, and I had a boyfriend who I was crazy about, and he had just given me his ID bracelet to wear.
For Christmas that year, he’d also given me a gold bangle bracelet with delicate flower etchings on it. I kept it in my locker at school, and made sure I only wore it while I was there, because if Mama knew about it, she wouldn’t have allowed me to keep it. As soon as I found out we were moving, I brought the bracelet home, because I wasn’t sure exactly when we were leaving, and I didn’t want to risk the chance of losing it altogether. I hid it under my mattress where I thought it would be safest, and checked on it often to make sure it was still there.
One afternoon when I got off the school bus, I saw a moving van parked out in front of our house. When I went inside to my room, my bed frame had been disassembled, ready for the movers to load on the truck, and my mattress was on the floor. Right away I remembered my bracelet. I searched everywhere for it, but it was nowhere to be found.
I wondered if maybe one of the movers had come across my bracelet and kept it, but I was afraid to accuse them. I couldn’t say anything to Mama because I didn’t want her to know about it, and Daddy and I weren’t even speaking anymore. There was nothing I could do but accept that my bracelet was gone.
The next day my brothers, and I stayed home from school to help pack for the move. By early afternoon we were taking off for Kentucky.
It was only a four-hour drive to our new home in Uniontown, but it seemed like forever. Mama was always nervous having me in the car with Daddy and her boys. With six people in such close quarters, somebody had to sit by me, and maybe even—God forbid—touch me.
The atmosphere in the backseat was grim. Nick and Jimmy D., who had been moping around for days because they didn’t want to move away from their friends, were long-faced, and they glared straight ahead of them as if they had lost all reason to go on living.
I was just as miserable. Every time I had to travel anywhere with the family, Mama made me sit on my hands and look out the window for the duration of the trip. Inside my heart was broken, because I knew I would never see Jerry again, and I had a sinking feeling my life was about to change, this time for the worse.
Daddy stopped at a traffic light beside a long blue car with two kids in the backseat laughing together. In another car I saw a mother passing out sandwiches and chips to her children. We passed carload after carload of happy families, and I wondered why ours couldn’t be one of them.
As much as Mama had wanted to move, once we arrived in Uniontown, she immediately decided she didn’t like it. Contrary to what she had expected, the staff housing, where Daddy’s employer had temporarily placed us, was not at all glamorous. It was a rundown, mice-infested modular home, well below the conditions she had been accustomed to. She was also concerned that because the house was located so near the rehab center where Daddy would be working, one of the “convicts,” as she called them, might escape and murder her. From the outset she griped constantly about how Daddy had failed her by dragging her to such a “godforsaken place.”
Daddy was enthusiastic about his career change and became preoccupied with his new job. Mama, with plenty of free time on her hands, started drinking more. Now that she was safely away from the ghosts she had left in Tennessee, she was slipping back to the way she was before Social Services had snooped around. She often got drunk and went off on lengthy rampages about how ugly I was, and reminded me how much she and the rest of the family despised me. As if I could ever forget.
It was right around this time that she became fixated on certain physical features of mine. My lips were too thick. My face was bony. My hair was stringy. Sometimes, while I was eating or taking a bath, she would stand over me and pick me apart.
“I can’t believe how ugly you are,” she said one night while I was in the bathtub. “You have a horse face, and you’re such a bony ass. You don’t even have breasts like most girls your age.”
As a reflex I glanced down at my puffy, budding nipples. She was right; the girls I went to school with were already well-developed. Mama had gone through puberty early, starting her period at twelve, and Audrey had done the same. I was taking after the late bloomers on Daddy’s side of the family. Near my twelfth birthday, she had left me brochures in my dresser drawer about menstruating, along with a box of sanitary napkins and a belt to keep them in place. I read the brochures, but the rest of the stuff was still unopened.
“There isn’t one single pretty thing about you. I’m so ashamed of you, and so is your daddy.”
She got no reaction. I no longer cared what she or Daddy thought of me. She had said the same words so often, I had grown immune to them, and they now rolled off me as easily as the bath water.
Still, she went on and on with her insults. When I ignored her, she said them at the top of her voice. When I didn’t flinch, she said them vehemently.
“Your lips are too thick,” she shouted. “I’m tired of looking at them. From now on, whenever you’re around us, I want you to hold your lips in your mouth—like this.” She pulled her own lips in, squeezing them tightly between her teeth to demonstrate.
I nodded my head, acknowledging that I understood.
“Do it right now!” she screamed, smacking me in the ear with the back of her hand.
Even when she struck me, I hardly felt the pain anymore. I was becoming numb, inside and out. I pulled my lips in, like she said, and went on bathing. As soon as she left the room, I let them back out again.
In the middle of the night, Mama flung open the door to my room and tugged the string of the overheard light so hard, it snapped up and smacked against the ceiling. Startled from a deep sleep, I sat erect in bed.
“You’re never going to have any boyfriends, Weasel. You do know that, don’t you?” Her eyes were glassy, and she smelled of alcohol. “Your brothers are ashamed of you. They tell me practically every day that their friends talk about how ugly you are, and that you don’t even look like part of our family.” When she spoke, frothy balls of spit flew from her mouth. “Nobody is ever going to want to go out with you, let alone marry you.” She quit talking for a minute and examined my face. Finding no trace of emotional response from me whatsoever, she played her trump card. “Look what I found,” she said, sticking one of her arms in front of me. “It was lying in the floor when we were moving out of the house on Maplewood.”
At first what she had said didn’t register. I was still half asleep, and anymore I didn’t pay much attention to her words. I blinked a couple of times to clear the sleep from my eyes. Then I recognized, gleaming in the overhead light, my bracelet—the one Jerry had given me for Christmas.
My initial impulse was to lunge at her and rip it from her wrist. I struggled to contain my anger. You bitch! I thought so loudly, I could have sworn I heard myself say it. But on the outside, I showed no indication of how mad she had made me.
“I love it!” Mama said, twisting my bracelet around and around on her wrist. “I think it may be gold. What do you think?”
I could see it in her eyes, the insatiable need to hurt me. But I refused to give her the satisfaction she reached for. I kept my face set in stone.
My lack of emotion sent her into frenzy, and all at once she came at me, socking at my face with both her fists. Her movements were slowed by the alcohol, giving me time to duck my head and tuck my face close to my chest, forcing her blows to land on the top of my skull. I knew her knuckles hurt when they hit me. It was my retaliation.
She grabbed my hair and jerked my head from side to side, an
d then up and down. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she screamed.
I hate you too! I screamed back at her. It was only in my head, but I know she heard me.
42
Once we were safely away from Spring Hill Social Services, Mama could no longer bring herself to let me wear clothes that flattered my figure. Her new mission became to make me appear as unattractive as she possibly could in front of my classmates at my new school. She took back the go-go boots she had given me, and the clothes Aunt Macy had sent me suddenly vanished.
All I had to wear to finish out my seventh grade school year were clothes left over from the sixth grade. I had outgrown most of them. The only thing I could still squeeze into was a pair of green, polyester stretch pants, but even they were too short, hitting me about mid-calf. Mama decided I was going to wear them anyway, and they became the foundation from which she built the rest of my wardrobe. She dug out some of her outdated blouses to go with the pants. For shoes she had already stumbled upon the perfect solution while ordering work clothes for Daddy from the Sears catalog. They were men’s boots, the kind that zip at the ankle. She ordered a pair in brown, two sizes too big so I wouldn’t grow out of them anytime soon.
For a coat, she found an old one of hers from when she was in high school. Not only was it decades out of style, but it was also the ugliest coat ever made. It was faded brown tweed, with frayed sleeves and buttons the size of Frisbees, and an oversized, floppy clown collar accented with wide black trim.
Getting dressed on the morning of my first day at Uniontown Middle School, I did the best I could with the clothes Mama had given me to wear. To make the polyester pants appear longer, I ripped out the hem, and pulled them down as low as possible on my hips, so low the crotch was hanging just above my knees. But still, a three-inch gap was between them and the two-sizes-too-big ankle boots that made my feet appear comically large for my scrawny legs.
