“Okay, put the balls away, girls, and follow me.”
I noticed Bessie talking quietly to a group of her friends, and I grew nervous as she sauntered in my direction. We filed out of the gym and piled into the hall, where we waited for Mrs. Flores to unlock the door. Suddenly, Bessie’s hands were around my neck, and I was pushed against the wall. While I was grasping at her hands, Mrs. Flores blew her whistle and yelled “break it up, girls” without so much as turning around. Bessie released me with a look that assured me we weren’t done. At that point, my friends cleared the way so I could push up front. I didn’t make it three steps before I felt the gang on my back, kicking my legs and punching my head, as I was slammed against the locker doors. Bessie swung at my stomach before moving to my head and then aimed at my face. My survival instinct kicked in, and I hit back. I thought it would be clear to anyone I was acting in self-defense. But Mrs. Flores didn’t see it that way. She rounded the corner in time to see me land a kick that sent Bessie flying backward. We were sent to the vice principal’s office.
As we walked down the hall, Bessie asked, with the anxiety of a younger sister, what I thought they would do with us.
“I don’t think it will be so bad,” I said.
“Are you going to snitch on me?”
“Nope,” I said. It became a bonding moment, this walk. Vice Principal Andes came out of his office looking like that detective in The Mod Squad, his Afro beautifully shaped, wearing a loud flower-printed silk shirt under his jacket and a styling pair of bell-bottoms. He had to be the coolest-looking VP ever. He looked at us, alternating between my swollen eye and Bessie’s bloody lip.
“Who wants to go first?”
Both of us shrugged shoulders. He flipped a coin. Bessie lost. She was in for about ten minutes and then came out pouting. We seemed to have lost a small bit of the camaraderie established in the hallway, but there was no sign of the bully I had seen in the gym. Mr. Andes told her to stay put while he spoke with me. Bessie plopped down in the chair I had been sitting in and folded her arms. I followed the VP into the office as he shut the door behind me and offered me the chair in front of his desk.
“So, Debbie Cackler,” he said, folding his hands on his lap and rocking back in his chair, smiling and then smoothing his mustache out. “Looks like you took a couple of punches.” We both laughed like it was something he respected. Like I had survived in the ring. “So tell me what happened,” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
After I finished telling him the story, he said he was going to have to suspend us both, because even if I didn’t think I did anything wrong, I had—by challenging her in front of everyone. I had another choice. I should have gone to the teacher. When I pointed out our gym coach wasn’t around, a normal state of affairs it seemed, he said he was really sorry, this is just the way it had to be. When I defended myself again by saying I didn’t attack her, he said the gym teacher saw something else. I said that something else would have been self-defense. I respect that, he told me. But I still have to suspend you. Coming from Mr. Andes, though, I couldn’t take it personally.
After Bessie and I were kicked out of school for a week, a curfew was issued. Students were warned against loitering on school grounds or at the nearby shopping mall after hours.
This was because of a racially divided gang fight the year before, which started after two boys squared up in the hallway. A fight had been organized for later at a parking lot at Crossroads, the nearby shopping mall. By the time police arrived, one student had been hit by a crowbar and ended up in intensive care, and a knife had been brandished.
When Mom came to pick me up and saw my face, she asked me what happened. I told her. She asked me if I hit the girl back. I said I kicked back to get her off me. She said I would have had her permission to beat the crap out of the girl, and then forgot about the incident the minute we walked in the door.
In Which Dad and I Have a Man-to-Man Chat
Oxford, 1997—Dad, after hearing that I was having a difficult time with the seizures and was adjusting to medication, called to ask if he could come visit us in Oxford. It would just be him. Mom wasn’t quite up to a trip yet, and then he added, oddly, that they had agreed in couples counseling that it would be okay. I took it as his way of notifying me things were changing.
When he arrived in Oxford, he was more buoyant and happier than I had ever seen him, like someone who had climbed out of a basement bunker after living there for decades. He told me he was looking forward to a five-day fitness camp and wanted me to bring it on. We had put in a lot of running hours together in my high school years, when we would hit the high school gym at six A.M. before anyone else would arrive, and put the Rocky theme on the boom box while running the bleachers.
Before we got out the door, Dad realized that he had no running shoes, so I took him down to the local sports store. After I had regaled him with how I had used a heart-rate monitor to pace myself during the London Marathon the year before, he purchased one too so I could train him to do the same. After a good aerobic warm-up, we started out from our house in East Oxford, ran down Cowley Road, across Magdalene Bridge, and circled over to Christ Church Meadows, an expansive formal park that sits at the back of a row of the older colleges, bordered also by the River Cherwell. Dad noted that the spires looked like they were trying to outpoke each other into the sky. His mixture of admiration and awe for the architecture renewed my own excitement over the buildings and their beauty, and it was like we were instantly back to that elevated place he could take me, where the real world felt like stage sets we were running through.
We jogged over to see Thomas at the field where he was playing Frisbee, before heading down the towpath along the River Isis, rowers in their boats speeding past, coxswains yelling orders, blowing whistles in prep for a regatta. That’s where I told him that after four years of marriage, I was intentionally and delightfully pregnant.
“Really?!” He beamed and threw his arm around my shoulder. “I have to tell you, kid, you two had me convinced you were serious with that Couples Against Kids Club. Is it still safe when you’re thirty-three?” I assured him everything was okay.
That night we took him down to Mario’s—a small Italian restaurant in East Oxford—owned by an ebullient elderly flirt who was often generous with his Sambuca and loved nothing more than a good party. He and Dad became instant pals, and I couldn’t help but react with pride when Mario pulled up a chair to join us at the table.
Dad told him that Thomas was his son-in-law and he was to be a new grandfather, and Mario called for another round of drinks for all remaining customers. I wanted to point out that I was his daughter, and pregnant, too, but with all the male bonding that was going on, it would have seemed like poor sportsmanship.
After the merriment died down and Mario returned to work, the conversation moved on to child-rearing. The three of us, without knowing it, were negotiating the terms of how we would interact now that the next generation was on its way. Dad was eager to share what he had been hearing from Dr. Laura, a conservative radio host commentator, about kids and respect. I was about to ask him when he had started listening to conservative radio, but was stopped when he made an offhanded comment about Genie, my elder sister, cutting herself off from the family, like he couldn’t fathom what had gotten into her. “Really?” I balked.
The last time I saw Genie, she was home from college for Christmas. We were in her bedroom, and she was shaking a book at me written by Alice Miller, a preeminent expert on child abuse, called For Your Own Good, demanding that I stop normalizing Mom’s child-rearing techniques. As she was throwing a book argument at me, I offered a relativist’s perspective—Mom was doing her best. The book literally hit me in the nose from across the room.
All three of my sisters and I were in full alignment when it came to our painful memories of Mom, but our strategies in dealing with her damage were different. Our sisterhood bond, made especially strong by the trauma we survived, helped the four
of us navigate our differences, but in the end it wasn’t enough. Genie’s estrangement took time, and when she cut herself off from the entire family, Gayle, Jen, and I couldn’t help but feel we had done something seriously wrong. Our grief for her was raw. So for Dad to pass this off so lightly was unusually insensitive.
While I was thinking these thoughts, Thomas jumped in. Maybe comfortable after all that male bonding and drinking, he came straight out and asked my father if he was aware of how differently my mother ran the house when he was traveling. It was as if he had just popped the tab on a shaken can of beer. I couldn’t help but be slightly awed by the guts of it, but still, the loaded awkwardness following the question was excruciating.
Dad went quiet. I watched his face as he mulled the question over in his mind. There has to be a kind of permission granted from a parent before agreeing to a job review by an adult child, let alone her husband. In addition, he had always made clear throughout my life that he genuinely believed there was no benefit in exploring the past, that it implied shame and weakness of character. Yet there was something different about this moment. This day. He looked at me, giving me the silent approval to go on, encouraging me to say what was on my mind. But having the emotional courage to break a taboo of a lifetime isn’t something one does in an instant.
I ventured delicately. Tested the water. I reminded him of the harm he himself saved us from, the winter when she had locked us in the garage. He nodded, giving me permission to continue. I assured him there were many more incidents that I could dredge up, if needed. “But do you really need me to provide examples, Dad? I’m not talking about her psychotic attacks—like the knife attack, or even that day in the garage. I’m talking about the day-to-day fear of living with her—her rages, the things she would say behind our backs, the shaming, her ‘tough love,’ the drama, her drinking. She was and sometimes still is completely different when you aren’t around, which was 80 percent of the time.”
“Yeah, I know. She was young and ill-equipped to be a mother. I should have never left her alone that often.”
“Dad, that’s no excuse for the behavior I’m talking about, or for who she became. She’s never been interested in growing or changing. Why should she, when you insist she’s the victim?”
After a long pause, Thomas asked Dad if he ever thought of removing us from her custody, leaving her, protecting us.
“I honestly still have a problem imagining it was as bad as you are saying. I’m not denying it, I’m just saying I never saw it.”
I looked at Thomas, pleading for him not to say more.
I could see Dad thinking it through. “We were both young. Of course I thought about leaving her. Everyone does at some point in a marriage. But if I had, I wouldn’t have had a chance of getting custody of you kids. You remember that movie Kramer vs. Kramer?”
He was looking at me now. “This was the 1970s. Even if I found a sympathetic judge, I couldn’t take care of four small daughters and work. And I would still have had to support her. You don’t just get rid of a wife. And I saw the damage your grandparents’ divorce did to her, even permanent damage. I didn’t want you girls suffering a broken home.”
As I listened to him talk, it sounded like he was rehashing a legal opinion and wondered if he had actually paid for it. It was beginning to sound like he was admitting he knew there was a serious problem.
He changed tack and began pointing out things I might not have considered, like how much better we were served by him earning a decent income. How we had a bigger house, a nicer neighborhood, well-resourced schools, great teachers, and family vacations. I had to imagine running that logic through the emotional filter of him being an adopted kid for me to appreciate his point.
“Dad, my concern isn’t who she was then, it’s who she is now.” How was I supposed to trust her when, instinctually, I found myself recoiling when I was around her? Dad had no idea. Worse than the past pain of our hurtful relationship, Mom and I had no relationship to hurt. She had found reason to reject me, time and time again. I would have taken it personally if she hadn’t done the same with my sisters. But Dad was shutting the conversation down, falling back to the new party line after her six weeks in hospital, that she had changed substantially since then.
He wrapped up our conversation by saying he’d made a vow. And at the end of the day, he had a duty to take care of his wife. He was thankful for the cud chewing and couldn’t wait to see what Day 2 at fitness camp had in store.
As we finished the evening, it was clear Thomas wasn’t nearly as impressed with Dad’s response as I had been. But I was so happy to be with Dad, I was desperate to get to the other side of that conversation.
In Which I Learn Respect
Omaha, 1977—It was a Sunday, the morning I heard my mother call my name. I thought if I hurried I might be able to help her before the mood escalated to red alert. As I opened her bedroom door, I inhaled lingering cigarette smoke.
“Am I right in thinking that laundry is your responsibility this week?”
This was, of course, a rhetorical question.
“Yes—sorry. I did it, but forgot to bring it upstairs.”
“Isn’t that a part of the job? Folding the clothes and bringing them upstairs?”
I let her words bounce off me and stared at the ceiling fan. In other words, it would be fair to say that on one level, I provoked her.
“You know out of the four of you girls, you are the only one that seems to think your life is more important than anyone else’s. Our lives do not revolve around yours. When do you think you might find time to bring the laundry up?”
I’d like to think I made a good show of strength and said something like “Maybe next week.” But I can assure you whatever my exasperated snarky juvenile response was, it wasn’t that creative. It quickly became clear I had just asked for a beating, and she told me to get her favorite implement of choice for such an occasion—her belt—and then did her best to effect within me a transformation of some kind. Respect? She struck my head, she struck my neck, she struck my upper back, became more and more enraged when she could not produce a sound from me. I think I might have even heard her grunt. I suddenly realized what this was. Barbarity.
When she exhausted herself, I turned around, looked at her widely dilated pupils, her sweaty lip, and almost felt empathy for the animal in her. It was here I discovered my superheroine powers of detaching pain from emotion and emotion from the body. And it was here I finally set my mind against her, that I recognized a me that could not accept her. I asked her if I should put the belt away for her. She instructed me to leave the room.
Three weeks later she raised her hand to me for “mouthing off.” I told her if she touched me, I’d slap her back, and then walked away. It was the last time she ever physically threatened me.
After that, I began feeling guilty for the loathing I carried for her, and I resented it almost more, this emotional duplicity. It was important to me to be a good person, a generous person even. I had feelings of loyalty toward her, was wired to love her. And I needed her to love me. I couldn’t let go of the fantasy that if I did the right thing, tried harder, some day she would see I wasn’t the manipulative, controlling, self-centered, immature, untrust-worthy person she wanted me to think I was.
Simply put—I hoped I wasn’t transforming into the criminal she had me down for being. Or Darth Vader.
In Which We Drop By for a Big Mac
Omaha, 1978—Mr. K picked up on my drop in mood; his tone changed too. “Let’s go find a phone,” he said. “I want to see what kind of man your father is,” and we pulled away from the gas station. We drove ten minutes without speaking. It was pitch-black now, and traffic was picking up with drivers who hadn’t left work early to beat the storm.
Mr. K turned into a McDonald’s at a busy intersection on Center Street. I saw him looking at a pay phone booth, the type with a folded hinged door. We were also close enough to the street that I was able to see the faces
of drivers sitting behind their steering wheels as they waited for the traffic light to turn. I couldn’t believe I was in clear view, so near to so many people yet totally helpless.
“Don’t try anything,” Mr. K warned as he turned the motor off. And in a blur of movement he was out the door and on my side of the van, yanking me out. He put the knife to my throat again. “Now walk,” he told me, pinning my arm behind me. I struggled not to lose my balance, as I looked around me in helpless horror. No one seemed to notice this masked man dragging me into the phone booth at knifepoint. We were close enough to the store window to read the prices of the Big Mac and double cheeseburger on the menu board inside.
“You okay?” he asked, concerned as if he were my babysitter, after he had shut the booth door.
My teeth were chattering. I nodded, the steam of my breath visible in the glare of the lights on the glass, streaked with tiny water rivulets. Rain was still falling half frozen, and the wind was bitter.
“Call your father and tell him that I need ten thousand dollars, and that he better give it to me.” He took a glove off, reached into his pocket for change, shoved a dime into the phone, and handed me the receiver.
“Dial.”
In Which I Become Captain Kisser
Omaha, 1977—When it came to the game of girls and boys, I seemed to have no problem with attention, but the freedom to pursue any kind of kissing games outside school hours was thwarted at every turn by my mother. Boys were banned from our house—and coed parties were not allowed until the age of sixteen, two rules that in retrospect seem not so unreasonable. But as a teenager living under the weight of her tyrannical moods, I was convinced with all my soul that this draconian measure to prevent adolescent trysts seemed unbearably unjust.
Dancing with the Octopus Page 11
