I shake my head and give her a bleak smile. Where would I start? What would I say? What would she think of me? Tell her that I’m not the squeaky-clean girl I seem to be? That I had sex with my boyfriend in a public park? That my parents fight all the time, and how sick I feel when they argue then go angrily silent for weeks, with each other and with me? Tell her how my dad barely talks to me anyway, and that I try not to look at him either? Yes, I would like to talk to her, but I’m afraid if I started, chained doors would swing open, and my life might never be the same. This is the life I know. Where else would I go? This is where I fit. This stuff must happen to me for a reason.
She drives around town in an easy, comfortable silence for about an hour before dropping me off at home. She has provided such a safe, calm space that I feel stronger somehow. I offer her sincere thanks as I gather my things.
Rushing through the house, I tell Mom I’m not hungry, then stretch the phone cord into my room, close the door, and call Dave. I’m just glad he answers since I never saw him today. I decide not to ask where he was. Ours is a big school. The halls are always crowded. Maybe we just missed each other.
“I got your note,” he admits. “What do you think we should do?”
“I have to tell my mom I’m pregnant. I guess tomorrow after school.”
Dave agrees, and we discuss talking to his mom after I tell mine. That’s it, no talk of a baby or how any of this will produce huge life changes. No talk about love or how irresistibly beautiful I am any more. I have no idea what being pregnant will mean in my life. Pregnant girls just disappear. Vanish. No one really knows what happens to them.
Next, I call Carolyn, who is just as clueless about what happens to pregnant girls. She listens to my worries, then sweetly promises to stay my friend. That’s nice. Dave made no promises I would stay his girlfriend. As I realize this, I sense a hairline fracture moving through my young heart. Why didn’t he come find me after he got my note? For the moment, I feel like a throwaway girl.
The following morning, my bed sheets are brightly stained with blood. I slept late, and though my head is spinning and my stomach cramping, I feel such a welcome relief, I cry. I tell Mom the cramps are making me cry. She acknowledges the blood but can’t deal with the emotions and lectures me about keeping track of my period and to wear a Kotex to bed at that time of the month, just in case I start bleeding. Slipping my bottom sheet and mattress cover off the bed, she tosses them in cold water in the kitchen sink. The entire sink turns an offending and raucous red. To me, that blood red is the most beautiful color ever. She changes the water a couple of times until it is barely pink, then plops the sheet and cover in buckets with a strong mixture of water and Clorox. I finish my oatmeal and cinnamon toast, watching the entire process like it’s the best show in town.
When I find Dave later that morning, I giddily share my news, “I started my period!”
He listens somberly before replying, “Maybe we should break up for a while. We should probably date other people.”
“Break up? Date who?” My mind reels. I thought I was pregnant! How do I go out with somebody else after that? What if another guy tries to kiss me or touch me? I can’t believe what Dave is saying, or how he can even think of dating others right now.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he consoles, lightly placing his hand on my shoulder. “It just makes me love you more when I see you with other guys and see them attracted to you,” he says, attempting to reassure me.
He wants to see me with other guys?
I blink my eyes. Although this sounds like nonsense, there’s an odd familiarity to it that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m not sure what hurts more, my heart or my stomach. I might throw up, and the bell is about to ring for our first class.
As I turn to go, it hits me that perhaps Dave is relieved that he finally has a chance to ask out the new girl I’ve seen him flirting with when he thinks I’m not around. He probably has a candy cane saved for her in his back pocket.
What Dave and I have shared is special. I know that. I will do whatever it takes to get him back. What else can I do? We made love! I have to go along with whatever he wants. He has to keep loving me. He’ll see. I can handle a break up. I can shut out my feelings. Somewhere, deep inside, I know about this pattern of loving. Someone shows me some attention, expresses love, experiences physical pleasure, then backs away and ignores me, acting like what we shared isn’t really important, or didn’t even happen.
I’m pretty sure this is how love goes.
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
1968 (age 15)—Richardson, Texas
Despite terrorizing my sister for years by hiding in her closet and spying on her as she practiced for some pageant or talent show, I really do want her to do well tonight. Winning would be great, but most of all I want her to not make any mistakes when she sings “Camelot,” or trip when walking down the long runway in high heels and a taped-down swimsuit. I admire the courage and discipline Pamela has shown as she prepares for the Miss Richardson pageant. Sneaking my hand inside her packed bag, I slip a handwritten note of support amidst the swimsuit, the heels, and the hairspray.
Mom and I are sitting in the audience, edgy with anticipation, as Pamela has now been selected as one of the five finalists. It’s her turn to answer a question from the judges: “We have heard you have a younger sister who has been carefully watching you during pageant preparations. If you had one piece of advice to give her, what would it be?”
After a reflective pause that has me squirming in my seat, Pamela starts by quoting a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
“This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.7
“I would tell my little sister that finding out what is true for ourselves takes time. If we’re brave enough to explore who we are and risk being vulnerable, we will get to know our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Learning to be honest with ourselves and others is one of the more important things we can do in life.”
My fifteen-year-old ears absorb as much of that wisdom as I’m capable of figuring out. I know Pamela’s answer is good by how loud everyone claps, even if I barely understand what it all means other than, maybe, “always do what you think is right.” In my book, she should win the pageant crown and not just first runner-up and Miss Congeniality, which are the results.
While the pageant is winding down, a memory crosses my mind. I was between three and four years old sitting against the side of my first home, watching the wind whip up tall grasses in a grain field. The side of the house had no windows, and our yard reached right up to the brick and mortar. It was my safe place, especially when Momma and Daddy were fighting. I could sit quietly, watch the wavy fields, and not be noticed. Rough brick texture etched into my back, still warm from the morning sun. In that safe place, no one tried to coax me to eat, talk, or smile, and I could rock—a motion I did often—the back of my head usually bumping walls, but now just barely touching the bricks behind me. I called the motion “bye-bye,” and I would rock until I fell asleep.
I picked at the grass and poked my little fingers in the warm north Texas dirt. The deeper I got, the cooler the ground. An afternoon breeze tickled my neck as a comfortable drowsiness overtook me. As I rocked, I heard the scolding Momma had just given me, “What are you crying about now, Patty Beth? And why are you always frowning? Your face is going to get stuck like that for the rest of your life. Someday you’ll be sorry.” With my face set firmly in a scowl, I rocked harder, until my head was banging on the bricks behind me. That day I decided to try smiling, even if I didn’t feel like it, just to see if everyone would leave me alone. It worked.
Now people often think I am happy, but that’s because I keep a smile plastered on my face, so they don’t ask questions. These days I wonder if I’m being true to myself, as Pamela has just encouraged, and doing what is right in my on-and-off-again relationship with Dave. To keep Dave as my boyfri
end means having sex whenever we are “going together.” I want us to be together forever, but Dave breaks up with me every so often so that, he claims, we don’t get too serious. What if the other girls just won’t have sex with him? I am desperate for Dave’s love, and since we are boyfriend and girlfriend, I feel like it’s right and normal for us to have sex together. Loving each other feels good, as do the sex and affection that come with being told I’m loved. Still, there’s this gnawing familiarity inside me that when a guy tells me he loves me, he might sometimes act like he doesn’t want to be with me. Mom caught me crying once after Dave had broken up with me, and she told me if I wanted to be loved, I had to endure being hurt. “That’s how relationships go,” she said. This makes sense to me.
Interestingly, there is always a girl in the fringes for Dave to date right away, like the girl he met on the YMCA Colorado ski trip. A big group of us drove up in a bus, Dave and I feigning sleep with a blanket draped over us while our hands were busy in each other’s pants. Once in Estes Park, he met a pretty girl from Kansas, and I watched from the shadows as he led her onto that same bus one snowy evening. Come spring, he predictably broke up with me, took off for Kansas, then told me he drove one hundred miles an hour directly to my house, claiming he couldn’t stand being away from me. I took him back without a question.
It feels like by sticking with Dave I am being true to myself, even if I do smile when really, I’m unhappy and confused. It’s just easier when no one asks why I feel bad. Like Mom said, this is how relationships go, how love goes, so I might as well get used to it.
PALM-READIN’ PATTY
1969 (age 17)—Dallas, Texas
“We’ve heard you have an interest in palm-reading. Can you explain how something like this might be useful to society today?”
My stomach twists upon hearing such a question from the Master of Ceremonies here at the question and answer point in the pageant program. This will surely drop my overall score. I most definitely did not put anything about palm-reading on any of the written materials required for this Miss Teenage Dallas pageant, and that’s where I was told my question would be drawn from! I wonder if someone intentionally wanted to blow my chances of winning the title, which, among other things, includes a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship that I am coveting here in my senior year of high school, desperate for a way to get out of my house and into college. I grip the microphone and manage to keep from simultaneously spilling my guts and bursting into tears while blubbering how much I need that scholarship, and why the hell are you blowing my chances with a question like that?
After acing the talent in the previous section of the final pageant’s program, I was feeling particularly hopeful. The audience must have been bored with the talent performances, evident by their laughter and responsiveness to my goofy antics when I roller skated on stage belting out “I’d Rather Be Blue Thinking of You Than Be Happy With Somebody Else,” a scene and a song from the popular film Funny Girl.8 I relate to the song, since it reminds me of my carousing and flirty boyfriend, Dave. Although I am often plenty blue in our relationship, I leave the constant breaking up to him, but I am always ready to have him back whenever he wants. I try to like other guys, but no one is as fun as Dave. Plus, we have made love, which I want to keep doing, but I want us to only make love with each other. I haven’t made love with anyone else, and I hope Dave hasn’t either. Does he feel the same way? I am not so sure. Most importantly, I believe Dave loves me, and next to wanting to go to college, being loved by him feels vital to my existence. I absolutely choose to occasionally be blue with him than happy with somebody else.
I didn’t miss a beat or word of the song as I comfortably skated, thanks to years of roller-skating during childhood. Unfortunately, during my act a plane flew over the University’s auditorium, making the unique-for-the-time wireless microphone screech horrendously for a good thirty seconds. I knocked my knees, scrunched my face, and put my hands over my ears like it was all part of the act. The audience clapped in support. I think they felt sorry for me.
I pause and gather my wits in efforts to navigate this disappointing question. Apparently, the emcee had seen me surveying the palm of one of my fellow contestants, maybe during pageant dress rehearsal when I was only trying to calm us down. At my recent high school’s Fall Festival, the oddest of our school’s English teachers set up a tent for palm-reading, fascinating me with her accurate revelations as she gazed at the maze of lines on my hands. Later she lent me a book about the history and practice of this art, and I was just playing around with what I had read.
I try to sound nonchalant about my pursuit of palmistry and of what relevance it has that “might be useful to society today” that wouldn’t sound like witchcraft here on this Christian University’s stage. I am well aware that some churches equate the practice of palm-reading to devil worship. What could be wrong about ancient Egyptian texts linking the practice to diagnosing and recognizing medical problems? Those early Egyptians detailed life habits and occurrences, noticing distinct similarities in the shape, texture, and palm lines in thousands of pre-mummified hands. Why couldn’t our hands and palms say something about who we are, what we have lived, and something about our future? I do my best to coherently present a few of these thoughts, but this inquiry into palm-reading will likely put my quirky display of talent in an entirely different category, especially compared to the sophisticated classical piano player, talented and trained singers, and the ballerina, some of these girls from families where spending ten thousand dollars a year on fancy private lessons is probably nothing.
A contestant from an esteemed and hugely expensive private high school wins the title of Miss Teenage Dallas. What private, out-of-state university, I wonder, will absorb her ten-thousand-dollar scholarship, the sum barely making a dent in her tuition? I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m pissed off and crushed at my loss, having fixated on that scholarship as my ticket to four whole years at a state college. Why did I think I could win anyway? I feel like a piece of trailer trash amidst a collection of wealthy, Ivy League material. Skating my clumsy ass right up to that crazy palm-reading question.
Sore loser that I am at this point, I mumble weak congratulations to the teary-eyed winner. I am desperate to get out of this place. I know I’ll never see any of these girls again. We live in different worlds. I grab my ratty old roller skates while inadvertently leaving behind the new, very-expensive-for-me pumps I had argued with Mom about buying to go with my homemade formal.
Leaving by the backdoor of the auditorium, I promise myself that I will figure out how to get to college and away from home, no matter what.
A NEW BEGINNING
1970 (age 17)—Richardson, Texas
“I’ve never heard of it,” Mom snaps, barely paying attention. She is opening cans of beans to put into goulash, one of the dishes on her short list of dinner options. We’re standing in the kitchen-den, one big space where Mom cooks while Dad sits on the other side of the room in his recliner watching TV. Throw in a couch and the kitchen table and the space gets cramped, especially when all three of us are in there. This is the only room in the house that the three of us are ever in at the same time, usually without talking. My initiating conversation here is like a breach of protocol.
“It’s the exam I have to take for getting into college. Stands for Scholastic Aptitude Test—SAT,” I explain nervously.
“Well, you don’t need that to go to El Centro Junior College,” she counters.
“I’m applying to the University of Texas, Mom. That’s why I went there to visit Anne and Chris.” Chris and Anne, two upperclassmen friends from high school, collaborated to get me down to Austin to show me the campus. They convinced me that there were ways I could afford to go to school there and have been guiding me through the application procedures.
Mom is now cooking the hamburger meat for the goulash. Brown. Everything is brown in this dish. Everything in this room is brown: the fridge, the table, Dad’s recliner, th
e couch, the rug. No light shines in this blocked-off room with its small windows, including the one that looks out onto the side of the neighbor’s house, and the one into our garage. Curtains cover all the panes. No one can look out, and no one can look in.
“I’ll pay for whatever that test is, but I can tell you right now, your Dad isn’t going to change his mind and pay for you to go to UT.” Mom has been talking like Dad isn’t even in the room, but acknowledges how he has made it crystal clear multiple times that he will only pay for college if I stay at home.
Although the last decade in our country has felt scary, I don’t believe that’s why Dad refuses to pay for me to go to UT. Occasionally he rants about “these crazy times,” and points out one of many things that has happened since Kennedy was shot in Dallas six years earlier. Every evening we listen to coverage of the Vietnam War during our silent dinners, hearing body counts amidst gun fire, the thwump, thwump, thwump of helicopters, and the clang of forks on our plates. Only three years ago, a ‘Nam soldier back from the war climbed the University of Texas tower and shot forty-three people, killing thirteen. Not two years later, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were gunned down within two months of each other. Civil rights protests and Vietnam War protests are cropping up around the nation, many on college campuses. Dad may worry about my safety, but when he brings up that concern, it feels superficial. Most of all he simply emphasizes how I would be better off staying at home, here in suburban Dallas. He didn’t go to college, just took correspondence courses. Mom didn’t go to college either. And they did just fine, he points out.
Yeah, Mom married you and once had a job selling lingerie in a department store, I want to say.
“I’m not paying for you to go to some big school where you’ll become a hippie like Paula, or be in those war protests,” Dad finally chimes in. “You can stay right here and go to a local junior college like Pam did, learn secretarial skills, or even get a job at Texas Instruments and make good money.” That’s where Dad works as a mechanical engineer, nights, in a little cubbyhole where he repairs the new complex calculators. Yeah, maybe we’ll work the same shift and drive to work together. There’s an idea!
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