by Cindy Bokma
At home, my mother kept everything neat and clean, candles and potpourri made the house smell like vanilla. This place was dark and dank and the humidity from outside seeped in through the windows and walls, making the house feel clammy all day and night. The air conditioning unit in the window leaked and I suspected it didn’t work properly but Aunt Priscilla insisted it was fine. She only ran it at night to save money. My skin was always sticky and my hair was beyond help.
It was Taffy’s job to clean out the chokingly pungent litter boxes, but pretty soon I was doing that, too, as she stood in the hallway watching me with her narrow little eyes.
I cooked simple meals like pasta with canned sauce. I cleaned the house with an old, ailing vacuum cleaner. I emptied the overflowing garbage cans and ashtrays. I scrubbed moldy bathrooms that were beyond filthy; mildew crept up the shower door and soap scum lined the tub. Taffy sprawled out on the couch smoking her mother’s cigarettes and watching cartoons while I cleaned around her. In the first four days I was there, I had already identified my role as the housekeeper, cook, and Taffy’s caregiver.
I cried every single night, waking in the morning with swollen red puffy eyes. Not an evening went by that I didn’t curl up in my damp room, trying not to breathe in the odors that permeated the muggy air in the house.
I turned my face into the lumpy pillow with the scratchy pillowcase that carried the smell of mildew. I sobbed, cried for my old life in Ohio, bawled for my parents and brother. I wrote letters to David asking him, begging him to come and get me. But he didn’t. And I wrote letters to Rita, but Rita was dating someone and she had no time to write me back right away. When she did write to me, her letters were full of fancy, loopy script, she dotted her I’s with little hearts and wrote “Rita and Mike 4ever” on the bottom of every note.
I started school, which was totally different than Ohio. Instead of the big brick high school on a slope of green grass, it was a stumpy building with overgrown shrubs and dry brown bushes. There were no enclosed hallways; everything was out in the open, in the humidity. Lockers lined the walls and the only protection from the sudden bursts of rain was a thin roof.
The girls eyed me with disdain, wearing their long hair in banana clips, big plastic earrings swung from their ears. Dressed in tropical print jeans with half shirts, they carried clear plastic purses.
They all had the same deep brown tan from being outside all year. Instead of short nails and clear gloss like my classmates in Ohio, these girls liked bright pink lipstick, and their nails were long. Their sleeveless tops and sandals hinted that there would be no sweaters or jackets needed. Boys had bi-level haircuts and wore sleeveless shirts with nylon shorts. They were all so different, I may as well have landed on a planet in a far away galaxy.
Everyone wore sunglasses whether it rained out or not. I walked into school on the first day wearing my jeans and loafers, looking like a foreign exchange student although I was only from Ohio.
I carried my JanSport backpack while the other girls lugged their books in bright canvas tote bags with the letters ESPRIT on the side. I tied my thick, unruly hair back with a shoelace, feeling out of place because I didn’t have the right color hair or the right clothes.
I needed clothes desperately; I didn’t think to pack warm weather clothes. When I packed for Florida, I was in a fog of grief, not thinking about the heat. Why did I pack jeans, sweaters, and long sleeve shirts? Aunt Priscilla took me shopping at a thrift store and bought me a handful of clothes, old used clothes that reeked of body odor and mothballs. Nothing in style, nothing fashionable, but I couldn’t complain because it would do no good. She didn’t listen to a word I said.
Nervously biting my nails, I kept my head down and let my hair fall in front of my face, trying to hide from the other students and their prying eyes. I sat alone in the cafeteria. Taffy and I qualified for low-income lunch tickets, so we got a free hot lunch every day.
I sometimes saw Taffy in school, but she was always surrounded by a group of hoodlums. I caught a glimpse of her smoking outside with a bunch of guys, standing in the rain. It wasn’t long before she was sneaking out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night to meet these very guys with their slicked back hair and loud cars. I heard her window slide open and I watched her climb out, run across the yard, and then dart behind the palms where she’d get into a dark sports car and not return for hours.
She asked me to buy condoms for her at Eckerd’s, where I began working after Aunt Priscilla insisted I get a job. After I refused to buy Taffy her contraception, she came in and shoplifted while I looked the other way.
Within six months, I feared I was suffering a nervous breakdown. I had not made a single friend; the girls whispered about me and pointed while the boys ignored me. I was doing well in my classes, excelling in math and science. I had a reputation as being weird and a nerd just like how it was back home in Ohio. I bit my nails constantly and when there was no nail left to bite I began gnawing on my fingertips and pulling at my hair.
After one particularly bad day at school, I trudged home in the warm pouring rain to find Aunt Priscilla sprawled out on the couch, cigarette burning in the ashtray, cats treading over her. Empty cans of beer littered the coffee table and a Masters of the Universe cartoon played loudly on the television.
I needed a hint of maternal love. I kept hoping Aunt Priscilla had a soft side buried somewhere and would be able to commiserate with me. My mother sat down at the kitchen table and begged me to tell her about my day. Back then I would roll my eyes and grab a cookie on my way to do my homework in my bedroom, eagerly clamping headphones over my ears so I didn’t hear her. Now, I kept everything to myself except when I wrote letters to David, who was now stationed far away.
“Aunt Priscilla, I hate school. The girls are so mean,” I said in a low voice, taking off my raincoat and draping it over the back of the kitchen chair. My lips were dry and I licked them. Sweat broke out along my hairline as I approached my aunt. I prayed she’d show me some kindness. Some nurturing. I needed to hear that everything would be okay.
“So leave. Drop out. Oh, Jesus,” she moaned from the couch. One of the cats sat on her abdomen twitching its long tail back and forth, eyeing me with disdain. The cigarette was turning to ash as smoke plumed into the air.
“What do you mean, drop out of school? Like, not go back?” I asked. My parents only ever encouraged me to go to school and beyond that, college.
“Screw it. If you hate school so much don’t go back. I dropped out. Look at me, I turned out okay.” She rolled over on her side, knocking the cat off of her. She tucked her feet up and I noticed the underside of them was black. I reminded myself to mop the floor when the weekend rolled around.
Taffy started working at the Winn-Dixie, bagging groceries, stealing cigarettes, and occasionally shoving candy bars in her pockets on the way out. She told me this with a giggle, proud of what she called, “Working the system.”
She handed her paychecks over to her mother, getting a small allowance, which she spent on beer. “For my boyfriend!” she answered when I asked her about it. I didn’t waste my time caring.
I continued to work at Eckerd’s; I got a raise and was promoted in a short time. I opened my own bank account rather than hand my checks over to Aunt Priscilla. I hated Florida. I hated Aunt Priscilla with her yellow teeth and her tight jeans and sequined tops. I hated Taffy who often helped herself to my clothes and shoes without asking; I would pull a shirt on only to find a spot or spill down the front of it, or a broken zipper or button missing from my pants. Everything carried the stench of cigarette smoke and cat piss.
Even though Taffy was underage, Aunt Priscilla let her drink and smoke. She defended Taffy’s right to have sex.
Strange men slept over several times a month. Often I would walk into the kitchen to find some odd man gulping coffee on his way out the door. After a peek into her room I found Aunt Priscilla passed out on top of her bed wearing only a dingy gray pair of u
nderpants, her hair and feet dirty.
During Christmas break I spent time cleaning up the litter boxes and un-polluting the house with bleach and Lysol. I couldn’t open all of the windows because the hot steamy air would only make the house more oppressive. My hair curled and a layer of sweat coated my skin.
I walked four blocks to Steak N’ Shake and bought myself a treat. A hamburger and raspberry crisp with a large ice tea. I strolled over to the bookstore in the drizzle and purchased a couple of paperback novels.
When I got back to the house, I took a cold shower and crawled into bed. Under the abrasive fabric of the sheets, I curled myself into a ball and began to escape into one of the books. The cats came slinking in and curled up on a pile of my dirty laundry, shooting me their usual evil glares.
Merry Christmas to me.
Chapter 5
Past
One year later I had two friends, Nancy and Irene. I was thankful for them because my most persistent feeling had been that of loneliness and it wore me down causing me to feel like I was wearing a dark heavy coat most days. I carried the pain of losing both my parents like a backpack full of stones. I saw their faces everywhere I looked and I mourned my life before coming to Florida. I kept to myself and walked with my head down, not interested in anything but trying to get through high school.
As much as I tried to stay by myself, I kept running into Nancy and Irene. I couldn’t avoid them; we were thrust together at honors meetings and classes. They waved me over to eat with them at lunchtime and we had study period together.
Slowly, I started getting to know both girls until I considered them friends. At Nancy’s house after school I discovered the appeal of Hollywood. With a painful stab, I thought of my mother and wished we were sitting in our kitchen back in Ohio, instead of sitting at Nancy’s table eating our after school snacks.
Nancy’s mother was a hairdresser and subscribed to celebrity magazines and gossip rags. I paged through the issues after they had been read to death in the salon, and I became obsessed with the existence of the rich and famous leading charmed lives. I read People magazine religiously and began paging through the magazine racks when I was at work.
Taffy dropped out of school and left Win-Dixie to start waiting tables at a restaurant in downtown Orlando. Aunt Priscilla continued to work as a cocktail waitress and paraded different men around the house. The house grew smaller by the day, almost as if the walls were slowly closing in on me. I was glad to be at school or work and asked for longer hours so I didn’t have to be home.
I gave up on trying to move out of Aunt Priscilla’s house. I wrote blizzards of letters to my grandmother, my aunts, and Mrs. Van Notti, begging them all to take me in. I wanted nothing more than to go back to my old school and hang out with Rita like the old times.
I yearned for a best friend, but Taffy didn’t fit the bill. She was a whiney brat that smoked way too much and drank and laughed when I told her I didn’t like to party. Taffy brought boys home and they sometimes spent the night. The fights between her and her mother made my heart pound and my chest grow tight as I heard them scream at each other and slam doors. The tension in the house made the muggy air even thicker. Taffy disregarded her curfew and though Aunt Priscilla tried to enforce some rules, Taffy completely ignored them and their battles became weekly occurrences.
Taffy’s partying lifestyle caught up with her quickly, she looked drawn and tired day after day when I came back from school or work. In no time at all she had aged ten years. She lied to her mother about where she was. I didn’t want any part of whatever she was doing and when Aunt Priscilla cornered me, demanding to know what Taffy was doing, I honestly said I didn’t know. “You need to watch out for her,” my aunt told me and I nodded and kept going to school, to work.
I avoided both of them and stayed in my tiny, humid room, dreaming of the day I’d walk out for good.
Nancy, Irene, and I studied together and talked about going to college. Both girls lived with their parents and siblings and had normal lives, the kind I took for granted when my parents were alive. Those girls were lucky to have mothers who made them dinner at night and asked them about school; they had fathers who worked hard and kept the lawns mowed and the weeds pulled. They were encouraged to go on to college while Aunt Priscilla kept telling me I wasn’t college material and I should cut my losses and work full time after graduation.
I plodded through the year, cleaning and cooking while I maintained a high grade point average and worked at Eckerd’s. My busy schedule helped me steer clear of my aunt and my cousin. When they fought, I left the house and went to the library so I could study in peace.
On one rainy afternoon I came home from school to find Aunt Priscilla sitting on the couch with a pink suitcase full of cosmetics in front of her. Perched on the edge of the couch was a well-dressed blonde woman sporting a tight perm wearing a pink suit.
“I’m going to sell Mary Kay,” Aunt Priscilla said proudly. Her smile caught me off guard, usually she was smirking or had her lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure.
The blonde woman turned to me. “Would you like to test our products? I’d be happy to give you a facial. I could give you one right now if you have the time.”
“Oh no, she don’t need that,” Aunt Priscilla said, waving me away with her hand, which, for once, wasn’t holding anything burning or with an alcohol content.
“No thanks,” I answered, giving the woman a tight smile. “Too much homework.”
I went to my bedroom and closed the door quietly. From under my bed, I hauled out the suitcase containing my parent’s belongings. I looked through the photos, held the blanket and the worn bible to my chest.
Finally, after working for months without a break, I saved enough cash to get a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. It was really going to happen. I pulled out my magazines and slowly paged through them, re-reading each word, taking it all in, as if for the first time. I saved every single celebrity magazine that Nancy’s mother had given me.
Hollywood.
The word seemed to offer a better way of life, a chance, and so many possibilities. The magazines were full of sunny, smiling celebrities hiking through Topanga Canyon, eating at fancy Melrose restaurants, shopping on Robertson Boulevard, at Fred Segal, and frolicking on Malibu beaches. I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to leave the humidity and the dark and the clouds and rain and go to a place where the sun didn’t stop shining.
I didn’t think my aunt or Taffy had any idea that I was going to leave. I knew that Taffy helped herself to my magazines when I was at school, but I doubted she put it together and realized I planned on leaving Florida for California. I returned home to see that my neat stacks of magazines were tossed in a messy pile and the corners were folded back, grease spots dotting the pages from her oily fingers. When confronted, she shrugged and said, “So what? Who cares? It’s a magazine, big deal!” It wasn’t worth arguing, soon I'd be gone.
Irene and Nancy were busy sending in college applications while I sat quietly and bit my nails, dreaming of a better life. College wasn’t an option for me; there was no way I could pay for it. All I knew was that I had to leave Florida; I had to get away from Aunt Priscilla and Taffy before I was sucked into their life of night clubs and strange men.
I gained thirty pounds in the time I lived in Orlando. I was chubby, too big for most of my clothes. I most frequently wore stretch pants with an elastic waistband and shoved my feet into flip flops. A steady diet of white bread, candy bars, and pasta didn’t help. I wondered how Aunt Priscilla and Taffy managed to stay so skinny. I imagined Rita telling me that I was eating my feelings, giving me advice from the magazines she loved. She would be right. My life sucked and though I dreamed of my parents and my life in Ohio, there was nothing I could do to get that back. I was frustrated and depressed; the only comfort was something sweet or greasy, quickly eaten before my aunt or Taffy could grab what was mine.
Aunt Priscilla was determined to drive
a pink Cadillac before the year was over. I watched as she got dressed up each afternoon, putting on her sea foam green suit with the wide lapels, carrying her pink case of cosmetics. She marched up and down the palm tree lined streets trying to sell her goods and when she wasn’t successful, which was more often than not, she stormed in, throwing her case to the side, kicking off her shoes, and settled down with a bottle of cheap vodka, drinking until she passed out.
She asked me to rub her feet once, wiggling her fat toes in front of my face. “I ain’t cut out for walking all afternoon. Shit, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Rub my feet for me. Rub them!” she commanded, glaring at me, waiting. My stomach rolled over as I took her dirty feet in my clean hands and tried not to vomit.
When the temperature reached over 100 degrees outside, Taffy and Aunt Priscilla strutted around the house wearing nothing but their gray bras with stretched elastic straps and cut off shorts. They sprawled out on the couch, sharing a beer and a cigarette, calling out to me, “Delia, get me somethin’ cold to drink. Delia, did you change the litter boxes? Delia, get me some chips.” On and on it went.
I couldn’t for the life of me, imagine my mother laying around in her bra and cut off shorts, commanding me to do anything. I thought of her sweet voice, her soft skin, and her clean kitchen welcoming friends in for a home cooked meal. I cried onto my pillow even though enough time had passed that I could make it through the day without breaking into tears. Nights were different; I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Long letters to my brother went unanswered. Rita rarely wrote me back.
Before long, Taffy got pregnant. I wasn’t surprised; in fact, I thought it would have happened sooner. She didn’t know who the father was and shrugged when I asked. Heck, she didn’t even know the identity of her own father. I knew without a doubt this was my time to leave. I needed to make an exit before there was a baby in the house.