Percy and Vickie brought Lydia over just about every day so we could play with her and The Colonel could get his baby fix. He said that a day without some Lydia sugar just wasn’t worth living. I don’t recall his ever behaving that way over his own children.
And Ma’am continued to say, from across the room, how cute the baby was.
Colonel Tom adored Lydia and admired Vickie, but he continued to intimidate and belittle Percy. Every chance he got, he’d criticize him and point out his screw-ups: his squandering his education; his forced marriage; his hair; his tattoos; his profession. We hated The Colonel for it, but after so many years, we had all gotten used to it. Hearing The Colonel brow-beat Percy was just a part of our lives. Sad, but true.
One day Percy was sitting on the sofa with his elbows resting on his knees and his eyes trained on the floor, as usual.
Without looking up, he said, “Colonel Tom, I’ve never understood the pleasure you get out of criticizing me, but, apparently, it’s something you just have to do. But I can’t allow you to talk to me that way in front of my daughter.”
The room fell silent and Colonel Tom’s face went ashen as Percy continued.
“Lydia is too little to understand now, but soon she will know what you are saying to me. You may not think me a man, but I have to be a man for my little girl. So you will have to treat me with respect so that my daughter will learn to respect me. And one more thing: do not ever take the Lord’s name in vain in front of Lydia.”
And still without looking at our father, Percy stood, walked over and took Lydia from The Colonel’s arms and said, “Time to go home, Vickie.”
After they left, we all went about our usual business—all except The Colonel. He continued to sit in his chair with a blank stare on his face. The sun went down and the room got dark. He didn’t turn on a light but just sat silently in the dark living room until it was time for bed. When the time came, he stood, didn’t say a word, climbed the back stairs to his bedroom, and closed the door. I was hopeful that Percy had struck a nerve in our father that day, that he was truly remorseful for his years of abominable treatment of his son, and that we would see a changed man.
Twenty-one
“How do you put up with it, Percy?”
“What choice do I have?”
“You could stay away from him.”
“Sis, I love you and Ma’am and Oops, and I can’t stay away from y’all. It’s a package deal. If I want to see y’all—and I do—I have to see him, too.”
“How can you respect him?”
“I never said I respected him, Sis. I don’t respect him at all. How could I respect the man who abuses our mother? I’ve wanted to ask him why a grown man gets pleasure out of hitting a little girl, but, if I did, he’d kick my ass from here to next week. And he’d still hit our mother.”
“But, Sis, I do honor him because he’s my father. And I am grateful that he went to work every day to put a roof over my head and fed and clothed me when I was too little to do that for myself. And that’s more than a lot of fathers do for their families.”
“We probably would have been better off if he had given us to someone else.”
“Maybe you’re right. But Colonel Tom didn’t give us away; he chose to take care of us himself—in his own way.”
“Percy?”
“Huh?”
“Why didn’t you just do what he wanted you to do?”
“You mean, why didn’t I be what he wanted me to be?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Even if I had been what I thought he wanted me to be, there was no guaranty that he was going to like me, that he was going to treat me any better than he did. God knows I wanted him to like me, but it was more important that I like me. And if I had buckled, I wouldn’t have liked me at all.”
“And, Sis, I have to believe that he respects me for being my own man. I just have to believe that.”
Twenty-two
Suzanne and Mary Sue were hopping up and down on the porch when I opened the door. They had their acceptance letters to Meriwether in their hands. They were going to be college roommates. I was not. I probably could have gotten a scholarship to Meriwether, but The Colonel would have none of it. I was going to the University, and that was final. No daughter of his was going to some hotsy-totsy private girls’ school. We were University people. Never mind that Ma’am went to a private school from the time she started junior high. Perhaps that’s the very reason I wasn’t going to a private school.
But I think the primary reason that I was going to the University was Colonel Tom’s need to be in control, and he wanted me right under his nose where he could keep an eye on me. He had agreed to let me live in the dorm on campus—which was very near our house—but I had to promise to pay a family visit each weekend. Why, I don’t know, since he paid no attention to my whereabouts when I was actually a resident in his home.
When it came time to leave home for college, Suzanne and Mary Sue helped pack their family cars, and off they went to be roommates at that hotsy-totsy private girls’ school. I, on the other hand, gathered my belongings, and, with Percy’s help, toted them across campus in our old Red Flyer wagon. It was not the way I had envisioned my first day of college.
I had been assigned a roommate from Chicago, and we had never met, except through letters we had exchanged over the summer. I was not prepared for Erika. She and her mother were already in our dorm room when Percy and I got there. Erika’s mother was a big-boned woman with large, stiff bleached blonde hair, and she was barking orders at Erika as we walked through the door. Mrs. Polatka—that would be Erika’s mother—ignored us as she hung curtains at our window and made up Erika’s bed with a bedspread that matched the curtains.
“Hi, Roomie, I’m Erika. That’s my ma over there, directing the program,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Mrs. Polatka gave us a bored wave of her hand, and Percy and I set about getting me settled in the small part of the room that Mrs. Polatka had left for me. I didn’t have a bedspread that matched our curtains, but I made my bed as presentable as I could with what I had and put my clothes in the few remaining drawers. When we had done all that we needed to do to get settled in, Percy gave me a hug and said that he needed to get the wagon back to the house in case The Colonel needed to take a ride.
Although Erika knew that my name was Lydia, she’d heard Percy calling me Sis. By the time Percy had left our room, Erika was calling me Sis, too. Guess after eighteen years of being called Sis, I had just grown into the name and looked like a Sis, instead of a Lydia. I figured I might as well just accept it and embrace it.
Hours later, when Mrs. Polatka had finally lined up Erika’s toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and brush on the bathroom counter and could find absolutely nothing else to direct, she reluctantly left us alone.
She had barely cleared our door when Erika collapsed on her bed and bellowed, “Holy crap, I thought she’d never get the hell outta here! Can you believe I’ve put up with that shit for eighteen years? I need a goddamn fag!”
With that she whipped out a pack of Winstons and lit up.
And that’s how my college career began.
The first night that Erika and I spent as roommates wore me out. She talked non-stop, filling me in on her exciting life in Chicago before she was banished here to Hicksville. She told me that she had started smoking at eleven when her older brother had encouraged her to smoke with him so she wouldn’t be able to tattle on him to their parents. Likewise, she started drinking beer with the same brother at thirteen. She lost her virginity at fifteen—thank god, not to her brother, but to one of her brother’s best friends. The older she got, the more tawdry her life became. I’m sure she thought she was shocking the hell out of this little old girl from Hicksville.
While she was spewing obscenities and blowing smoke rings in my face, I thought, “Erika, I could stop you in your tracks if I told you that my first boyfriend was a homosexual and that I had caught him kissing a boy.”
But I didn’t want to one-up her badly enough to betray Jeremy.
Well after midnight when Erika finally ran out of stories and steam, she passed out from exhaustion. I crawled between the clean sheets of my new bed and slept peacefully, with no sounds of thuds and muffled crying.
I awoke the following morning with a smile on my face, eager to start my new life. We were scheduled for a full day of orientation, and we needed to shower and hurry to breakfast so we wouldn’t be late. I tried to arouse Erika, but she wouldn’t budge.
I thought, “Oh, my god, she has talked herself to death.”
Just when I had decided that Erika had truly died in her sleep and was trying to figure out whom to tell, she rolled over, squinted one eye open and said, “Wha’ th’ hell?”
It didn’t take long to discover that this was the way Erika woke up every morning.
After showering and dressing, we joined the rest of the incoming freshman for breakfast in the dining hall. We ate our meals cafeteria style, and there were wondrous breakfast foods for as far as the eye could see. We could have eggs or bacon or sausage or toast or grits or pancakes or oatmeal or juice, or we could have all of that, if we wanted. And I wanted! Erika complained about the rubbery eggs, the limp bacon, the cold toast, the lumpy oatmeal. I thought everything was delicious! After eating Ma’am’s food for eighteen years, this was fine dining. I would go on to gain the freshman fifteen on this fine dining.
When Erika finally dragged me from the breakfast table—I carried a few extra strips of bacon along with me, wrapped in my napkin—we headed for the room where our orientation was to start. My extended breakfast had caused us to be late, and our orientation leader had already begun speaking.
We tried to sneak in the door, but we attracted our leader’s attention, and he looked in our direction. And then he smiled. Oh, god, did he smile. Erika gasped and poked me in the ribs, but all I could do was stare at that smile.
He said, “Come in and find a seat, ladies. We’ve just begun, and you haven’t missed a thing. I’m your orientation leader, your big brother, so to speak. My name is Garth Brooks.”
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s funny now. Back then, though, he was the only one, and it wasn’t at all amusing. But get this: Garth is his mother’s maiden name, and, you guessed it, her name is Jenny—Jenny Garth. Once again, neither was that funny back then since she was the only one.
None of us got much out of our orientation class because we were sighing too loudly to hear a word Garth was saying. He had told us that he was our big brother—so to speak—but none of us girls wanted him for a brother. He was gorgeous and funny and flirty, and every one of us would have died for his attention.
But my roommate, Erika, laid claim to him. And something told me that I didn’t want to mess with Erika. After a full day of learning all we needed to know about being freshmen, we headed back to my beloved dining hall. Once again, there was an array of foods—only this time dinner foods. I couldn’t decide between the spaghetti or fried chicken, so I had a little of each, along with a some mashed potatoes and cornbread and a few desserts. Only one day into college, and my slacks were already feeling snug.
All through dinner and our walk back to the dorm, Erika chattered endlessly about Garth and how wonderful it was going to be once they began dating. And I didn’t doubt for one minute that they would begin dating. Erika was adorable—a petite brunette who knew how to use her big black eyes.
As we walked into our room, our phone began to ring. Erika ran to answer it.
“Hello? Well, hi, Garth. This is a pleasant surprise.” Then she put her hand over the receiver, grinned broadly, and did a little dance. Once she’d composed herself, she said, “Is there something you forgot to tell me in orientation? Huh? Who? You mean Sis? Well, okay. Hold on.”
With that she clenched her jaw, flared her nostrils, squinted her eyes, and shoved the phone into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. Then she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her so hard our window rattled.
Catching my breath I said, “Hello?”
“Hey, what time are we meeting in the dining hall tomorrow night?”
I said, “I didn’t realize we were meeting in the dining hall tomorrow night?”
And I was hooked just as soon as Garth replied, “But how are we going to make plans for our Saturday night date if we don’t meet for dinner tomorrow night to discuss it?”
And I giggled! I hated giggly girls. But I giggled at Garth! I was furious with myself, but I couldn’t help it. Once I’d composed myself, I agreed to meet him the following night for our date-planning session. Just as I was hanging up the phone, Erika stormed back into the room.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“Well, Garth called to ask me out.”
“How can you do that to me? You knew I had plans!”
“But, Erika, I didn’t call him. He called me. Did you expect me to say, ‘I can’t go out with you because Erika has dibs.’?”
“Hell, no, but you could have turned him down.”
“Yeah, fat chance of that!”
Then she went into a pout that lasted for about a week, but I didn’t care. I was too preoccupied with my thoughts of Garth to notice Erika.
The following day was devoted to class assignments, gym locker assignments, mail box assignments, library card assignments. And each assignment required a wait in a very long line. But it gave me time to meet some of the other freshmen and make new friends, since my roommate was no longer speaking to me.
Twenty-three
Garth was waiting outside the dining hall when I arrived for our date to plan our first date. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and one foot crossed over the other—a very provocative pose. He was tall—a little over six feet, I guessed—and his shaggy, blonde hair hung seductively to his beautiful, sky-blue eyes. He was surrounded by freshman girls, and he was flashing his melt-in-your-mouth grin at them—until he saw me approach. Our eyes locked, and he walked right through that sea of freshman girls toward me. Without a word he offered his arm and escorted me into the cafeteria line.
Most girls would have gotten a salad and glass of water, so her date wouldn’t think she was a glutton. Not me! I didn’t care what Garth thought of my eating habits. I had discovered the mother lode of food, and nothing was going to stop me from sampling it to the fullest. I piled on meat, potatoes, breads, desserts—as much as I could cram on my plate. Garth laughed when the food kept sliding off and I kept pushing it back on.
After we were seated, I explained that my mother was not a cook. He said that I should enjoy it now because he was certain I’d soon tire of it. I couldn’t see that happening, but I didn’t argue with him. He also told me that he didn’t trust girls who tried to impress guys by ordering salad and water. He thought they were phony. See there?
The whole time we were eating, Garth kept staring at my mouth. I thought he just liked watching people chew, but it made me self-conscious.
Finally I said, “You keep staring at my mouth. Do I have something between my teeth.”
That’s when Garth told me that he was planning to go to dental school and that he was mesmerized by my big, white, beautiful teeth. He wanted to know how long I’d had to wear braces to get my teeth so perfect.
And for the first time in my life I was delighted to say, “I didn’t need braces. I was born with these perfect teeth.”
So I got used to Garth’s not looking me in the eye when I talked. He always looked me in the teeth. When my mouth was shut, he’d remind me to smile. Pretty soon, I was walking around with a perpetual goofy grin on my face.
We were a hot item right from the start. Garth met me after classes, and we ate three meals a day together. We studied together during the week, and we played together every weekend. Soon he was visiting my family.
We didn’t have many friends because Garth said he loved me so much he just didn’t want to share me wi
th anyone else. Mayday! Mayday! But I was so starry eyed over the gorgeous, funny, flirty senior, that I was flattered by his devotion and attention. I loved being his everything, and it made me feel so good, knowing that I had the power to make someone so happy.
Occasionally, on weekends Garth would take me to a party at his fraternity house. We would stand in a horde of his teeth-clenching frat brothers while Garth draped his arm around my shoulders, protectively. He would nurse a beer while I longed for a beer but drank a Coke instead. I had acquired a taste for beer in high school—thanks to Suzanne—but Garth forbade my drinking since I was underage. While I listened to Garth’s boring frat brothers drone, I watched my friends dance and laugh. I longed to be on the dance floor with them, but Garth said that he just wasn’t much for dancing. So I reveled in his protectiveness and convinced myself that dancing wasn’t important.
Once my suitemates asked me to join them for pizza and a movie.
When I told Garth, he said, “Now, you’ve spoiled the surprise!”
“What surprise?” I asked.
“Well, if I told you that, the whole thing would be spoiled. So far, you’ve only spoiled the fact that I’ve planned a surprise.”
I found myself apologizing and begging Garth to forgive my spoiling his big surprise. And, of course, I declined my suitemates’ invitation for pizza and a movie.
All week long I prodded Garth for hints about my surprise. When Friday arrived, I was beside myself with excitement. For my surprise Garth took me to his frat house rec room where we watched an old black and white Humphrey Bogart movie. Garth drank a beer while I sipped a Coke. I kept waiting for the big part of the surprise, but it never came. The movie was it. We were halfway through the evening before I realized there was no surprise at all. Garth just didn’t want me spending time with anyone but him.
Getting the Important Things Right Page 10