thanksgiving road trip
Every Thanksgiving they drove eleven hours to Stepmother’s parents’ house in West Virginia—four people and one dog stuffed into a small station wagon. No matter where they went, the driving experience was always the same. The children and the dog always shared the back seat, the dog’s tail slapping the face of one child as she tried to lick the other’s face. Eventually they’d push the dog down to the footwell, and one of the siblings would place their hand flat on the seat in the middle. “Put your hand on my hand,” they chanted over and over as they layered their hands one on top of the other. “Put your hand on my hand.” The person on the bottom would slide their hand out and slap the top of the other person’s hand, but not too hard, because the hand that got slapped was owned by the person whose hand was now in the bottom and whose turn it now was to retaliate. Their parents begged the children not to play this game, because it always ended in a midair slap fight, and the children always played it anyway. Girl got carsick when she read in the car, and the drive was long and boring.
Stepmother always drove, and Mother’s job was to read the map. Whenever Stepmother came to a new town or highway intersection, Mother would hold the map six inches from her face, her arms spread wide so the windshield was blocked on the passenger’s side.
“Judy! Judy!” Stepmother would yell. “Where am I supposed to turn? Left, did you say left?” Always loud, always angry. “Seventy-six? Judy, am I supposed to turn onto seventy-six?” She didn’t ever ask politely, or quietly. She treated Mother, the person Girl loved most in the entire world, like she was an idiot, a servant, a child. She yelled and spluttered as Mother tried to read the map and mollify her at the same time.
“I don’t know … I’m looking … I can’t find it … wait … just pull over a minute …”
The silent daughter, the good child that never made any trouble, looked out the window with narrowed eyes. Girl squeezed her arms so tightly that her elbows hurt from trying to keep everything in. Don’t you talk to my mother like that, she imagined saying. She didn’t know why Mother let Stepmother treat her this way. Her fists ached with the desire to punch something. Who was she fooling? Hitting Stepmother would be as useless as trying to scream in dreams.
Stepmother had been adopted by Claude and Libby when she was two. Before that, she went from family to family in foster care. Multiple potential parents returned her to the system because she sang herself to sleep every night. This was why Stepmother was so afraid the people she loved would leave. “I have abandonment issues,” Stepmother told her over and over. Claude and Libby went to the agency looking for a newborn boy, but left with a two-year-old girl because Baby Stepmother ran up to them and called them “Mama” and “Daddy,” and Libby could not leave this precious creature behind. On the train ride home, Baby Stepmother went up to every woman and called her “Mama” and every man and called him “Daddy.” Libby told Girl, “I felt like I had been swindled.”
Claude was a Methodist minister, and Stepmother wanted to be one, too, if only she had been born a boy. Her father wouldn’t let her use the good tools because she was a girl, or because she was reckless and refused to follow directions, depending on whom you asked. She was only allowed to play half-court basketball, because females had different rules for everything. Her mother beat her with a switch until she bled when she didn’t practice piano. Stepmother swore that she would never hurt a child like that.
Stepmother had a sister, five years younger. Once her parents gave up on conceiving and adopted Baby Stepmother, her mother became fertile and gave birth to a sickly child. Stepmother chased her younger sister around with a butcher knife once, and another time she threw an axe at her sister’s head. Their mother tried her best to keep the two girls apart as much as possible. Stepmother laughed and laughed when she told Girl and Brother these stories.
Stepmother didn’t seem to like her parents very much, and Girl was intimidated by their stiff, formal demeanor. The grandparents didn’t like that Stepmother was gay, but they still invited them for Thanksgiving every year, and bought Girl wonderful presents that were always exactly what Girl wanted: baby doll dresses, or plastic horses, or coral-colored nail polish, depending on the year. Grandmother also yelled at Stepmother for inexplicable things. “Did you squeeze this bread?” she asked Girl. Girl shook her head. “Your stepmother must be up to her old bread-squeezing tricks again!” Girl knew it was unlikely that Stepmother had snuck into the kitchen and squeezed the loaf of bread, but she liked seeing someone yell at Stepmother, so she nodded her head.
Every time they visited the grandparents, the family had to go to church on Sunday and listen to Grandfather preach. Girl hated church—it was always cold and her dress was always scratchy and it went on forever. The last time they visited, Grandmother pulled Stepmother aside.
“I hope you are happy. Your father is upstairs writing his resignation letter. He’s quitting the church.”
“Why is Daddy quitting?” Stepmother asked.
“Because you are wearing a wedding ring, and everyone knows you aren’t married, and he doesn’t want to explain to the congregation that you are married to a woman.”
“Tell him not to quit the church, Mother. We’ll leave before the service.” They didn’t go back for Thanksgiving for seven years. From then on, they had Thanksgiving with just the four of them around the dining room table, or at Coco’s Carousel restaurant with a few friends. Someday, Girl told herself, she was going to marry someone with a big family and have Thanksgiving with cousins and aunts and uncles—so many people that they needed a kids’ table in one room and more than one kind of pie.
seneca army depot
Mother was born in 1944 and grew up practicing duck-and-cover drills at school.
“There was a lot of talk in the neighborhood about building bomb shelters in your backyard,” she told Girl.
“Did you build one?” Girl asked.
“My parents talked a lot about it, but decided not to. Their reasoning was that if you were in your bomb shelter and a neighbor came, you couldn’t let them in, because they could bring radiation in with them or eat your food and then your family wouldn’t have enough left to live on until it was safe again many months later. Some people were buying guns in case they had to shoot someone that tried to get into their bomb shelter. My father said that he could not refuse a neighbor, and if it came down to it, he’d rather they all died together than have to shoot a friend who tried to come in.”
Girl and her family watched the news together every night, even though Girl thought it was boring. Brother and Girl played somewhat quietly with Barbie dolls and Star Wars figures on the living room rug. They liked to be near their parents, and their parents liked them to pay attention when important topics came on. In the summer of 1983 a group of fifty-four women set up a tent city they called a “peace encampment” outside of the Seneca Army Depot because it was rumored that the army stored nuclear weapons there. The women were arrested in a peaceful protest and garnered national attention. A group from the family’s church, First Unitarian Universalist of Rochester, planned a trip to participate in the protest, so Mother and Stepmother decided their family would join them.
“Now, listen up, kids,” Stepmother said. She was driving the family an hour south to Romulus, New York, where the base was located. “There will be soldiers there with guns. It might be a little scary. We aren’t going to cross the line. It is only dangerous if you cross the line.”
“What line?” Girl asked.
“There’s a line painted on the pavement, dividing public property from the military base.”
“Oh. Will people tie themselves to the fence again?” A few women had been arrested for tying themselves to the fence surrounding the base and refusing to leave. It sounded like an uncomfortable way to protest, but Girl kind of wanted to see someone do it so she understood how it worked. Did they use handcuffs or bandanas?
“I’m not sure,” Stepmother answere
d. “Maybe. We’ll see. But we won’t tie ourselves to the fence, even if some of them do. We are just going to sing songs. Do you remember the words to ‘We Shall Overcome’?”
“Yeah,” Girl said, and went back to looking out the window while her parents started singing. Girl was in fourth grade, and dreaming about boys and what dog she might get someday was way more interesting than protests, unless people were going to tie themselves to fences, of course, but there was no guarantee of that this evening.
“Lock your door,” Stepmother said. “This is a town full of rednecks. Look at all the American flags.” They had exited the freeway and were driving through the town outside the base. Stepmother didn’t trust people who flew American flags. She said that they were racists and homophobes. Girl wanted to defend the flag—they made her recite the pledge at school, after all, so she didn’t see how flying it made you a redneck—but she didn’t want to risk being wrong about it. She also didn’t want to be beaten up for having gay parents.
Dark was just creeping into the sky when the family pulled into the grass field next to the peace encampment and parked. Kitsy was there, a woman from church Girl really liked. Kitsy had shoulder-length, chestnut-colored hair and an impish look to her face. She was overweight, like Girl’s parents, but feminine and stylish, wearing long skirts and tall boots and many colored scarves. Kitsy liked children, and they gravitated to her. Kitsy had been to the peace encampment before, so she led the family over to the gathering and introduced them around.
There was a white line painted across the road to the base, as promised, and on the other side were soldiers wearing green fatigues and helmets, just like on M*A*S*H or Hogan’s Heroes, two of Girl’s favorite shows. No one was tied to the fence, but there were a few tattered ribbons from previous protests still waving in the evening breeze. Some of the women from the peace encampment had started a small campfire, and people were gathering around it. As night fell, the protesters became dark shapes with firelit faces, even their hair melting into obscurity, no longer people but only floating, glowing faces—a congregation of bald, singing ovals in smoldering hues of yellow and orange. Mother’s glasses reflected the dancing tongues of fire, and Girl could no longer see her eyes. The air was cool and the grass was wet, and the sky so black, with lots of stars shining cold and distant on Girl. The voices, mostly female, sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Give Peace a Chance.”
Stepmother sang protest and activist songs at coffeehouses and folk festivals, so Girl knew all of the songs already from listening to her practice over and over at home. Everyone said that Stepmother had a great voice. Girl recognized that her stepmother’s singing was on key but thought that her inflection was hoity-toity and pretentious. It didn’t seem natural, like when Mother sang. Girl was glad she was standing next to Mother, who had a deep voice for a woman—she was loud and strong and could find the lower octave all by herself. Girl could only sing on key if she stood close to someone else who could find the notes for her.
After a while Kitsy came up to talk to Girl. At nine years old, Girl was the youngest person there. Girl had hoped there would be more kids, but it was all various sizes and shapes of grown-ups, women outnumbering men thirty to one. A man would have to be very sure of himself to come here, Girl thought. She didn’t wonder how Brother felt, though—it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.
“Do you want to take a rose with me across the line to the MPs?” Kitsy asked.
Girl didn’t know that MP stood for Military Police, to her it was a word that just meant army guy. Emmpee. It sounded like a rank, like corporal or private or something, but Girl didn’t know what, and she didn’t want to admit her ignorance by asking.
“Let me ask my mother,” Girl told her. Kitsy followed her over to where Mother and Stepmother were standing. Kitsy explained her plan to cross the line, and how as the youngest child there, Girl could make the largest impact on the soldiers.
“Girl, do you want to go with Kitsy?” Mother asked. Girl nodded. “Okay, but when they tell you to cross the line, you have to do it right away. Just walk up, give them the flower, and come right back. They can shoot you if you don’t cross the line when they tell you to.”
Did Mother really warn her daughter that the soldiers might shoot her? Or did she say arrest and instead Girl remembered it as shoot? Was Mother merely trying to ensure that her daughter came right back? If she thought Girl might get shot, why did she let her cross the line? Mother was alive during the Kent State massacre and an active protester in the sixties and seventies. She knew sometimes things went wrong at peace rallies.
Kitsy held Girl’s hand and they stepped across the white stripe on the pavement. It was only as wide as the yellow stripe down the middle of Girl’s street back at home. They passed a tall fence topped with barbed wire. Behind it lay coils of razor wire almost as tall as Girl was. There were four men standing at the gate holding their rifles across their chests, one hand on the stock, the other hand on the barrel. They were tall, clean-shaven, and mean-looking. Girl didn’t realize that they were young, too, not much older than teenagers, and likely as scared as she was. Her hands shook.
“Don’t worry,” Kitsy whispered. “I’ll do all the talking. All you do is hand them the rose. I will say, ‘we give you this rose as a sign of peace,’ and then we will walk back over the line. Don’t worry. They won’t shoot a little girl. If they shoot anyone, it will be me.”
Girl quavered a little, but she clutched Kitsy’s hand and held her breath when they got close to the guardhouse. She was glad that she didn’t have to talk. The drab green men loomed over Girl like evil trees from a fairy tale, except they had machine guns.
“Get back over the line!” one of them called, and Kitsy and Girl stopped walking.
“We just want to give you a rose,” Kitsy said firmly, not sounding even a little bit scared. “Can we approach?”
The men talked among themselves for a few seconds, then one of them called out again, “Okay, but then you must turn and leave immediately.” Girl couldn’t tell if it was the same man who had spoken before. They all looked and sounded the same to her, with growling, angry voices.
The legs of Girl’s size-nine-slim jeans whisked against each other as she continued her forward walk, the tsk-tsk louder in her ears than the crickets—or were they locusts? Girl could never remember. Her sneakers were the exact color of raspberry bubblegum, jarringly childlike against the dull, gray road. The floodlights stripped Girl’s shadow and made it trail behind so she didn’t even have that dark specter-child for comfort. She was glad Kitsy held her hand so tightly. There wasn’t enough room between their palms to feel any dampness.
When they got within a few feet of the MPs, Kitsy nodded to Girl. It was too late to say, “This is too much for me.” Girl didn’t look back at the crowd of protesters, but she knew they were watching. She held the white, long-stem rose out to the closest soldier, glad she didn’t have to speak, and proud that her arm didn’t quiver.
“We give you this rose as a sign of peace,” Kitsy said, just as she had planned. Later, Kitsy became a minister, and the profession suited her perfectly. She was meant to give roses to soldiers and hold the hands of scared children.
The MP took the stem from Girl’s outstretched hand. “You have thirty seconds to get back across the line or we have orders to shoot,” he said. He didn’t smile or acknowledge the gift in any way. Girl’s youth hadn’t cracked his composure in the least—no thank you, or even a hint of movement at the edges of his mouth.
Kitsy and Girl turned and walked back across the line as quickly as they could and still appear dignified. If Kitsy hadn’t held Girl’s hand so firmly, Girl would have run, her bubblegum shoes slapping the pavement. She wouldn’t have looked back until she found Mother, but Kitsy didn’t let go and Girl didn’t run. Girl wondered what she could have done differently to have made her brave, useless gesture matter to those olive-green, unsmiling men. If
she had cried and let herself look like a scared child instead of trying so hard to be a perfect, small-scale adult, if she hadn’t tied her shoes so tightly, and one had come undone, maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe one of the soldiers would have bent down to tie it.
The rest of the night was uneventful, just more singing of songs and holding candles. Girl waited until she was in the back seat of the car to cry in the dark, where no one could see her. The MP’s face was so hard-looking as he took the rose, as if he would have been just fine with shooting Girl. Girl didn’t say anything to Mother, though, because Girl had said she wanted to go with Kitsy, and had even been proud to be the one chosen. Girl looked out the window as they drove home, but instead of seeing the dark countryside roll by, she saw only orange faces of flame and stoic men holding guns.
the downhill slide
Girl had been given a diary for her birthday. It was brown fake leather with a tiny, gold lock and key. That was the crucial part of the diary—the lock. Here she could write all her secrets down in her messy, left-handed handwriting, her hair tickling the side of her face as she bent over her desk. Like many gifts, it was a slight disappointment—she wished it were pink or purple or a more girly color, but the gold lettering on the front made up for it. My Diary, it said in block letters, and when she ran her fingernail over the letters she could feel how they were slightly raised. Gold leaf, she decided, and that meant it was expensive, and everyone knew expensive was better. The edges of the pages were gold, too, and it had a red satin ribbon sewn in to mark your place.
She listed the boys she liked, turned the page, and wrote “Dirty Words” at the top of the next page, followed by a list of every bad word she knew: boobs, tits, shit, vulva. She wrote in her third-grade penmanship that she wished she was prettier, like the other girls at school. Her handwriting always looked like a boy’s, but it wasn’t her fault, she was left-handed, and she wrote with her elbow sticking straight out and her wrist curled into a half circle that made her hand ache and the other kids laugh at her. Still, she liked being left-handed. It made her special, and her long-dead uncle had been left-handed, and Brother was only right-handed like everyone else. All the teachers told her it meant she was creative. Girl didn’t put much stock in that, though. She knew she wasn’t creative—she couldn’t draw or paint—she was just a little bit weird. She wasn’t as weird as Brother, but she was odd enough not to watch the right TV shows or own the right clothes. She paused to think what else to write, but her hand hurt and writing was so boring and took forever so she closed her diary and locked it and went out to play.
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