The issue of the deportment belt is simply another in a long line of grievances I have with my mother. Mum and I don’t get on well these days. We are always arguing. I can’t do anything right. I am growing up. I have my own opinion on many things, but Mum doesn’t want to know, or care, about what I think.
I think back on a prime example from a couple of weeks ago. I was given my first dance solo on pointe and asked to perform it at a gala concert. I was Anne Boleyn and dressed head to toe in black as I danced around the stage interpreting Anne Boleyn’s last days in the Tower of London. I wore a suitably woeful expression on my face as I held a bible and prayed while I danced. The performance concluded with me on my knees front and center on the stage with the bible clutched to my chest. As the last note of the music played, I abruptly let my head fall forward, symbolizing Anne Boleyn’s ultimate beheading. My performance garnered appreciative applause from the audience, and I left the stage thinking that I had interpreted the role well, and that I had captured the drama of that last moment of Anne Boleyn’s life. My self-satisfaction was short-lived as my mother came to me in the dressing room and chastised me.
“You didnae smile once!”
I knew then that there are things I will do in life that my parents will never understand, things that their less-educated minds can never comprehend. One thing I do comprehend is that the older I become, the greater the rift between us grows, and the more the rift widens, the greater my desire to leave home.
I go down for my tea. An awful smell hits me as I enter the kitchen and on seeing Brussels sprouts on the dinner plate left for me, I automatically say, “Yuck!” I announce to Mum, “I’m not eating the Brussels sprouts.”
“Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice!”
Tone of voice? I simply stated a fact; I didn’t raise my voice or anything. She is making a fuss over nothing.
“If you don’t like my cooking, you can get out of here. Miss high and mighty now you have a bloomin’ blue belt.”
Mum’s words make me mad and I dramatically respond, “Fine! I am leaving this house and never coming back!” I support my statement by getting my coat and shoulder bag from the hall, opening the front door, and stepping outside. To accent my leaving, I slam the door behind me, making its glass tremble at the shock. I shall run away. Again. We’ll see how sorry Mum is when I don’t come back and she starts worrying about me.
This isn’t the first time I have run away after arguing with Mum. I do it every now and then: not for too long of course, and always when my dad is away as he is the one person I fear will punish me for being bad.
It is just after six o’ clock in the evening. It is still daylight out so I walk down Penhale Road, which takes me to the main street of Fratton Road, where I wander aimlessly up and down the street, even though the shops close at five o’clock and there is not much to do or see at this time. I purposefully stride along the cement-slabbed pavement, pretending to anyone who sees me that I am going somewhere, even though I am simply walking up and down the streets, biding my time, making a point. Once I think I have been away from home long enough so that my point is made, and that Mum will be suitably contrite after her mean behavior and worried if I am all right, I go back home, my way of showing my forgiveness of my mother.
However, tonight, unknown to me, Dad comes home while I am “running away.” I return to the house ready for my mother’s apology and contrite expression. I close the front door, step into the hallway, and immediately hear voices in the living room. I hear my father talking to my mother. Instantly I recognize my misstep. My father’s anger always results in hurt; more often these days it’s a beating with his belt or hand rather than being sent to the corner. There is a momentary glint of hope that he will understand my side, have some compassion for me having to deal with my mother’s berating comments. But as soon as he appears in the hallway, the momentary glint of hope runs away, leaving me to deal with my father’s anger alone.
To say Dad is angry is an understatement. He yells at me because how dare I be so disrespectful to my mother. How dare I talk back! How dare I stand up for myself, try to explain my position, believe I have any rights in this house! My father is ready for me. I get the belt. Even though I am now the same height as my father, I cannot escape the punishment as he is so much stronger than I am and his iron hand holds me tight at the wrist as the leather whacks against my behind, each painful blow causing me to cry out so I can barely hear my father’s words above my own crying. Between each slap of the belt he shouts.
“If you don’t want tae live in this hoose, you don’t need to.”
Whack!
“You don’t disrespect yer mother, and you don’t talk back tae her.”
Whack!
“This is not your hoose. You have nae rights here.” Whack! “You’re nothing. Get oot!”
He drags me by the hand, through the hallway, then through the living room, where he opens the back door and shoves me out into the garden, locking the back door behind me. The curtains are then drawn. I can’t see into the house. I am locked out for the night, left to sleep in the garden.
I look around me but see little. The day has gone and taken every pixel of color and light with it over the horizon. The grass is damp, as always. There is no place to sit or lie down. Not that I want to as my behind is sore and each movement I make accents the pain. I turn and slowly walk toward the back of the garden, finding my way among the familiar silhouettes, along the small path behind the garage, avoiding the walls because I think there will be spiders and other life forms crawling around. I make my way to the other side of the garage where I know there is a pile of wood. I feel for and find the wood, carefully climb onto the pile, and sit down, finding my balance and as much comfort as I can on the logs. I sit upright. There is nowhere to lie down to sleep. Not that I want to sleep. I am too scared of the scuttering noises uncomfortably close, and the blackness obscuring everything around me. At least it isn’t raining, I think, searching for anything positive during this miserable moment. But it is cold. I pull up my knees and I wrap my arms around them, curling into a ball, hoping I can keep myself warm. My stomach rumbles angrily. I didn’t have any dinner. Perhaps I should have eaten the Brussels sprouts.
I momentarily despise my parents. They don’t treat me like a person. They don’t even try to see things from my point of view; they treat me like I’m an idiot, like I don’t have a brain. I am growing up, evolving as a person just like anyone else at my age. Just as they once did. I cannot wait to leave home, to become my own person, to live by my own rules. I don’t need my parents. I don’t need anyone!
I sit on the logs for what seems like several hours, occasionally adjusting my position to try and give different portions of my behind relief from the painful contact with the hard wood. The only light is far above me. I see the moon rise and pass across the sky. I watch the stars circulate above me. I try to think good thoughts, uncertain of how this event is going to play out.
In the early hours of the morning, I hear the back door of the house open. Dad comes out to the garden and quietly calls me back into the house. Apparently remorse has replaced his anger, and he now feels bad that he had left me outside in the dark. Dad apologizes to me with a big hug, making everything better. Everything is now okay. We have made our peace. Dad loves me in his own way. His punishments are harsh, no doubt a product of his own strict upbringing, but designed to teach me to be good, and to keep me on track in life. I hold nothing against my dad, or mum. I know they only want what is best for me.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
I stand in the middle of my parents’ bedroom, surrounded by the hush that I always associate with this room. The bay windows on my left side invite light into the room to enhance the pink, white, and wood-accented décor, while the double glazing holds back the noise from the passing traffic outside. The only sound permitted is the “tick” of the small gold alarm clock on one of the bedside tables. I look at my mother’
s dressing table standing in the bay window, at the pink and white porcelain dishes holding my mother’s jewelry and other knickknacks, sitting on white doilies, all mirrored in the glass behind. These dishes are familiar Mother’s Day presents from forty-plus years ago. I look toward the double bed and then generally around the room. This is my parents’ private province. Cloistered away in drawers and behind the closet doors are items my parents kept away from the prying eyes of others, but now, as the dutiful daughter I am required to encroach on my father’s privacy.
Mum has asked me to go into Dad’s wardrobe and sort through his belongings. It is something Mum doesn’t want to do herself. When she speaks about getting rid of Dad’s things, her tone is one of disengagement. She doesn’t want to know what he had. She doesn’t care. Mum wants none of it.
“Get rid of the lot,” she instructs me. “No reason tae keep anything.”
I am unsettled by my mother’s disengagement from the process; that she doesn’t even want to look at my father’s personal belongings and see what is there. I don’t question my mother’s directive, but I want to. It doesn’t seem right that she can just throw everything away as if it has lost its value. I pause for a moment and realize that perhaps without my father everything has lost its value. But doesn’t Mum want any mementos? Is there nothing of his that she wants to hold on to, to remember him by? But Mum was always of a certain mindset, and if she doesn’t want any of Dad’s things and they are to go out, then out they go.
I move to stand in front of my father’s wardrobe, staring at the wooden sliding doors hiding my father’s personal effects, his clothing, things he kept away from the inquisitive, even Mum. I reach out and slowly push one of the doors to the side, its movement rumbling across the metal track, and like a theater curtain revealing a scene, the door makes way for the display of male belongings, dutifully hanging or lying where they were last placed. I run my hand through the garments hanging along the rail, and then crouch down to see what lies on the wardrobe floor. This access to my father’s privacy feels odd, intrusive. I have the strange, awkward feeling we all feel when going through someone else’s property, even when we are given permission to do so.
Mum’s instructions are that Dad’s clothes are to be piled into plastic bags to be taken to the charity shop. I find large black plastic bags and do as directed, not liking the offhanded way Dad’s clothes are to be discarded. I sort through my dad’s sweaters, his ties, other items. They are—were—personifications of him. His gray plaid sweater was worn so often it was an integral part of my father’s wardrobe, and his light gray raincoat was worn most times my father left the house. His ties with navy insignia were worn for special events with his shipmates. As one by one I take items off the hangers and hooks in the wardrobe, I picture Dad wearing each of them, but they all have to go.
There are shelves on the one side of my dad’s wardrobe that house a carefully arranged assortment of objects. I see some of my father’s many books, mostly car mechanic books and maps of Britain. The roadmaps are familiar to me. When I was old enough, I became the family navigator on long trips to and around Scotland. Mum didn’t have the patience for that sort of thing and was happy to pass the job off to me. I came to know the route to take on the motorways and main roads from Portsmouth to Glasgow, the roads from Glasgow to such cities as Edinburgh and Ayr, and how to get to tourist areas in the Highlands such as Loch Lomond and Loch Ness.
Dad’s car books are named by car model and year. They are grimy from being handled by oily fingers, no doubt Dad’s as he followed the manuals’ instructions for repairing a car. One thing Dad had known well was how to take care of a car. It was rare that his own car had to have work done for it to pass its MOT each year. Many times he was a life and money saver for family and friends whose cars would come to a halt, followed by a call to Dad asking if he could please fix it. I make a mental note to see what makes of car my family members have and if anyone can use these books.
I find several bottles of good whiskey standing on the wardrobe floor. No doubt gathered for the next Hogmanay party bringing in a New Year that Dad will not see. On a shelf of the wardrobe are coin collections in blue presentation boxes and plastic sleeves, some minted for special events, including the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and some collected from his travels abroad. And there are his medals from his navy days, including the Royal Victorian Medal and citation he had received from the Queen. I know the whiskey will be given away to family and friends, and Mark will get the coins and his grandfather’s medals.
At the back of the wardrobe is a cardboard box, its weight challenging my heaving and pulling as I drag it out into the daylight. I kneel on the floor next to the box and pull back its cardboard flaps to see what is inside that is so heavy and immovable. I feel a cold hard sphere, my dad’s bowling ball. I smile. It immediately brings back a fond and irrepressible memory.
I am about ten years old, standing at the end of the long hallway in the old house on Fraser Road. It is dark except for the light at the end of the hallway coming in from the window in the top half of the front door. I remember the context of the moment.
Mum and Dad took up ten-pin bowling at the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute’s social club or NAAFI. For Mum it was something she could do to alleviate the lonely months while Dad was away at sea. Mum even won many bowling trophies, which was surprising because I didn’t think my mum was good at anything. Then Dad decides to buy himself a bowling ball. I remember the day vividly.
Dad brings his ball home from the shop, and he, Mum, and I stand at the kitchen end of the hallway as Dad proudly shows it to us. Dad is delighted with his first custom-made black sphere, ready to show the world that he is a contender on the lanes.
“Look,” he explains to me, pointing to the holes in the surface of the ball, “it has finger holes measured for me and is a specific weight designed to optimize my swing and increase my score.”
I am impressed. Mum doesn’t have her own ball and she has trophies.
The long narrow hallway in the house looks just like a bowling alley and to Dad a tantalizing alternative to the real thing. “I’m goin’ tae give it a try,” he says, unable to resist the chance to practice his swing and show off his dexterity.
My father rolls his sixteen-pound missile along the hallway with as much energy as he can, aiming for the imaginary ten pins standing in formation at the end of the alley. I watch the black ball rolling away from us at high speed. My father’s aim is straight. The ball goes straight down the hallway, straight through the wooden front door, straight through the metal gate beyond the door at the end of the forecourt, and straight into the street beyond. The explosive sound of the ball making contact with wood then metal reverberates around the house and echoes out onto the street, where neighbors come running out of their homes, startled by the explosion and by the sight of what appears to be a black cannonball sitting in the middle of the road.
In the house I stand behind my mum and dad as the three of us look along the hallway to the circle of light entering through the round hole now bored into the front door. I look in disbelief at the sight, scared to say a word, waiting to see how my parents will react. They react as they often did, recognizing the humor in the incident, my father’s quiet chuckle and my mother’s raucous laugh letting the world know, it is okay. We walk out into the street to explain the incident to the neighbors and to look at the damage, all while having a good laugh. I learn from my parents that sometimes the best thing to do when bad things happen is to laugh them better.
I run my hand one more time over the cool surface of the bowling ball, grateful for the memory. I smile at the ball as if it is a dear friend, then fold the flaps of the box back into place, deciding to leave the ball where it is for the time being.
As I continue my unhurried removal of items from the wardrobe, the void replacing what was my father’s tangible presence grows. Where there was once personality within the wardrobe is now emptiness, and it
is my doing. I feel like I am throwing away things that had meaning to my father, I feel as though I am betraying my dad, and I don’t like it. I take a deep breath and allow rationale to take over my thoughts. Mum doesn’t want these items. I cannot take them. Those with value will be given to family members, and the remaining items will go to those in need. I tell myself that logically, this is for the best.
I continue filling the bags with clothing, but not without a final caress of each item in tribute to Dad and the memories each article holds. I look back at the now empty wardrobe. The onerous task is done. I have contributed something to taking care of Dad’s affairs, but I still feel unsettled, that what I have done is insufficient, insignificant. I want to contribute more than simply throwing his life away. I need to do more, but what?
Something else to be taken care of is selling Dad’s car now sitting forgotten in the tiny garage at the end of the garden. The garage is really more of a shed, just big enough to fit the most compact of cars and nothing more. Dad had to drive the car out to the alley behind the house if he wanted to work in the garage. This last car is smaller than other cars he had owned in the past. A product of the more fuel-efficient and harder financial times I suppose.
The garage will have to be gone through, sorted, and cleared out as well. I have already taken a quick look inside the tiny space, and found a messy assortment of my dad’s toys—his old tools from his days as a young carpenter’s apprentice, as well as planks of wood everywhere, and PVC pipes, wrenches, pliers, tins of nuts, bolts, screws, light bulbs, and other items he had owned as long as I could remember, all the same hue of dust. Without poking around too much, and not wanting to disturb the spiders I knew would be lurking among the planks of wood, electrical cords, tins of screws, and lord knows what else, I took a general inventory and told Mum that perhaps my cousins will be best at clearing out the garage and taking whatever they want and can use. It will incentivize them to clear out the garage and save me from the onerous task.
Our Grand Finale Page 7