The Promise I Kept

by Jackie Madden Haugh

  The grungy, soap scum-stained sink and shower now sparkled. Where forest green towels once hung (chosen to hide all the stains), immaculate white ones lined with green satin were perfectly folded on towel bars to be used only as decorations. The toilet bowl stayed Lysol fresh, and lavender-grapefruit candles filled the air with an intoxicating aroma. Now, with dad’s sanitary wipes and adult diapers, I’d be thrown in a time machine back twenty years. Back to the days of Pampers and poop.

  I didn’t think this all through very well, I thought, going from room to room, digesting how things were about to become different. I’d just gotten this place looking the way I wanted. So much was about to change.

  Then, realizing there was a massive hurdle I hadn’t considered, I poured myself a drink of wine. Despite the fact I had a five-bedroom house, someone was about to be bumped to make room for Daddy. This would prove to be one of the most difficult decisions.

  CHAPTER 5

  Child Displacement

  The bedroom is the room in a house where we go to relax in, to store our personal belongings, and to fantasize about our futures. If a child is truly lucky, as in my case, it’s a private space that belongs to them and them alone. Boys need not enter, and parents only after knocking. It’s a hallowed domain where memories are created and revisited. No one ever told me how painful it would be to lose my bedroom.

  At the age of seven, when we moved to our second home on Windsor Drive, I was given the privilege of no longer sharing a sleeping space with my brothers. Gone were the trucks and soldiers, dirty socks that smelled of wet grass and mud, and the messy beds where the art of hospital corners became lost. For as long as I could remember, every night there had been a lump of testosterone snoring two feet away from me. I now could fill the room with dolls, keep the vases full of fresh flowers from the garden, and arrange my stuffed animals in an orderly fashion across my pillow. But, most importantly, I was to be left alone.

  I can’t believe I have my own room, my young mind cheered as I sat on the edge of my bed and looked around. I’m going to make sure it’s always pretty.

  For the next two years, this small chamber inside the Madden castle was a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture: a green dresser that once held baby clothes, a faded yellow desk that was resurrected from my maternal grandmother’s basement, and a heavy black headboard with tall, carved posts that had been handed down from one generation to another.

  While the rest of the house received brand new salt-and-pepper tweed carpet, the funds ran out by the time they got to my room. There lay a slab of forest green carpet pulled up from our previous home on Arundel Road, complete with the stains young children make.

  There were no frills, no lacy curtains or feminine bedspread with throw pillows in shades of the pink and blue of my dreams. And, because I was so young, a mirror was not yet necessary. There was still plenty of time for such embellishment. But, despite the fact the décor looked like something out of the Goodwill bargain basement, I loved it.

  “Isn’t our new home beautiful?” I asked my baby dolls as they sat around their tiny wooden table in their chairs. “Remember to be polite and no messes. I want this to stay just as it is.”

  It was between those four walls where I found myself in control, for once in my life. Being outnumbered in the gender department got tiring. God gave the Madden males a larger set of lungs, and they were always heard first. Not wanting to fight to be noticed, I spent hours playing with my dolls, moving them around the menagerie; one day it was mothering Raggedy Ann and Andy and the other children in the nursery, the next, Barbie and Ken ruled the floor as they drove in circles in her peach-colored convertible coupe. Peace and order reigned, never again to be interrupted by clumsy sneakers making their way through my playground as they carelessly stepped on a few napping plastic dolls.

  After two years of saving all their spare change, my parents finally had enough money to buy me real furniture and a new rug: a beautiful honey-colored maple bedroom set like something out of a Drexel furniture catalog, and snow-white carpet.

  Under the window that looked out at the willow tree next door sat my twin bed covered in a white bedspread and yellow and green pillows for a splash of color. A nightstand held my rosebud hurricane lamp, pink AM radio, and nighttime book of the week. Against the large wall was a double dresser with enough drawers to house not only winter and summer clothes but all four seasons, as well as an enormous mirror for one day applying makeup. In the corner sat a lovely grown-up desk with five drawers for all my creative writing supplies and journals.

  Where once there was just a pane of glass, dainty white curtains trimmed in eyelet lace were hung with a shade I could pull shut so the neighbors wouldn’t be able to see my budding body change. And, on the walls, pink, green, and yellow Monet-like flowers scattered over the wallpaper.

  “Oh, Mom and Dad, I love it. Thank you!” I exclaimed when it was done, my nine-year-old self absolutely thrilled with the room makeover. I threw my arms around them both as they stood with me to look at their handiwork. “I promise to keep it looking like this forever.”

  A promise I would keep for the next seventeen years.

  As the years sped by, my room became my demilitarized zone where I could act like Switzerland when the heated discussion on whose NFL team was the best or who would make it to the World Series became too much.

  “Jackie,” my father called, tapping first before entering. “Why don’t you come out with the rest of the family?”

  “No thanks, Dad. You guys are watching sports. I’ll stay here.”

  “But you’re always in your room. We’d love to have you with us.”

  “Can we watch The Patty Duke show?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Smiling, he patted my head. “That might cause a war.”

  “I’m good, but thanks for asking me.”

  Private bedrooms have a way of making sense of the world outside when life gets confusing. They soothe emotions as yet another pimply faced boy breaks your heart or when facing a difficult test in math the following day. A bedroom is where you aspire for greatness in your future or cry your tears about present failures. But, in 1981, after I’d been out of the house for nearly nine years and married for two, all that changed.

  “Jackie, Grandma needs to live with us,” I remember my mother saying on the other end of the phone as if she was announcing there’d be chicken for dinner again. “She’ll be staying in your room.”

  “Really?” I tried to process what was being said.

  “The doctor said she couldn’t live alone anymore and I can’t bear to put her away. I’m giving her your room.”

  Stunned, I sat silent for a second, and then blurted, “Where am I supposed to sleep?”

  “What do you mean, ‘where will you sleep?’ You don’t live here anymore.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still my room.”

  “Jackie, you can’t be serious?” she said, a perturbed note in her voice. “You haven’t lived here since high school, and you’re married, for God’s sake. Your place is with your husband.”

  While this was a true statement, even married women like to escape their reality from time to time and go back to the one place they never doubted they were loved.

  “I know,” I said, fearful tears might start to come. “But I come home a lot.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Your grandmother deserves a pretty room, and the boys’ rooms are disgusting.”

  While the good girl inside understood that my parents were trying to do right by Grandma, it was still my room!

  I wanted to scream, “Stop being so damn cheap and fix up one of the others! I still come home once in a while,” but instead, I softened my tone and asked, now ashamed, “What if I want to come and visit? Where will I sleep?”

  “You can always sleep in Michael’s room.”

  Thinking about the 1970s time warp across the hall, with its burnt orange bedspread, avocado green shag carpet, and
the stench of body odor and illegal smoke from funny cigarettes still imprinted deep into the bedspread, I saw my days of coming home to reconnect with myself would soon be over.

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Hanging up the phone, I searched my soul as to why this was so difficult for me to accept. After all, I was twenty-seven, pregnant with Michelle, married, and living in San Diego. Truth be told, I only came home by myself three or four times a year. Then it hit me. All my life, the only place I didn’t have to fight to call my own was my bedroom. In college and post-graduate days I had roommates, and now I shared my living space with my husband. But I adored my grandmother and had to learn to accept things would be different.

  And different they immediately became.

  On my first visit home after the new arrangement, my mother asked as I walked through the door if I could help clean up. Grandma was sitting in the living room and Mom was doing her linens, but apparently there’d been some spillage.

  Opening the door to my once beautiful, private space, I was hit with the smell of a diaper that had been left to stand in its juices and debris an hour too long.

  Holy shit, I wanted to scream but tightened my lips. The space that had always been kept pristine looked like something out of an abandoned nursing home.

  What happened?

  It hadn’t taken long for my desk to become cluttered with her medicines, a pill for every ache, every pain, and every rise and fall in blood pressure. Water rings dulled the sheen of the furniture I once lovingly polished. And instead of my white bedspread with a daisy crocheted afghan as the focal point, a port-a-potty sat center stage in the middle of the room with urine droplets and remnants of feces doing a Jackson Pollock splatter dance on the once-white carpet.

  Tears began to sting my eyes, partly because this was not how I had left my room, but mostly because I now understood how the aging process degraded one’s dignity into nothing.

  “I can’t believe how much has exploded from that tiny body of hers,” I mumbled, lifting the bowl filled with bodily waste and carrying it to the bathroom. “I don’t think multiple bottles of Clorox bleach will ever get the smell out of here.”

  After sterilizing and scrubbing the floor, I noticed stains on the mattress as well. No wonder my mother was doing so much laundry every day. My poor grandmother, once an elegant, sophisticated silent movie actress, had been reduced to an infant, needing those who loved her to clean up the mess.

  Finishing my job, I went to the living room to see her staring out the window, humiliation and weathered hands covering her face. From the moment she was born until she turned ninety-two, she had been self-sufficient. Now, she was just another old soul waiting to die. So was my room.

  “Hi Grammy. Can I read you something from the newspaper?” I asked, trying to deflect her embarrassment.

  As I was preparing for Dad’s arrival, these memories came roaring to the surface as if an oil well had been punctured deep within my past. Gushing forth uncontrollably, the pain resurfaced, and I was hit with the realization I was about to do this to one of my kids too.

  I had to think about this logically. It has to be the easiest room for Dad, and whoever that affects, they’ll just have to understand.

  Closing my eyes, I visualized our two-story ranch with its five bedrooms and all the key players. Carefully lifting off the roof of the perfectly scripted dwelling where everyone had their bedroom, I mentally picked up the precious dolls and began rearranging their bodies onto different beds.

  Studying Michelle’s room on the second floor, it became immediately obvious that it couldn’t be an option. I’d never be able to manage my dad’s wheelchair up and down the staircase.

  “Okay, that takes one out of the mix,” I said softly, as I placed her back in her room in my mind’s eye. Peering at the rooms below, another member would immediately be given dispensation as well due to his sex.

  Timmy had spent twenty-three years surrounded by three sisters and a nagging mother. I couldn’t expect him to give up his living quarters. Like me, it was his sanctuary to guard against raging female hormones. That wouldn’t be just unfair, but cruel.

  “That leaves Jenni or Lauren.”

  Sadly for Jenni, it quickly became apparent that her old room was the most logical solution with its easy access to the family room. I just had to find a way to become saleswoman of the year and make her believe it was her idea all along.

  “You’re giving him my room? Why not one of the others?” Jenni sounded somewhat annoyed when I called her to tell her.

  Startled by the sound of magma beginning to boil on the other end of the phone, I did my best to divert the building eruption.

  “Honey, it’s just for a little while,” I began, twisting my hair around my index finger. I knew she might be upset, but I was completely thrown off by the intensity of her reaction. “Your grandfather’s ninety-five. It won’t be forever.”

  “That’s what your parents told you when your grandmother invaded your room, and she lived to 101!”

  Yes, Jenni was right. Some senior citizens are born with a genetic makeup on steroids. Like the trick candles on a birthday cake, no matter how hard life blew on her, my grandmother’s life would not be extinguished. She had seemed to be on a mission to outlive her entire legacy.

  “And what about all my stuff?”

  You mean all those boxes of letters, stuffed animals, photographs, and picture albums you’ve been saving since you were ten? I thought, but said, “I’ll find them a safe place in the garage.”

  “Not just that, my clothes. Where will I put them?”

  “Jenni, we’ll find room for your things,” I said, now a bit irritated. “There’ll always be a bed for you here and a place to hang your clothes. Just think about it,” I said as I shifted my body weight, unprepared for such an in-depth interrogation. “How often are we all together anyway? Thanksgiving. Christmas. Any other time, it won’t be an issue.”

  But my reassurance fell on deaf ears.

  “You know, Mom, he’ll ruin my room. Remember how you said yours was never the same again?”

  “Honey, mine was never the same because your grandparents refused to do anything to it after Grandma was gone,” I responded, now borderline fuming. “When your grandfather no longer needs it, we’ll re-do everything.”

  Like Pollyanna, I was not about to let this conversation spoil my decision. I’d play the Glad Game and look for all the positives.

  “And you can help me by choosing colors and bed linens. It’ll be a fun project,” I chirped in my cheery, singsong way.

  But rather than being the sweet, pliable child I knew so well, the people-pleasing clone of her mother, obstinacy rang in her responses. Volleying back and forth my reasons for and her questioning why her, a smoldering heat rose in my gut, an emotion I always tried to push down—anger.

  Why should I even have to explain this? my thoughts screamed as I gritted my teeth in irritation. This is my house. I pay the bills. No one helps me. I should be able to decide what to do with it.

  But I didn’t say that. Instead, feeling defeated, I kept my mouth shut.

  What infuriated me most was that this was not a life sentence. Just like my grandmother, one day, Dad would be gone too. The only difference was Jenni would get a whole new room out of it.

  Soon the whimpering on the other end of the phone turned into convulsing sobs. My annoyance with the entire conversation now turned into disbelief.

  “Jenni! What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t mean to be selfish. I know this is something that has to be done, but . . .”

  A stagnating pause asphyxiated the airwaves.

  “Jenni? Are you there?” A sob. “Jenni, what’s wrong?”

  Clearing her throat and blowing her nose into what I hoped were tissues and not her sleeve, the real reason she was holding back spluttered out. “God, Mom! What if he dies in there? I’ll never be able to sleep in my room again.”

  A
drenalin ignited like a flame on a gas stove. I was no longer angry. I was pissed.

  I couldn’t believe she just said that. Yes, it was shitty I once lost my room, but I got over it. Besides, never did I think Grammy might die in it or even worry about it. When did Jenni become so shallow?

  “I have to call you back,” was all I could muster through my building rage. Throwing the phone across the room, I wept until my throat became raw. The grief of feeling abandoned choked me.

  “Families are supposed to support each other,” I blubbered out loud, putting the pillow over my face to drown out the sound of my hysteria. “I’ve sacrificed everything for everyone my entire life. When do I get a little understanding and support?”

  The phone rang.

  I knew it was my good girl calling to apologize and make everything right, but I wasn’t ready to answer. I was mad, and I wanted to stay mad, at least a little longer. The bee sting of my self-perceived betrayal would not ease, no matter how much baking soda I layered on.

  The phone rang again, and I just stared at it.

  Finally, knowing I had to face this conversation, I got up to call her back. But, just as I began to dial, the humanness of Jenni’s concern slapped me hard. Death is creepy, and death is scary, especially for someone who has never had to deal with it.

  “Oh my God.” I began to cry again. “I never thought this part through. Maybe this is too much to ask of her, of all of them. This house will completely change with him here. Will they even want to come home again?”

  No matter how much we redecorated, the knowledge that he had passed away would always stay with the room.

  Picking up the phone, I dialed. “Jenni . . .”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” her sobs came. “Of course, he can have my room.”