The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  Enthralled by Ma’s bravery, who taught that danger lurks in the unfamiliar, I listened as she described finding Mrs. Amadon, an invalid, collapsed on her toilet, immobile. Ma described how she called on that inexplicable physical strength that appears when women most need it and lifted Mrs. Amadon, washed her, and put her to bed. Ma didn’t say how long Mrs. Amadon had been there. What she did say was that when people need help, you help them. Plain and simple.

  The pride I felt in Agatha’s kindness was immeasurable. Whatever prejudices there might have existed when the Armsteads first moved to West Lebanon were overcome through neighborly gestures like these. To show their appreciation for Ma’s kindness, the Amadons sent fresh cream and containers of sweet butter on a regular basis thereafter.

  Agatha would see my pride and smile, recognizing that connections were made without her having to give a sermon. In this way, we communicated without words, with me as the student and Agatha as my teacher. This was reinforced later in the evening when Ma gathered her grandchildren around her and spontaneously decided to make ice cream. Ma churned up the Amadons’ finest cream with added rock salt, ice, and strawberries I had picked the day before; the tips of my fingers were still stained red. If it weren’t for untold numbers of hours spent licking S&H Green Stamps, and placing them into booklets of dotted squares, sometimes in strips and other times individually, which Ma redeemed for our beloved pink ice cream maker, I might never have known the creamy, unrivaled flavor my bowl of heaven offered. Agatha not only fed me, but through her example, taught me of life’s unexpected rewards through kindness and hard work.

  The catalog for S&H Green Stamps reinforced that idea, too. After sitting for hours, licking stamps and filling up booklets, all I needed for inspiration was to look at the alluring descriptions of those prizes, despite the fact that by the time I finished filling up a booklet, the taste of glue on my tongue completely obliterated any vestige of Ma’s supper that night.

  There were home economics and business management lessons here, too. This was no accident. Instituting a practice that was very unusual in the foster care system, Agatha insisted that each of us have our own saving accounts. I was six when I proudly walked into the Rochester Trust Company in New Hampshire. Also known as the Lilac City, Rochester was the gateway to the world for me, a point of departure.

  On occasion, after Agatha deducted from her social services and social security checks, with documented scrutiny, she presented each of us with a small allowance for completed chores. Ma accompanied me up to the teller, my heart beating a mile a minute with anticipation, as I rose to demi-pointe and relinquished my saved change. Even though the bouffant-coiffed teller mistook me for a little boy, my braids hidden under my hood, this did not dull my enthusiasm in the least. Each time I went back to the bank with my red plaid savings book, I saw proof that if you saved, you gained interest. I thought this was a great deal!

  Just as Ma wanted us to learn to save, she must have been the unofficial president of the “waste not, want not” school of thinking. Richard, Agatha’s fourth-born child, could remember the Depression years when, as he said, “We were so hungry we used to scrape the burned rice off the bottom of the pot,” and he very much believed that my sisters and I were spoiled because we would never have to do so. Richie would always say, “You kids are lucky; you have no idea.” In a way I felt guilty, because I knew I was getting the best parts of his mother, no longer struggling between ten children, trying to make ends meet, and that’s what her son saw. We probably were spoiled in many ways, compared to how Agatha had brought up her own children in another era, but Ma did her best for all of us and made sure none of us ever took material things for granted.

  There were three things Ma hated wasting: electricity, time, and water. I brushed my teeth and washed my face once a day, in the morning, and shared bathwater on Saturday nights. Our hair was washed and pressed once a month. Agatha also had three fears: God, fire, and ever losing Forest Edge. “You must think I have money to burn” was an oft-used quip, as was her admonition to “stop wasting electricity,” together with her matter-of-fact observation “Every time you turn the lights off and on, that’s five cents.”

  In this regard, the Green Stamps were instructive, too, since a trip to the Globe, our closest grocery store, provided an opportunity to estimate exactly how many stamps our purchases might yield, which Ma calculated with her red plastic gizmo, pressing three white buttons like keys on a trumpet, to keep track of her running tab. Grocery shopping, therefore, was never just about food. It was a first stop on the road to attaining modern technology. But Forest Edge was not entirely stuck in the Dark Ages. Agatha had her cherished electric blanket, the RCA television set, and the ungainly green rotisserie that was wheeled out of the woodshed amid much fanfare, to be admired and revered, like a Roman gladiator, strategically placed in front of one of her burgeoning flower beds. It was the centerpiece of the annual cookout.

  Without question, Agatha Armstead was the eighth wonder of the world, the original multitasker, with a method to her genius. Take the epic process of canning and processing goods; the rest of us were mere mortals, there to pick, dice, wash, chop, and cheer Agatha on to the ultimate outcome: vegetables, jarred pickles, jams, cranberry and apple sauces, homemade cider, various wines, and of course, her famous beer. By age six I was a canning veteran; I was taught that canning was both art and science and about the perils of botulism and the importance of french cutting and labeling. Aesthetics counted obviously in the peeling, paring, dicing, and slicing of foods to be preserved in Mason jars. After all, items like her coveted dill pickles were given as gifts throughout the year accented by sprigs of homegrown dill and cloves of garlic. It all had to look appealing on the shelf—besides having the right crunch and tang.

  Depending on what was being canned, this process could go on for weeks, from the act of gathering supplies to the melting of wax to be used for sealing containers, to the food preparation in the kitchen with bubbling, percolating vats and pots and pans, as Ma hovered over it all like Madame Curie in her laboratory. We were dispatched to collect Grandpa’s old beer jugs, and to set them up as a barricade to the kitchen entrance, in the unlikely case of an explosion. Then, when the coast was clear, we were invited back in a steamy kitchen to admire the beauty and the settling aroma of the cooling concoctions. When steam from the boiling pots transformed Ma’s synthetic wig into something that looked more like a Berber rug, she would say, “I know I look like zip in distress,” and quickly remedied the situation by grabbing the bangs of her wig and rotating the front to the back. Everyone fell out with laughter each time she did this. Agatha not only had a brilliant sense of humor but also didn’t have time for vanity when there was serious work to be done. Finally, in a sort of ad hoc assembly line, the canning jars were checked for cracks and lids with metal clamps were secured before they were labeled with Agatha’s exquisite penmanship. My sisters and I took turns carefully placing the glass jars in the pantry, a built-in icebox in the kitchen, the cellar, our linen closet (where Agatha kept all of her beautiful linen and lace tablecloths), and other spaces in between. She even stored a few jars in her bedroom. When we were done, we were cooked. Not one square inch of our home seemed to be spared from Mason, Ball, and Kerr canning jars.

  I was taught that there were no shortcuts in life to completing a full cycle. It was how nature worked. Moreover, I learned that follow-through and completion were the only means to earning a desired result. And none of this could have been brought forth if not for the power of Agatha’s exhaustless ability to envision completion, starting with the inspiration she gleaned from magazines, her primary source for planning her garden before planting. Next, mail-order Burpee seeds were cultivated in little peat pots on windowsills, barely past winter. She taught me to attend to each seedling and sprout with the most attentive care: how to avoid overwatering or being tempted to tear away a husk; but rather allowing nature to release its natural wonder in its own time. T
o see the first glimpse of green growth poking through was an absolute miracle to me, an experience that I could share with Ma, year after year.

  In my six-year-old arms I carefully transported fragile tiny plants to the freshly tilled garden, delighting in watching Agatha’s excitement as she was outfitted in overalls and kneepads to buffer her brittle bones. Momentarily, not feeling any pain, she was in her element as she pierced the soil with her trowel, providing just enough dimension for me to follow behind and place the peat pot into the earth, old hands over young hands securing it. We did this over and over until we finished. As I helped Ma to her feet, she always said “Whew, it’s getting hot out here.” With her hands on her hips and my arm threaded through one of hers, I leaned on my pillar of strength as we admired our work together. The hint of a kitchen towel she used to pad her bra where the hollow had been peeked out just under her neck, as we made our way to get a cold glass of well water. The sight was so familiar to me that it became endearing, and a reminder that she had refused the expense of breast reconstruction.

  With Star Trek over and the picture tube now reduced to a white dot, Ma reminded us that it was time to return to Earth: “Let’s say prayers.” On our rusty knees, heads bowed, fingers interlocked, lips moving, quietly reciting words I didn’t understand, giving them my own pronunciation, I continued praying the way Agatha taught me to pray, even for those who mean you harm.

  On those Sundays when weather prevented us from getting to church we participated at home from our living room, watching mass on our RCA. I did my best to reenact receiving Communion, even if we didn’t have the actual Eucharist. And though Agatha was not exactly crazy about my theatrical display, she didn’t find it to be blasphemous, so didn’t say anything as I took reverent steps up to the television screen, knelt before it, stuck out my tongue to receive the imaginary wafer, and blessed myself before moving back to my chair. Before we went to bed that night, Ma would have the last word, completing the service with a glass of Manischewitz wine, her favorite.

  Ma’s room was always a haven, where all things fearful or confusing were banished. During a time when I slept with Ma, I jumped into bed first. Here there were cures and potions, clarity and history. There were trinkets, beads, pill bottles, her jars of Pond’s cold cream, skin lotions, face powder, fabulous and expensive wigs on stands and forms, clocks, candles, fabric, yarn, rugs, color, and texture for days—all in that compact New England sleeping space. On the rare occasion where I wasn’t feeling well, there was always a jar of Vicks VapoRub at the ready, the cure-all that Agatha would rub on my chest, then give me a teaspoon of to ingest, saying, “This’ll kill that cold.” And me, too, I thought, but I never asked why and just swallowed. I could feel the blob of heat making its way down like a slow ball of fire.

  One night, I had questions and not enough answers. As I lay there in Ma’s bed, I still wondered who those black people were I had seen in my town the week before. How did they find our little enclave? Weren’t we the only black people in Maine? I stared at them the way locals stared at me all the time. I guess I was just shocked to see other people who looked like me who weren’t Agatha’s relatives.

  Then there was some other confusion. Where did the Rowell name come from? What did “foster” mean? Many times Ma was asked if we were related; she always noted, “Yes, Vicki is my foster daughter,” and I cringed each time, feeling exposed. The church lady asking on that day said, “Well, she looks just like you, anyway,” and awkwardly walked off. I didn’t believe the lady who had just come out of Sunday service anymore than she believed herself. Couldn’t I just be Agatha’s daughter?

  All such thoughts dimmed when Ma entered the room on the night in question, lighting it with her presence, as she looked down to see that I had laid out her rosary beads and her orange polyester pajamas.

  “Thank you, Vicki,” she said, beaming, pleased at this small courtesy, just as she was every night.

  Sometimes by the time Agatha had begun to prepare for bed, I had fallen asleep, or at least closed my eyes to give her privacy. But this night I wasn’t tired and found myself mesmerized by the blue ruffle that ran in a rectangle and hung above the bed in a dreamy canopy, which Agatha had attached to the ceiling with evenly spaced red thumbtacks. It wasn’t hard to visualize the four mahogany bed posters holding up the ruffle, or so I imagined that was Ma’s vision all along. Illusion. Magic.

  “Time to turn over, sugar, and go to sleep,” she said, interrupting my blue reverie, making sure my eyes were closed.

  I promptly turned over, face to the wall, my nose against the moist air held within the two-hundred-year-old plaster. Ma was not only fiercely modest, but in preparing for her disrobing ceremony, she was protecting my young eyes from seeing her disfigurement. That had been explained without words many times, just as we knew that there was an imaginary line down the middle of the bed, leaving an empty space that protected privacy for the both of us.

  This night, however, I needed at last to see for myself how deep her wounds were, how heavy her burden. Still facing the wall, I watched Agatha’s shadow in silhouette fighting against itself on the patterned wallpaper. I had to see more; ever so slightly I peered over my shoulder and witnessed the agonizing struggle she undertook to unfasten hooks with her phlebitic fingers bent behind her crooked spine.

  I held my breath until her effort and gravity could tear the medieval corset away from her ravaged torso and allow it to fall with a thud to the floor. We both exhaled.

  Curious to see what else was to be peeled away, I continued to spy as she removed her wig and pinned it onto a Styrofoam form, moving next to lovingly apply cold cream to her face and throat. “Vicki,” she whispered as she plucked up a tissue, not turning around to check whether I was awake or asleep, “always remember, the neck and chest are all part of the face.”

  Agatha knew all, and sensed, of course, that I had been watching her. She knew that I had seen her breastless body. Curved, bent, wounded. But beautiful. She knew I had seen her without her wig, two thin braids pinned neatly beneath the artificial hair. I lay frozen.

  How did she channel away the pain, past and present every day? What was her secret? Later, I would find out.

  After winding her West clock and popping a Rolaid, Agatha pinched out the last bits of light and instantaneously left us in complete blackness. In the time that the cricket sang his first notes, crucifixes, statuettes, rosary beads, and clocks were illuminated in a chartreuse glow. The creation of this light, I believed, had to be Agatha’s private miracle.

  I joined her in reciting the rosary, not understanding why she prayed for redemption. Or maybe I knew that she was as close to God as any human could be, and that through her, I was with God, too. I was still trying to figure out who God was or what God meant. Agatha seemed to sum it all up for me just lying there breathing with her plastic beads between her fingers. This was my fortress. She was my belonging.

  Through Agatha, I had been given a foundation that provided guidelines for what mattered: Merit. Study. Hard, hard work. Investment in property and people. Humility, silent meditation, laughter, and music.

  This moment in the sixth year of my life, August 1965, ended my carefree youth and was followed soon thereafter by a life-altering experience. I was getting ready to start the first grade at West Lebanon Elementary School and Agatha asked me a simple question.

  Double-checking our annual purchase orders from the state for shopping for school clothes, she noticed that I was going through sneakers twice as fast as my sisters. She had only recently replaced my red Keds and already the toes were worn through. Turning the Keds over a few times in her hands, Ma lifted her head and set her chin like a detective out to uncover the truth and asked, “Vicki, why do you keep getting these holes in your sneakers?”

  What I next explained to her by way of an answer would radically affect everything, not merely my whole future, but would reshape my past, condensing it all into an impressionistic collage of experiences
that had transpired before Ma’s discovery of those holes in my shoes.

  “From the barn,” I ventured. Her skeptical face made me explain a bit more. “I got them trying to standing on my toes.”

  “Standing on your toes?” asked Ma, curiously. “Show me.”

  She handed the Keds to me and off to the barn we went.

  Leaning on the frame of the organ, I lifted myself onto my toes just like the little girl I saw who toe-tapped on a local TV show called the Ted Mack Family Hour. I suspended my weight between the tops of my sneakers and rough-hewn splintered floor.

  An expression of wonder came into Agatha’s eyes. How could holes in my sneakers make her this happy? I wondered. “Come with me, sugar,” she said, as she took me by the hand, humming a tune all the way back into the house and into the front room toward the Steinway. She pulled a piece of Melrose Brothers Publishing sheet music out of her overstuffed piano bench, which held her dreams of yesteryear, and told me to stand in the middle of the room. She gracefully sat down as if to give a recital, then got up again and did something she only did for special occasions. She lifted the cumbersome ebony lid I’d polished so many times, sustaining it with its stand, revealing the wondrous secret workings of her instrument, a golden jewel box with red felt accents, which always dazzled me. Agatha sat back down, placed her foot on the brass damper pedal, spread her arthritic fingers across her ivory universe, and began to swing. “Let’s have fun, Vicki!” With such an effort, I wanted to do something to please her but wasn’t sure what. Agatha disregarded my hesitation, gently commanding, “Move around the room, honey; do anything, just dance!”

  I let the vibrations of Ma’s voice and the cords emanating from her Steinway & Sons piano, inspired by a German cabinetmaker in his kitchen, move me, lift me, twirl me, creating shapes like the ones I saw the June Taylor Dancers do on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ma, not really needing the sheet music at all, closed her eyes behind her jeweled cateye bifocals, recalling perhaps her own inspiration from James P. Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith, and one of her favorite singers, Pearl Bailey, her feet rapidly moving across the damper, sostenuto, and soft pedals below. We improvised and collaborated, laughing and singing, both of us doing our dance. Then Ma stopped playing, abruptly. I stopped, too, out of breath and perspiring. Nodding her head as if to respond to a question she had silently asked herself, she said it out loud, “Yes, Sugar, there’s no doubt about it, we’ve got to get you some dance lessons.”