by Jewel
Money was always tight, but perhaps tighter now that we did not have our own vegetable garden and beef we raised. We had to buy all our groceries now, and the strain in the house was obvious. I remember a tooth rotting, and one day it just crumbled into tiny shards in my mouth. I knew we didn’t have the money to fix it and worried about telling my dad. We did get it fixed, though I’m not sure how he was able to swing it. My dad came up with some ways to cut costs elsewhere. He announced that we were going to pick one soap for the house. All soaps and detergents were basically the same, he said, so why waste money on five different kinds? It was our decision, he said, empowering us with the mission. My brothers and I weighed our options. We could use shampoo for dishes and laundry. We could use laundry soap for dishes and hair and washing our bodies. Or we could use dish soap for everything, or a bar of soap. Bar soap it was. For whatever reason we settled on Irish Spring. Dad bought a pack of fifty bars the next day at Costco. I remember the first time I washed my hair with it, rubbing that bar into my long hair and making a foamy green lather that reeked of musky, manly scent. The result was clean hair, though the texture felt more like something one feeds to barnyard animals than the luscious locks my burgeoning preteen womanhood had hoped for. A bar was ever present by the sink for hand washing, and also to be soaked in a sink of hot water until it was potent enough to cut the grease on the dishes. Laundry was a bit trickier. We would cut flakes with a sharp knife, the soap peeling in buttery layers, and drop them in the washing machine. I got to where I hated the smell of that soap. And the teasing at school I seemed helpless to stop.
Luckily for me, a popular, pretty girl named Diane took me under her wing. Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe she liked me. I have no idea. I liked her. She was confident and had a cool perm that she wore in a short modern style and had the latest in clothing and jewelry. She was like a walking Jordache poster. Pastel Esprit shirts with the collars turned up, blue eyeliner, black spandex with turquoise leopard-print slouchy sweaters, acid-washed denim—she was the culmination of the best the ’80s had to offer, and I wanted to be her badly. I also thought she was rich, which, looking back, is funny, because I realize now that she lived in a large cluster of low-rent apartments. But her mom was nice and her dad was a pilot and they had clean white carpets and she had things . . . lots of things. A boom box and mother-of-pearl earrings and Popsicles. And she shaved. No one had explained to me that women shave their legs. I hadn’t been around many women in a setting to see their legs. It was an entirely new idea to me that year. A light dusting of feather-fine blonde hair had cropped up on my shins just months before, and after seeing Diane’s perfectly smooth, lotioned limbs, I resolved I better follow suit.
One night I crept into the bathroom and got Dad’s razor. I went back to my room like some refugee and locked the door. I turned out the lights, so my brothers wouldn’t see them on and come knocking as I struggled to figure out this strange ritual I knew nothing about. Not knowing was deeply shameful. I know. Common sense should have informed me otherwise, but it was foregone in favor of secrecy and shame, both powerful blinders.
Using one hand to guide the other, I began to apply the dry razor to dry skin, only to realize in short order that some water might help things along. I rolled my pants legs down, went to the kitchen as nonchalantly as possible, and filled a glass. My dad and brothers were in the living room watching TV, none the wiser. I went back to my room and got the job done, occasionally swishing the razor in the cup of water as quietly as possible. When I finished, I turned on the light to admire my handiwork, only to see by the cuts and nicks along my shinbone and ankle area that I would need some tissue. And more practice. And light.
The next day I ill-advisedly wore a skirt, and my dad, noticing the telltale cuts, took me aside that evening and said calmly, “Jewel, I am going to ask your mom to come by tomorrow. Maybe it’s time she takes you bra shopping.”
Just hearing my dad utter the word “bra” in the same breath as my own name made me want to crawl under a table. I thought we had an unspoken agreement not to discuss these things. He wasn’t prudish or shy, and in fact he was the one who explained to me how babies are made when I was quite young. He had a book with pictures and handled it with a social worker’s discipline. No shame, no awkwardness, just the facts. But that was before the divorce, before he had a string of girlfriends coming and going, strange women sitting with mixed feelings at our breakfast table while I made them oatmeal and my dad slept upstairs. And it was before I had figured out I was fantastically modest. Back on the homestead, I was the only one within a twenty-mile radius who did not take part in the group saunas on Sunday nights. No one in our area had a shower, so Sunday was basically a potluck and bath night. My grandfather would build a fire in the sauna and anyone who came by would get naked and pile in the small hot wooden room together to bathe and scrub and sweat. The brave would jump into the ice-cold pool outside the sauna door, which was basically a five-foot hole in the earth with visqueen to cover it and keep water in. Then folks would get dressed and share food.
I have vivid memories of all shapes and shades of body hair. You saw it all in that sauna. Chubby with bush. Cherubic with no bush. Thin with gray hair, the occasional exotic redhead. All the kids stripped down as well and everyone drank fresh birch-sap water we collected in jugs. I hated it though. I was the only one who wore a bathing suit in the sauna, waiting it out until everyone left to strip down and scrub up with fresh creek water and a cloth I brought from the house. My understanding of women and sexuality was from barrooms: that women gave themselves away and that men were perverts. I saw firsthand what a woman was willing to do for a compliment, and that men made chauvinistic and creepy comments with no idea any line had been crossed. At home there was little privacy to be found, and so I took it where I could get it.
As much as I hated to admit it, and as much as I hated the situation, the fact was I did need a training bra. All the girls had them, and while I can’t say I was developed enough to have earned one, I hated to be left out of the teasing and bra-snapping going on at school, as the boys learned this new trick and the girls feigned it annoyed them when really they were proud their new accessories were noticed. The only cheeks burning with shame there belonged to the girls with no bra straps to show.
“Okay,” I answered my dad, and like that, the topic was changed.
I hadn’t seen my mom much, even though she still lived in Anchorage. I wish I could go back in time and tell my twelve-year-old self to ask why the hell not. I instinctively knew not to. She picked me up the next day and drove me to a mall, and as she guided me through the maze of racks of strange-looking contraptions, I tried my best to hide the fact that I was absolutely dying inside. When she involved a store clerk in our mission, I almost lost all composure. I stood mutely and imagined myself running from the building into the street to let the cold air hit me. I hid my embarrassment and went into the dressing room to try a few on, while my mom and the clerk waited outside the thin curtain, mere inches away, for my verdict.
“Is the fit all right, honey?” the store clerk said.
“Yeah,” I answered meekly. I had no idea what a good fit was from a bad one.
“Let’s see,” my mom said. I stepped out to be examined. Four eyes focused directly on my nonexistent bosom, the cotton triangles of fabric so white the outline could be clearly seen through my shirt.
“Oh, that looks great, don’t you agree?” the clerk said.
“Is it comfortable, Jewel? You don’t want it to feel too tight.”
“It’s good,” I said shyly. “Let’s go home.”
In the car on the way back my mom talked about how my feminine issues were nothing like hers had been. Her mom was scared of talking about such things. One day Arva had flung open my mom’s bedroom door, thrown a sanitary belt and napkin into the room, and shut the door as quickly as it had been opened.
In reality my mom di
d not know how it happened for me. When womanhood arrived a few years later, she was gone, and I was alone in a house with some strangers she was staying with, and when I saw the blood, I wrapped my underwear in toilet paper, walked out the door, got a city bus to the grocery store, and stood dumbfounded in the feminine-products aisle. On the bus, I wrapped the package in as many bags as I could so that no one could see my dirty little secret. And when I lost my virginity a year after that, I would tell no one but my journal, and even there I could not bear to tell the truth. I rewrote and reimagined the whole thing—it was romantic, and the man thoughtful and kind. In reality he was much too old and drunk and he never called again and I was not ready as much as I felt like I just better get the whole thing over with. I had never been valued up to that time in my life by those closest to me, so how could I begin to value myself? It would take me years of learning to love and create safety for myself before that would ever be possible. I wish I could tell every young girl how special and valuable they are. I wish someone had told me.
All that was years away. That day I sat in the car, twisting my torso this way and that, experimenting with the strange new feeling around my chest, wondering if anyone at school would notice the next day, not sure which I dreaded more—boys noticing or not noticing.
I was a regular visitor at Diane’s house. Her mom liked me, and Diane and I often played after school, dressing up and listening to the radio, dancing for hours to songs like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” One day she and her mom had to leave for some errand, and for whatever reason they left me alone in the house. They told me to make myself at home. And boy, did I ever. It began with me trying on Diane’s necklace that was sitting on the bedside table. Black plastic beads made to look sort of like pearls. It was like a fever came over me. I wanted it. I put it in my pocket, thinking she would never miss it. Then I saw a pair of leggings I’d coveted peeking out of her closet. I took them as well, rolling them tightly and fitting them into my jacket pocket. I saw that pink geometric-patterned sweater and I had to have it in my life too. I gathered so much stuff that I went down to the kitchen and found a garbage bag to fill. And I filled it. I had no plan. It was as if there was a black hole hidden in me that I had unwittingly ripped wide open, this terrible need in me like an abyss, sucking everything I saw into it, trying to fill the void.
I think I carted the heavy bag several miles home and hid it away. I couldn’t wear any of it without being caught, but I didn’t give it that much thought. Within the hour Diane and her mom came home and there was nothing subtle about what I had done. Diane’s mom called it a cry for help and asked my dad to go easy on me. And he did. He did not yell or hit me. He seemed to see I was in trouble, and lots of big, sad concerned eyes were cast upon me, which strangely didn’t make me feel any better. I still had this emptiness inside me. No one seemed to be talking about how to fix it. Needless to say it put a strain on my relationship with Diane. School did not get easier either. I was diagnosed with dyslexia that year, which explained a lot.
That summer, after school ended, we moved back to Homer, thank God. Back to the barn. And I prepared for seventh grade. I was so nervous about junior high, and did my best to fit in by asking the most popular girl for a picture of herself so I could get my hair permed the same way. Again I recognized that embarrassed look of pity as she stood there on the stairs, late for third-period English. Little did she know I would befriend her and then rob her. Kidding! My stealing stopped for a while after the Diane incident.
I managed to make a few friends with the outcasts, and thought I was doing pretty well in general. Despite my difficult home life with my dad, I acted bright and cheery in class and in the hallways, but I must not have been fooling the school faculty, because I was enrolled in a special workshop in relaxation techniques and meditation. I noticed all the kids in it were “troubled.” A group of five or six of us met with a woman who would turn the lights down low in the small classroom. We’d lie on the floor as she guided us through several exercises in a low, soothing voice. First relaxing every muscle in our bodies, then imagining different colors sweeping through our bodies, melting away any tension the colors came upon. She would tell us to imagine a place we felt safe, what it smelled like, what it looked like. She asked us to taste fresh cool water that might be running through our favorite spot. My place was at the head of the bay, where I often rode on my horse. The smell of cottonwood trees and timothy bluegrass, and the cold, crisp taste of the water I would drink from a spring. She asked us to listen to the sounds of our special place. That was easy for me—the hermit thrush had a three-tone call that I had spent entire afternoons listening to, along with eagles’ cries high up in their nests, and the sound of the wind strumming the leaves like a harp. I often fell asleep in meditation, which the teacher said was a sign that I was learning how to fully relax.
I put the techniques I learned to good use. My aunt Stellavera (my dad’s sister) also taught me Transcendental Meditation. I was so often stressed just being alone. There was no stability, no certainty, and no predictability in my life. The visualizations brought such a peace and allowed me to live in my own body and enjoy the space and calm in there for a little while. Meditation helped me to access the same thing my writing did: my intelligence and my instincts beyond the turmoil that inhabited the forefront of my mind. It was addictive, and a well I could draw from any time I wanted. I lay down on the floor and did my visualizations before I went to bed each night. I was able to engage my creativity and come up with other techniques that worked for me as well. I began a gratitude practice after looking back at my journals and discovering that I was surprisingly negative in my writing. I never complained in my day-to-day life, or to anyone, but when I held my writing up as a mirror to myself, I saw someone who worried and who always expected the worst. Seeing myself on the page, in black and white, was startling. I wanted to focus on what was good in my life, and so before bed each night, as a sort of prayer, I said all the things I was grateful for that day. I always managed to find a lot. It often had to do with nature and feeling taken care of by the land. Animals taught me not to feel sorry for myself, because animals accept things and stay in the moment. If an animal lost a leg, for instance, like one of our dogs did, it did not question God or sit around and mope. Animals did not wonder what on earth they did to deserve this and make it about their own morality—they learned to accept it and move on. And sometimes to stay out of the road next time. I learned to practice walking meditations, to still my mind as I explored the meadows or the beach. In these sessions I learned we need one another and are connected, whether we see it or not. I learned that connection is invisible. It dawned on me in science class when we put drops of food coloring in the water of some store-bought carnations, the flower would soon turn purple. In my mind I colored the wind purple, I imagined my lungs taking it in, and my skin turning the moody tint. I followed my exhale as the trees absorbed it, the leaves changing color. A chain reaction followed until the ocean, the birds, and each living thing were all variations of the same shade. This gave me such a profound sense of peace, and sense of how we all live interconnected existences.
I really tried to be mindful of when people were kind to me. I experimented with this mindfulness in other aspects of my life. I noticed my anxiety lessened the more present my mind was in my daily activities, and I began to find a meditative state while weeding the garden or our five-acre potato patch. I wasn’t great at it, and rarely could sustain it for very long, but it was the foundation for something that would help me greatly in my life. I was trying to make good on my promise to do no harm to myself. To find positive ways to fill the emptiness that had measurable impact, rather than negative ways that, while distracting or numbing, ultimately would only set me back further.
eight
an invisible thread
During the summer after seventh grade my aunt Catkin came to visit, the youngest of my dad’s siblings. She had become a captain
in the Marine Corps and we hit it off. She invited me to live with her and her two-year-old daughter and husband in Hawaii. I didn’t hear much she said after that. Hawaii conjured up images of blue seas, balmy breezes, and easy living. The opportunity to escape that dark barn and all the ugliness inside seemed like a dream come true. No weeding gardens, no milking cows in subzero temperatures, no looking for lost calves in the frozen still of night, and no coal stove to bank. No dad yelling at me. Sign me up! The hitch was I had to earn the money to get there. I worked hard at my usual jobs: babysitting, driving hay equipment, singing with Dad. My aunt took care of enrolling me in school, and I bought my one-way plane ticket just in time to get there and get settled before school started. In hindsight, if I could go back and advise myself before leaving, I would tell my younger self to always buy a round-trip ticket. I would also caution myself against expecting Utopia to exist anywhere. Hawaii wasn’t so much going from the frying pan into the fire, but it was at least like switching frying pans.
When I stepped off the plane, the air embraced me with tropical-scented arms. My eyes tried to take in the different scenery—the deep blues of sea and sky, the busy roads, the lush green mountains. However, by the time we walked out to the car that had been sitting in the sun, I almost had heatstroke. It was hot. Really hot. Like over seventy degrees hot. I didn’t think I would ever get used to that heat and humidity. But I was sure willing to try. Catkin was cheerful and showed me a few sights as we drove to the far side of Oahu to the town of Kaneohe, which would be my new home. She also filled me in about the local public school as we drove, and said most white kids went to private schools because the locals were known for being very tough, but that I would be fine. At their house I met her husband, Larry, a lieutenant in the corps. Larry was the picture of a fit, clean-shaven Marine. He was Filipino and had a lot of family on the island. And then there was Ecaterina, their daughter. Half Swiss and half Filipino, she had caramel skin and golden green eyes and curly locks of hair. She was sweet and funny, and I knew we would have a great time together.