I wanted Lanny to live, too.
Upon our return, I told Brenda and Joni that Larry and I had taken Mama to a special hospital, a place where she could get some rest, a place that would help her to feel not so sad.
“You’re two very special girls,” I said. “Nothing that’s happened is your fault.”
When I told them I would be taking care of them until Mama got out, they hugged me long and hard.
I told Patricia, Nancy, and Vicki the distilled, bloodless version of the truth. They were sorry but not surprised. Mama had threatened to harm herself before.
Patricia wanted to remain in Denver City with Mr. Rodeo, but that wasn’t an option. She was sent to live with Daddy and Alice in New Mexico, though Daddy continued to work out of town. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Daddy personally, afraid he might insist that Brenda and Joni come, too. I felt guilty for shutting him out—he didn’t deserve that—but he hadn’t been the one to find Mama lying in her own blood. He didn’t know how high the stakes were. Brenda and Joni had become Mama’s lifeline.
I had to consider Brenda and Joni, too. They had been through so much. They didn’t know any of the gory details but knew something was amiss. I understood when they hugged me hard, after I said I would take care of them, that they needed me to step in. They needed an anchor. I could moor them for a while; they had always felt safe in my care.
After Valentine’s Day, I withdrew them from their Denver City school and Larry helped me move them to Odessa, where I had a job. I informed Dola and Dick I would be looking for a place to rent, now that I had two sisters in tow.
Without pausing, Dola said, “You’ll do no such thing.”
Though Dola had just given birth to Diana, my new goddaughter, Dick rearranged the bedrooms so that Brenda and Joni could have a room of their own. I found a second job at a fast-food restaurant that allowed me to be home with Brenda and Joni after school for a few hours before my night shift at the Barn Door. I hoped my two jobs would cover our expenses.
I wasn’t so sure the afternoon a letter came from the Colorado State Hospital. My mouth dropped open when I read, “We hope we can be of help to you in arriving at the most reasonable charge for the hospitalization of your relative.” I hadn’t even considered the cost of hospitalizing Mama, nor did I imagine I would be approached financially for her care. But Mama didn’t have any assets, was in the middle of a divorce, and had no insurance. I was her next of kin, her contact, the one who helped her check in to the hospital.
I couldn’t afford to pay more than a few dollars toward her hospital bill. I nervously filled out the questionnaire they sent and included a copy of my most recent income-tax return. I worried the whole arrangement might fall through. Time would tell.
I enrolled Brenda and Joni in a nearby school and took off work to attend parents’ night. Brenda and Joni held my hand and proudly showed me around their rooms, pointing out the artwork and stories they created. They were so resilient and hopeful—despite all they had been through.
I read them parts of Mama’s letters, especially when she wrote about how much she missed and loved them. Three letters helped me track Mama’s progress:
February 28, 1968
Dear Terry,
Received your lovely letter. I do hope that all of you are happy. I know it’s hard to work and be saddled with two little ones at your age; but I do know that you love them and will take good care of them. God willing, it won’t be for too long and I can take care of them myself. Let me know how you are managing. . . .
I’m keeping a diary and am going to send it to you. Read it if you want but put it in a good place. Don’t be shocked and don’t discuss it with everyone. Remember this is a mental hospital. A world entirely its own. Someday, I’ll write a book. The stitches are out and my arms are healing well. I will have some terrible scars. Reminders, I guess. . . .
Send me some heels and a few of my nice things. Not too many. Just a couple of complete outfits (something to dance in). . . .
Be sure to let the little ones know I love them dearly. When you write Patricia, tell her I love her and hope she’ll find it in her heart to write me someday. Do let me know if you have financial trouble. I’m not that delicate.
Well, Pumpkin, it’s time that I made my nightly entry and got to bed. Thanks again for all your understanding. Tell Larry hello and to look out for all of you until I’m well again.
All my love,
Mama
I didn’t bother Mama with my financial concerns other than to say I had taken on another part-time job. Luckily, when the Colorado State Hospital realized I was only eighteen, and the primary caretaker of my two youngest sisters, they didn’t want Mama’s stay to be a financial hardship for me. I would not be charged for her care. I breathed a sigh of relief. I packed up and mailed Mama a couple of outfits and heels so she could go dancing.
Mama’s Diary Entry
I miss my girls much and evenings are always my low. . . . Everyone is so quiet at night. . . . no sleep last night . . . Wish the doc would prescribe Doriden—not a narcotic or a barbiturate—[just] good old restful sleep. Damn the nights.
As long as I could remember, Mama hated the night.
I didn’t hate the nights; they were just too short. Whatever social and individual time I had came after ten at night. During the days and weekends, I tried to spend as much time as possible with Brenda and Joni. I took them for picnics at Dennis the Menace Park and showed them prairie-dog town, a live colony of prairie dogs that sometimes tunneled outside the fence designed to protect them. Brenda and Joni delighted in the prairie dogs’ cavorting as they popped in and out of their mounded burrows, making high-pitched squeaks timed to the twitch of their tails.
Whenever I drove Brenda and Joni anywhere, they begged me to call Dick and Dola on the CB radio. To them, it was a toy. Long before the era of cell phones, I often picked up the CB mike and said, “KOVO514, mobile to base, come in, please.”
“KOVO514 base to mobile, go ahead.” It would be Dick’s or Dola’s voice crackling over the radio.
“We’re meeting Larry at Whataburger for lunch,” Brenda told Dola over the CB mike one day after leaving prairie-dog town.
“Sounds great,” Dola said. “Can y’all stop by the store and pick up some diapers and a can of sliced pineapple on the way home? I’ll make a pineapple upside-down cake tonight.”
“Ten four,” I said.
“I’ll make sure she remembers,” Brenda piped in. She loved pineapple upside-down cake.
Joni grabbed the mike from Brenda. “Over and out,” Joni said, giggling and covering her mouth.
March 25, 1968
Dearest Terry and Little Ones,
It was so nice to hear your voice on the telephone last night. I was afraid to answer at first because I thought that it might bring bad news. It was quite a relief when I heard all of you. Joni and Brenda sound real happy, Terry. You must be doing a real fine job. . . .
There is a new girl in my dormitory that is only eighteen. She does not even know what size dress that she wears. Her mother has always done everything for her until she just couldn’t take it anymore. I was thinking that maybe I pushed you girls to learn too much and maybe I did. Now I see that it can also work two ways. I could not stand for one of you to be in here. Better me than you. . . .
Terry, I may have a chance here to brush up on my schooling. What do you think? The girls sound as though they have made such a good adjustment that I hate to move them out of school until the summer vacation. If the opportunity is offered to me, should I take it? Of course, I may not have any choice. Even though I am a voluntary patient—they can commit me if I try to leave before they agree to it and at this point I really do not know what the doctor has in mind. . . .
It is odd how many things are changing for me as I have time to think of them. I did not realize how much I was tied into knots. I find that I had put up several mental blocks as a defense. I forget some things that I wou
ld rather remember. It must have been a habit I formed to hold myself together. What a tight rope I must have been walking for a long time—years.
The psychiatric technicians (educated fools for the most part, ha) want me to talk, talk, talk. And I have formed such a habit of keeping so much to myself for so long that we are really clashing. How in the world do they expect me to be able to talk to these kids who are not yet dry behind the ears about a life that has covered as many miles as mine? They are supposed to be objective about it all, but most of them have not yet lived in a broad enough world to be objective about anything.
Hugs and kisses to all,
Mama
P.S. They listen to the telephone conversations so I feel under a strain to talk too personally
It sounded like Mama was doing much better and gaining some insight. I felt a twang when I read that she wanted to brush up on her schooling. I knew the feeling. I told myself I still had time. It made sense to let the girls finish out the school year. They were happy and we were doing well together.
Mama’s Diary Entry
Ray is drawn to me and me to him. . . . he has little faith in women. It must be that he senses in me something akin to himself. I don’t trust men. He seems intelligent enough to realize that the closeness of our situation and my role in his life (and his in mine) are part of a temporary arrangement.
When I read this entry, a little warning bell went off in my head. Mama was in the hospital to get well, not to get involved with another man.
April 2, 1968
Dearest Terry,
How is the little mother? Now you can see why it is nice to have children while you are young. You have the energy to keep up with them. . . .
I really do want to go back to school if I can and even if it is not possible, I am finding myself and I think that I can not only make a new life for myself, but one that I will be happy in. Not bragging—just realized that my IQ makes it impossible for me to be happy in most situations. I am overly sensitive because I am overly perceptive to other people. I am continually amazed at the amount of intelligent [patients] in this place. . . .
Ray was discharged two days ago. He is job hunting in Denver and asked me to call him when I got out. I may do that. . . . He helped me as much as anything because his was my own situation in reverse. Complicated? This place is that!
Do you know that I really did not think that there was anything that anyone could do that would make me want to live again? I really thought that I would be wasting everyone’s time. How wrong I was!!!! Just the rest and the time to think have brought about more changes than you could dream of. . . .
I am taking aptitude tests at the rehabilitation center this week. Will you please pick out some of the dresses that I will be able to use in an office job and send them to me? Hope to be out of here in about a week and a half. . . .
Meanwhile, just keep smiling. It won’t be too long before I will be able to take care of the girls again. Bye now.
Love,
Mama
I boxed up more of Mama’s clothes. Over the course of several months, I had sent most of her clothing. It sounded like she was headed for Denver and Ray. I had an uneasy feeling, but I told myself everything would be fine.
In the meantime, I decided to give Brenda and Joni the best Easter they could imagine. I put two Easter dresses on layaway, a white eyelet dress for Brenda and a blue ruffled dress for Joni. I had been saving my tip money to buy the dresses along with ruffled bonnets, lace socks, and new white shoes. The night before Easter, I proudly laid out their outfits. I positioned two large Easter baskets in the hallway outside their bedroom door.
Brenda and Joni awoke on Easter morning chattering and jumping with delight to find a stuffed Easter bunny and jelly beans inside their baskets. Dola and I hid colored eggs, Avon eggs with decals, and chocolate eggs in her mother’s backyard for the Easter-egg hunt. I helped Brenda pull her dress over her head, then helped Joni thread her slender body into hers. Both dresses fit perfectly. I combed their long hair, tied on their bonnets, and handed them their baskets for our Easter-egg hunt. If a day can be perfect, that one was.
Mama had been out of the hospital for four days but apparently had no plans of coming to Odessa anytime soon. In fact, we weren’t sure where she had gone. Possibly Denver, as her last letter suggested.
Dad and Cathy spoke to Vicki in California and learned about Mama’s suicide attempt and that I was taking care of the girls. Since I had been writing them regularly, Vicki assumed I had told them. I hadn’t. I still kept most things to myself. Besides, I thought Dad and Cathy had enough to worry about with Lanny. The cancer had spread to Lanny’s spine. He was in considerable pain.
Whenever he could manage it, Lanny drew pictures for me. Dad wrote, “Lanny drew you a rat fink—whatever that is.” I unfolded the picture and easily recognized the Rat Fink cartoon character. When I received Lanny’s school picture, I wrote back saying I couldn’t believe I had such a good-looking brother. Cathy said Lanny loved to read that and couldn’t wait to walk to the mailbox to see if there might be another letter from me. When he received the books I sent him, he immediately stashed them in his treasure chest. “Only his greatest treasures go in there,” Cathy said. When Lanny heard I had taken the girls bowling, he told Cathy to tell me he thought he could beat me at bowling. Cathy said he scored 136 once and thought he was a great bowler.
For my April birthday, Lanny sent me a Snoopy card about zooming across the miles to wish me a happy birthday. He had written in cursive. “Dear Terry, I really do wish I could zoom down there to see you. Love to my sister on her birthday. Love, Lanny.”
I propped his card up on top of my dresser.
Dad and Cathy had hoped they could bring Robin and Lanny for a visit after Lanny had shunts inserted to take some of the pressure off his brain. The doctor said a slow, easy trip to see me in Texas, and Vicki in California, might be possible. But, too soon, Lanny’s headaches returned with a vengeance. It broke my heart to read, “He screams from the pain.”
May came.
When Mama finally called, I asked where she was staying. She said she was moving around and staying with different people in Colorado. I asked when she thought she would be coming back.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I do miss the girls, but if you could keep them just a while longer . . . If you need me, you should be able to reach me at this number for a while.”
She didn’t sound depressed or irrational, just untethered.
Before school let out, I bought Joni’s and Brenda’s class pictures.
Brenda sits in the front row of her class with her hands folded. She will be going into sixth grade come fall. She looks like me. Joni stands in the second row of her class and smiles. She will be entering third grade. Joni looks like Daddy. Both Brenda and Joni look happy and well-adjusted.
As I looked at their pictures, a wave of sadness washed over me. These two girls were precious in every way. I knew suddenly I was at a crossroads and had a choice to make. I could put my life on hold and try to raise them until they were grown. Or I could call Mama and tell her this was a good time for them to transition into a new place with her. They still wanted and needed Mama.
I held their pictures a long while. I had been Joni’s age when I was in Iowa, waiting for Mama to come back before the end of summer, as she had promised. And here I was, all these years later, waiting for her again.
Only this time, I wasn’t helpless. I had just turned nineteen. I was old enough to nurture and protect what was precious to me not only now, but what had been precious to me as a young girl watching Mama drive away.
I knew what I had to do.
I DROVE with all the windows down, toward the setting sun. The waxing moon climbed into the desert sky. I was headed west toward California for Vicki’s graduation from high school. Mama wouldn’t be there. I knew it for a fact. She had the girls now. I had called her and told her I thought it was time. I would miss Brenda and Joni
and they would miss me, but I would always see to it that their dresses were never too big.
The girl in me who had been waiting her whole life was in the car with me now, her hair flying in the wind. She couldn’t stop smiling.
Epilogue
Riverside Cemetery
May 26, 2009
UNBELIEVABLY, IT’S HAPPENED again. I know I’m in the general vicinity, but here I am walking up and down the rows, unable to locate Mama’s grave. A worker riding a droning lawn mower observes me from beneath his baseball cap. The air smells of newly mown grass.
It’s been almost twenty years since you were last here, and thirty-five years since she died, I tell myself. This is supposed to assuage my feelings of exasperation for being unable to locate the grave, though I have the lot and block numbers in hand. It’s purely coincidental that my visit falls so close to Memorial Day. I have flown into Colorado for a few days before returning to South Carolina. My husband, Jim, returned home without me, and my daughter, Mandy, returned to Boston, where she now lives.
The three of us flew to California days earlier for my niece Kim’s wedding. My sisters, along with our husbands, children, and grandchildren, filled numerous pews on the bride’s side of the church. Over the years, our extended family has grown into a small village. Within it, Nancy, Vicki, Patricia, Brenda, Joni, and I are known simply as The Sisters.
The Sisters—it’s our collective identity. Though we live apart from one another, in four different states, The Sisters have never been closer. We have a reunion almost every year. Invariably, when we gather, the six of us pile atop a single bed—just the way we used to, growing up—to talk, share, and remember.
Over the years, our children have joined us cross-legged on the floor and implored us to tell them stories about our childhood, which we did with great relish. Ours has been an oral history for many decades. I turned sixty. Joni, the baby, will be turning fifty in November. I know Joni wishes I would forget this fact, the way I seem to have forgotten the location of Mama’s headstone.
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