Raising Myself

by Beverly Engel

  The big boy told me to lie down on the ground and he told Joey to get on top of me. Joey and I giggled as our naked bodies rubbed against each other. I liked feeling his body so close to mine. His body smelled like a vegetable garden—like carrots and celery.

  The big boy told Joey to move the bottom part of his body up and down on the bottom part of mine. Caught up in the game, we both did as we were told, laughing all the while. But once Joey started moving like the big boy told him to do, we both grew silent. Suddenly this didn’t seem like a game anymore. The mood inside the bush had changed. The big boy had a funny look on his face and he had grown quiet and withdrawn.

  Joey abruptly got off me and started putting on his clothes. The big boy had now turned away from us. All I could see was his back. I felt so uncomfortable that I too sat up and put my clothes back on.

  “It’s time to go,” the big boy said in a low, strange voice. He no longer seemed interested in playing with us, and that was fine with me because I suddenly didn’t like him as much as I had before.

  The big boy rose up off the ground and, crouching, made his way through the opening of the branches to the outside. He walked off without saying a word.

  Joey and I sat silently inside the playhouse for a few more minutes. Something had changed between us. I felt self-conscious when he looked at me.

  “I better be getting home,” Joey said.

  “Yeah, me too,” I replied.

  Even with the strange way things had ended, I couldn’t wait to show Momma what I had learned. When I got home I found her napping, and as was usual when it was hot she was on top of the covers without any clothes on. I jumped up on her bed and started doing what the teenage boy had taught Joey to do to me.

  Momma looked at me with a horrified look on her face. “Where did you learn that?” she demanded, eyeing me like I was some stranger she had just met.

  I blurted out what had happened with the teenage boy.

  Momma tried to do all the right things. She found the boy and his parents and told them about the incident, and he was forbidden to come near me or Joey again. She also told Joey’s parents what had happened to us.

  But being my mother, she put an extra spin on things. She forbade me from playing with Joey anymore. That was a real blow, because Joey was my only friend. And forbidding us from playing together also sent me the message that I too must have been bad, I too was responsible for what had happened. It all made me feel very confused. What exactly was proper behavior and what was not? My mother made it clear that what we had done was wrong. And even though she seemed to hold the teenage boy primarily responsible, from that day on my mother considered me “sexually precocious.” Somehow she had not understood that I was only showing her what I had learned, as children tend to do. Instead, she saw my actions as sexual.

  Whenever something bad happened to me or whenever someone hurt me, as far as Momma was concerned, it was always my fault. If I caught a cold, it was because I’d gone outside without a sweater. If I came home from school and complained to her that someone had been mean to me, she would always say, “Well, what did you do to her?” In my mother’s eyes, I was always up to no good. If there was trouble, I was the instigator.

  And since it was always my fault, there was never any empathy or compassion from her. There was never any, “Oh honey, I’m so sorry that happened to you” or, “Come here and let me kiss away your tears.” The message was always clear: “You brought this on yourself. If you had only done this or not done that, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”

  This left me feeling confused, angry, and hopeless. Why couldn’t she ever take my side? Why did she always blame me for everything? Would a time ever come when she would understand me and care about my feelings?

  chapter 6

  I almost flunked kindergarten. This was surprising, mostly because I’d tried so hard to get in.

  I’d found out about kindergarten from Joey before we were banned from spending time together; he’d told me he couldn’t wait to start school and meet lots of new friends, and that was all I needed to hear. I wanted to start too. I was so desperate for friends and for something to do, and I had a sense that school could be my saving grace.

  I have a December birthday, so I wasn’t quite five when school started in September, but I begged my mother to let me start anyway. In fact, I more than begged her—I hounded her.

  “Momma, please let me go to school,” I pleaded.

  “I’m sorry. You have to wait until next year.”

  “Why do I have to wait?” I said, stamping my feet.

  “You have to be five years old to start kindergarten.”

  “But I’m almost five,” I insisted. “Why don’t you tell them I’m five already?”

  “They know how old you are. And they won’t let you in.” She was starting to sound irritated.

  I don’t know what changed Momma’s mind, but she ended up talking the school administration into letting me start early.

  When the first day of school rolled around I was beside myself, and I was even more thrilled when I saw a whole room full of other kids. No holding on to my mother and crying when she left the room for me. I wanted to take a leap and jump into the middle of those kids as if they were a roomful of balloons.

  Every weekday morning, Momma set her alarm clock and called from her bed for me to get up. She didn’t have to call more than once; I was so eager to get to school I jumped out of bed right away.

  There was no such thing as breakfast in my house. My mother was never hungry in the morning, so there were no eggs or oatmeal, and boxes of Wheaties or Rice Krispies were an extravagance we couldn’t afford. This meant I went to school with an empty stomach, but I didn’t mind. I was just happy to be going.

  Without breakfast to slow me down, all I had to do was get myself dressed and walk to school, which was only a block away. Even so, no matter how hard I tried to get there on time, I was always late, and all the kids looked up and stared at me when I walked in. Already, I didn’t fit in.

  But, being the outgoing child I was, I quickly made friends with two other little girls, Debbie and Mary Lou. We did everything together. At recess we played on the swings, the three of us lined up in a row, flying higher and higher into the sky, laughing our heads off. We took turns on the teeter-totter and glided down the slide. I had never felt such joy. At naptime, we placed our little pallets down side-by-side on the floor. And we talked—constantly.

  When it came time to graduate to first grade, my teacher called my mother to school for a meeting. She asked Momma to bring me along.

  “Beverly is a delightful child, Mrs. Engel,” the teacher began, looking at me with a serious look on her face. I could sense there was a “but” coming.

  “She’s very imaginative and bright,” she continued. “But she talks too much in class. She and her two friends continue to talk even when I tell them to be quiet. It disrupts the class.”

  Momma shot me a deadly look. I could already feel the spanking, already hear the lecture as soon as I got home.

  But the teacher wasn’t finished yet.

  “Beverly seems to be the ringleader. I think the other two girls would mind better if Beverly wasn’t encouraging them. Because of this I seriously considered not allowing her to move on to the first grade, but instead I’ve decided the solution will be to separate the three girls—make sure they are not in the same class next year.”

  “That sounds like a good solution,” Momma replied crisply. “But I guarantee you won’t have any trouble with Beverly talking too much in the future.” Again, she shot me a threatening look. “Thank you for your time.”

  With that, she abruptly turned on her heel and got out of there as fast as she could. I followed after her. I couldn’t tell if she was moving so fast because she didn’t want to lose her temper in front of the teacher or because she was so humiliated. At any rate, I knew I was in for it when I got home.

  As soon as we walked through our front d
oor, my mother laid into me—physically and verbally.

  “You know you are supposed to do what your teacher tells you to do. If she tells you to be quiet, you need to be quiet!”

  She went on and on about how embarrassed she was that I was once again such a troublemaker. “I don’t know why you insist on making trouble wherever you go. Does it make you happy to embarrass me all the time? Do you get a kick out of it? All I have ever asked you to do is to try not to embarrass me in front of others. Why can’t you do that one simple thing?” With that she gave me several hard swats on the bottom.

  I felt horrible. I didn’t know the answer to her questions. I tried to be good and not embarrass her, but she was right, I did keep getting into trouble.

  “They’re not going to put you in the same class with Debbie and Mary Lou next year, but I also don’t want you playing with them at recess. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Momma,” I replied dutifully, even though I was panicking inside. What would I do without my best friends? Who would I play with? I never understood why she needed to be so extreme. But I knew to not argue with her.

  “You’d better mind me if you know what’s good for you. You may think you can get away with things when you aren’t with me, but it will always catch up to you. I’m going to tell your teacher to make sure you three don’t play together.”

  I hated it when Momma got so upset. I felt bad about not minding the teacher and for embarrassing my mother. But mostly I was devastated. For the first time in my life, I had friends I adored, and now I was going to lose them. I’d lost Joey over the summer, and now I’d lost my two new friends from school. And worst of all, it was once again all my fault.

  I didn’t make friends easily in first grade like I had in kindergarten. I had a boy haircut, and some of the kids called me “boy” instead of Beverly.

  My mother decided on the haircut to make it easier to manage. “I’m not getting up in the morning to brush your hair and put barrettes in it, and you don’t seem to be able to do it yourself, so we’re getting it chopped off,” she’d announced shortly before school started.

  I didn’t care one way or the other until I found out she was taking me to a barbershop instead of a beauty parlor.

  “Why should I pay an arm and a leg for a haircut at some fancy beauty shop? A good barber can do just as good a job and it only costs me a fraction of the cost,” she’d explain to anyone who mentioned my hair. No one ever seemed to have the nerve to stand up to my mother and disagree with her, or to take my side and encourage her to do better by me.

  In addition to my haircut, I always wore tailored, neutral-colored clothes and clunky brown Oxfords, which made me stand out even further from the other little girls in their frilly, pink and yellow dresses with lace-tipped socks and Baby Jane shoes. My mother drilled into me early on that I wasn’t a “frilly” type of girl. She bought me clothes in beige and tan and grey.

  Fortunately, in spite of the way I looked, I made a new friend. Her name was Pamela, and she looked like the paintings of little girls with huge eyes that used to hang everywhere. Pamela was too pathetic and forlorn looking to be pretty, although she had all the features of a pretty girl. Her parents were Greek, so she had olive skin, dark eyes, and thick black hair cut in a short bob. Her parents didn’t dress her in frilly clothes either.

  I spotted Pamela because she was a misfit like me. At recess, she found a place far away from the other kids and sat with her head down. She never spoke up in class, and when the teacher called on her, she seemed to go into shock and simply could not speak. The other kids looked at her with the same strange look they gave me.

  I liked Pamela because she showed the world how she was really feeling. She didn’t hide it under a false bravado of strength and brashness like I did. She probably liked me because I was so outgoing and friendly. We complemented each other. I acted the way she wished she could act and she reminded me of how sad I really felt.

  Pamela’s parents were rich—at least compared to my mother. They lived less than a mile from us but they might as well have lived in another town. Their part of Bakersfield was called Hillcrest and was filled with massive, ranch-style homes reserved for the doctors and lawyers and business owners of Bakersfield.

  After school Pam and I walked to her house, where we played for hours in her toy- and doll-filled bedroom, which was almost as big as our entire apartment. Her room, with its princess bed and shelves full of dolls and stuffed animals, was our safe house, our respite from the cruel world outside. We were isolated and alone, but we were safe. We had no one scrutinizing us, no one demanding we act a certain way, no one asking anything of us.

  Pam and I were kind to each other. As we played quietly in our make-believe worlds, we seldom spoke, each in our own fantasy world. But we were connected. I’d look up and see Pam’s dark, sad eyes, and without a word she would tell me all about her pain and loneliness. She would look at me and smile, silently communicating her unconditional acceptance of me.

  Pam’s mother stayed in bed all day long. I don’t know if she was sick or sad or what her reason was, but “taking to bed” was a common thing for women to do at that time—at least in Bakersfield. When I got older, I always thought that life had just become too much for these women, and so they retreated to their bed, the way Pam and I had retreated into her room and into our fantasy worlds.

  I felt sad for Pam. She was as alone as I was. Even though her mother was home, she might as well not have been. The house was very long and Pam’s bedroom was on the opposite end of the house from her parents’ bedroom. Even when we took the long walk down to her mother’s bedroom for an occasional visit, she seemed distant and removed. She was a beautiful woman and smiled sweetly when we came into the room, but she didn’t have much to say and we soon knew it was time to leave. Pam hardly ever saw her father either. Mr. Delis owned a farm supply store and worked long hours, well into the evening.

  Pam and I were like orphans who had to raise ourselves, and we clung to each other like lifelines. She became my best friend and more. She was my soul mate, not because we were so alike but because we were opposites, each filling in the gaps in the other’s personality. I was the leader, she was the follower. These were the roles we took on in life—roles created for self-preservation. I was naturally gregarious but this was also a necessity: I had to make my way by myself, so I needed to be able to connect with others, to assert my needs, and, most important, to withstand my mother’s neglect and high expectations by being vigilant and self-sufficient.

  Pam, on the other hand, needed to be passive. She may have been that way naturally, but it also worked for her. She was also neglected, but she received the clear message that she needed to “lie low,” not express her needs, and certainly make no demands. Even if she had, there would have been no one around to meet them.

  I think Pam liked my take-charge attitude because it meant she didn’t have to take the risk of coming out of her shell. I liked her quietness because sometimes my noisiness was too much even for me.

  Because of Pam, I learned that having a family and a big house doesn’t mean that you’re any better off. Pam was as impoverished as I was, even though her parents could buy her anything she wanted. I had the personality, strength, and courage to make it in the world alone, while Pam would have been crushed outside the protection of her cage, like the little, fragile bird that she was.

  chapter 7

  At about the same time I started first grade, Momma found a nice lady to babysit me after school and on weekends while she was at work. She usually worked until late at night, so I’d either walk the few blocks to Mrs. Jones’s house after school or, if I went to Pam’s after school, I’d walk from Pam’s house to Mrs. Jones’s around dinnertime.

  Mrs. Jones wore no makeup whatsoever—not even lipstick. She put her hair up in a bun, and her starched “house-dresses” all had prints of flowers or polka dots. She had a daughter named Sarah who was several years older than me. Her hu
sband drove a big-rig truck for a living, so he was seldom around.

  Unlike other babysitters I’d had, who took care of multiple children, Mrs. Jones only babysat for me. I liked spending time with her because I got a little more attention from her than I had received from those other, busier babysitters, all of whom had made it clear they were just in it for the money and didn’t really care about the kids they were watching.

  Mrs. Jones was especially interested in my spiritual development. She was a member of the Pentecostal church—a group commonly referred to as “holy rollers,” due to their tendency to become so carried away by the Holy Spirit that they sometimes ended up rolling on the floor. A big part of the church’s teaching was that if you wanted to get into heaven you had to refrain from drinking alcohol and coffee, dancing, smoking cigarettes, and wearing makeup. Of course, they also believed you shouldn’t have sex before marriage or outside of marriage.

  Mrs. Jones taught me, along with her daughter, to believe that all of these prohibited activities were the devil’s doing and God would punish those who participated in them. Every evening, she sat us down on her bed for a Bible lesson and a lecture about what was right and wrong. She made us promise we would never smoke, drink, wear makeup, or dance when we grew up, and that we would remain virgins until we got married. I didn’t quite know what a “virgin” was, but I hoped that what the teenage boy had made Joey and me do didn’t mean I wasn’t a virgin anymore.

  When I was about six and Sarah was twelve, Mrs. Jones had us sign a pledge. I fully intended to honor that pledge, if for no other reason than I was afraid of God’s wrath if I didn’t. Besides, I already felt like I was a bad person because of all the bad things I’d already done. I was always getting into trouble with my Momma, I was a liar, and I’d done bad things with Joey. I couldn’t afford to make God even angrier with me.

  Since my mother often had to work on Sundays, I frequently attended church with Mrs. Jones and Sarah, and if Mr. Jones was in town, he came too. There I witnessed many strange things—some exciting, some scary.