Her son, Doug, was the only other student in the fourth grade, so the two of us sat together. I loved watching him and Mrs. Green interact. It was the first time I had ever witnessed what having a loving mother looked like. Although she tried to treat Doug like all her other students, I’d catch her winking at him or glancing at him with a loving look. And when she came over to examine our work, she always put her hand on his shoulders.
I also found a friend in the neighborhood named Gail. Gail went to another school and stayed with her grandmother until her parents came to pick her up each day. After school, we watched the Mickey Mouse Club and ate cookies with milk. I loved the Mickey Mouse Club. We waited with excitement as each “Mouseketeer” came forward to announce their name. We each had a different favorite. Mine was Cubby, a cute little boy about seven years old, and Gail’s was Annette, a dark-haired beauty who was already developing breasts even though she was only nine or ten.
Gail was at home with her parents on the weekends and my mom worked all day Saturday and even went out on Sunday afternoons to sell her Avon products, so that meant I stayed by myself all day on the weekends. Momma let me have a cat to keep me company. She was white with light brown spots, so I named her Sandy.
I created a routine to help me pass the time. First thing in the mornings, I went over to the next-door neighbor’s house. Mrs. Maynard was the first of many old ladies I befriended in my childhood—sweet ladies who probably felt sorry for me because I was alone so much, and who were probably lonely themselves. Mrs. Maynard fed me breakfast: corn flakes. The only catch was that she served the cereal with canned condensed milk, which tasted absolutely horrible to me. I ate the cereal anyway, both because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and because I was so hungry. Momma wasn’t making enough money to provide much food for us, and she’d never considered breakfast a meal anyway.
Mrs. Maynard was kind of like Ruby: she was nice to me but she had her limits. After giving me my cereal and listening to me chatter for a while, she soon made it clear that I needed to go home. She’d given me an old coffee pot to play with, so I usually went home to our backyard, where I had set up a sort of camp scenario like I’d seen cowboys do on TV. I sat the coffee pot on some rocks and pretended to heat up the coffee to serve guests. Just like little girls play “tea party” with little tea sets, I played “coffee” with my coffee pot.
There was a rock garden in our little backyard—just several large rocks placed in a circle, really, but I found them endlessly entertaining. For hours, I walked on top of them, round and round the circle, balancing myself as I hopped from rock to rock. I’d sing songs, tell myself stories, and make up scenarios in my head—like the one where I used the stones to help me cross a ferocious river.
When I got hungry, I went inside to make myself a sandwich. When we lived in Bakersfield Momma had always bought pumpernickel or rye bread, and even though I ate it, I never liked it. I’d always hound her to buy white bread like I’d had at Ruby’s house, but to no avail.
“That white bread they sell today isn’t bread at all,” she’d tell me. “It’s just tasteless fluff.”
But in Ceres she finally broke down and bought me white bread.
“I know you like it and I know you live on sandwiches when I’m not at home,” she explained. “Besides, it is a lot cheaper than the other bread.”
It did make more sense to buy the foot-long loaves of cheap white bread. That way, I could make sandwiches all week long out of one loaf.
Momma also broke down and starting buying me bologna. She had seldom bought lunchmeat in the past because it was expensive, but when she did it was always the kind she liked— olive loaf or headcheese. I hated these but always ate them anyway.
Now I could go into the kitchen and make myself bologna sandwiches with white bread whenever I got hungry. I was what Momma would call “living in hog heaven.”
Then I would play “Queen,” the game my mother had taught me. I pretended I was the Queen’s servant and I had to clean the castle before she came home or I’d be put in chains in the dungeon. I swept and dusted, made the bed, did the dishes, and took out the garbage. Then I rewarded myself by going to visit the neighbor on the other side of our house, a nice lady who would invite me in for cookies and milk. I don’t remember her name but she was very sweet to me and the cookies and milk always tasted so good after all my hard work.
After my cookies and milk, I came home and, with Sandy in my lap, sat on our front porch and waited for the real Queen to come home. I would start my waiting at least an hour before she usually arrived. There was something about waiting for her, looking for her to come down the street, that was always exciting to me. Somehow, waiting for my mother always made me feel less lonely. Even though she wasn’t with me, the anticipation of her coming made me feel happy.
Ceres was a sweet time for me. My mother couldn’t afford to buy beer and so I experienced a whole different person from the one who drank every night. She seemed to notice me more and even took the time to ask me about school. I’d catch her looking at me sometimes, as if she was trying to figure out how I was doing. And because she didn’t have any lady friends, she spent all her free time with me. Yes, she was unhappy, and yes, she was exhausted, but these things seemed to help her to appreciate me more. She let me know she was grateful for the fact that I was being so good and not causing her any problems. And for the first time in my life she told me she was proud of me—both for being able to stay alone all by myself and for keeping the house so clean.
I gained a new respect for my mother during this time. I’d never really thought about what she did all day when she worked at Thrifty’s, but now I could picture her walking up and down streets, knocking on doors, and selling her Avon products. And I saw how tired she was when she came home, which made me feel bad for her. She’d take off her shoes and tell me her feet hurt, and I would rub them with alcohol for her.
On Sunday evenings, Momma would usually make a big pot of navy beans and salt pork and we’d eat off it all week. I loved it when she cooked anything—even though she often burned the food. It felt cheery to smell the food cooking and it reminded me of the smells in Aunt Opal’s kitchen.
When the food was done, I’d make myself a big bowl of beans and then I’d cut off the skin of the salt pork and add it to my bowl. I usually wolfed down the beans, but I savored the pork skin since it was the only meat we had. If Momma had cooked it long enough, the skin was tender and juicy.
After dinner my mother and I would get into the big bed and she would read out loud the books she had checked out from the library. We had no TV and there was nothing else to do. Even though it was early fall the evenings were cold and so we lay huddled up together under blankets to keep warm. I wasn’t used to being physically close to my mother like that— she always needed her space—but on those nights she let me sit up close to her on the bed and she even let me tuck my head under her arm. I felt safe and warm and loved.
The book I remember most was called Spoon River Anthology. It was about the people of a town called Spoon River. It wasn’t a regular book, it was more of a collection of poems that served as epitaphs on the townspeople’s graves. As my mother read each epitaph we got to know more about the townspeople—how their lives were interconnected and how they treated one another. The poems revealed people’s secrets and their cruelty toward each other. They exposed hypocrisy and sometimes revealed how people had gotten revenge for the harm that had been done to them.
The book was not a children’s book and I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I loved the fact that I was with my mother, that she was reading to me, and that we were sharing something important together. I could tell my mother was moved by the words in the book. Sometimes she’d cry a little as she read one of the poems, and other times she would sit quietly without saying anything after she’d finished reading one, like she was letting it sink in. Other times she nodded her head in understanding as she read a particular poem. Like ent
ry number 8, Amanda Barker:
Henry got me with child,
Knowing that I could not bring forth life
Without losing my own.
And even at nine years old, there was one entry that touched me personally. It was entry number 202, Mabel Osborne:
Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium! . . .
. . . Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water! . . .
. . . And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness;
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved your love,
Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—
Thirsting, thirsting . . .
part two
dark and ugly things
“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent?”
—Anne Rice, Merrick
chapter 13
Good things don’t last long but bad things last forever. That’s what I was learning. I loved living in Ceres, going to the little country school, watching the Mickey Mouse Club with Gail after school, and reading books at night with my mother. But Momma decided she couldn’t take it any longer. She couldn’t find a job, and she told me she was too old to be selling cosmetics door-to-door. So she called Ruby and asked her to come pick us up.
I was happy to see Ruby, and I could tell Momma was too, in spite of the fact that she said she felt like a failure and a fool for having moved out of Bakersfield in the first place.
“I was just getting on my feet. Whatever possessed me to move to Sonora is beyond me,” she chastised herself. “Now I’m going to have to start all over again.”
Ruby and Momma sat in the front seat and I sat in the back. We put Sandy in a wooden box and placed her in the backseat next to me. She cried almost the whole trip.
While we drove, I fantasized about seeing Pam again. I pictured the look on her face when she first saw me, how she’d give me a big hug. I imagined what it would be like to spend the day together in her room, safe but free to dream. I liked Gail a lot, but it wasn’t the same as with Pam. We didn’t have as much in common. Gail’s grandmother loved her a lot, you could tell, and I think her parents loved her too. All that love made her a cheerful, secure child, not sad and uncertain like Pam and me.
When we got back to Bakersfield, we had to live with Ruby and Steve for a while, until Momma could get a job and afford to pay rent. Ruby and Steve had gotten married while we were away in Sonora and Ceres, and Ruby had bought a house on Lake Street, about a mile from the court. Living with Ruby and Steve seemed like a great adventure to me, but I could tell that Momma wasn’t happy about having to once again live off some-one’s charity.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Momma to get a part-time job working at night at a nearby grocery store. Ruby also worked at night at the Little Brown Jug. That meant that Steve needed to watch me every night.
This didn’t seem to be a problem because I knew Steve liked me and wanted to be with me. He didn’t act like babysitters I’d had in the past, women who were nice to me because they were being paid and who constantly let me know I was in the way, or friends of my mother’s who watched me just because they liked my mother so much and wanted to do something nice for her.
While Steve was cordial to my mother, he wasn’t as caught up in her charm as other people were. In fact, it seemed to me that he liked me better than he liked my mother. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to spend time alone with me. This was all new to me. No one, other than Pam, had ever liked me more than they liked my mother. And unlike my mother and Ruby, Steve didn’t mind me chattering at him.
My first night alone with Steve I followed him into the dark garage in the backyard. It was filled with machines and parts of machines and lots of tools all crammed in together. There was a heavy, thick smell to all that oily metal. Steve picked up a wrench and sat down in front of a machine and studied it intently. Then he started turning a part on the machine with the wrench. As he worked, he explained what he was doing. The words he spoke sounded like a foreign language to me, but it felt so good for him to include me. It made me feel like an adult.
Several nights later, Steve looked at a magazine while I sat at the table drawing pictures. It reminded me of the times I’d sat quietly with Ruby as she read. But Steve didn’t ignore me the way Ruby had. Instead he invited me to sit on his lap and gave me a hug and a kiss. I’d never sat in a man’s lap before, not even my uncle Frank or Forrest’s laps. It made me feel special and loved. Steve told me he loved me and I told him I loved him too. He gave me another big hug and we sat quietly together for a while. It felt so good to just sit there and take in that love. Then Steve picked up his magazine and began to show me the pictures inside, pictures of naked men and women.
“This is what people who love each other do together,” he whispered into my ear. His quiet words felt intimate to me.
I didn’t understand what he meant, exactly. In some of the pictures, the men were lying on top of the women, which reminded me of when the teenage boy had told Joey to get on top of me. I’d felt uncomfortable when Joey had done that, and I started to feel uncomfortable now. I must have started to get fidgety because Steve suddenly cuddled me more tightly and gave me another kiss on the cheek. This made the uncomfortable feelings go away and I once again felt cozy and loved up there in his lap.
“Well, I think it’s time you went to bed, young lady,” he announced suddenly.
He lifted me off his lap and walked into the bathroom. I followed him in, not sure what was coming next. I’d never had a bedtime with my mother. I just fell asleep on the couch and she’d tell me to get into bed when she was ready to go to sleep.
Steve bent over and put the plug in the bathtub and started filling it with water.
He turned to me and said, “Okay, take off your clothes.”
I felt a little embarrassed but I complied, taking each piece of clothing off as slowly as I possibly could. Even though I was only nine, I had already begun to develop breasts and I felt awkward and exposed.
Before long, I stood there totally naked. Steve smiled at me in approval. That made the awkward feeling go away.
“Okay, jump in,” he said cheerfully.
I sat down in the warm water. It felt nice. Steve took a bar of Ivory soap and started lathering up a washcloth.
“Turn around,” he said, “so I can get your back.”
I felt so cared for, so loved, as he scrubbed my back with the cloth. My mother had never washed me like this. From the time I’d been big enough to get into the bathtub she’d just let me wash myself. My back never got washed except when I’d soak a washcloth in the water and then squeeze out the water as I held the cloth over my neck, letting the water fall down my back. I was a child starved for touch.
“Now turn around so I can get your front,” Steve said nonchalantly, this time in a softer voice.
Dutifully, I complied.
“You know, you have beautiful breasts. You’re going to be a knockout when you grow up,” he whispered as he gently washed my breasts, first with the cloth, then with his fingers.
This made me feel strange. I knew something about this was wrong. He told me to get out of the bath; when I did, he started drying me off. I was used to doing things myself, and now I had a sense that I couldn’t escape him even if I wanted to. I became more and more uncomfortable. A queasy feeling rode up in my stomach.
After the bath, instead of taking me to the room where I slept with my mother, Steve walked me into the bedroom he shared with Ruby. Even though it was still daylight outside, the room was dark. The shades were drawn tight and there was a heavy feeling in air that made it seem even darker.
All of a sudden, Steve was naked. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and what I saw before me was alien—it looked all purple and wrinkly and ugly. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see this grotesque mons
ter. He asked me to touch the monster, but I didn’t want to. He showed me how to push back the skin on it to expose what was underneath. When I finally touched it, however, I did the opposite of what he told me: I took the skin that looked like the skin on a chicken neck and I pulled it over his penis to cover it up—to make it go away.
Steve got impatient and showed me again. “No, like this,” he insisted.
I did it again, but my way. Now his voice became rougher and he grabbed my hand and forced me to pull back the skin and to make an up and down movement on the monster.
I knew that what was happening was wrong. It didn’t matter that Steve had said this is what people who loved each other did. It just felt wrong, bad.
I don’t remember anything after that for a while except the dark room, the sun going down, and the smell of Vaseline.
The next thing I can recall is Steve being on top of me and saying, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” I felt like I couldn’t breathe, that I was trapped under his body, and yet I also couldn’t feel my body. I was completely numb and I felt like I wasn’t really there. All I wanted was for him to hurry up and get off me.
Steve got out of bed and started putting his pants on. He told me to get up, then he threw my pajamas at me and told me to put them on. My body felt weak with shame. Now he was all sweet to me, telling me what a good girl I was and how much he loved me. He walked me into the kitchen and made me a root beer float. I was glad he did this because my stomach felt nauseated, like I was going to throw up, and I had a bad taste in my mouth.
Just in case the sweet words and the root beer float didn’t do the trick, Steve looked me straight in the eyes and said, “What we do together is a secret. If you ever tell anyone about it, I will kill you. You know I’ve been in a mental hospital and I’m crazy enough to do it.”
Raising Myself Page 8