Raising Myself

by Beverly Engel

  “Oh, this will look good on you.”

  “Yes, but it’s your color. You should have it.”

  “No, you take it. I have a blouse almost like it.”

  “Yes, but you always need another blouse for work.”

  I knew my mother desperately needed clothes for work, and I knew she must feel badly because she couldn’t afford to buy me clothes. On these nights, for once, we were kind and generous toward each other.

  Throughout the box, often wrapped in a scarf or doily, there would be pieces of costume jewelry or knickknacks—clearly things my aunt no longer wanted or that were possibly recycled gifts. Most of the things she sent were ugly or useless even to us, and I realized that my mother exercised great restraint by not saying anything to me about how insulted she was to receive them.

  My mother had always put my aunt on a pedestal. But her habit of complaining about everyone she ever met or knew included her sister and brothers. (I say “habit” because it seemed like part of her personality to do this.) So it was a pleasant surprise that, for the most part, she tried to hide her judgments and disapproval from me regarding Aunt Natalla’s hand-me-down gifts. And because of this, I had good feelings about my aunt and put her on a pedestal myself. I thought of her as someone who was kind and loving.

  So when my mother told me Aunt Natalla was coming to visit us from Missouri the summer before my junior year, I was thrilled. I was excited to meet this elusive “Fairy Godmother” for the first time in my life.

  Uncle Kay, who still lived in Bakersfield but whom we saw infrequently, joined us for the occasion of my aunt’s visit and he seemed to be on his best behavior. He had lived with Aunt Natalla and her husband, Homer, for several years when he was in his early twenties but had finally been kicked out because of his drinking. On the day of Aunt Natalla’s arrival, Kay offered to pay for a taxi to pick her up at the tiny little regional airport, a few miles out of town, since neither he nor my mother had a car.

  The three of us were as cramped in the backseat of the taxi as sardines in a can. It was June and, as was typical, it was already boiling hot by nine in the morning. When we got to the airport, I was full of excitement; I stood behind the chain-linked fence waiting with anticipation for my aunt to get off the small propeller-driven plane. But instead of greeting us, instead of saying hello to her beloved niece for the first time since she was a baby and giving her a big hug, she immediately started complaining.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’m exhausted. We had a two-hour layover in Phoenix and then the plane was delayed on top of it all. And the food was terrible. I couldn’t eat a thing. I’m starving. My God it’s hot here. It’s worse than Poplar Bluff!”

  When she finally looked at me, she gave me a pathetic smile and tried to be the good aunt, but it was clear that she was uncomfortable and unhappy and didn’t have the energy or ability to get past it long enough to connect with me.

  Kay sat in the front seat with the driver while my mother, my aunt, and I all squeezed into the backseat.

  “I’m sorry it’s so tight in the cab,” my mother apologized. “We should have left Beverly at home. And I’m so sorry you didn’t have a good flight. I hope you’ll be cool enough in the apartment. There’s a cooler right in your bedroom.”

  My mother and I had worked hard for two weeks to get our small apartment clean for my aunt. But upon our arrival home, my aunt made it abundantly clear that it was not up to her standards. As soon as she walked through the door she had only negative things to say: “My goodness, how can you live in such a tiny apartment? This rug needs a good cleaning. Don’t you have any clean towels? My goodness, these sheets need a good ironing.”

  She also complained about my mother’s smoking and the yellow layer of smoke stains that lined the ceilings. My mother tried not to smoke as much in Aunt Natalla’s presence but she was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes and couldn’t help herself. My aunt spent that whole evening either standing at the front door or on the front porch, trying to get some fresh air.

  When my mother cheerfully told her that dinner was ready that evening, my aunt took one look at the food she had prepared and insisted on taking us out to dinner. My uncle called another cab and we went downtown to the Chinese restaurant.

  Aunt Natalla left the very next day. I assume she must have intended to stay longer but she was just too uncomfortable. She’d come all the way from Missouri to see us but she couldn’t wait to jump back on that plane to get home—home and away from her poor, country bumpkin kin.

  Like my mother often acted with her own friends and neighbors, my aunt acted like she was a queen and we were the lucky “minions” who had been blessed by her presence. Only my aunt was far worse than my mother.

  I felt deeply disappointed after Aunt Natalla’s visit—but I knew my disappointment couldn’t compare with my mother’s hurt feelings. She had been so excited to see her beloved sister, the sister she put on a pedestal. She hadn’t seen her in fourteen years, and it was unlikely she would be seeing her again any time soon. And she had worked hard to make Natalla feel comfortable: she’d bought new sheets for my twin bed so she could sleep comfortably, stocked our tiny bathroom with new towels and French soap. But it seemed that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t please her sister. My aunt was apparently so used to being pampered, so used to a certain style of living that she simply couldn’t adjust to a lesser one—even for a few days.

  This was only the third time in my life I’d felt sorry for my mother. The first time had been in Ceres when I thought of her walking up and down the streets trying to sell her cosmetics. The second was when I heard her crying and saw her sitting up late at night smoking cigarettes after I’d been caught shoplifting.

  It turned out that Aunt Natalla, the great woman, was not the gracious, loving, and kind person I’d imagined she would be. In fact, she seemed aloof, rigid, egotistical, and unwilling (or perhaps unable) to be the least bit flexible or compassionate.

  After my aunt’s visit, my mother became more critical of her and less excited about the Christmas box. For me, it was the loss of the fantasy aunt I carried in my head, the sweet, caring aunt who loved me from afar. I suspect it was an even greater loss for my mother—the loss of the loving older sister she adored and admired. Now she had to face the truth that Natalla—like Kay and even Forrest—was selfish, self-centered, and not so loving after all.

  I had now met every one of my mother’s living relatives and I was extremely disappointed. Except for Uncle Frank, they all seemed arrogant, self-centered, selfish, and demanding. It was all about them. They didn’t seem to have the ability to put themselves in the other person’s shoes. They were all “experts” on every subject; they all thought they knew everything and their opinion was the only one that really mattered.

  And they all seemed to think they were better than everyone else. I wondered where they’d gotten this. With the exception of Natalla, who had married into money, none of them had any money or any real accomplishments to boast of.

  I now understood why they weren’t close to each other. The Depression may have torn them apart, but what kept them apart was their difficult personalities. I think Forrest tried the hardest to stay connected to his siblings. He certainly did with my mother and I, and I know he helped Frank out from time to time. But my aunt Natalla wiped her hands of Kay and Frank very early on because of the humiliation their alcoholism caused her among her elitist country club friends in Poplar Bluff.

  All my life, I’d dreamed of having a family. But it sure wasn’t this one. Just like I had realized from having Kay live with us that having a bad father was worse than having no father at all, I came to the conclusion that it was better to have no family at all than to have a family like the one I had.

  Most of all, after having met all of my mother’s siblings I came to understand my mother better. I gained a deeper understanding of why she was the way she was. She’d been raised around people who were constantly criticizing ot
her people. People who always had an opinion about what someone else should do. She’d been raised by people who were arrogant and self-centered, who always thought they were better than everyone else. Realizing this helped me to judge my mother a little less harshly. Maybe she couldn’t help being the way she was.

  chapter 28

  One evening in the fall of my sophomore year, Helen Barnes, Cherie’s mother, called and asked to speak to my mother. I was worried at first, thinking that something had happened to Cherie, but as it turned out Helen was calling to invite my mother and me over to their house the following Saturday. Since Cherie and I were such good friends, she said, she thought that they should meet. My mother just happened to be in a good mood—she’d just drank a couple of beers—so she agreed.

  That Saturday, Helen picked us up in her late-model beige Buick and drove us up to their house in Hillcrest. Though I’d been to their house many times, my mother had never seen it, so Helen proudly gave my mother a tour. You could tell she was proud of the house, and it was immaculate—which, I knew, was all thanks to Cherie’s hard work.

  The Helen on display on this day was a different version from the angry, red-faced monster I’d known. This Helen was gracious and charming. She was not a beautiful woman but she had the air of someone who was. Her face was puffy (which I would later come to understand came from drinking too much) and her eyes were too small for her round face, but she was very sexy. She wore a blouse with a plunging neckline and a skin-tight pencil skirt with open-toed stilettos, which made her walk like Marilyn Monroe—very short steps, one foot strategically placed in front of the other, making her hips swing in an exaggerated way.

  After the tour, Helen had Cherie provide us all with drinks— martinis for the grownups, 7Ups with maraschino cherries for Cherie and me—and we all settled into the living room. Helen sat down on the couch and crossed her legs in a provocative way. Then, with her hands crossed in a pose over her knees, she bent her head and looked up with seductive eyes and a pout on her lips. She leaned over, showing plenty of cleavage in the process, and took a very slow sip from her drink.

  Helen caught me looking at her, and just for a second her eyes met mine. I could tell she was a smart cookie, and like me, she could read people. She scrutinized me carefully, as if trying figure out whether I was someone she could respect or someone she could walk all over. I think she decided right away that she liked me. From that moment on, she often looked at me when she spoke, and when I spoke she listened attentively and nodded in agreement with some of the things I said.

  Perhaps Helen saw my strength, or maybe it was my pain, or perhaps even my dark side. Whatever the case, she decided not to mess with me. Unlike most adults I’d met so far, she didn’t treat me as if she pitied me. Instead she treated me with respect—the total opposite of how she treated her daughter.

  In my previous encounters with Helen, I had disliked her intensely for the way she treated Cherie. And I was afraid of her. I’d seen her blow up in anger many times and I knew what she was capable of. But Helen’s sexuality was very attractive to me. She seemed to own it and to be comfortable in her own body. I’d always been ashamed of my body and my sexual feelings, so watching her gave me a whole new perspective on female sexuality.

  Helen certainly flaunted her sexuality—but even if she hadn’t, it would have just oozed out of her. She was so different from my mother, who didn’t seem to exude any sensuality at all. Even though my mother was a beautiful woman—more so than Helen, in spite of being at least fifteen years her senior—she seemed almost asexual. Mom reminded me of Deborah Kerr, with her regal manners and her porcelain doll skin. Helen was more like Ava Gardner—all earthy and sensuous and raw, even animalistic at times. I adored Ava Gardner.

  What at first seemed like friendliness and acceptance toward me soon revealed itself to be manipulation. In fact, the word that comes to mind when I think of Helen is “conniving.” And even though I grew to like her, and I liked the fact that she liked me, I didn’t trust her. I didn’t trust that the attention and approval she lavished on me had anything to do with me. I suspected it had far more to do with Cherie—specifically, making Cherie feel bad. When she paid attention to me or complimented me, Cherie was usually there to witness it, and although the comparisons she made between us were usually subtle, sometimes they were blatant.

  “You’re so gregarious and fun,” she’d tell me. “I wish Cherie was more like you. She’s always so withdrawn and glum. Sometimes I wonder if I brought home the wrong baby from the hospital. You’re more like me than she is.”

  The look on Cherie’s face when her mother said these things was difficult to witness. She looked absolutely devastated. Her whole face seemed to fall, her eyes cast down, her lips formed into an upside-down smile.

  I was deeply conflicted about my feelings for Helen. I loved the compliments, especially since I never received any from my own mother, but I hated seeing Cherie look so dejected. I also knew Helen was right: we were alike. I felt good about meeting a kindred spirit, but at the same time I felt shame about what I saw in this mirror being put up in front of me. And I felt horribly guilty for going along with her devious game. I wanted to stand up for Cherie, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it—partly because I was too afraid of Helen’s reaction, but also because I didn’t want to put an end to the compliments.

  Helen was cunning when it came to my mother as well. There was a deliberateness in the way she plied her with drinks. Momma could usually handle her beer, but she never drank hard liquor, so when Helen gave it to her she got drunk right away. Helen always had a self-satisfied look on her face when my mother started to slur her words, and occasionally she’d shoot me a look of triumph when my mother stumbled to the bathroom.

  I suspected it made Helen feel superior to see Mom tumble off her pedestal like that. My mother was far more sophisticated, beautiful, intelligent, and likeable than Helen; in fact, she probably wouldn’t have even associated with Helen in her younger days. No matter how much money Helen had, she couldn’t match my mother for class, and she knew it—and resented her for it. I, in turn, resented Helen for using my mother’s weakness to make herself feel better.

  As time went on, Helen began inviting us to her house for holiday parties. She would pick us up around noon, and as soon as we got to her house the drinking and the show would begin. We all had to perform for Helen in some way. My mother and the other guests—Helen’s grown nephew, Danny, and his friends Hugh and Rex—had to listen to Helen’s stories. Danny had the job of refilling everyone’s drinks. Cherie and I had to work in the kitchen and dining room, preparing the food and setting the table just right.

  At these holiday parties, Helen was over-the-top seductive with everyone—me, my mother, Rex, Hugh, and even Danny. After some conversation, in which Danny and his friends would literally sit at Helen’s feet as she talked in detail about the sexual escapades she’d had with men over the course of her life, Helen would put on sexy music, usually a tango, and take turns dancing with each of the young men, who were all in their early twenties.

  It was clear that she had the men mesmerized. As they danced with her, each young man looked down at her as if she were the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world. And she, in turn, looked up to him as if he were her knight in shining armor, her eyes full of admiration and longing. Then she would move closer, making sure there was no space between her body and theirs as she slithered her hips back and forth against their pelvis. Then, having gotten all three of them hot and bothered, she insisted that they dance with Cherie and me.

  I developed a crush on Rex and Cherie adored Hugh so we paired off, sometimes going outside on the patio and making out. My mother was too far gone to care and Helen seemed to approve. I was now fourteen and Cherie was fifteen.

  Helen had captured each and every one of us in her web, and she was so good at it that we didn’t even know what danger we were in.

  After the dancing, Cherie and I were summone
d into the living room to perform a skit or play the little organ Helen had bought just for this purpose. My favorite song to play was “Liebestrom,” a hauntingly sad, almost morose song. And I didn’t mind performing skits; in fact, I loved the chance to express myself and get some attention. But Cherie hated it. She hated standing up in front of others and preferred to stay in the background. And she knew her mother expected her to perform perfectly, so she and I had to practice our skits over and over to make sure we got them just right.

  My favorite skit was one we performed to the Marty Robbins song “Rosa’s Cantina.” The song was about a man falling in love with a Mexican girl named Falina who danced at Rosa’s Cantina.

  I loved whirling and dancing around as Falina, and both Cherie and I played the role of the cowboy who loved her but had to ride away on his horse to avoid the law, which was just as fun. We’d had a lot of experience galloping around the playground all through grammar school, and memories of this brought giggles from us.

  There was another Marty Robbins song (Helen loved Marty Robbins) about cattle. The line we liked best described the cattle leaving their shackles. We loved pretending we were taking off our shackles, and we exaggerated the movements as we did it. Cherie especially liked doing it.

  Dinner was always served far too late in the evening at these holiday parties. By then all the adults were drunk, especially my mother. I’ll never forget one infamous Thanksgiving dinner during my sophomore year. We had just sat down to dinner. Helen, at the head of the table, took all the credit for how beautiful all the food and the table looked and then announced that we should dig in.

  I was starving, so I started shoveling food in my mouth right away. I looked up from my plate just in time to see my mother’s head drop forward, right into her plate. I was mortified. How could she do such a thing? How could my mother, who always cared so much what people thought, who always told me that your reputation was your most important asset, let herself stoop to such self-degradation? I wanted to disown her, pretend she wasn’t my mother. I wanted to run away and hide.