Raising Myself

by Beverly Engel

  “I know, I know,” Sue said. “But you don’t understand. When you love someone like Glenn and I love each other, you’ll do anything to be with them. Your feelings of love overshadow everything.”

  Sue was right. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see how you could love someone so much that you’d put your own or someone else’s life in danger to be with them. Or rather, I could see it but I didn’t accept it—didn’t approve of it. I’d witnessed Ruby putting all reason aside to be with a man who was totally inappropriate for her—a man who had been in a mental hospital, a dangerous man—and I’d seen how in so doing she had risked her own safety and the safety of a child. I just wasn’t willing to believe that loving someone could justify all that. And I was afraid they were going to get caught.

  Sure enough, one day Glenn’s wife followed him to Sue’s house. That night she flagged Doyle down while he was driving up his driveway and told him all about what his wife was up to.

  The next day Doyle came home at lunch time and caught Sue and Glenn in the act. I still consider it a miracle that he didn’t kill Glenn or Sue, or both of them. But he did beat Glenn up and then physically throw Sue out of the house.

  Surprisingly, this story actually had a happy ending. Glenn left his wife, and he and Sue moved in together. I’d never seen Sue so happy. Doyle kept everything he and Sue had, including her clothes, but Sue was just glad to be rid of him. Glenn’s wife also took everything they had accumulated, so Sue and Glenn didn’t have a pot to piss in. But Glenn still had his job working at a garage and they had each other.

  I was happy that things turned out well for Sue. She’d been through so much tragedy and chaos in her young life. She deserved to be happy and secure and loved. And I was happy for a more selfish reason: I needed to know that there could be a happy ending. All I’d ever experienced or witnessed around me were stories that ended badly.

  chapter 30

  Sue and Glenn fixed me up with a friend of Glenn’s from the garage who lived in a little apartment behind their house, Ricky. He was a thin, wiry guy with lots of energy and charisma, and he was twenty-two years old—seven years older than me.

  I’ll never forget the first time he picked me up on his motorcycle. I hadn’t been on one before so, when I got on the back, I hung on for dear life. Ricky wasn’t very big so putting my arms around his waist didn’t make me feel all that safe. One good pull and I was afraid he’d be sitting in my seat and I’d be on the ground. But Ricky was stronger than he looked, and even though I was petrified of that roaring monster, the ride was also thrilling—it reminded me of how I felt driving in Ruby’s red convertible.

  Ricky wasn’t very good looking but he was crazy about me. In a way, I guess I was using him. Sue and Glenn were so in love that I felt lonely hanging out with them when I didn’t have a date too.

  The four of us spent the rest of the summer before my junior year together, going to the Bakersfield Speedway every Saturday night to watch the drag races, partying at Sue and Glenn’s, and going to the drive-in. I felt happy because it kept me out of my house, and because Sue and Glenn’s happiness was contagious.

  Ricky made me feel pretty and sexy and desirable. We’d go back to his apartment late at night and lie on his bed and make out, and he was always a gentleman—not that I cared. By this point, I was ready for sex, but I exuded such a “good girl” persona that guys usually left me alone. Ricky treated me with respect and I appreciated that. But I also secretly wished he’d try to go further.

  Sometimes Ricky just stared at me and caressed my hair and face. “You’re so beautiful,” he’d say. “I love you so much.”

  But I didn’t take him seriously. How could he be in love with me? We hadn’t known each other that long. And besides, I didn’t think anyone could really love me.

  One Saturday night in late August, just before school started, things got hot and heavy between us. Instead of stopping the way he usually did, Ricky kept right on touching me. Before I knew it, we both had our clothes off and were just about to have sex—and then he jumped up, put on his jeans, and went out the door.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said over his shoulder. “Gotta get me a rubber from Glenn.”

  I lay there naked in the dark, completely turned on, anticipating what it would be like to have sex with Ricky, someone who I knew would be gentle and loving.

  But when Ricky came back, he told me Glenn didn’t have any rubbers since he and Sue were trying to have a kid.

  “Why don’t you go to the store and get some?” I asked. I was glad he’d had the presence of mind to think of them since I was deathly afraid of becoming pregnant.

  But it seemed like the evening air had cooled Ricky off.

  “It’s late. Maybe we should forget it,” he said. He kept his jeans on and lay down on his side, facing me. “We shouldn’t anyway. Not until we’re married.”

  I was too shocked to say anything. I suddenly felt cold and vulnerable lying there with just the sheet covering my nakedness.

  “Will you marry me, Beverly?” he said softly, gathering me up in his arms.

  I didn’t know what to say. Marrying Ricky was the last thing on my mind. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So I tried reasoning with him.

  “I’m too young to get married, Ricky. I’m not even out of high school.”

  He wasn’t having any of it. “Okay, but why can’t we at least get engaged and then get married once you graduate?”

  I felt more and more trapped as I tried to find a way to let him down easy. “But I’m going to college, Ricky. I can’t get married.”

  “Married people go to college too, you know,” he assured me. “I make good money, and I can support us while you’re in school.”

  I sat up, clutching the sheet to my chest. Finally, I said, “But we’d have so little in common by that point, you being a mechanic and me a college graduate.”

  This turned out to be the wrong thing to say. I’d never seen Ricky get angry before but now he jumped out of bed and began pacing around the room, making fists with his strong, callused hands.

  “You just don’t love me, that’s all. Am I right or am I right?”

  He was right, of course. I couldn’t say it, but my silence must have said it all. Ricky stood staring at me, clenching his jaw so tight that the sides of his roughly cut face began to spasm. Then he grabbed a shirt and walked out the front door of his little apartment.

  A minute later, I heard his motorcycle start up. At first, I thought he was going to storm off but when I heard the motor idling I realized he was waiting to take me home. I got up, threw on my clothes, and took my place on the throbbing machine.

  When we reached my house, Ricky kept the motor racing instead of walking me to the door the way he normally did. I got off and stood beside him, not knowing what to say or do. He grabbed me and gave me a long, lingering kiss, and then he drove off. I knew he wouldn’t call me again.

  I immediately felt an incredible sense of relief. That had been a very close call, closer than I wanted to experience again. My worst nightmare was to marry some hick from Bakersfield, move into a tract home, and be trapped with a bunch of screaming kids. I’d been planning my escape from Bakersfield for years and I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way. I hadn’t meant to hurt Ricky, but I wasn’t about to sacrifice myself for him either.

  As the days went by, I began to miss Ricky. Every time I saw a couple on TV kiss or laugh together I thought of him. I guess I missed him so much because he cared about me. I loved it that he thought I was beautiful and sexy and I loved that he loved me. I wanted to call him just to hear his voice, just to feel connected to someone again. But I knew better. It wouldn’t be fair. I’d only encourage him or hurt him further. So instead, I told myself it was for the best that we weren’t talking anymore, and I got busy making plans for the new school year.

  Over the next couple of days, I noticed that Sue sounded more distant when we talked on the phone. I couldn’t he
lp but sense that she was judging me for rejecting Ricky. Then, a week later, she called me and I could tell by the tension in her voice that something was wrong.

  “Ricky drove his motorcycle off a cliff,” she said in a serious tone.

  “Oh my God, is he all right?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “He’s alive but he’s in intensive care.”

  “But he’s going to be all right?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I think so,” she said. “But I think he did it on purpose.” I could hear the blame in her voice.

  “You mean he tried to k-kill himself?” I stammered. I felt terrible. How could this be? I asked Sue if she would take me to the hospital to see him.

  She hesitated.

  “What’s going on, why can’t you take me to see him?”

  “He doesn’t want to see you,” she said flatly.

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  I was shattered. I knew I’d hurt him but until that moment I hadn’t known that I’d hurt him that much. There was nothing I could do but ask Sue to call me and let me know how he was doing. I did send a card to the hospital telling him I hoped he’d be okay, and that I’d like to come see him, but I never knew if he got it.

  A couple of weeks went by with no call from Sue. I missed her but I didn’t want to see her if she was going to be acting as distant and critical of me as she’d sounded during our last phone call. Finally, I called her to ask about Ricky—and this time she was even more distant and evasive than before.

  “Will you at least tell me how he is?” I prodded.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Is he going to be out of the hospital soon?”

  “You said you just wanted to know how he is and I told you.” She sounded angry.

  “I know he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” I said, “so why are you being so evasive?”

  “Well, if you must know, he’s getting married,” she said.

  “He’s getting married?” I was dumbstruck. “What do you mean he’s getting married? To whom?”

  “One of the nurses that took care of him at the hospital.”

  For some reason I felt devastated, like I’d just lost my best friend—or maybe more aptly, my puppy. I hadn’t wanted to marry Ricky, and yet the thought of him marrying someone else, and so quickly, left me with conflicting feelings. I suddenly felt abandoned and angry at that same time. He had sure gotten over me quickly. Had it all been a lie? Had he not loved me after all? It seemed to me he just wanted to get married to someone . . . anyone.

  In early September, right after school started, Florence and the girls and I were invited to a party. The more I drank the more upset I became about Ricky. In my drunken haze, I grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer and ran down the street with it. Several guys from the party managed to wrestle me to the ground and get the knife away from me.

  It was all very melodramatic. I was drunk and I was probably just doing it for attention, but then again I may have also been looking for an easy way out of the pain that had been building up inside of me all my life. Sue had escaped from Doyle, Ricky had escaped from his pain over losing me, but I was still stuck with my mother, our dark apartment, and my life.

  Whenever anyone asked me about that night after the fact, I tried to laugh it off, saying I was just drunk. But I felt exposed, and once again I felt that horrible shame inside for having done such a stupid thing.

  I also felt ashamed of the way I had treated Ricky. I had led him to believe I cared about him more than I did. But the truth was, I hadn’t realized that men could get their feelings hurt. I didn’t entirely understand that they were humans too. The contact I’d had so far with men had been mostly painful—them leading me on and using me for their own selfish needs. But Ricky had been caring and kind toward me and, in return, I had been condescending toward him. I thought I was better than him and I let him know it, and I hurt him deeply in the process. I had been arrogant and selfish and self-centered and heartless, like so many members of my family—and worse yet, I’d used my sexuality the way Helen did, seducing him in order to feel powerful. I vowed to never do that again.

  part five

  dreams of escape

  “By God, I shall spend the rest of my life getting my heart back, healing and forgetting every scar you put upon me when I was a child. The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape.”

  —Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel

  chapter 31

  Once again, I’d come dangerously close to the flame and somehow managed not to get burned. I cared about Sue, but though her rejection of me stung, she also represented everything I was trying to get away from. And as much as I cared about Ricky, he represented the dead end I feared so much.

  I was determined to make more of my life. I wanted to travel and see the world. And I wanted to get an education so I’d never end up like my mother, just scratching at making a living, standing on her feet for eight hours a day, and feeling embarrassed about where she lived. I was going to make a different life for myself, and I was sure that education was my ticket out. I became determined to work even harder in school. I wanted to leave behind the Steves and the Harveys, the Sues and the Doyles, the Rickys, and of course, my mother.

  At the start of my junior year, with this focus in my mind, I discovered some hidden talents. I knew I was smart because people always commented on my intelligence and I was always in the smart kids’ classes. I also knew I was precocious—that I sounded and acted older than my years. But, up until my junior year, I had never really excelled at anything. I was horrible in math and just mediocre in classes like history, geography, and science. But junior year, my school decided to do an experiment. They took all the smart kids and put them into one advanced English class and one advanced history class.

  There were so many students in each of these classes that we had to meet in the basement. In history class, I just disappeared into the woodwork, which was easy to do in such a large room. But in English class, I raised my hand every time the teacher asked a question. I was interested and engaged.

  We started the semester studying poetry and the teacher had us reading poems by Robert Lois Stevenson, William Blake, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In class, she asked us questions about what we thought their poems meant or what we thought an image symbolized. I always had an answer and the teacher was visibly impressed with what I had to say. She said things to me like, “That’s a very interesting interpretation, Beverly.” Or “Good analysis, Beverly,” or, “Excellent.” Then she would ask if anyone else had anything to add. There was always dead silence.

  Soon it became almost a joke. The teacher would ask a question about a poem and a silence would fall over the huge classroom. No one lifted their hand. Except me. Mrs. Lester would look around the room and ask, “Doesn’t anyone else have anything to say? Don’t be afraid, there are no right or wrong answers. Just tell me what you thought the poem was about.” But still there would be no response from the rest of the class. Finally, she would look my way, smile, and say, “Yes, Beverly.”

  It was clear to everyone she was disappointed that no one else raised their hand, but at the same time she was pleased and eager to hear my answers. And she couldn’t hide her delight when I gave an interesting, thought-provoking response.

  I think the other kids were as shocked as I was by what was coming out of my mouth. Who was this person, and where had she been hiding? Up until this point, I had basically been invisible in school. I wasn’t used to standing out, and none of my classmates were used to it either. At first they looked at me like I had suddenly turned a different color or grown a tail, but eventually they began looking at me with a new expression— one of respect.

  These were the smartest kids in school, and I was now the star of the class. It changed the way my peers treated me. Needless to say, my self-esteem imp
roved tremendously as more and more of the popular kids started saying hi and smiling at me in the halls.

  As it turned out, I was good at understanding not only poetry but also serious literature. I got lost in it. I devoured works by Thoreau and Blake and I loved Fitzgerald’s novels. I read all of Steinbeck’s books. I especially loved The Grapes of Wrath.

  And I excelled in writing essays and book reports, always getting an “A” along with comments like “Brilliant,” “Understanding beyond your years,” and “Great writing.”

  Your life can change in one day, even in one moment. Just like my life had been changed for the worse the day Steve first molested me, my life was changed for the better because of that English class.

  That year, I learned that everyone has a talent. Mine had been buried under all my shame and feelings of inadequacy; each time I was bad, each time I failed at something, I had become more and more convinced that I was worthless. Each time I compared myself with other kids and found that I came up short, I’d lost more and more self-esteem. I was always the last one picked in PE. I was the last one picked when we studied dancing. But in that English class, I decided God was fair after all. Before that I thought I’d been dealt an unlucky hand. I thought God had abandoned me by placing me in Bakers-field with all its dust and pollution and crime. By giving me a mother who didn’t know how to love me. By putting me in a family of alcoholics and know-it-alls. By giving me Pam only to take her away. By putting Steve and Harvey in my life to rape and abuse me.

  But now I realized that he hadn’t just given me bad things. He’d also given me this wonderful gift—a deep understanding of and appreciation for poems and essays and stories. The gift of being able to read poetry or an essay or a story and be able to not only appreciate it but understand the meaning of it. He’d given me the ability to understand metaphors and similes. And he’d given me the confidence to be able to articulate what it was I had understood—a confidence that I had never felt about any other subject. And perhaps most important of all, he’d given me the ability to write well.