Raising Myself

by Beverly Engel

  I learned something else that year in the advanced English class. Although my life up until that point had been full of heart-ache and pain and loneliness, there had been a few bright spots. And, as it turned out, one of those bright spots—my time with my mother in Ceres reading Spoon River Anthology—had had a profound effect on me. It had given me a special appreciation for poetry and how it could convey, and evoke, important emotions. My mother and I had both been moved by the poetry in that book. It had been a source of solace for us, and it had given us a way to express what we were feeling, even though we couldn’t articulate it ourselves. It helped us both feel understood—less alone in life.

  I was learning an important lesson: even the smallest positive experiences can begin to balance out the negative ones.

  chapter 32

  The world was finally opening up for me. At the beginning of my junior year, I made a new friend named Dee-Dee and we had an instant connection, in part because we both had alcoholic mothers. In fact, Dee-Dee’s mother’s drinking had gotten so bad that she and her sister had to move to Bakersfield to live with her aunt, who happened to live across the street from Cherie.

  Even though Dee-Dee’s childhood had been as miserable as mine in many ways, her aunt had money and that meant that Dee-Dee had great-looking clothes. And since she lived in Hillcrest, she became instantly popular. It didn’t hurt that she was really, really cute and all the boys flocked around her. My friendship with Dee-Dee finally gave me a new credibility among the popular girls, so between Dee-Dee and English class, I’d finally made it.

  Then a couple of seniors took me and Florence aside and explained to us that before they graduated they needed to pass on the leadership of their YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) club to some juniors. They chose us because we seemed to be leaders and had lots of friends we could recruit into the club.

  I said yes right away, excited by the chance to form our own club. It took Florence a little longer to come around. She wanted to know exactly what she had to do; she didn’t want to have too much responsibility.

  I attended one of their meetings and became even more enthusiastic. I invited Dee-Dee and Cherie and even Pam to join and all three seemed delighted. Florence finally decided to participate and she brought several of her friends. We now had our own Y club.

  Just as that one English class and Dee Dee had changed my life, another new person was to come into my life and change it still more. Her name was Yvonne and she was Bakersfield’s new YWCA Director.

  The members of all the Y clubs in Bakersfield had been invited to come downtown to the YWCA to meet her. The small room was filled to capacity; all the chairs were taken and people were standing in the back. A woman in her mid-twenties stepped up to the front of the room and introduced herself as Yvonne. She was tall and lean and athletic, what some people would call a “handsome” woman. But it was her personality that made her truly attractive.

  I was mesmerized. I’d never met anyone like her. She was confident and powerful. She was inspiring.

  “You have the power to change your life,” she said with great enthusiasm and authority.

  That’s what I’d been trying to do. I hadn’t liked the road I was going down and I’d been trying to change my ways. Her words gave me hope that I could actually do it.

  “You also have the power to change your community,” Yvonne said.

  I wasn’t so sure I agreed with her about that. Was it really possible to change things around you—change your environment? So far in my life, I hadn’t experienced that. I couldn’t change my mother. I couldn’t stop men from sexually abusing me. I couldn’t make the bad things I’d done disappear.

  “I want to encourage all of you to help others less fortunate than yourself,” she continued.

  I didn’t realize there were those who had less than me. In my school, in my neighborhood, I had always been among the less fortunate. But if I met someone who had less than me, I would want to help them because I knew what it was like to suffer. I knew what it was like to wish someone would help me. Yes, I thought to myself, I’d like to meet these people and help them if I can.

  As I left the meeting, I felt like a changed person. I wondered if Florence, who had driven us to the meeting, felt the same way. I sidled over to her and nodded my head in Yvonne’s direction. “Isn’t she great?”

  “Yeah,” Florence said, “she’s something else.”

  “She said some really interesting things—like how we can change our lives.”

  This was met with silence. Florence wasn’t exactly a deep thinker, and she clearly wasn’t as taken by Yvonne as I was so I retreated into my own mind. I wanted to talk to this woman. I wanted to get closer to her. I wanted to find out how I could help these people who were less fortunate than me and how I could change my environment.

  I was sitting across from Yvonne in her office downtown. I’d had to take two buses after school to get to the YWCA building.

  She folded her hands in her lap. “So what do you want to do with your life, Beverly?”

  No one had ever asked me that question before. Sure, people had asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, but Yvonne was asking a different question.

  “I want to make a difference in the world. I want to do something important.”

  Unlike most adults I had met thus far, Yvonne looked at me with real interest. “Well, that’s what I like to hear, especially from a young woman like yourself.” She gave me a warm smile that went straight to my heart.

  “Yes, I liked what you said the other night about helping other people. Can you tell me what projects I could get involved with?”

  “Well, the Big Sisters program is looking for Big Sisters for the mentally retarded. That might be a place for you to start.”

  Yes, I thought to myself. Someone who was mentally retarded was certainly worse off than me. At least I knew I was smart; I couldn’t imagine what life would be like if I didn’t have that.

  A few weeks later, I attended a gathering at a park where potential Big Sisters were to meet up with the mentally retarded children who were in need of a Big Sister. I spotted Eileen right away, and she seemed to be drawn to me as well.

  Eileen had a wonderful smile. It just radiated. She had Down syndrome—at the time we called it “mongolism”—but all I could see was her spirit. She was the happiest person I had ever met, and she had a contagious laugh.

  We sat down on the grass together. Eileen made a mustache out of a blade of grass. She became mesmerized by a ladybug crawling on her hand then her arm.

  As we laughed out loud and ran around the park, Eileen brought me back to the joy I only remembered ever feeling as a very small child—the joy I had lost. The sparkle in her eyes brought the sparkle back to my own. She reminded me that life wasn’t just about suffering and surviving pain.

  Over the next year, I spent all my Saturdays with Eileen. Her mother told me I helped her feel more like a normal kid—that she was no longer depressed because she didn’t feel as isolated and alone—and thanked me frequently for spending time with her. But Eileen gave me much more than I gave her. She taught me to be grateful for what I had. She helped me to appreciate the beauty around me. She taught me how nature is always there to help us connect with our spirit, our soul.

  And most important, she gave me hope. Maybe I could help other people. Maybe by helping others, I could bring some good into this world instead of only creating trouble and causing pain.

  I went to the YWCA offices downtown almost every day after school. I couldn’t get enough of Yvonne. I wanted to be around her all the time. I wanted to absorb her. I wanted to become her.

  Her door was always open to us and sometimes I went into her office just to blow off steam about my mother and her drinking.

  One day, after I’d been going on and on about my mother, Yvonne asked, “Have you ever had counseling, Beverly?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe we can set up a time each week for you
to come see me and we can talk more about all this,” she suggested.

  I felt excited. Someone cared about me. Someone wanted to help me.

  I started meeting with Yvonne every Tuesday after school. I talked to her a lot about my mother—how her drinking was getting worse and I couldn’t wait to get away from her. I also told Yvonne about the sexual abuse. And then, finally, after talking to her for several months, I told her one day about my suicide attempt after Richard drove off a cliff.

  She looked concerned. “I think it is time for me to refer you to someone more qualified to help you,” she said. “I’m a social worker, but I’m not equipped to deal with some of the issues you have—especially the suicide attempt.”

  I felt horribly rejected. Was I too disturbed, too crazy for Yvonne? What did she think of me? Was this going to make it so I couldn’t continue with the Y Club?

  Yvonne referred me to a male psychiatrist who volunteered his time since I couldn’t afford to pay him. He was a tall, thin, pale man, very polite but very formal.

  At my first session, he asked me why I thought I was there. I didn’t have any trouble opening up with him. I told him about what Steve did to me. I told him about what Harvey did. I told him about my mother, how critical she was and how her drinking was getting worse and how much I hated her for it.

  I went to the psychiatrist for several sessions. I liked talking to him but I wished he would say something back to me. I wished he’d tell me he was sorry all those things had happened to me. I wished he’d tell me what I could do about all the bad feelings I was having—all the shame and anger and sadness. But he never said anything. I wondered sometimes if he was really listening.

  One day, when I walked into his office and sat across from his desk, he said, “This is going to be your last visit with me. You are a very smart girl and you seem to understand your problems very well. In fact, you seem quite well adjusted for someone who has experienced all that you have. I think you have a bright future ahead. You don’t need to be ruled by your past.”

  I was stunned. I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. I’d liked coming to talk to him. It helped me to feel less alone. It felt good to have someone who would listen to my problems, even if he didn’t offer any suggestions for how to solve them. Now I felt rejected—for a second time. First by Yvonne and now by this therapist. On the other hand, I also felt like he’d given me a compliment, and I was relieved to hear that he thought I didn’t need any further help. I was okay. I was “well adjusted.” I didn’t have to let my past ruin my future.

  chapter 33

  The fact that I’d become more popular at school and started going to the Y seemed to bother my mother. She suddenly started telling me what time to come home and asking me where I was going and with whom. I was completely surprised by this since she hadn’t taken any interest in these things for many years. But even though it was difficult for me to adjust to, I went along with this new turn of events, thinking that perhaps I still needed to prove myself to her. After all, I had put her through hell when I was on Janice Drive.

  It got so that I was lucky to get out of the house before she laid into me about something:

  “You just went out last night—you don’t need to go out again tonight.”

  “What do you girls do when you go out, anyway?”

  “I need my sleep. Be quiet and don’t make a ruckus when you come in.”

  “You’d better not be sleeping with boys. All I need is for you to get pregnant!”

  I tried to be patient with her but it was difficult. And I tried to understand her but it was all so new—her concern for me, her suddenly setting boundaries when she had seldom done so as I was growing up. And if she was already drunk when she said these things, which was often, I had a hard time seeing her as someone I should respect or listen to. In fact, the more she lost control of her faculties, the more contemptuous I grew toward her.

  Who the hell does she think she is, telling me what to do? I’d think to myself. I never said this out loud, but I’m sure I expressed it in the way I looked at and spoke to her.

  The fact that I was feeling better than I ever had about myself, that I had more friends and was receiving more positive feedback from others, seemed to rub my mother the wrong way. Thinking about it now, I wonder what my blossoming and my adolescence was bringing up in her. From the little I’d been able to ascertain, my mother had a really good time during her teen years. She was pretty and got a lot of attention from boys. She had a best friend and she seemed to have a lot of fun.

  Once, she shared with me about her own adolescence and early twenties, “I was a selfish girl who only thought of myself.” Maybe she was projecting her feelings about herself onto me. After all, adolescents are notoriously self-centered and arrogant, and I was probably no exception.

  And yet, I actually had more compassion for my mother at the time than I’d had in years. I appreciated how hard she worked for us, and I tried to make her life easier by cooking and keeping the house clean. I walked nearly a mile each Sunday to the nearest Laundromat to wash and dry our clothes, and I even ironed her work clothes when I ironed mine. And I was considerate of her when I came home from being out with the girls, making sure I didn’t disturb her sleep. So her harshness and sarcasm were puzzling to me, and I couldn’t always keep my contempt from rising to the surface.

  Maybe she resented the fact that I was young and had my whole life ahead of me. My leaving the house to go out with my friends seemed to upset her more than my going out on dates. Whenever a boy came to pick me up, she put her “Queen of the World” face on to greet my date. She’d talk to him politely, putting on the charm, smoking her cigarettes in her regal way. Often it seemed she even flirted with these boys, trying to seduce them with her charm.

  My mother had made it clear that she never wanted to get married again. In fact, she had never dated in all the time I was growing up. Helen had managed to drag her out to the bars a couple of times when they first met, but my mother would come home and tell me how bored she’d been.

  “There aren’t any interesting men my age,” she’d complain. “They are either married or fools. What do I need with a man around, anyway? All they do is sit around with their feet on the coffee table while the women vacuum around them. And they expect to be waited on hand and foot. Who needs that?”

  Even so, throughout the years I had noticed that my mother was different around men. She seemed to afford them extra respect just because they were male. This is probably true of many women of her generation, who grew up at a time when men were the dominant sex. But she also seemed to like men more than women.

  My mother was especially charming with one boy I dated, Gilbert Lucas. He was really cute, with curly black hair and large brown eyes, and he was always polite to my mother. I guess she started out with the intention of checking Gilbert out the first night he came to pick me up, but there must have been something about him that interested her because she continued to chat with him for quite some time. I had to sit patiently, waiting for her to stop talking so we could go.

  Gilbert was a respectful boy and he didn’t seem to mind talking with my mother. In fact, he seemed charmed by her. I had never really seen my mother in action with men. I’d seen her charm women, but this was something different altogether.

  I didn’t like the fact that Gilbert seemed pleased by my mother’s attention. I felt like she was infringing on my territory and that she was doing it on purpose—trying to show me she could conquer him if she wanted to, that she could win. I stopped going out with him shortly afterward.

  All during my growing up years, my mother punished me by spanking me, and then, later on, by using a tree switch or strap. I always felt like she had a right to hit me in these ways and that I deserved the punishment when I got it. But starting my junior year, her tactics changed and she started slapping me in the face. It often happened quickly, without warning, and it wasn’t punishment—it was pure rage. It was usually in
reaction to something I said to her and it hurt far more than a beating because it was so humiliating, shocking, and insulting. And because I didn’t feel I deserved it.

  It happened if I “talked back” to her, which meant I’d dared to disagree with her or question her. It happened often when she was drunk. It was her way of asserting her power and control. Perhaps she sensed my growing confidence, my growing strength, and she needed to knock me down a peg or two.

  But unlike her switchings, her face slaps didn’t serve the purpose of humbling me and making me regret my actions. More and more, the slaps served to stoke the flames of my growing hatred and rage toward her.

  One night, we came to blows. I don’t remember what started it. I probably talked back to her and she slapped me in the face, as she had so many times before. But this time something snapped inside of me. In an instant, without thinking, I slapped her back.

  At first she looked shocked but that look immediately turned to absolute hatred. She slapped me back, and once again I slapped her. Then it turned into an out-and-out brawl. We hit each other anywhere we could make contact. We pushed each other around the living room, up against walls, and finally fell onto the couch. From there, we tumbled onto the floor.

  I was livid with rage and my rage gave me strength. But in spite of this, in spite of the fact that I outweighed my mother by at least twenty pounds and I was forty years younger than her, my mother managed to pin me down on the floor. I was spitting mad as I struggled to get up, but to no avail. My mother had kicked my butt. If she’d intended to knock me down a peg or two, she had succeeded. I was utterly humiliated.

  chapter 34

  I was having a great day. It seemed that positive things just kept happening all day long and everything was going my way. It was near the end of the school year and my English teacher, Mrs. Lester, asked me if I could stay after class so she could talk to me.