“Beverly, I read your last essay and I want to tell you that it really impressed me,” she said. “You are an exceptionally good writer. You are clear and succinct and you really know how to get your point across. I want to encourage you to continue writing.”
I was dumbstruck. I’d always gotten A’s on my essays and I knew writing came easy for me, but I’d never had a teacher make a point of encouraging me like this.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lester,” I said politely, but I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell her how grateful I was to her for acknowledging me, for encouraging me.
“You’re also exceptionally good at interpreting literature and poetry,” she said. “Have you ever thought of becoming an English teacher such as myself?”
“No, I haven’t,” I admitted. “I do want to go to college, but I was thinking of becoming a nurse.”
“Well, that’s an admirable profession if you are good at math and science as well as English.”
“Well, I’m really not,” I said, glancing down.
“Then, by all means, think about becoming an English teacher. I think you would be very good at it. And please, please continue your writing.”
I assured her I would. As I left her room, I could feel myself being lifted up, like a kid who had been put on her father’s shoulders and was suddenly seeing the world from a different perspective. Some of the shame I’d been carrying around like an albatross around my neck began to fall off me and in its place rose a new feeling. It was such a new feeling that at first I didn’t even know what to call it. But then I located it: pride. Yes, that’s what it was. I felt proud of myself.
That day was also the day the seniors in our Y club were to officially turn leadership over to the juniors, and the day we were going to elect the president of the club. It may not have been a surprise to anyone else that I was elected president, but it was to me. One of the seniors said that I had great leadership skills and that she was pleased to know they had left the club in my good hands.
To top it all off, I had gotten almost all A’s on my report card. The only B I got was in geometry, my worst subject.
It was my mother’s day off and I couldn’t wait to get home to tell her all about my great day. As usual, I found her sitting on the new brown couch she’d bought on time, reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette with a beer sitting on the coffee table in front of her. I told her what Mrs. Lester had said to me about my writing. And about being elected president of my Y club. And about almost getting straight A’s. I finished up by telling her about how good I felt about myself, how I finally felt like I’d been accepted in high school after years of feeling like an outcast.
She nodded and half smiled, half smirked. “Well, that’s good, honey,” she said. And then she went back to her magazine.
But today her lack of encouragement or interest didn’t bother me.
Nothing you can say or do is going to take away these good feelings, I thought as I went into my bedroom to call Dee-Dee.
About an hour later, as I walked through the living room, I must have had an extra spring to my step, or maybe a smile on my face. Whatever it was, my mother didn’t like it.
“You really think you’re something, don’t you?” she asked in a sinister tone, putting down her magazine. “Well, let me tell you who you really are: You’re illegitimate. Do you know what that means?”
Of course I knew what it meant. It meant I was a bastard, someone who was lower than low. I was the kind of person people spat at, the kind of person who was shunned by others, not the kind of person who was elected president of a club.
The look on my face must have frightened my mother. This was a secret she’d hidden from me all my life, that she’d been saving for just the right moment. She must have wanted to bring me down a notch or two—but instead she’d flattened me.
Her face softened, and she motioned for me to sit down next to her on the couch. Then she shared with me more about herself than she’d ever told me before.
“It wasn’t as if I was a young girl who didn’t know any better,” she started. “After all, I’d been married twice, once to a golf professional and the second time to an alcoholic, good-for-nothing artist who sponged off his wealthy family. My first husband— Anderson was his name, Mark Anderson—was a wonderful man and he was crazy about me.” She picked up a cigarette and lit it. “But I got tired of traveling around the country on the golf circuit, staying in one hotel and then another. The first few years were fun but after a while it got tiresome, living out of a suitcase, constantly on the road. After several years of this, I told him I wanted to settle down—wanted a home of our own. But he didn’t want to quit the circuit. So that’s when I decided to leave.”
“What did he say when you told him you were going?” I asked, still reeling from all this new information.
“Oh, I didn’t tell him I was leaving. I just packed my bags one day when he was practicing for a tournament.”
“You just left without saying anything? You didn’t even tell him you were going?” I asked incredulously, remembering all the times she’d threatened to send me off to a convent if I didn’t shape up.
“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I knew he loved me but I also knew he loved his golf. It wasn’t fair to force him to choose.”
“So then how long was it before you met the artist?” I asked. I was becoming engrossed in her story, and it helped to soothe the sting about discovering I was a bastard.
“Oh, not too long. But I was still legally married to Anderson. I heard from friends that he still loved me and was hoping I’d come back someday, so he hadn’t filed for divorce. But I sent word back to him through a friend that I wanted to get married to someone else, so he filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion.”
“What was the artist’s name?” I asked, not believing that she was opening up with me like this, not believing she was telling me so much about herself.
“Richard Engel.”
I stared at her, trying to let this information sink in. I wondered if he was my father. But she’d said I was illegitimate. How could that be?
“That’s my last name,” I finally said.
“Yes, I was still legally married to him when I conceived you. I woke up one day and decided I’d had enough of his shenanigans and walked out. I’d only been away from him for a few months when I met your father.”
“Why didn’t you marry my father?”
“He was already married.”
“He was?”
I was having a hard time believing that my uptight mother, the mother who had preached to me since I was a toddler about maintaining a good reputation, would have an affair with a married man. But then, I never thought she’d have a child out of wedlock either.
My whole world seemed to be falling apart. Not only was I illegitimate but my own father was a married man when he slept with my mother, and he had rejected me completely.
“Why didn’t my father ever come to see me?” I asked, tears rolling down my cheeks.
“He never knew about you. I never told him.”
I stared at my mother, not believing the words that had just come out of her mouth. “You never told him? Why not?”
She sighed. “When I discovered I was pregnant, I told the one friend I knew I could trust. She told me he was married and had five children. I was horrified. I was afraid if I told him I was pregnant, he’d leave his wife and kids and I didn’t want to be responsible for that. So I left town and he wasn’t any the wiser.”
All this information was making me dizzy. My real father wasn’t named Engel. That wasn’t even my real name. And my real father didn’t even know I existed.
“Do you know where my real father is now?”
“He’s dead. He died when you were three years old.”
“How did he die? How did you find out?”
“Well, that’s interesting,” she said, brightening a little. “You actually had a nightmare about him the night
he died. You woke up screaming. You told me a plane had crashed in our backyard and you were trying to rescue someone who was important to you but it wasn’t me. Do you remember that?”
I nodded. I did. That nightmare had stayed with me all these years. I even remembered the kind of plane it was. I’d seen a picture of it in my encyclopedias when I was little.
“Well, a friend of mine—the same friend who told me he was married—sent me a newspaper clipping about his death. He’d died in a plane crash the night you had your nightmare.”
I was speechless. In just a few minutes time I’d learned so much information—far too much to absorb all at once. I sat in silence for a few minutes, taking it all in. But then another question popped into my mind: “What was my father’s name?”
But my mother had reached the end of her confession. She had wanted to bring me down off my high horse and she had succeeded. Now she wanted nothing more to do with me.
“That’s enough about all this,” she said. “Don’t you have homework to do?”
As all this new information sank in, it all began to make sense to me. My mother didn’t hate me because I was such a bad kid, because I caused her so much trouble, or because I was this bad seed; she hated me from the start because I was a burden to her— an inconvenience, something that got in the way of her living her life the way she wanted to live it, free from entanglements and conflict. Someone who kept her from being able to walk away to freedom whenever she wished. Unlike her two husbands, she was stuck with me, stuck with the responsibility of raising a child, stuck trying to get along with another human being.
On top of all that, I was probably a constant reminder of her shame about the affair and getting pregnant out of wedlock. I wasn’t the worthless, unlovable child she had made me out to be. She couldn’t love me because of what I represented to her, but that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t love me. It was her shame I was carrying around with me. Her shame she was projecting onto me. It wasn’t my fault she had gotten pregnant— it was her mistake. And just because I was her mistake didn’t mean I was a mistake.
As horrible and ashamed as I felt about learning that I was illegitimate, somehow all this new information made me feel a little more free of my mother. I’d always felt inadequate around her, like I could never measure up to who she wished I would be. I could never be as beautiful, elegant, and popular as she was; I was always the servant and she was always the queen. But now she didn’t seem so perfect. Now she didn’t seem so much better than me.
Years later my mother apologized for telling me about my father the way she did.
“I did it for your own good, but I did it the wrong way,” she explained. “I was afraid you were getting a big head, that you were becoming conceited. I knew what that was like. I was the biggest spoiled brat you ever knew. My mother was always having to cut me down to size.”
I couldn’t imagine how my mother could possibly think I was conceited. I’d felt so much lower than other people all my life. It wasn’t until that year that I had even begun to find my way or feel good about myself. But what she told me about her mother having to cut her down to size made sense. My mother seldom complimented me on anything. And I had never understood why she always played down her looks. Whenever anyone complimented her, she’d laugh it off with, “You’ve got to be kidding; this old dress?” or “You’ve got to be blind as a bat, don’t you see all these wrinkles?” My mother had been raised with shame, the same way she’d raised me.
chapter 35
It was finally my senior year, the year I’d waited for forever. I could see my future taking shape and I was excited about it. My plan was to go to junior college in Bakersfield because I couldn’t afford a regular four-year college, and then to move to San Francisco or LA and transfer to a state college. I’d have to work during the day and go to school at night once I got there, so it would take me a long time to finish college. Most night classes were from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., and some were from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., two days a week, so I wouldn’t be able to take more than two classes a week. But I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to become a college graduate.
I was excited about finally getting out of Bakersfield, but I was also having a good year. On top of being elected president of our Y club, I was also elected president of my Medical Careers club, and my newfound confidence was helping me to make friends more easily than ever before.
To top it all off, I was finally able to take an art class. I’d always wanted to but, since I had been in college preparatory classes all through high school, I’d never had room in my schedule. Now, as a senior, I had room for two electives, so I signed up for art and a special sociology class. I was also accepted into an advanced composition class that would fulfill my English requirement. Instead of school being a drag, I was loving it.
I now had a diverse group of friends. In addition to Dee-Dee and Florence and Cherie and the other girls in my Y club, I made friends with two girls from my Medical Careers club, Sharon and Grace; Helene, who I met at a YWCA weekend retreat; and even some girls I met from a Y across town.
Helene was my first black friend. In Bakersfield, black people literally lived “across the tracks,” and this meant they went to a different high school. But there was a Y teen club for blacks and Yvonne had made sure that all members of the Y teen clubs in Bakersfield met each other by offering weekend retreats to which we were all invited.
At the first retreat, the black girls taught us all how to do the Jerk, a popular dance at the time. We had a great time dancing together and getting to know one another, and I especially liked Helene. She was quiet but sweet and friendly.
Helene asked me if I’d like to come over to her house after school one day and I was delighted. I took the downtown bus and she met me at the bus stop and we walked the short way to her house. Helene’s mother was welcoming and seemed open to Helene having a white friend. Helene and I went into her bedroom and listened to records and danced. I loved the music she listened to, what she called “soul” music. She taught me more dances and we laughed the whole time we were dancing. We also talked about our plans for the future. Like me, Helene couldn’t afford to go to college, so she knew she’d have to get a job after high school and save her money if she was ever going to go.
I liked Helene’s ambition and her spirit and sense of humor. We didn’t seem all that different, as far as I was concerned. I wanted us to become close friends, but I knew I couldn’t reciprocate by inviting her over to my house; my mother hated blacks too much.
When several weeks went by and I still didn’t invite Helene to my house, she seemed to cool toward me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to explain why I couldn’t invite her. So while we continued to see each other at Y events, we slowly drifted apart.
I knew not to bring Helene up with my mother. We had been arguing over the Civil Rights Movement for months. It was 1965, the height of the movement, and we were seeing marches, protests, and riots every night on TV. I felt that blacks should be treated the same as whites, but my mother continued to insist that they should “stay in their place.” She was opposed to things like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, while I felt these were important steps toward ending racial segregation and discrimination. My mother continued to believe that blacks were inferior to us, and no matter how much I tried to reason with her, she refused to change her mind.
I decided to try out for the senior play and during the tryouts I met Sunny, who was to become my new best friend. I still loved Dee-Dee but she was too boy crazy for me—it was all she ever talked about. And when she had a boyfriend, she didn’t have time for anything or anyone else.
Sunny was different from anyone I’d ever met. She was clever and inquisitive and seemed older than the other kids. We’d never met before because she wasn’t part of the college prep classes I’d been in
since freshman year, but once we met we opened up to each other right away. It turned out that Sunny and I had a lot in common. Both our mothers were alcoholics and we’d both had to raise ourselves. And when I told her I’d been sexually abused, she shared with me that she had been raped by a group of men a few years before. She never gave me details about what happened, or who the men were, and I never asked. We had the special kind of bond born of shared suffering and shame.
Unlike Pam and Cherie and Sue, Sunny’s traumas hadn’t seemed to dampen her capacity for joy. Like Ruby, she was a free spirit. She was full of mischief and spontaneity, and she didn’t care what other people thought of her. She was also everything I wasn’t: beautiful, athletic, and self-confident. She wasn’t gregarious like I was, working hard to get everyone to like her; instead she was quietly confident and self-contained. She stood back and checked people out, and then decided whether she wanted to be friends with them.
And in spite of her rape experience, Sunny seemed fearless. She loved adventure and she seemed very comfortable in her own body, whereas I was always self-conscious, especially about my body.
The best thing about Sunny, though, was the way she made me feel. She adored me and admired me. I could tell how she felt about me by the way she looked at me lovingly, by how impressed with me she was. By the way she seemed proud to introduce me to her family and friends, like she was lucky to call me her friend. She thought I was smart and funny, and she often told me how happy she was that she’d met me. I’d never had anyone treat me like I was so special to them and it felt wonderful.
Sunny was the kind of young girl that men leave their wives for, have nervous breakdowns over, or even kill for. She was tall and lean, with just the right amount of curves and long, tan, gorgeous legs that went on forever. She had full, sensuous lips and huge, childlike eyes with long lashes, and a small, almost button-like nose. In the summertime, she wore short shorts that showed just a peek of her firm buttocks and halter tops that revealed more than a peek of cleavage. As we walked down the street, men would whistle, yell, and nearly drive off the road when they saw her.
Raising Myself Page 21