As the months went by, John and I became more and more serious about each other. While nothing had changed in terms of John getting a job or being more financially independent, he started talking more and more about us being together.
One day, as we were getting ready to pack up to go home, John looked at me, held my hand, and placed a ring on my finger. It was the ring he always wore—the ring his father had given him.
“I can’t ask you to marry me, Beverly, not yet,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, we are already married. I want you to have this ring to show you how much I love you and to seal my commitment to you.”
I knew the story about how John had come to have his father’s ring. When he graduated from high school, his father had come down from Northern California to see him. The next day they had gone out to lunch and John’s father had handed him the ring, which had first belonged to John’s grandfather.
John told me how he’d felt overcome with love for his father in that moment. He had fond memories of his grandfather, who had died many years before, and he knew his father loved him very much. He’d often admired the ring on his father’s finger and he knew what a gesture of love it was for him to give it to John.
“This was my father’s ring,” John said, clasping his hand over mine. “I want you to have it.”
I, too, was overwhelmed by this gesture of love. “I can’t take your father’s ring, John,” I protested. “He wanted you to have it.”
“And I want you to have it. We’re together, Beverly. It’s not like I won’t still have it. It will just be on your hand instead of mine.”
I couldn’t say no to John’s loving gesture, and in return I gave him my class ring, which he promptly put on his pinky finger.
I hadn’t grown up thinking about my wedding day the way so many other girls do. It hadn’t been part of my life plan. My mother had such negative things to say about marriage, and since she’d opened up and told me about her own marital history, I wondered whether I too might be incapable of committing to marriage. In fact, when I thought of being married I always worried that I’d wake up one morning, take a look at the man lying next to me, and feel horribly trapped.
But being with John had changed all that. Now I wanted to get married—to him. I could even imagine having children with him, something I thought I’d never feel like doing.
One day while we were lying together quietly at the park, John told me he had something important to tell me. We both sat up and looked at each other. He stammered as he began to speak. “You know, we’ve talked about having children. But I need to tell you that I already have a daughter, her name is Rhonda. She lives with her mother.”
I felt like I was going to pass out. Was John telling me he was married?
“I had to marry her mother. I got her pregnant, and I had to marry her. Believe me, I didn’t want to. I barely knew her. But my mother made me. I tried to stay with her and Rhonda. I wanted to do the right thing. But she was such a bitch, I just couldn’t do it, and we got divorced right away.”
I could barely breathe. I was young and in love. I had imagined that John and I would experience all our firsts together—our wedding, our first child. Now, I was hearing that he’d already experienced these things with another woman. I was beyond disappointed. I’d experienced so much tragedy and depravity and disappointment in life already, but with John I’d let myself imagine a happy future together. Hearing this information took away some of the wonder our relationship held for me. It suddenly felt the way my whole life had felt. My mother’s words—“Don’t laugh too hard because you’ll just end up crying”—rang in my ears.
I got up and walked off to be alone for a while, to let it all sink in, to wrap my mind around it somehow. I tried to allow myself to feel my emotions but I didn’t really know how to put my own feelings first. Instead, I kept worrying about what John was feeling. So, just as I had done all my life, as my mother had taught me to do with her, I put myself aside and shored myself up in order to go back to tell John that of course I still loved him, of course I understood. John looked so worried and forlorn and then so relieved that I knew I’d done the right thing.
It was a hot day in July about two weeks after John told me about Rhonda. John and I had found a large shade tree to lie under and we’d been there for several hours, kissing, holding each other, and sometimes talking but mostly just being together quietly. We’d had more time than usual at the park since it was staying light out for so long, but John still needed to drive home, so we started packing up.
We were putting the blanket and cooler in John’s trunk when I noticed that his ring wasn’t on my finger. Mortified, I told him and we ran back to our spot under the tree and started searching for it in the grass. I don’t know how long we searched, but we kept looking until it started getting too dark for us to see anything. I wanted John to get a flashlight so we could continue looking but he said it was no use. We’d searched and searched to no avail. The ring was gone.
I’d done many bad things in my life up to that point. I’d hurt lots of people. I’d been careless with myself and others. But I felt worse about losing John’s ring than I felt about all the other bad things combined.
I knew John was devastated, but he didn’t let me see it on his face. He just said, “It wasn’t your fault. Shit happens.” And we walked back to his car.
chapter 41
In August, John’s parents were going out of town for a weekend so he invited me to come to San Luis Obispo. As I rode the Greyhound bus the 100 miles or so, my thoughts were full of John and what it would be like to spend the night with him. We had never had sex but I was more than ready. We loved each other so much, and I saw no reason why we shouldn’t show our love for each other in that way.
My mother hadn’t really spent much time with John but she liked him well enough, and she was fine with me going to see him. Of course, she didn’t know his parents weren’t going to be there.
The night I arrived, John let me know he had planned a party in order to introduce me to all his friends. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to spend all our time alone. But as John and I danced and held each other close, I was happy to be with him like this in front of his friends. He seemed to be proud of me.
As the night wore on, I drank more and more beer, and the more I drank the more turned on I became being close to John. I had never been aggressive with him before, but that night I was. I rubbed my body against his as we danced. He seemed surprised, and I think embarrassed, by how seductive I was being, especially because I was doing it in front of his friends.
After everyone had left the party, we went into his bedroom and began to kiss. We both tore off our clothes, in a mad frenzy to get at one another.
He tried to have sex with me; he tried all night long, in fact, but it wasn’t happening. He had an erection but he couldn’t get inside me. I was drunk and didn’t really know what was going on. All I knew was that I desperately wanted John inside me. I’d never had intercourse by choice before, and now I wanted it badly.
I could tell John was frustrated, but he didn’t say anything. He kept trying different positions, sighing when it didn’t work, stopping abruptly, and repositioning himself. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I assumed there was something wrong with me. Finally, he gave up and we went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up in John’s bed. I didn’t understand what had happened the previous night, but I was so ashamed of the way I had acted at the party and so convinced that there was something wrong with me that I wanted to just put it all out of my mind. I focused all my attention on how good it felt to wake up next to John and to be able to watch him while he was sleeping. I fantasized about what it was going to be like waking up next to him every morning.
I got out of bed and started making breakfast for him. I was caught up in the fantasy of us being married and me being a happy housewife, something that had never crossed my mind before—not even with John.
But whe
n John came into the kitchen and I gave him a cheerful, “Good morning,” my fantasy ended. This wasn’t the same John I’d known. He was grumpy and cold and detached. When I asked if he wanted some breakfast, he scowled. “Are you kidding? I have a terrible headache.”
I continued to try to engage him, rubbing his shoulders, sitting next to him. But John wanted nothing to do with me, and he made this very clear by picking up a newspaper and hiding behind it.
I was devastated. He’s ashamed of me, I thought. I’d been too aggressive. I’d embarrassed him in front of his friends. The reason he fell in love with me in the first place was because I didn’t act like all the tramps he’d known. Now I’d acted just like one. I shouldn’t have drunk so much beer . . .
I wasn’t supposed to go back to Bakersfield until later that afternoon but suddenly John was up, stretching and saying, “Well, we better head for the bus depot.”
I didn’t say a word. I silently began gathering up my things. I felt so bad about myself that I didn’t feel I had the right to question him.
John drove me to the bus station without saying anything to me. He tried to be cordial when he said good-bye, but I could tell he couldn’t wait to get rid of me. He didn’t even wait with me for my bus; he left me there several hours before it was scheduled to arrive. I sat in the station, feeling completely rejected and unlovable. I was sure I’d ruined the best relationship I had ever had.
I cried most of the way home on the bus. I just knew John would never speak to me again. But even so, I waited around for days, hoping I would get a call from him saying, “I forgive you. I love you.”
The call never came.
chapter 42
Two weeks after my visit to San Luis Obispo, I found myself waiting for something else—my period. I had always been regular, so when it didn’t come I panicked. I was certain I was pregnant. My worst nightmare had come true. Just like my mother, I was going to be an unmarried woman with a bastard child.
I was sure God was punishing me. Once again I had been bad, and once again I was being punished for it.
I tried calling John several times but his mother kept telling me he wasn’t there. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
Late one night when I couldn’t sleep, I got up quietly and went into our little kitchen—the room farthest from my moth-er’s room. I took out my easel and the painting I had started of me and John the first night we met, when everything was easy and beautiful and full of promise. The painting was of us standing in the archway on the cliffs of Avila holding hands. All you could see was our backs as we gazed at the moonlit ocean below—the diamond water. I put the 45 of the Green Berets song on my little portable record player and turned the volume down low.
As I painted and listened to the record, I started to cry— over the loss of John, because I thought I was pregnant, and most of all because it was all my fault.
My mother burst into the kitchen, startling me. “What the hell are you doing!” she screamed. “Don’t you know I have to get up in the morning? What’s wrong with you? What kind of a crazy person starts painting in the middle of the night?”
I don’t remember what I said to her in response. I know I didn’t tell her why I was crying. I didn’t think she cared how I felt or why. I turned the music off but kept on painting. Art had become my salvation. It was keeping me from going mad.
My mother could have just gone quietly back to bed—but she was on a roll. She wanted a fight. It was no longer about me waking her up. Now her fangs were out and she could see I was in a weakened position. Time to strike.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why are you crying all the time? You’re acting like a crazy person.”
I tried to ignore her and just kept painting. I was too close to the edge to even open my mouth, much less let words come out.
But she kept on. “You know how crazy you look? Sitting there painting and crying in the middle of the night?”
When she couldn’t get a rise out of me, she grabbed the painting and flung it across the room. The fresh oil paint smeared and spread all over the wall. If she thought I was nuts before, she hadn’t seen anything yet. I completely lost it.
My mother didn’t know what she had done by tossing that painting. She didn’t know how precious it was to me, or how much the act of painting itself was doing to keep me sane.
I screamed at her and she screamed back. Then all of a sudden she was throwing my painting, my record player, and my paints out the front door and onto the yard. “Get out! Get out!” she yelled.
I stood there stunned, not knowing what to do. She continued her rampage, going into my bedroom, taking my clothes off the back of the doorway I used for a closet, and tossing everything onto the wet lawn.
I ran out to salvage my belongings, grabbing them and placing them on the red tiles of our porch, but she had already run past me with more clothes.
In a panic, I ran into the house and called my friend Judy, the one friend I knew who would be up that time of night, and asked her if she could come pick me up.
The rest was a blur. Judy’s mother ended up picking me up and was kind enough to let me stay with them. A few days later, I finally started my period. I was enormously relieved. I was only eighteen years old and had only $100 to my name. I had already decided that if I was pregnant I would have an abortion. There would have been no way for me to raise a child under my current circumstances.
I was about to start my second year of junior college in a few weeks, and now I had nowhere to live and no job to support myself. I couldn’t impose on Judy’s mother much longer. After about a week, I decided it was time for me to move to LA.
chapter 43
Nothing grows in the dust, not even a weed. That’s why the Okies and Arkies had to abandon their dust-ravaged farms during the Dust Bowl and head out to California in hopes of greener pastures. And that’s why I had to escape the barren emptiness of Bakersfield and the destructive windstorms of my mother.
Just like the Okies dreamed of the fertile California land, with its orange orchards and green hills, I dreamed of finding people with love in their hearts.
I needed people who could love and respect me the way I was. People who didn’t resent me for who I was or what I accomplished, who weren’t so disappointed with their own lives that they needed to ruin my chances, who didn’t think I was bad because I made mistakes sometimes, who didn’t punish me with silence. People who wouldn’t take advantage of my need to be loved. People who didn’t want to kill me because they wanted to die.
Kicking me out of the house was my mother’s final act of rejection. She’d finally accomplished what she’d been threatening to do most of my life—getting rid of me. I wondered why she hadn’t had an abortion or put me up for adoption, since she’d never really wanted me. I had been an inconvenience from the beginning, and now she was free of me.
My mother had exerted her power over me one more time, and she had won. But in doing so she had actually done me a great favor. In fact, throwing me out was the best thing she could have done for me. Now that I was no longer under her roof, my mother could no longer control me. I was free.
Like my mother had told me many times, I had raised myself. Now I was going to find out if I’d done a good job. In some ways, I’d been on my own since I was four years old and roaming the streets of Bakersfield. But Bakersfield was just a speck on the map compared to Los Angeles. I didn’t know how I’d fare in a big city like LA on my own. But I knew I had to go. There was nothing for me in Bakersfield but more pain.
When I told my friends I was going to LA, they were amazed that I had the strength and courage to just pack up and go alone to a strange city. What they didn’t understand was that I had already done it many times before. I had moved from Bakersfield to Sonora, Sonora to Ceres, and Ceres to Bakers-field—and though I was with my mother each time, in a real sense I was all alone. And in many ways, moving to new neighborhoods, as we had, was like moving to a new town
since each one was so radically different. I was used to having to make my way in a strange place with no support or guidance. I was used to trolling the streets looking for new friends.
My friends also couldn’t believe I’d move to a place like LA, which they imagined to be fraught with crime and dangerous people. But, as far as crime and dangerous people were concerned, I’d already survived Bakersfield, with its child abusers, peeping toms, Hells Angels, rapists, and murderers. What more could happen to me that hadn’t already happened?
I truly believed I could survive whatever LA had in store for me. I had survived the loss of my best friend, my mentor, and the love of my life, all within a few months. Before that, I’d survived child sexual abuse, rape, and an attempted suicide. But most of all, I had survived my mother’s neglect, selfishness, and cruelty.
I had come close to going over the edge many times, but I hadn’t fallen off the cliff. The thoughts I’d had while babysitting that little boy so many years earlier still had me convinced that I’d come close to becoming a sex abuser. I had come close to falling down a terrible hole of promiscuity when I lived on Janice Drive. And I had come close to rejecting all my values and becoming a criminal when I shoplifted. I’d even survived my own self-destructiveness.
I felt good about myself for surviving all these things. I felt good about not giving up and falling into complete “badness.” It had taken all my strength to survive and not fall off that cliff. I knew I could handle most anything that the future held.
And I was determined to make something of myself in spite of what I’d missed out on growing up, in spite of the sexual abuse and the rape, in spite of not having a father or a family and nearly no mother. I wanted to learn, and I wanted to help other people the way I wished I’d been helped.
I believed I had enough to go on. I had my natural curiosity about people and life. I was gregarious and could make friends easily. The traumas I’d experienced had made me tough—and wise. I’d learned a lot about people—who was safe and who wasn’t. I had my mother’s sharp wit and intelligence. And I also had her stubborn determination—her ability to put her head down and just keep moving no matter how strong the wind or how much dust got in her eyes.
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