Once she told me that my face was very asymmetrical, and that symmetry in a face was a measure of beauty. Since by this time I was so used to her assaults from years and years of experience, I didn’t cry. Instead I asked her, deliberately misunderstanding, whether she would prefer that I had two mouths or four eyes. As I hoped, she laughed, and I sent the conversation in another direction. Naturally, after that, I checked the mirror a million times afterwards, convinced she was right and that my facial asymmetry meant I was not at all beautiful. I wonder what she thought I could do about having an asymmetrical face?
My mother had told me every variation on my failure to be beautiful many times long before. According to her, I was not beautiful, but “striking.” She would also tell me that I was “handsome” which was simply weird, as though I had been a horse or a brigadier general. Other times she would scream at me for looking “sultry,” whatever that meant.
She would tell her friends that I was “sullen,” which might have had a grain of truth, speaking of a known pre-teen emotional attitude not a physical attribute. In any event, my appearance was not acceptable to her at all. These sorts of verbal attacks where she thought she was being truthful and helpful were an ongoing part of my life with her, as familiar and pleasant as weekly blood transfusions might be. You know what’s coming, but that does not make it hurt any less.
I get it. I’m not beautiful. All those people who said I was over the years were wrong!
Mother knows best.
I wish I had been secure enough to not be affected by what she said to me, but she was my mother and I was convinced that somewhere, somehow, she had to be right. Since I am a stage performer and I am of necessity completely aware of what I look like, I knew that if I put on my makeup in a certain way, people would think I was beautiful, even if the reality is that I was not.
I wonder what she would have said to me if I had been overtly deformed.
Don’t get me wrong. I desperately wanted to be close to her, but emotionally she was very much like an automaton. She had an emotional life in her books, but in person with real people she was more like a series of tape loops, and her invariable conversational goal was to puncture any weakness or anything she could interpret as falling short in some way.
I eventually concluded that I liked thwarting her efforts to destroy or control me, and I loved excelling her in cooking, sewing, singing, foreign languages, dance, and a host of other things. I could tell she would always verbally rip me apart for the things I did better than she did, and amid my bruises and tears I would laugh at her.
And laugh at her I did. When I was going to West Campus Junior High I studied tap dancing, since I would routinely take any kind of dance class I could. My mother absolutely despised tap dancing, and called me “Baby Twinkletoes.” I don’t know if she thought this would shame me out of tap class, but what actually happened is that her words spurred me on to diligence. I practiced for many hours, always in the room above her bedroom. What could she say? I was doing my homework.
For as long as I could, I stayed anywhere but home.
If she saw me cry, she would hurt me. When I was younger, she would hurt me physically. When I was older, she would mock or humiliate me for crying. After all, according to her crying never did anyone any good. So I learned early to never let her see me cry and to brace myself if she did. Any vulnerability would expose me to harm since she was viciously competitive at heart, and vulnerability was weakness, and overpowering a vulnerable, weak person means presto—she wins!
Letting her know how I felt about more or less anything was the stupidest thing I could possibly have done. Trying to tell her about my life would simply put it on the chopping block, ready for the hatchet. Trying to talk to her about school would result in tape loops, but I was persistent and foolish…to a point.
In practice, I would confide in my father and talk to him about anything and everything. I would not talk to my mother unless there was some real-world problem I needed her to help me solve.
The last time my mother hit me, we had been driving somewhere in the car and she had reached back into the back seat and whacked me hard in the face with the back of her fist. I complained to her, saying that she had promised she would never hit me again. When we got home, she got out of the car, stood there like a statue, and told me that I could hit her back. Naturally, I did not hit her, but I felt I lost all respect for her from that moment onwards; not for hitting me, but for believing that I was the sort of person who would hit my mother. For all that I have felt from time to time that I do not know who I am, there are some things that I do know about myself. I know that I do not hit my parents. Ever.
The last time she molested me, I was twelve years old and I was able to walk away. We were in the living room upstairs in the Prince Street house, usually called Greenwalls, and we were near the unused fireplace—the wall near the kitchen. She had been badgering me about sex, as usual, and complaining at me. She told me she was going to show me how sexy she was, and she stuck her tongue in my ear. I can still feel it. I walked away: what on earth else could I do? I certainly was not going to do what she wanted and respond with amazed arousal and tell her that she was as sexy as she thought she was.
I was not going to bash her in the face, although the thought did cross my mind.
My mother would complain endlessly to Tracy and Diana about me. She did this instead of simply telling me that I had misbehaved. One day she told me that I was fresh, which meant “impertinent” or “rude” back then, and I asked her if she would prefer that I was stale. Even if we assume that I was the rudest child who ever drew breath, in retrospect it strikes me as silly that Marion went to my aunt to complain about this rather than address the issue with me.
My mother’s view of me could not always be regarded as either accurate or reasonable. Nowhere was this more obvious to me than in a letter I received a few weeks ago from my friend Jane Beckman. Jane met me when I was a little girl, and was around a lot when I was twelve to fourteen and involved in Clan Colin.
I will present the letter here, and I trust you will find it as illuminating and alarming as I did:
Jane Beckman’s Letter
I first encountered MZB at a Darkover Con in Berkeley in 1978. It was a small and rather intimate affair, back then. I knew Moira (then Dorothy) from the group I hung with in the SCA. Various friends would bring her along. I was part of a conversation with several people when the topic turned to children. MZB started talking about how Dorothy was such a trial to raise because she “wasn’t like other children.” One of the other women laughed and said something about how they were always a trial. Marion’s face darkened and she said “You have no idea. She has to be watched carefully and disciplined regularly. She’s my little bad seed.” I was somewhat shocked that someone would speak that way about her daughter, as Dorothy seemed like just a regular young teenager to me. (I think she had just turned 14.) I think I said “Hey, she’s just a teenager.”
She then started hinting that Dorothy had some sort of “powers” that had to be channeled and regulated. “It’s a dangerous age. They discover sex, and can use it to call power. I know about these things.” Um, yeah. There were also some comments that Marion and her brother were doing rituals to “keep her in check.” I thought this was odd, but I also knew a lot of folks who believed that not only was Darkover real, but were using it like some sort of magical training, so why shouldn’t the author believe in various laran powers?
However, I was getting to know Dorothy, and she seemed like just an average kid. And she seemed troubled by her family. By that point, I was starting to hear rumors, things like that Walter Breen was into “man-boy love” and that this was condoned by her mother. Little wonder that she was avoiding being home a lot. Over time, I started to learn enough to horrify me. By the time I had known Dorothy and her family for a couple years, I started making cynical comments that I could sell family secrets to the National Enquirer. In those days, there was
a sense of powerlessness a lot of us felt, when we had an idea that there was abuse and sexual abuse going on. Making inquiries of authorities tended to result in skepticism and a shrug of “so what do you expect us to do? Can you prove this?” Times were different.
At one point, in a conversation with friends, someone talked about how great it must be to live with noted science fiction authors. Dorothy burst out “What’s it ever done for me, except getting me raped at twelve?” and ran out of the room. Silence fell on the room. Kat and Jana and I started talking to people about whether it would be possible to wrest custody from Marion, as we believed there was abuse and sexual abuse going on, based on little half-hysterical comments that were occasionally made. She reacted badly to being touched, and often seemed on the verge of hysteria over something as simple as someone giving her a hug. There were also things like her saying she wanted to be a dominatrix, because then she could “get back at” the people who had abused her.
The authorities were not particularly helpful. Everything came down to “well, it would be her word against her parents, and do you think that she would be credible enough as a witness?” The problem is, when things were as “alternative” as not just her family, but our whole circle was, we all knew the authorities would just treat us all as a freak show, and it might make things even worse.
Dorothy hung around at other places where I was, including my “family” (the Bruners) at Dragon Run, with Clan Colin, with Serpent and Kathy, my boyfriend Dean, my best friends Jana and David, with my friend Kat, Renaissance Faire, and other places. I also got invited to Greyhavens now and then, and also was at Greenwalls (MZB’s house) a couple times.
Marion wrote a lot of us into her books. My friend Jana is in one of the books. I’m in one of the books, looking like Marion but sounding like myself, some number of people we know had characters based on them. My friend David quoted things I’d said that showed up in books. We think Marion worked with real people she knew, rather than creating characters from scratch, and using her daughter was no exception.
When Stormqueen came out, Marion said openly that she had based the main character on Dorothy. Oh swell, a book about a little girl with occult powers who accidentally kills people. I thought it was a horrible thing to do to your child. Dorothy was upset. David tried to always diffuse it a little by going “Hey, Stormqueen! Killed anyone lately?” Dorothy would respond with “Yeah, it’s going to be you!” and it would devolve into good-natured ribbing. But I could tell that underneath, it really upset her. But I started to realize that Marion really believed a lot of it. One time, when we were at Eoin MacKenzie’s (with Clan Colin), a mug fell out of the loft and hit her on the head. It hit her pretty hard, and she was pretty dazed.
We wanted to take her to the ER, but needed parental permission for them to do anything other than give her an ice pack. Marion was called and expressly forbid it. She got really strange on the phone, very upset, and said she refused to let her go to the hospital where they would test her and “find out she’s not human.” What??? We started to realize that this was Marion’s reality, somehow she had created some story about her daughter being some unhuman elemental being, and believed it enough that she wove the whole thing into Stormqueen. Around this time, I also heard from some of the Greyhavens folks that Paul and Marion were creating some sort of quasi-religious movement to acknowledge Dorothy as an elemental being and “keep her under control.”
Then there was the SCA event at Lodi Lake. Dorothy had earlier been watching a little boy whom she had left back with his family household. He had wandered away, fallen into the lake and drowned. Later that day, my friend Ruth Bruner and I had a very distraught and hysterical Dorothy in our pavilion in crying fits saying: “My mother was right. I’m evil. I must have done something. I killed him. It was me. I don’t know what I did, but it must have been me.” We kept her with us and tried to calm her down and convince her that she didn’t have some sort of unregulated psychic powers that would reach out and kill people she cared about.
—Jane Beckman
About the last paragraph, that relates to an event that happened at an SCA event at Lodi Lake, CA (March Crown) when I was 13. I have mentioned Flieg. He was married, but went around with another woman, Lee, who was married to someone else. Lee had a three-year-old son named Robin.
I had never thought of myself as a potential parent and had never spent any time with children before, and Lee let me look after Robin briefly. Robin wanted to play with the ducks at the lake so I brought him back to Lee, telling her what he wanted to do and cautioning her to keep him away from there. I left the site with my friend Sterling to get some asthma medicine. When Sterling and I got back we saw Lee and Flieg near the lake, and they asked me if I had seen Robin. I asked them if they had looked in the lake and they said yes, they had.
Lee told me she had told Robin to find a big kid to play with after I left, which horrified me.
I went to the lake and found Robin, floating face-down in deep water, and apparently dead. I screamed bloody murder and grabbed the first large adult I could find. He dove into the lake and rescued Robin. He held Robin upside down by the feet, so the water ran out of his nose and mouth. The paramedics arrived, and did everything they could to save him. They also treated me for shock. I was a wreck for the rest of the day.
I did not go into the lake because the water was deep where Robin was, and I was wearing about ten yards of skirts, long sleeves, a tightly laced bodice and a Scottish plaid. I realized I would not be able to get him—or me—out if I went into the water in my costume. To this day I feel ashamed that I did not risk it, because maybe the few seconds I would have saved might have made a difference. The man who went in after Robin took his shirt off before going in after him, which seems in retrospect to have been a very good idea—if he would not even risk keeping his shirt on, perhaps it was irrational of me to think I should have gone in wearing my costume despite the risk.
Initially Lee and Flieg hailed me as a “hero,” but then got mad because when the insurance people came to my house, I told them exactly what had happened and Lee was found to be responsible for Robin’s injuries, ending a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the SCA.
There was no happy ending. Robin lived until he was ten years old, and never woke up. I saw him only once after that, and he could do nothing but breathe, unaided, noisily, while lying in his crib.
I had had lifesaving classes before then, which is how I knew that it would have been stupid for me to go into the water in my costume. Still, I have questioned myself so many times: Could I have saved him? Should I have just gone in the water in my costume on the chance I could have saved him even if I could not save myself? Would the few seconds I might have saved by going in myself have made any difference?
After that, I was not able to go near lakes for many years. I was not able to make myself swim, nor was I able to even look at lakes. Years later, I told a boyfriend that my mind invented wall-to-wall sharks and other dangers when I thought of swimming into the ocean, even though I knew it was absurd. He told me, gently, that he thought that sharks were not the problem, but one little floating child.
Requiem for Robin
Little boy, blond, precious
Little boy sat in my lap
Little boy, just three summers
Settling down to take a nap
I’d never even held a baby
Till you came and cooed at me
I had never understood
How the love for a child could be
Lonely mother, foolish mother
Flirting with a new strange man
Once I’d given you back to her
Wouldn’t give in to your demands
She told you run and find a big kid
So you’d not run off alone
But you toddled off to the water’s edge
to play with ducks and pretty stones.
When I returned your worried mother
Asked if I’d se
en you anywhere
I asked her if she’d checked the lake
She said she had, you weren’t there
I made a beeline for the water
Found you floating, yellow and blue
My screams brought help, and in mere seconds
A man dove in and rescued you
For seven years you clung to life
You never woke, just wheezed and stared
Your father drank himself to death
And still the bitter scars we share
And Robin, Robin, safe in Heaven
Precious boy, now in God’s lap
Know that here I still weep for you
Settling down to take a nap.
—Moira Greyland
Chapter 21: The Lisa of Two Evils (1979)
King: But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son-
Hamlet: A little more than kin and less than kind.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2
My stepmother Lisa moved in with us on August 24, 1979, when I was 13. Lisa, also known as Elisabeth Waters, was born in 1952 in Providence, Rhode Island. She was originally a fan of my mother’s writing, and an aspiring writer. Before she arrived, she mailed me a package when I was at summer camp: a nightgown and some chocolate chip cookies, and a very nice letter telling me how much she looked forward to meeting me. That was wonderful and gave me high hopes that she would be a good part of our family.
It was not to be.
Lisa was submissive and sweet to Marion, calling her “Breda” and worse, “Mommy.” She treated my mother with veritable hero-worship, and it puzzled me. I was even more puzzled that this infantile behavior was so enthralling to my mother. I had been trained to never be feminine, never be child-like, and certainly to never be submissive—why would Mother desire the very traits she worked so hard to beat out of me?
The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon Page 18