by Seka
That was a real threatening bet.
Neither of us wanted to admit that we really wanted to do it. But being contestants wouldn’t be in keeping with the fact we were jockettes.
We both tried out and made it. The day of the event, there were three judges and the whole school came. There were fifty of us on the large auditorium stage. There was no talent contest involved, which was good because I can’t sing or dance. I was contestant #32, which I still remember to this day.
I was nervous as hell. The lady who lived across the street was a hairdresser. Before the pageant, I went to her to get frosted blonde streaks in my hair. But the whole thing turned blonde. That was the first time I’d gone blonde. Ironically, I said to myself, “Oh shit, this screws up my chance of winning.” I wasn’t used to it. As I walked up on stage, I thought it was the dumbest thing I had done in my life. I was an athlete with what I thought was a bad dye job. I just felt stupid. But my teammates and the boys’ football team started screaming and applauding when I walked out, which kind of surprised me because I was still pretty unaware and uninterested in boys. It felt good but it also felt weird. I wasn’t crazy about wearing a dress, either. And it was hard to walk in high heels because it was something I’d never done before.
The judges started eliminating contestants. They went down to twenty. Then to ten. Debbie and I looked at each other incredulously. I never thought for a minute I’d win. I never thought of myself as a pretty girl. Just average. And if you told me boys were looking at me, I’d have said you were crazy. I had male friends because of sports but that was about it.
Suddenly, we were down to the final five. The whole thing seemed unreal to me. I’m thinking, “Holy crap, I may actually pull this off.” Debbie and I were looking at each other and laughing, “Are these people blind? Don’t they know what they’re doing?”
They eliminated number five.
If you won, you led the Junior/Senior prom and were crowned “Miss Hopewell High School.” Not that there were a lot of duties. You were in parades for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, those kinds of things. I looked at Debbie and whispered, “How is this going to affect our basketball games if we win?” She just laughed.
The final four were standing there and I started shaking like a leaf; I was so nervous. They called out the second place runner-up, which was Debbie. She just looked at me and gave me a thumbs-up.
Then they called the first place runner-up, which was the girl everyone thought was going to win.
There I was, standing next to the last remaining girl and the first thing that went through my head was that maybe being blonde wasn’t so bad. Debbie was blonde, too. But I was getting ready to walk off the stage.
And then they called my name. Yes, my name.
It was like something out of a dream. Everybody’s jumping on me and kissing me and putting a crown on my head and I actually said, “Debbie, what’s going on?” I just didn’t absorb it.
“You won, you crazy person.”
It didn’t sink in for two or three days, but it felt pretty damn good. I was starting to accomplish things. My time served had started to pay off.
5. Beauty Queen
I was instantly popular. My picture was all over the school and local newspapers and suddenly everyone knew who I was. People acted like they liked me because I was the beauty queen. Ironically, this made me feel awkward because I felt I was on display all the time. I wasn’t a feminine, prissy girl. I was still a tomboy and I liked it that way. But whenever I walked by I would hear, “There’s Ms. Hopewell High School.”
People would point and whisper and I had no idea what they were saying, but I assumed it wasn’t good. I was suspicious and not at all used to being treated like a beauty. I never had any positive reinforcement that I was pretty. Being abandoned doesn’t exactly make you secure.
To me, all this fuss was over nothing. I just walked out on stage and people stared at me. They weren’t judging me on my abilities or anything like that. Going out for basketball, you were picked because you were good. But being picked on your looks, you didn’t have much to do with that except for genes, personal hygiene, and maintenance. I guess I cleaned myself up pretty good for that pageant.
I’d have lunch with a group of students, but except for Debbie and some of my teammates, I didn’t have a lot of people I considered friends. And I certainly didn’t have a best friend.
Looking back, I probably chose not to get close with anyone because it seemed that everyone who was close had abandoned me. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. There was always a simmering anger over what my family had done to me. Sometimes I was aware of it, other times it was subconscious. Teammates and opponents saw this and knew not to get in my way on the field because I’d kick their ass. And at five-eight and one hundred fifty-five pounds with big legs from running all the time, those little girls didn’t know what hit them. But mostly I directed it towards my mother, and even my brother and sister for not standing up for me. Why didn’t anyone ever say, “Where’s Dottie? How come she’s not with us?”
My aunt went to get her hair done every week and she found out about the Miss Southside Virginia Pageant. This event didn’t involve just girls in our high school but also from neighboring towns. The beauticians put it together to showcase their hairdos and such. My aunt had her heart set on my entering it. Reluctantly I agreed, especially since there was a bathing suit competition I wasn’t happy about. If I could have worn one of those big, long bathing suits from the twenties I would have. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I didn’t instantly think I was pretty because I won Ms. Hopewell High. I picked a one-piece turtleneck bathing suit. I accepted that I had good legs. The rest of me, I didn’t want anyone to see.
It was in a small meeting hall. There was no stage. Chairs were lined up on either side of the runway. There were maybe fifty to seventy-five people in the audience. Nothing too glamorous — far from it. I was scared and I still wasn’t used to walking in high heels, but I was told they should to be very high because it made your legs look even better.
There were around twenty to twenty-five contestants and most of them were not very attractive. I kind of felt bad for them, and then I felt worse because I thought I was being egotistical.
I won.
I thought to myself, “I’m just glad it’s over. I want to go home.” I’d fulfilled my duties.
Now even more people knew me, but it didn’t change me in the least because it was more about making my aunt happy.
In the fall of 1971, I was still a junior, and as Ms. Hopewell High School I was expected to be in the Thanksgiving homecoming parade. My aunt had an old Cutlass convertible so she volunteered to drive me in the parade. As we were all getting lined up, out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of men in white outfits and hoods. I tapped my aunt on the shoulder and said, “Hey, what’s that?”
She said, “Don’t look. You don’t need to bother with that.”
She didn’t really look around, which I thought was pretty odd. They were all men and I looked again in spite of my aunt. When I did, one of them took off his hood and it was my aunt’s boss. He looked directly at me and it was the coldest, blankest stare I had ever seen. He had always been so nice to me. I turned back around, did not wave, and stared straight ahead.
I didn’t have a clue who they were or what they did. I was very naive. We didn’t study them in school or see a lot about them on TV back then. I knew the Klan existed, but I didn’t quite know what they looked like and never imagined they were in my town.
Although a lot of the townspeople and students were prejudiced, I never was. I may not have had much exposure to people of different races, but I would talk to anyone. I like everybody unless they prove to me they’re a blazing jackass. But I knew this wasn’t good. Deadness had come across the air. Somehow I knew they weren’t supposed to be part of the parade, but it was eerie with them standing there waiting. They seemed ready to march. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be part
of this.
We got the signal to start and I went with the flow. As people clapped and shouted for the teams and bands and cheerleaders, in my youthful excitement I pretty much forgot about the Klansmen. When it was over and we ended up on the other end of town, I saw that they hadn’t been in it at all. I had no idea why.
When I went into the store afterwards, my aunt’s boss was never rude or mean to me, but he looked at me differently. The Klan didn’t want people to know who they were. That was the day I realized there was evil everywhere, even in small town America.
6. Boys
Living with my aunt wasn’t exactly carefree. The oldest of four girls and four boys, she was sort of the matriarch of the family after my grandmother passed away. She was “Big Mama.”
There were certain obligations. I had to get good grades. Be a good girl. Not have sex. Not even think about sex. Be a nun, a vanilla wafer.
I think this was important to her because her reputation was so good. She could prove to everyone in the family that she was able to raise a decent kid — that I wouldn’t turn out like her sister, my mother.
My second cousin Diane introduced me to a nice young man at church. He was everything my aunt thought a boy should be. He came from a good God-fearing, law-abiding family. His name was Woody. She was comfortable with him because she felt he was “safe.” And he was. I still have the first piece of jewelry he ever gave me, a little pinky insignia ring. I really liked him. He had a great sense of humor and was a nice young man. I was even allowed to date him. Of course, I had to stand on the bottom step for him to kiss me good night because I was a head taller than he was. But I wasn’t looking for a future with him. Getting married to your childhood sweetheart and having kids and a white picket fence just never entered my thought process. I cared about him, but at that age I didn’t know what love was. I don’t think anyone my age did.
Even then I didn’t want to have children. My childhood had been hard enough. I wanted to live a little, and probably somewhere in the back of my mind I didn’t want to risk doing the same damage to my kids my mother did to me. I probably would have been a good mother, but I just wasn’t willing to find out.
I joined the school work program. It helped you build credits toward graduating. There were certain merchants in town who would volunteer to give students jobs, so I started working in a shoe store. The store was more for ladies and men than it was for children. One quiet afternoon, I was chatting with the other saleswoman who worked there. At the time, I thought she was “old” but she was probably only in her forties. Suddenly, this huge guy walked in and she said nervously, “You wait on him; you wait on him.”
He was very imposing. Wearing dark sunglasses, he had shaggy, disheveled, curly blonde hair and had to be six-foot seven. I was immediately attracted to him because he was like the classic rebel bad boy. He was what every parent would tell a girl to avoid. And being a red-blooded All-American girl, I wanted what I was not supposed to have.
I walked up to him and said, “Can I help you?” Looking down at his huge feet I said to myself, “Holy shit, we don’t have shoes to fit this man.”
Measuring him, I discovered he was a size fourteen and found just one pair of shoes in the entire store that fit him. His own steel-toed safety boots were ragged and we were able to replace those, but we didn’t have a pair of dress shoes for him.
Being a man of few words, he just grinned this sinister grin and nodded his head when I told him we could order a pair of dress shoes. I never thought at the time to even ask him what kind he wanted; I just decided I was going to get him what I liked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but maybe he agreed so he’d have an excuse to come back. He paid for the shoes and picked himself up and left. I didn’t even ask his name.
The store owner asked why I hadn’t taken down his name, but the lady I worked with said, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.” She must have seen something between us I didn’t.
I later discovered he played pool every day across the street at the pool hall, and he did come back a few days later to see if his order had arrived. That’s when he first introduced himself.
“My name is Frank. You were supposed to order me shoes.”
Being a smartass even at an early age, I said, “Frank what?” I wanted to know his last name.
“Patton. Frank Patton.”
I went in the back and scribbled his name on the package. He paid and stayed there for a few minutes. He asked me my name and said, “I’ll be back later,” which I thought was funny as he had no reason to come back except to see me. My heart began beating out of my chest, I was so excited.
Frank would come in the store every now and again and finally asked, “Would you like to go out?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I was scared to ask my aunt’s permission, because even though she was only five-three, she could be tough. She was the type who even when she was scared of something she wouldn’t show it. But I knew she was a marshmallow inside and she saw I’d always been a good kid, so when I asked she said, “Sure.” That was until she opened the door and saw this giant of a man standing there.
She took one look at him, slammed the door in Frank’s face, and said simply, “Hell, no!”
I just stood there open-mouthed, absolutely humiliated.
“How old is he?” she shrieked.
“Around twenty-five.”
Every time I mentioned his name after that my aunt had him ten years older. “You’re not going out with some thirty-five year old guy!”
The next time he was forty-five. And later fifty-five. It got absurd.
His parents lived on the same street as us. They owned their own home. Nice yard. Clean. Honest, hard-working people. My aunt just thought he was way too old for me.
So I started sneaking around with him.
I told Woody I didn’t want to see him anymore. I really had no good reason to break up with him other than I just wanted to see this long, lean, lanky hunk of a guy. It wouldn’t be fair to Woody, even though lying to him wasn’t fair either. Not wanting to hurt him, I said I had to concentrate on school and sports. He started crying and all I could think to say was “Don’t cry.” I felt just horrible.
Frank would come into the store and the other salesgirls would cover for me during my lunch breaks. It wasn’t like a real date, as my aunt had forbidden it. Since we couldn’t hide in such a small town, we just drove around in his car. I was always scared someone would spot us, since I knew what my aunt would do if she found out.
The funny thing was that we really didn’t talk a whole lot. He was such a quiet person. I was scared to death being alone in a car with a rebel boy and nobody knowing where I was. The only boy I’d ever kissed was Woody, and that wasn’t even a kiss kiss.
It all came to a head one afternoon. I still didn’t have any real close girlfriends, but a group of “bad girls” had a sorority and I hung out with them a bit. They said, “Come on, we’re going to skip school today.” I said I couldn’t do that, but they convinced me. When we got to a vacant house there were guys and girls there. Whoever’s house it was, the parents were gone. The boys and girls were pairing up. It was clear they were about to sneak off to other rooms to have sex. That was something I wasn’t at all interested in. I had never had sex. I hadn’t even come close to having sex. I figured I needed to go home and tell my aunt I had skipped school and take my punishment. I knew I was going to catch hell.
I started walking home and Frank happened to drive by and he said, “Get in the car, I’ll drive you.”
Being a pretty good distance away, I took him up on the offer and he left me two blocks from my house. I told him I was going to be in trouble and didn’t even know if I’d be allowed to go to work for a while. He just grinned. Here was this little schoolgirl with this big grown up guy.
My aunt wasn’t home, but the school had called to tell her I’d played hooky. Evidently in the interim someone had told her I had been in the car with Frank. I w
as doomed any which way.
When she finally walked in, it got real ugly real fast. She called me a little slut and said, “You’re just like your mother, sleeping with every man in town.” Although she loved her sister, she never approved of her, and suddenly I had disappointed her, too.
Devastated, I told her I hadn’t slept with anyone. But there was no convincing my aunt. With the mere act of skipping school and being in mixed company, she immediately assumed I had committed the “ultimate sin” of having sex.
I was monitored pretty closely after that. I was allowed to go to school. From school, I went to my job. Then home. The Gestapo would have loved her.
She never knew that Frank would come to the shoe store to see me. The strain of it all was wearing on me. One day when Frank paid a visit he asked, “What’s going on?” and my tears just started to pour. I told him about my situation at home and he said, “You don’t need to put up with that.”
“I don’t have much choice.”
Just as casually, he said, “Well, we could get married.”
And just like that I said, “Okay.”
It wasn’t exactly the most thought out decision I’d ever made, but it was a way out. I didn’t want to be away from my uncle, but it would be a way for my aunt not to look at me in disappointment. A way for her not to be reminded of my mother.
I told him I was only seventeen and he said when I turned eighteen we would run away. It sounded exciting, but I didn’t even know what romance was.
I told my cousin Diane I was going to get married and she gasped, “What!?” She, of course, told her mother, who was my aunt’s daughter.
Mary Jo came to me and said, “You can’t do this.” But I had made up my mind.
“I’m going to get married no matter what.” In turn, Mary Jo told my aunt and that was when all hell broke loose. There was a lot of screaming, yelling, and accusing.
“You have to be pregnant or you wouldn’t be doing this,” my aunt repeated again and again.