Don't Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

  Finally, I whisper, “Can I make us some soup, Gram?” She nods yes, and I slink from the room. I hear the snap as she turns on the lights. I get out a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and heat it on the stove. I pour it into a chipped bowl, add crackers, and bring it to her on the silver tray with fresh coffee. She folds the letters, puts them in a copper jar near the couch, and begins sipping her soup and coffee.

  The next day, without explanation, she goes back to being the nice, sweet Gram who rescued me.

  One night that winter, the wind rattles the house and sleet plays a staccato melody on the windows. Gram starts reading me “Annabelle Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe. I’ve never heard such a beautiful poem. As she reads, the wind seems to match the poem’s rhythm. The wind accents the ends of the verses with hearty gusts. Afterwards, Gram’s eyes grow misty and her face wistful as she talks about her life.

  “I understand that you miss your father. I didn’t have any father. I used to wonder how my life would have been different if he had lived.”

  I ask her about herself, hoping she’ll tell me the stories that Blanche has already told me, wondering how her version will be different.

  “I was born in 1894, and my father died a few months before I was born. You have no idea how much I think about him, and my little son. He was stillborn, the cord wrapped around his neck.” She sobs quietly. “I wonder, if he had lived… I might not have had another child.” She pulls out a Kleenex. I pat her arm, worried. If she hadn’t had another child, she would not have had my mother. Then where would I be?

  She goes on, wiping her eyes. “He was born in 1914. I didn’t understand anything. Let me tell you this, young lady, you be careful around men. They’ll tell you all kinds of things that make you want to, you know, get close to them, but it’s just an act. They’ll tell you they love you and all that. They just want one thing, and if you give them what they want, they’ll leave you.”

  She’s always telling me about bad things I should watch out for, but I don’t really know what she means. She pauses, sips her coffee, lights another cigarette, and goes on with her story.

  “Things got bad with your grandfather after your mother was born. He was an alcoholic. I hate men who drink. Eventually I left and worked in Chicago. Through my job at the glove factory, I went to England on ocean liners. Such a life—dining at the captain’s table. People back then knew how to act and what to wear. The trunk in my bedroom, remember all those stickers on it? What a life! I’d give anything to be able to do it again. Promise me when you grow up you’ll take a ship across the ocean. Of course, everything’s changed now. That was before the war. I tell you, if only Americans knew what they did to England by being pacifists. Thank God that damn Roosevelt finally got us into the war. It was a crime to let the Brits fight alone.”

  “What was the baby’s name?”

  “What?”

  “What was your baby boy’s name?”

  “Harrison. Harrison Hawkins. I wish he’d lived. Just think how wonderful it would be to have a son. To have a man to take care of me. That mother of yours—so irresponsible.”

  “How old was Mother when you left for Europe?”

  “That father of hers. His family, they had their noses up in the air, I tell you. Always looked down on me. But who were they anyway—people living in a little one-horse town, nobody really. Just because they owned the newspaper didn’t make them special.”

  “He took care of Mommy?”

  “Your mother lived with my grandmother. Your mother is named after her, Josephine. When I was still young, and before I married Blaine, I lived with her so I could graduate from high school. You will graduate from high school, I’ll see to that. Most of my brothers and sisters just got to fourth or fifth grade. Education makes a difference. It used to be that girls couldn’t even go to school. You will go to college, read, and learn history and art. You’ll find out—life will be better for you. There’s nothing like culture; not many people appreciate that.”

  Gram tells me more about her life tonight than she ever has before, and for the first time I see her as a complicated person with many different emotions. I climb up to lie in front of her on the couch, stretching my body along the length of hers. She puts her arms around me, her breath ruffling my hair. Without her, I think, I would have no one. I feel her heart beating next to mine.

  Sex and Beethoven

  One day after penmanship and before recess, a girl named Cheryl who’s in Mrs. Collins’s fifth grade class with us, rushes to the teacher, crying. After the school nurse takes her away, everyone whispers at recess about her having a “period,” a term most of us haven’t heard before. Mrs. Collins tells us in a business-like tone that Cheryl is sick, but she’ll be back to school soon. I don’t understand what all the buzzing means, but the girls in the in-group start talking about monthly bleeding so you can have a baby. They say it will happen to all of us. Some girls seem to know what is going on, but the rest of us view the information about bleeding with horror and disbelief. Surely they are wrong about this. It must be some kind of terrible rumor just to upset everyone.

  That afternoon, I tell Gram the story. She reacts with wide-open eyes and goes into action. When she calls the school, she finds out that Cheryl is from a poor family and ruined her only dress. Gram gathers clothes from several of my friends, makes up a box for Cheryl, and takes it to the school nurse, who delivers it. When we get home, Gram sits on the couch, lights a cigarette, and tells me to sit down on the piano bench for a talk.

  I have a feeling I won’t like this. I’m already worried and nervous, and Gram has a gleam in her eye I don’t trust.

  “Has your mother already told you about monthly bleeding like Cheryl’s? Do you know it will happen to you?”

  I want to tell her that the girls have told me enough, but I shake my head. Gram’s eyes are the black points of obsidian they turn into when she’s lit up. I sit on my trembling hands. My armpits are damp.

  She goes on to tell me about eggs inside a woman’s body, that every month the body prepares for a baby, and when the woman doesn’t get pregnant, there is a flow of blood. She uses a word I don’t understand and don’t remember. When she was young, rags caught the blood, but now we have Kotex. She describes the pad and belt in one embarrassed second. She doesn’t like this talk any more than I do.

  Smoke comes out the side of her mouth. “You know about sex, don’t you? It’s pretty disgusting; the only reason to have to do it is to give your husband a baby, and after that you don’t have to be bothered with it. I don’t know what’s the matter with women who think otherwise. Must be oversexed.” Gram blows a stream of smoke high into the air.

  “You know how a baby is made? I was so shocked when I was young and all. The man’s organ…”—she accentuates “organ” with a grimace—“sticks straight up in the air. Imagine! It’s for marriage, but even then…” She makes another face, and laughs.

  I’m confused. “But how is the baby made?”

  “It goes straight inside you and shoots out sperm. It unites with the egg and makes a baby. I don’t want to hear of any such goings on with you until you’re married. These low-class sluts that just let any man have them, they aren’t worth the powder it would take to blast them to hell, and to hell is where they’re going, believe you me.”

  Gram goes on and on: sex is revolting; it hurts. Men are evil and selfish. “Just tell them no, and only let them do it once, just enough to have one baby someday. Then you’ll be done with the whole damn misery. Remember this; it’s for your own good.”

  I stare at my grandmother, her face distorted with disgust, and I vow to never let any of this happen to me. I wonder how I can have a baby and avoid all the scary stuff.

  The boys I know are nice, and would never do mean things to a girl. Keith, for instance. A few weeks ago after Youth Symphony, Gram and I saw him hauling his cello on his back far from home. He was scurrying down the sidewalk with the energy of three men. Gram asked hi
m if he wanted a ride.

  He smiled, thanked us, and got in the car. We drove him to his house on 20th Street, where we met his family. His sister and two brothers were all bundles of energy, racing through the yard, laughing and teasing. I want a family like that: a mother who stays home and makes cookies; a father who laughs and jokes, a twinkle in his eye.

  Keith is polite to my grandmother, and he treats me like a real person instead of a silly child. He shakes my hand when I come to orchestra and pats me on the shoulder when I do a good job. His eyes are always glistening with good humor and fun.

  Eva, our passionate new conductor, joins Mr. Brauninger to lead the Youth Orchestra. She makes the orchestra even more fun. She’s enthusiastic and energetic; she waves her arms and shouts at the top of her lungs, “Come on, don’t hold back, give it all you’ve got!” She seems so powerful, I’m a little scared of her. I’ve never seen a woman like her in my life, so sure of herself.

  We kids joke that they are like Mutt and Jeff, because Mr. B. towers over her at six feet. It doesn’t take long for us to notice the way they walk together, heads close, holding hands. That year, they become our musical mother and father, touching us with their hands, their voices, their hearts as the music opens up new horizons. They are wildly enthusiastic about Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. Then they introduce us to Beethoven.

  At first Beethoven is too hard to play—so many notes making intricate layers of sound. We learn his First Symphony, whose brilliant notes of the violins and deep sonorities of the brass transport me into realms of glory. I forget about my parents and my grandmother. I forget about the hollow place inside me that is cold, dark, and unreachable. In the music I am alive, at one with a greater universe. And Keith is there with me.

  This afternoon after school I wait under the swaying green trees for Gram to pick me up. I’ve been uneasy for days now, wondering if I’ve done something wrong, waiting for Gram to get mad at me.

  What will it be tonight, I worry. Will she make me practice for three hours or study for two hours? Perhaps she’ll insist that I read David Copperfield for an hour.

  The Nash Rambler swirls around the corner. I try to figure out what kind of mood Gram’s in by the look on her face or the gesture of her hands. Uh oh. I don’t like what I see today. Her hair is frizzy and her eyes look wild. Jittery, I open the door.

  “Get in,” she hisses and we speed back home. Standing in the kitchen door with her hands on her hips and her elbows sticking out in two V shapes, she orders me to wash a pile of dishes. “Your room needs dusting. And you have to vacuum.”

  “I have lots of homework.”

  “Just get cracking and you’ll have enough time. You kids today, you have no idea how easy things are. In my time we had to do chores all day long. We were lucky to get any schoolwork done at all. You ought to be grateful.”

  “I am grateful. But…”

  A flash of her rings, my lip burning, my hand jumping to my face. “Why did you hit me?”

  “I didn’t like your tone of voice. Shape up or ship out, young lady. I don’t have to put up with your back talk.”

  She dictates what I can say; it’s not a democracy. If she wants to shout and scream insults, I’m supposed to be silent, to just take it. Later, when I sit down to practice a new Mozart sonata, she tells me the rhythm is wrong, the position of my hands is off. She hovers too close to me, the full strength of her cigarette smoke drifting into my face. I cough, but she doesn’t move back. I can hardly see the music through the noxious cloud.

  “You’ll never make anything of yourself this way,” Gram snarls. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I know I shouldn’t say it, but I’ve had enough. “Then you do it.” I get up from the piano and try to get away before she can hit me again, but I’m not fast enough and feel her sting on my cheeks.

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. Who do you think pays for your lessons?”

  “I just thought if you knew how to play, you should…” I know I’m on dangerous ground, but I can’t stop myself.

  “You’re mocking me, you little brat.” Her hands are out of control around my face, flailing and slapping, pulling at my hair. I shout for her to stop and she yells, “Sit down there and get busy. You have a recital next week, and I will not be humiliated. Mind me.”

  I slink back to the piano, hating it, hating her, trying to read the notes though my tears. My hands throb where her rings hit my finger bones as I tried to fend off her blows. Then the music reaches up and takes me, the melody and chords flowing through my body. The colors of the music present themselves, rich gold and burgundy, pale yellow and chartreuse green. Soon there is nothing but sound and color, only the music and me.

  The Facts of Life

  and Death

  In the summer of my eleventh year, Gram and I visit Iowa again. Mother takes the train from Chicago and picks me up to spend a few days in Wapello. Blaine is out in the garden on this warm afternoon, wearing his battered straw hat and whistling between his teeth—weeding, cutting flowers, trimming the grass. Grandma Bernie scurries around the kitchen, putting away groceries and banging bowls on the counter as she gets ready to cook. So far, it’s been a good day, the adults getting along. I can detect none of the usual fault lines; still, I know that at any moment an invisible seam could part, tumbling all of us into darkness.

  Mother calls out to me, “Linda Joy, come in here.”

  I can tell by the tone of her voice that she wants to talk to me about something serious. I follow her into our bedroom, my stomach edgy. Mother tells me to sit on the bed. I hide my worry behind a good-girl face. Her brows furrow. “Have you ever heard the word ‘menstruation’?”

  It doesn’t sound familiar, it sounds like a disease.

  “It means the monthly cycle your body goes through to prepare you to have a baby.”

  Then I remember the school lecture, but not that word. I recall vividly the scary description Gram gave me last year of “the act.” I can’t tell Mother about that. It would only cause a fight.

  Mother smoothes the sheets, takes a long puff from her cigarette, and says. “Each month an egg comes down to your womb, where a baby will grow when it is the right time, after you’re married. A lining builds up, but when there’s no baby, it comes out.” She pauses. “It comes out down there,” she says, indicating the area between my legs, “and it looks like blood. Each month you bleed. It’s perfectly natural and nothing to get excited about. Some women complain, but that’s nonsense. It’s the way God made us, and there’s nothing to worry about. Understand?”

  Mother is matter of fact. She pulls down the waistband of her shorts and snaps an elastic belt. “Go home and tell Gram to buy these for you. I didn’t need them until I was fifteen. You should not be embarrassed or think that you’re sick. It is just part of life; it’s not bad at all.” She looks up at me. “And don’t listen if your grandmother says negative things. She came from another era. Just remember what your mama says. She has your best interests at heart.” Mother refers to herself in the third person, as usual.

  I know she must be wrong. It is incomprehensible that this could happen to me, this serious and messy event, however normal it may be. I want to run back to my dolls. Blood, eggs, this mystery awaiting some particular moment to burst forth within my skinny body, make me feel off balance. Around the tables of my Iowa relatives, the mention of childbirth or any suggestion of sex—a bastard child, a girl who “had” to get married—causes shivers of electricity. I don’t want to experience this dangerous thing that makes adults act weird.

  Mother has revealed to me the mystery of women, as Gram did in her way. I look at my mother through new eyes, respecting her for taking on the job of telling me what a daughter should be told. At least Mother thinks it’s all natural and good. She doesn’t hate men, and I love her for that.

  As we finish our conversation, Grandma Bernie calls out, “Hey you, want some chocolate chip cookies?” Smiling, her silver hair shini
ng from a recent trip to the beauty shop, she carries them to the dining room table, filling the room with a delicious aroma. Mother cackles with delight. I realize that what she has just told me connects me like a river of blood and creation to all the women in my family, and especially to her.

  After cookies and milk, Grandma Bernie opens a suitcase hidden in the closet. It holds a wonderful array of miniature doll clothes. “Your little dolls need some new outfits,” she smiles. I scoop them up, marveling at their snaps and buttons, pinked edges, and perfect proportions. I run to show my mother.

  “Nice,” she nods absentmindedly, furling a lock of hair round and round her finger. Tiny curls, made from her nervous twirling, circle her face. She looks up again. “Well, at least someone does that for you. Grandma Bernie is really good to you!”

  I spend a happy afternoon dressing and undressing my dolls. They remind me that I’m still a little girl. I play and play, imagining balls and fancy dates with handsome men. Being grown up is far, far away.

  The next day we all get in the car for a drive. Part of any visit to Iowa includes driving on the back roads, looking at houses, picking up fruit at the roadside stands. Grandpa says that he wants to stop by the Wapello Cemetery. Bernie nods her approval.

  “I don’t want to go there,” Mother says in the cadence of a spoiled child. “Let me get out.”