Gram seals my prison, enforcing her complete control over me. She allows me to complete summer school, but the rest of the time I’m isolated in the dark smoky house with her, my only respites in music and reading. Gram can’t allow me to have a speck of autonomy. Accusing me, hating my father, and being angry at Aunt Helen seem to become her reasons for living, yet she constantly threatens to die, saying that with all this stress—which is my fault—she’ll die of a heart attack and haunt me for the rest of my life.
I don’t want her to die; time and time again I’ve told her so. After a few weeks of her wailing, I get wise to her and build a shield that protects me from feeling guilty any more. She just wants to scare me and make me do what she wants; she loves having total control over my body and soul. The more she burrows into me, the more I practice hiding from her, making sure she never knows what I’m thinking again, learning how to make my face a mask.
Summer passes in this way. Every day she threatens to send me away for talking back to her, either to a juvenile hall or to my parents. As much as I want to be away from her, I don’t want to leave the only home I’ve ever had, my friends, and my school. Chicago is a huge city, scary and impersonal. I worry about the future and what bad things might be in store.
She sits on the couch and goes on and on. “You want your damned parents so bad, you can have them. If they’d wanted you all these years, they could have had you. I did them a favor taking care of their brat when they had better things to do. Your father never wanted a child; he was forty years old before you were born. You were an accident. Go on and live with him if that’s what you want. Go to bed. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
I keep telling her it’s normal to want to know your own father, and that I love them both, but she doesn’t understand. In her eyes, it’s one or the other. I can love my mother, of course, but my father, he’s in a different category. I wonder if what she says about him not wanting me is true, remembering my time at Vera’s—I could tell then that I was inconvenient. Did my father want me? I don’t know what to believe.
One day, several weeks into this madness, Gram sits quietly on the couch, pondering and smoking. She’s suddenly so quiet I wonder what she’s up to. She says, “I suppose your father could come for a visit.”
Is it a trap? She’s just testing me; she’ll attack me if I agree. Over the next few days, she pursues the idea enough to call my father and arrange it. I still don’t trust her, but plans are made for him to pick me up and drive us to Oklahoma City so we can spend time away from Enid, meaning Gram.
As the day draws near, I start to get excited about seeing my father. The last time I saw him, I was twelve. I wonder what he’ll think of me, if he will recognize me. Since I last saw him, I’ve gotten my period, started wearing a bra, and grown several inches, though I’m still thin as a rail and wear glasses. Will my father like me? After all that has happened, will he think that I’m like Gram or Mother?
He comes to pick me up in a rented, cream-colored Cadillac. He and Gram are civil to each other, nodding and tight lipped. I feel proud that I was strong enough to win him, and convert Gram to my side. His deep voice curls around me like a warm blanket. I try not to show how happy I am, not wanting to make Gram jealous.
We drive to Oklahoma City on highway 81, the Chisholm Trail. The sky is azure blue, with clouds floating above the edge of the horizon. Daddy bubbles over with talk and laughter, his eyes bright with admiration as he looks at me.
“You sure have grown up, such a nice little figure, just like your mother. You have to be careful about boys. They’ve only got one thing on their minds.”
“I don’t worry about that,” I say.
“I just want you to know that if something were to happen, if you ever got in trouble, you could talk to me. Your Gram, she’s old-fashioned, but I’m your father. You know you can come to me.”
I say all the right things: thank you, I appreciate your concern. At the same time, I’m almost insulted, shocked that he could think such a thing about me. Clearly he does not know me very well at all. Good Baptist girls don’t go around getting pregnant. I’m not even sure of the details of the sex act.
Daddy goes on to tell me that boys are wily creatures. “I ought to know. I was a very horny young man myself. Still am, but… Hazel and I don’t have that kind of relationship any more. Hardly ever did.”
I’m surprised and discomfited by this new kind of intimacy, but I’m grateful to know that he’d be there if I needed him. Gram would throw me out of the house if I ever got pregnant, but that will never happen. Gram’s scary stories and the Baptist teachings have me thoroughly scared about boys and sex.
Daddy gives me a taste of a new, free way to live, riding in a Cadillac, my hair blowing, a smile on my face. I feel triumphant. My father, in the flesh. Real after all, not just a dream.
He rents us adjoining rooms in a motel in downtown Oklahoma City, with a connecting door. After a few minutes I wander through the open door, surprised to find him naked, his face covered with shaving cream. I back out, apologizing, burning with embarrassment. I’m not used to having men in the house, especially naked ones. I keep my eyes on his face as I leave the room, worried that the encounter might trigger his desire to kiss me.
A few moments later, he comes in the room partially dressed, smelling of aftershave, grinning and telling me in his deep, melodious voice how grownup I am, how I still need to learn how to kiss. I laugh and push against him playfully. It’s been so hard to win him back. How can I reject my own father? I laugh and tell him I’m too young to date, but he keeps up the litany. “Let me teach you. Boys are awkward; you need to know what to do.” He pulls me toward him and I can’t bear to turn him away. A few kisses demonstrate that things have changed since I was little—it’s definitely not all right for my father to do this. I don’t want what he’s doing, but I want him to love me. Memories of the last few weeks swirl in my mind, the long, smoke-filled nights of Gram’s ranting and attacks, everything I went through to get him back into her good graces. Now I know that I can’t let him do this, but I’m afraid I’ll lose him forever if I say no. I want to run away, but he kisses me again. I resort to something that’s sure to work—I simply put on my helpless little girl act. “Oh, Daddy, I’m so hungry. Can we go eat now, please? Really, I’m so hungry I can’t wait. Please, Daddy.”
I stand by the door, making it clear that he has to leave. He shuffles back to his room and I close the door. The silence is so loud I can’t hear anything but the pounding in my ears while I try to understand what has happened.
Daddy’s wearing his Chicago suit and starched shirt when he takes me to a club for dinner. A live jazz band plays in the smoky basement. Bubbly and ever so cheerful, Daddy orders Manhattans for us, and New York steaks. This adult bar and dinner-dance place is both exciting and frightening to me. The drink burns my throat and all the way down to my stomach. The Baptist voice growls–sin, sin. I feel desperately sad, as if I’ve lost my father all over again. This is not the way it was supposed to be—kissing, drinking alcohol. He talks on excitedly about his wonderful life in Chicago, unaware of my misery. After we eat our steaks he asks me to dance. Two days ago I would have wanted this attention, but when he takes me in his arms, my face pressed against his diamond tie tack, my throat is full of tears. A voice in my head says, “No one will ever really love you.” I want so much to go home.
I play along with Daddy the next day, pretending to have a good time. On the way home, he insists on showing me how to drive by having me sit on his lap at the wheel. For a time, being at the wheel is great fun if I don’t think about his lap, but I soon get uncomfortable enough to insist on getting off his lap.
I want so much to be happy. I focus on the beautiful sky and the way the land stretches out from horizon to horizon. I imagine the Cherokee Indians on their horses a long time ago on this land before we took it away from them; I look forward to the next season of wheat as Daddy drives me back to Enid, bac
k to Gram and the house on Park Street.
A sea change has happened to me this summer, especially on this trip with my father. On the way back, I think about the girl who traveled the highway in the other direction two days ago, innocent and full of hope. This new girl is wiser, aware of the subtle ways that life plays tricks, giving us what we want but in a form we can’t accept. This new and different girl is on her way home to a new kind of darkness. I almost don’t mind when he leaves. There is no way to know how long it will be, and how deep the darkness will grow, until I see my father again.
Back at Gram’s, I watch her smoke and tell her lies about what a nice time we had and how wonderful Daddy was. I try to persuade her—and myself—that he really is a good father. I watch her face; my lying skills are improving. She accepts what I say and doesn’t grill me about it. I feel empowered by my ability to hide the truth from her. Little do I know how adept at lying I will eventually become.
I know one way to smooth the pain in my chest. I sit down at the piano and play a Bach Prelude and Fugue. The clean colors of the music as it unfurls into the thick air of the house, green and red, black and cream, will clear my mind. The logic of Bach braids my mind into ordered bars and measures, contrapuntal melodies weaving so clear that there’s no way to get lost in the labyrinth of notes. Not so with the painful puzzle of my family, trapping me in a tangle of feelings. I can see that Gram and I are destined to be together for the long haul, until I graduate from high school. My father is lost to me for good.
God’s in His Heaven
Pippa Passes
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his Heaven—
All’s right with the world!
—Robert Browning
Slush drips from the windshield of the city bus. A bitter winter wind rolls from the Rocky Mountains across the Great Plains, all the way to Oklahoma. A light dusting of snow covers dull brown grasses, winter’s grieving for the green seasons of growth. As soon as the bus pulls up in front of the high school, I jump out and dash into the warmth of the building, trying to outrun the bite of the wind on my thighs. I love the way the snow softens the edges of the world and conceals a bare, lost landscape, but I hate the cold that burrows deep into my bones.
I pull open the door, grateful for the blast of heat in my face. It seems my body constantly shivers from a cold no heat can penetrate, a cold that’s settled deep in the crevices of my soul. Gram is the Ice Queen, sitting in her hole in the couch for hours, even days, without speaking to me. Other times she’s hot and desperate, as if she must see me cry in order to satisfy her hunger for misery. She runs either too hot or too cold, with fewer of the pleasantly warm times that we used to share.
At school, I’m cast into what I think of as the “real world,” a world where people talk and laugh. I’m thrown together with kids from normal families who golf, eat pizza, go bowling, and have friends over for dinner. At home—or, I should say, at Gram’s house, since she always insists I’m just a guest—there’s none of this kind of activity. Home for me is not a place to be comfortable and let down your guard. My places of safety are away from the house.
I don’t know it yet, but it will take much of my adult life to be able to experience home as a place where the cares of the world are released. At this point in my life, survival is my goal, so I escape Gram’s house as much as I can, just as I’ll eventually escape Enid to go to college. I love going to school. It’s the only place besides symphony where I am with normal people who have seemingly ordinary lives.
Jodie and I always meet every morning at school, joining the stream of kids in the promenade through the halls. As I enter the building, I see her waving at me from the end of the corridor. The slight blush of her lipstick gleams when she smiles, and her beautiful chestnut hair flows down her back. Her ever-ready grin and gentle kidding keep me floating a notch or two above the misery that tugs constantly at my mind, threatening to submerge me in the dark world of Gram’s house.
Jodie runs up and starts in with her jokes and good humor. We both know we’re outsiders, but we don’t care—we have our own world of music and literature. We stroll together, observing the golden girls who wear twin-set sweaters with tiny pearl necklaces or pencil skirts with bobby socks, everyone’s hair coiffed in a flip. They are already making good progress in the quest for a secure future—going steady, sporting their boyfriends’ class rings, well on their way to the husband, house, and weekend barbecue in the backyard.
Jodie tells me how hard she’s been practicing and about the quartet rehearsal she had at her house. I try not to feel envious of her life, but I do. I could never host a group or party of any kind—Gram would just embarrass me. Jodie and I are both serious about music and our futures, though she’s a much more dedicated musician than I. She practices the cello every day for five or six hours, and then spends most of her free time immersed somehow in music. At Monday night symphony, I’ve observed how her technique has developed to a higher level of professionalism, how her sound and approach to the instrument have advanced.
I love watching Jodie when she solos, losing myself in admiration for her concentration and technique. Every time she finishes, she winks at me and jokes, as if to deflect attention from herself. It helps me more than she knows that my best friend has serious goals and is always there for me. Jodie is my lifeline, helping me survive day to day, but she has no idea of this.
Since we started going to the same school, we’ve been inseparable. Because of the competition between her mother and Gram, we don’t do the normal things girlfriends do, sleep over or go to the movies, but we’ve shared Mr. Brauninger, the symphony, and our love for the cello since we were ten years old. Now we talk about almost everything, the usual teen concerns of makeup, kissing, and boys, as well as our future. The secrets I carry loom large in my mind, but I don’t share them with her, and it will be years before I know that Jodie’s life is not so great at home. We are good girls—we follow the rules, work hard, and don’t talk about home except in the most general terms.
For first period, Jodie and I rush to Miss Fromholz’s French class, where we like to make her say “I love you” in French.
“Je t’aime, je t’aime,” she repeats with a wink. During class she shows movies of Paris, narrating in French—the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Impressionist paintings full of light and joy. Jodie and I promise to meet each other one day in a café on the Seine.
“I can’t wait to get out of this town,” she murmurs behind her hand.
“Me neither,” I say, and mean it.
I can’t wait to escape, even though I’m scared of the larger world beyond Enid. Paris… Now there a girl could live a magical, artistic life—eating fine cuisine, flirting with exotic young men—unhampered by strict Midwestern rules. Thanks to movies in French class and Gram’s love of Europe, I can imagine living in a worldly, sophisticated way somewhere else. Jodie and I dream together of that enchanted future someplace far away.
We discuss the books we’ve read in English class with Miss Young. She’s introduced us to the plays of Shakespeare and the worlds of English and American literature through Austen, Longfellow, Dickens, and Melville. Miss Scott, our journalism teacher and a world traveler, demonstrates her philosophical bent by quoting poets, philosophers, and statesmen. One of her favorite quotes is from Alfred Lord Tennyson: “I am a part of all I have met.”
This line opens a window for me, telling me that the sorrow I’ve experienced will weave itself into the tapestry of who I am becoming, that my life will be richer for it, that my fractured childhood isn’t for naught. I still wish things could be different for me, but this simple verse casts a glimmer of light on my grim circumstances.
Jodie notices Browning’s poem “Pippa Passes” in my wallet.
“God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” She smiles as if she understands that a poem can save you. I have memorized it, repeating it silently when Gram spews her hate. Darkness and light weave through my life, but the suck of the negative is so strong it frequently engulfs me. I keep clawing my way back up—thanks to Jodie, music, and books.
Jodie and I say goodbye after our two classes together and make a plan to meet again later. I watch her graceful gait as she walks down the hall and feel such gratitude that she is in my life. I know I’ll see her in orchestra later, where Vivaldi or Bach will sweep away the clutter in my mind.
I enjoy orchestra, but the high school group isn’t as much of a challenge as Monday night symphony. But it is an opportunity to play, and I need that. My cello technique is not what it should be, because Gram doesn’t send me for lessons any more. For a couple of years after Mr. Brauninger left, she took me to study with a wonderful teacher in Oklahoma City, but Gram doesn’t go out any more. Still, it’s understood that I’m to major in cello in college.
For now, my musical development is focused on the piano, where I’m learning concertos, Liszt Etudes, and Chopin Preludes. Maybe it’s Gram’s own life-long love affair with the piano that makes her continue those lessons. I am gratified to be seen as a better-than-average pianist, but playing in recitals and concerts is torture for me. I have never admitted to anyone the extent of my stage fright, which for some reason reaches truly terrifying proportions when I’m to play the piano. Each time there’s a performance on my schedule, I go through hell as the day approaches, as if I’m waiting to be shot at dawn. Memorizing long pieces means hours of labor, my sweat literally falling on the keys. By the time the recital comes, I have to trust that the music is in my hands, that they will play on even if I do forget the music.
When I’m on the brightly lit stage, my mind can shift into a complete blank. Sometimes it whirls into a panic about what Gram will say if I make a fool of her, as she puts it, by making a mistake in my playing. So far, when this fear takes over, my hands keep running up and down the keyboard as if they had a life of their own. Maybe they do. It’s comforting to think that part of me is invulnerable to my bouts of panic.
Don't Call Me Mother Page 16