American Daughter

by Stephanie Thornton Plymale

  When I still didn’t react, he said, “Want me to bring it up to your room?”

  I nodded and followed him upstairs to the room I slept in. He set the box down on the rug beside my bed. I sank onto the floor beside it, put both my arms around it, and began to cry.

  Did it matter that a stereo was inside the box? One that likely cost him an entire paycheck? Yes, it mattered beyond measure. It was the kind of gift a grown man would buy. It cast an impossibly sophisticated sheen over the inherent miracle of a gift expressly for me. A stereo. A stereo!

  And no. It didn’t matter at all. He had me at the box, whatever was inside.

  MANY OF MY friends marvel at the fact that I married my first love, a boy I met at the age of fifteen. Some people see our story as a kind of fairy tale. A young man came along and fell in love with me, and his love was steadfast and true, and his devotion never wavered, and that’s what saved me.

  It’s the truth, but there’s another truth just alongside it: Our love was not just something that came along, something that happened to me. It was something I reached for with both hands and held as tightly as I could. I made a decision to receive his love, to return it, to love him and all of him and only him, forever. I insisted on purity.

  Purity is a fraught word, a standard that religious zealots brandish at one another. It reeks of sanctimony; it implies judgment. But when I say I wanted purity, I don’t mean it in that way at all.

  I mean only that I wanted, always, to be the polar opposite of my mother. That I watched her give herself to one man after another from as far back as I could remember. And growing up with the fallout of her promiscuity raining down around me left me with a fervent wish to give myself to only one man. Nothing else felt safe to me.

  Here is a final snapshot from that era of my life:

  Jim and I are studying in his bedroom. I graduated high school just a few months ago and am now enrolled at the local community college. Jim is in his second year at Portland State University. I’m still a waitress at Elmer’s, a local diner, and Jim works for UPS.

  I love being at Jim’s house. He describes his own family as dysfunctional, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine what he means by that. From my perspective, his family is a model of structure and stability. Right this minute, his mother is making hamburgers for dinner. She’ll serve them with real sesame seed buns and all the fixings—tomato slices, pickle chips, and sautéed onions—arranged on a platter.

  “We should get our own place,” he tells me between calculus problems. “Now that you’re done with high school, it’s time. With both of us working, we should be able to rent a decent apartment somewhere.”

  My last foster mother has recently kicked me out of her house because I was one day late renewing my registration tags at the DMV. I’m still reeling from that blow. I’ve known too many homes, too many broken attachments, and too many betrayals to enter another makeshift arrangement.

  I long for the kind of commitment that’s formalized, certified, official. I need a stamp of permanence. I yearn for a family of my own.

  “I want that too,” I tell Jim. “But we have to get married. I’m not going to just shack up with you somewhere unless we’re married.”

  Jim looks up from his calculus book. His eyes meet mine. His expression is vague, as if he needs a moment to process what I just said. Then he nods briefly, as if I’ve suggested we see a movie later that evening.

  “Okay,” he says, and turns back to his book.

  “STEPH? ARE YOU sure you want to do this?”

  Jim was standing at the foot of our bed in black thermals. It was barely daybreak. He and the kids were heading out to Timberline Lodge for a day of skiing at Mount Hood.

  No, I wanted to tell him. I’m not at all sure I want to do this. In fact, I know I don’t want to do this. I hated that he would be so far away while I was at my mother’s. I didn’t want him to go.

  I was still curled beneath the comforter. If it were a regular Saturday, Jim would still be in bed with me. We would have coffee and then walk our dog together. We’d go to our favorite local hole-in-the-wall for brunch.

  But it wasn’t a regular Saturday. Instead of joining my family on the mountain, I would go see my mother. And I was afraid.

  Jim was afraid too. I could see it in his eyes. My mother was unpredictable. Sometimes she was violent.

  Jim’s way was always to be there for me. He had been at my side for every hardship of the last three decades, but I knew if he were at my side today, I wouldn’t be able to have the conversation with my mother that I needed to have. My mother didn’t like him. She never had. As she saw it, I’d fully belonged to her before he came along. I’d been a model of compliance. In her version of things, Jim was to blame for the loss of her perfect servant, and I knew I’d have no hope of drawing her out and getting the information I needed if he was there. I would have to go alone.

  Two hours later I pulled into the parking area of my mother’s apartment complex and saw her right away. She was in a little sheltered area, a kind of gazebo next to the lot. She was standing there, it seemed, so her cigarette would be safe from the rain.

  I took one look at her and went cold with alarm. She was Flow today—I could see that from the car.

  She wore a long green washed-out dress, faux suede knee-high moccasin boots, a white headband, and black shades. A blood-smeared surgical mask was dangling from her neck. The bones of her face stood out in sharp relief, and deep grooves were etched around her downturned mouth. As Flow, she held herself stiffly, and from long experience I knew that behind the shades her eyes were glittering with rage.

  I hoped the coffee in its tall take-out cup had cooled somewhat by now. I didn’t put it past her to hurl its hot contents at me. I eased the car into a parking space in the section reserved for guests, cut the engine, and just sat there a moment with my eyes closed and tried to slow my breathing.

  And then I was standing in front of her, trying to smile.

  “Mom,” I said. “Hi.”

  She glared at me without answering.

  “It’s good to see you,” I tried.

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and held her silence.

  “I brought you coffee from Starbucks,” I said, holding it out. “It’s mocha.”

  At this, her jaw unclenched. The lines on her face seemed to soften. She took the coffee and ground her cigarette out underfoot.

  “Can we go inside?” I asked.

  “All right,” she said.

  I trailed her to a ground-floor apartment just across the lot. As Flow, my mother moved with what I can only describe as a prowl—the slinking stealthy gait of a cat on the hunt. At her door I waited while she fished the key from the deep pocket of her dress. Then I followed her over the threshold into a small living room, furnished simply with an old sofa, two chairs, and a coffee table. The room was littered with prescription bottles, a full ashtray of cigarette butts, and a pipe she used for her herbs.

  She sank down onto the sofa and took a sip of the coffee. “It’s good,” she told me.

  It was unnerving not to see her eyes. “Mom, why are you wearing shades?” I asked. “It’s raining out there and we’re inside now anyway.”

  “I need them,” she said fretfully. “There’s a glare in here.”

  “And why do you have a mask around your neck?”

  “In case I get a nosebleed,” she said. “That keeps happening. I don’t want to ruin this dress.”

  I took the opposite corner of her sofa and positioned my cell phone beside me, in the shadow of my jacket. I’d already pressed the button that would record our conversation. Now that I knew she was dying, I felt compelled to preserve whatever account of the past she might offer me.

  “How are you feeling, Mom?”

  “I’m in pain,” she told me. “I’ve had a lot of pain.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I felt a rush of pity for her. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “May
be you can get me some of that medical marijuana.”

  Marijuana was legal now in Oregon, so she didn’t need a prescription, but I knew the real issue was the expense. “I’ll try,” I told her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Now she did take the shades off. Her blue eyes were blazing but tired.

  “Are you sleeping all right, Mom?”

  “Not since they switched my pain meds,” she said. “These new pills aren’t working.”

  “Do you want me to talk to your doctor?”

  “If you think it might help,” she said.

  “I’d be glad to try. I’m sorry the meds aren’t better. Where are you having pain?”

  “The worst of it is in my back. The doctor said the cancer already spread to my spine.”

  An ache rose in my throat. Flow seemed to have departed. It was just my mother in front of me, and she suddenly looked girlish and fragile.

  “We’ll figure out the meds,” I told her. “I won’t let you suffer.”

  She regarded me for a long moment and then she smiled. “You love me,” she said. There was a note of wonder in her voice. “You really love me.”

  “I do. I love you, Mom.”

  She sat back against the sofa, satisfied.

  “Mom,” I said. “I have so many questions. There’s so much about our past that I don’t understand. I don’t want to wear you out when you’re sick, but you’re the only one who can give me the answers.”

  She eyed me from her corner of the couch. “What do you want to know?”

  Under the cover of my jacket, I angled the phone in her direction and glanced down to make sure it was recording.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” I said.

  Chapter 4

  IN SOME WAYS my visit with my mother was better than I expected. She didn’t attack me or curse me out. She was forthcoming and matter-of-fact in her account of my birth: all the ways she had tried to rid herself of the pregnancy and my arrival despite her best efforts.

  I left her apartment on the verge of tears. As soon as I was inside my car, I began to cry. I hadn’t known about her attempts to terminate her pregnancy. She’d never told me. Given everything else she’d said and done, I didn’t even know why it mattered, but it did. The sorrow of it lodged like so much silt in my throat.

  She didn’t want me. My own mother didn’t want me. She tried to get rid of me.

  There it was—irreducible, undeniable. Final.

  Driving home, I felt so tired I was afraid I might fall asleep at the wheel. It was the deep of winter, dark before five o’clock, and for once I felt grateful that night was here so early. At home I went straight to the room I shared with Jim and got into our bed. I knew my husband and daughter would have dinner at the lodge and be home late. That was for the best, since I didn’t think I could deal with talking to anyone just yet.

  Jim was asleep beside me when I woke up the next morning, and I almost wept with the relief of seeing him. I lay there aching and dazed, feeling the old orphan loneliness, overcome by the urge to draw my own family close around me. Within the hour, I’d wrangled my two sons—Josh and Jeremy, both in their twenties—into coming to dinner that night.

  For the rest of the day as I prepared for their visit, I was spurred by the same frenetic intensity that had driven my domestic efforts a thousand times before. I wanted a fire in the hearth and every light and candle in the house ablaze. I wanted a laden table and the warmth of both ovens on at once. I wanted delicious cooking aromas to fill the air. There was something almost manic about the way I tied up the blade roast, scrubbed the potatoes, and chopped the vegetables. After searing the meat, I simmered it for hours in a concoction of beef broth and red wine, root vegetables and bay leaves. A rich fragrance filled the kitchen as I turned to setting the table.

  I loved our dining room table. I loved the rustic wood, its length and heft, its weight and majesty. It could seat twelve people. It was solid. It was permanent. It was the table of a woman who had put down roots.

  I brought out my embroidered linen tablecloth and favorite set of gold and white dishes. I’d have just enough time to go out for flowers. All these details seemed very important.

  I felt compelled, as I so often did, to conjure a feeling of bounty, abundance, comfort and well-being. Seeing my mother brought back this ancient hunger. Literal hunger: the emptiness of a child who hasn’t been fed and won’t be fed. Hunger that twists in the gut like an eel on a hook. Seeing her brought back the chill of my childhood. The cold, damp car that was our home.

  I would beat it all back yet again with a feast on my dining room table, smiling faces around it, classical music and candlelight, warmth and laughter.

  Finally, by five o’clock, Jim and all three of our children were beneath our roof.

  There was Andrea, still at home with us. The daughter we’d adopted from Guatemala, who seemed to have the world on a string. Athletic, lovely, filled with such dazzling self-assurance she barely seemed to notice or appreciate her own popularity.

  There was Josh, who quickly and easily found his way in the world. His boyish, bearish good looks and ready smile lent him a social ease that I envied. Josh loved life and it showed. He was a sales executive at a national software company, and his rollicking good nature made him a favorite with customers.

  There was Jeremy, my sweet, easy-going younger son who’d built his own business selling shoes. These days he was keeping his dark hair buzzed short and sporting a sparse goatee.

  Josh was the first to put his arms around me. “Hey, mom,” he said. “Is everything okay? You look a little worn out.” Josh was always the one who could read me, the most intuitive about how I was feeling.

  “I’m fine,” I said into his shoulder. “Everything’s fine.”

  All their lives I’d wanted above all to protect them in the ways my mother had never protected me. Often that meant protecting them from her. I made sure their contact with her was sharply limited. Years had sometimes gone by between visits. They didn’t yet know that she had cancer or that I’d been to see her. At the moment, there was no reason to tell them. I wanted to keep her, even the mention of her, far away from us tonight.

  At dinner, I barely ate. I had no appetite at all. It was enough to watch my family eat. Everything was just as I wanted it.

  My friends often told me I made it all look easy. None of them knew the desperation lying beneath it all. The way I did these things as if my next breath depended on it.

  It wasn’t until Jim and all the kids were on the sofa, watching the Mariners game, that I let myself remember the rest of my conversation with my mother.

  “Wow, Mom,” I’d managed to say, after hearing my birth story.

  “I guess I never told you any of this before,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “You never did.”

  “Well, there it is. For some reason, I decided to save you.”

  That was how she saw it, how she’d spun it to herself. She hadn’t tried to kill me; she’d decided to save me.

  The sorrow and grief, it would surface after I left. I couldn’t let it overwhelm me then, not before I’d gotten more of what I’d come for.

  I looked down to confirm that my phone was still recording. Then I made myself meet her gaze.

  “I’m glad you decided to save me, Mom,” I said. “So then what?”

  ON A TUESDAY in late summer, a young woman on Haight Street—passing out fliers for her temple—invited my mother to her first Buddhist meeting. My mother liked the look of her. She had light blonde hair falling nearly to her waist, wide green cat eyes, and a lovely vibe: peaceful, centered, and serene.

  My mother was lonely. She loved San Francisco but she didn’t like living with Louie. She wanted a spiritual partnership. She wanted to live on a higher astral plane. She wanted to be a vegetarian. She took the light green paper the woman held out to her. It was the address of a Buddhist temple, where there would be a meeting at eight that evening.

  L
ater that same day, in Buena Vista Park, someone left a local newspaper laid open on the bench my mother was sitting on. Right there on that page, staring up at her, was a description of Buddhism by members of the very same temple. This was an unmistakable instance of synchronicity. My mother picked it up and read this statement of purpose:

  This project is an ecstatic exercise in action. Our purpose is to turn people on. The results of our actions, money, vibration, influences will be dedicated and used for the good of all sentient beings. Out of the heart-glow of the red Buddha come the vibrations that unite us to act.

  After that she could have no doubt that Buddhism was for her. That evening she walked to the address printed on the paper. The meeting room was long and plain with an altar at the front. Hanging on the wall just above it was a framed scroll bearing Japanese calligraphy. Lamps made of bamboo and rice paper stood on either side and hung from the ceiling, and the dusty scent of cypress incense hovered in the air. The floors were made of polished hardwood, and they gleamed beneath the bare feet of all who were gathered in the room.

  On the altar were various objects that she would learn about in the days and weeks to come and eventually bring into her own home. She didn’t have a chance to look at them closely that first evening because a man standing near them drew her gaze away. Beautiful was not a word my mother tended to use when referring to a man. But it was the word she used when she talked about Rick.

  Rick Haskell had more power over my mother than any other man ever had. From the moment she saw him, she was under his sway. He was tall and lean with shoulder-length light brown hair and blue eyes like a rogue Jesus. He was also a con man, an alcoholic, a heroin addict, and a convicted felon, just out of prison for armed robbery.

  Rick was beside her when they received the mantra that was the key to life itself, the culmination of the Buddha’s teachings:

  Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

  I devote myself to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra.

  It was a wedding vow of sorts, a pledge to be faithful to the Buddha nature deep within her. Secretly, in her own mind, it was a wedding vow for her and Rick as well, enclosing the two of them in its petals of protection.