If any of this was hard for my mother, or frightening, or demoralizing, she never showed it. I can’t recall a single moment of reflection or introspection on my mother’s part, not one in all the years I spent with her. She didn’t cry in the car at night. She didn’t seem horrified to be homeless. She simply went along. She rose before dawn, returned in the evenings, took us to the public showers, did whatever she could to score her acid and her herbs. She took her life in stride, wherever she found herself.
I’ve never met anyone else of whom this could be said. All the homeless women I’ve encountered while doing volunteer work speak the language of therapy and recovery. They will mention their bad choices, their addictions, and their codependency. They talk about hitting rock bottom. They attend AA and NA meetings, support groups, counseling, and anger management classes. They are earnestly trying to salvage themselves, their relationships with their children, and their employment prospects.
My mother did none of these things. She did not take stock of how far she had fallen. She did not seek to make amends to anyone. She didn’t try to get clean. She never recognized the harm she inflicted on her children. She never despaired and she never apologized.
A few days before, during our most recent visit, I’d asked why she hadn’t let me stay with the Bertolini family while we were homeless. She’d left Allan with her brother and his wife when we went to Mexico. She reported that Dominic had been kidnapped without ever seeming to grieve his disappearance. Why didn’t she let them keep me just a little longer? Such an arrangement would have left her with one less child to feed and more room in the car.
“They taught you to be ashamed of me,” my mother said. “When they brought you to visit me, I could see it.”
With a sudden shock, I flashed onto a memory of the visit she was referring to, one I hadn’t thought about in decades: the visiting area of the jail, with the plexiglass divider and the telephones on either side. It was true, I didn’t want to be there at all. I didn’t want to talk to my mother or even look at her. All I wanted was to go back to my new home.
Mama Bee had to gently prod me into my chair and coax me into picking up the phone. My mother sat down across from me and picked up her own phone. I don’t recall our conversation, but I remember that she had something for me—something she’d made herself. She slid it through the hole at the bottom of the glass and I took it.
It was a doll made out of a brown paper bag. It had long black yarn for hair, a ribbon headband glued across the forehead, and a feather sticking up from beneath the ribbon. It had button eyes and she had colored an elaborate pattern on its dress. Zig-zagging stripes of red and blue alternated with rows of different shapes: circles and spirals and stars and moons.
I was happy to have something from my mom. I brought it home and put it in my drawer. But I also felt the first stirrings of shame in response to my mother, a dawning awareness that I did not want to be like her.
“I only felt shame because we were in a jail,” I told her. “I didn’t really understand why you were there, but I knew that jail was a bad place.”
This was the truth. The Bertolinis didn’t plant the seed of shame. It had flowered on its own.
“Well, you never looked at me that way before.”
SEVERAL MONTHS INTO her housekeeping job, my mother got a lucky break. The largest unit in the motel became available for long-term rental, and her employers allowed her to move into it for a vastly reduced rate.
The motel was a long, low-slung tan building. It was modest but clean and well-kept, and it even had little touches of charm. The door to each room was red with a tan trim, and each one opened onto a low brick doorstep. Cultivated flowers grew along the edge of the building: lilies and poppies and agave. Between these little bordered flower beds and the doors of each unit were walnut-stained Adirondack chairs.
I loved every single thing about living in this motel. Our rental unit, which was essentially one big room, felt palatial to me after living in the car. At the far end, on the other side of a wooden divider, was a little kitchenette with a refrigerator, a couple of cabinets, and a few feet of counter space. There was a small kitchen table—not much bigger than a card table—made of pale plywood, along with four wooden chairs. In the main room were two queen-sized beds draped with burgundy sateen.
I loved helping my mother with her housekeeping tasks: replacing the towels in each guest bathroom, setting out the tiny bottles of lotion and shampoo, stripping the beds and making them again. I loved pushing the tall laden cart from room to room, puffed up with the importance of my role.
I loved to make her coffee just the way she liked it. Every morning I put two heaping teaspoons of instant Swiss mocha into a mug, heated water in a shallow pan, poured it in when it was boiling, and stirred in a spoonful of honey.
The motel felt impossibly luxurious after living in the car. It was heavenly to sleep in a bed, warm beneath clean blankets. It seemed the height of good fortune to have running water and electric lights, a range with two burners, a shelter spacious enough to walk around in. It was like a miracle to have functional plumbing and toilet paper and privacy, and to be able to go to the bathroom without stepping outside.
The motel had a pool, and this too was a pure joy: a rectangle of shimmering aqua cut into the concrete. On those hot and arid summer days, relief was just a moment away.
My siblings and I were splashing in the shallow end one day when my mother, who was sitting off to the side and watching us, suddenly rose and dove in at the deep side. She had never joined us in the pool before, and we all stared in wonder as she surfaced several yards away. Then we watched her body arc out of the water like a dolphin and plunge back in, again and again, as her flashing arms swept the air. Back and forth she went with a swift efficient flip-turn on either side, her strokes powerful and practiced and rhythmic. It was an astonishing sight: the sudden transformation of a wraithlike junkie into a self-assured Olympian.
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY was warm and clear, a perfect day to go out on Mae’s yacht. I crossed her backyard that morning in a new red sundress. I felt pretty and youthful and playful as I made my way down the gangplank to where Mae was waiting for me.
“Oh, my sweet girl!” she exclaimed, gathering me into a hug. “Don’t you look beautiful! Your haircut is stunning! You look younger than ever.”
Owen extended his hand to steady me as I stepped onto the boat. He hovered nearby while Kim and Lara greeted me as warmly as Mae had. Then with the slightest touch at the small of my back, he guided me to the bar.
“Let’s get you a drink,” he said. “What would be your pleasure, lovely one?”
“Have a mimosa, Steph,” Kim called. “His mimosas are killer!”
“Killer,” Owen affirmed, reaching for a silver shaker. “May I?”
I watched him create my drink with fresh-squeezed blood orange juice, Dom Perignon, and Grand Marnier. His motions were deft and sure. The weather was balmy and the pine-tinged Pacific Northwest air was like a caress.
The boat moved away from the dock. The sun was shining and the river was sparkling. I watched a flying fish trace an arc in the air and recalled my mother in the motel pool. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder, Where and when and how did she ever learn to swim like that?
Then I pushed the thought of her away. I wasn’t going to dwell on her today. As promised, my drink was delicious: crisp and sweet and strong, the color of a sunset. The wind lifted my hair as I stood at the railing.
I feel good, I thought for the first time since I’d last seen Owen. I feel really, really good.
So often I’d ached to be a part of Mae’s family. And now, a little buzzed already from my mimosa, I felt as if I really were.
I felt as if I belonged, truly belonged. It was as if I’d stepped into an alternate world in which I was her daughter-in-law: someone with the true right to call her Mama.
I didn’t belong in the family I’d been born into, and I had never felt t
ruly taken in by Jim’s. But Mae’s—I fit so naturally into Mae’s. And it felt at that moment as if stepping into it would be as simple as stepping onto a boat.
Chapter 9
I WAS MAKING a guest room bed with my mother when our time at the motel came to an abrupt end. I thought about that a lot afterward: how swiftly and suddenly everything went dark. How rich life had seemed to me at the motel! Six people in a single room for several months on end might not sound blissful to most people, but it was so much better than living in a car that it felt like a dream to me.
Shelter, blessed shelter. Electricity and heat. And space, so much space compared to a car. Water on tap, hot food we could cook ourselves, a television and a refrigerator and a bathtub. The pool, too—an oasis from the heat, but one that was calm and placid, nothing like the pounding ocean.
And then there was the cleanliness, the order. Fresh clean towels every day, and fresh clean sheets on our bed. A ready supply of soap and shampoo, and even little luxuries like body lotion.
Finally, there was my role as my mother’s helper. I’d been too young before to really help her with much, but at the motel, we were a housekeeping team. I loved fluffing the pillows, folding the bedspread just so, arranging the little bottles in the bathrooms, making each modest room as pristine and welcoming as I could. Though I couldn’t articulate it yet, even to myself, I was already deeply interested, deeply invested, in learning how to make a space into a sanctuary and tending to the comfort of displaced people.
My mother was glad to have my help. I could sense that too, though she never said so. And I loved being of service to her. If I were of use to her, if she needed me even a little, then my place in the world was more secure.
I loved being of service. My siblings all survived our childhood in different ways. Some of them became hard and reckless and lawless. Some withdrew into chronic solitude or addiction or mental illness. The desire to serve, to be of assistance to other people, is one of the traits that saved me.
I was folding the bottom edge of a flat sheet into hospital corners when the slow whirl of red and blue lights lit the room. A police car was in the parking lot.
My mother was on her knees folding the opposite corner of the bed. She understood in an instant that they were here for her. I could see that knowledge in her face as her gaze met mine. She looked for a moment like a trapped and wild-eyed animal.
Then the blue-uniformed figure of a cop filled the doorframe. He had sandy hair and a handlebar mustache. “Florence Haskell?” he said.
The couple who owned the motel stood just behind him. “That’s her,” the wife said mournfully.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to come with me,” he said.
My mother rose and faced him. Her eyes narrowed and her stance was defiant. “What for?” she wanted to know.
“For aggravated assault and battery,” he said. “It’s my understanding that you attacked one of the motel guests.”
I believe the owners of the motel had already grown wary of my mother. They’d begun to ask questions about us. Why were we unsupervised at the pool all day? Why weren’t we in school?
Even I could see that my mother’s behavior was ever more erratic. She went around with a deep scowl, muttering and cursing under her breath. She lit joints in the laundry room, and there were complaints from guests about the smoke-scented linens.
The owners of the motel, an aging Asian couple, had always struck me as good and decent people. They worked hard to keep the motel tidy and respectable. It’s easy to imagine that my mother posed an ever-deepening dilemma to them. She was moody and unpredictable. She was clearly an irresponsible parent, but what would happen to us if they fired her? They likely understood that we’d been homeless before. If they ended her employment, would we be homeless again?
But when she assaulted a guest, there was nothing left to decide. They could not keep her on, and of course they were obligated to report violence inflicted on a customer.
As always, it took several men to subdue my mother, to drag her out to the waiting patrol car and fling her face down across the hood. Another cop ushered Isabella and me into the back of a second car, and through the windshield I could see them wrestling her arms behind her and cuffing her wrists. She was thrashing and kicking, and by now her howl of indignation was familiar to me.
Don’t you know who I am . . . ?
The motel owners must have mentioned a slew of truant children in their call to the cops because a social worker materialized on the scene: a sweet young woman with long dark hair and glasses. She wore a navy skirt and a blouse with a bow at the throat. In the back seat of the police car, she kept one arm around my shoulders. With her other hand, she smoothed my hair and spoke in a soothing murmur.
“My name is Adele,” she told me. “I know you’re scared, but everything is going to be all right. Your mother needs help, and the policemen are going to take her to a place where people will help her. And we’re going to find help for you too. You’re going to be okay.”
I liked Adele. I liked her sweet face and her gentle voice. I felt lulled by her reassuring words. I wanted to stay in the police car, cuddled close to her in the back seat, breathing in her flowery perfume.
“Where are we going?” Isabella asked her.
“We’re going to get you help,” she repeated.
Maybe we could go home with her. I felt safe with her.
All my possessions—two outfits and a doll—were in a black trash bag in the back seat with me. Isabella was holding her own black bag. Our brothers were on the beach, and I wondered whether anyone would help them too.
The police car pulled out of the motel lot and began the long drive to our unspecified destination. I studied the men in the front seat, the way they said code words into their radios, their almost identical close-cropped hair. I leaned into Adele, loving the feeling of her arm around my shoulders, nestling into her warmth as we drove away from Mendocino, out of the town and into the hills, up winding roads and into the dark immensity of the redwood forests.
As an adult, I can appreciate the majesty of those beautiful ancient trees, but as a child in the back of that police car, they filled me with wild foreboding. They were a canopy overhead, blocking out the light. The temperature of the air dropped, and the little bit of sky we could see was the dark blue of a bruise.
At long last we came to a vast building with a circular driveway. Adele helped Isabella and me out of the car and, still murmuring reassurances, brought us inside to a small waiting room. Two women sat at a table near the entrance. Without pleasantries, one of them spoke directly to her.
“Their bags,” she said in a tone of command.
Adele knelt in front of us. “Girls, they need your things for now. You’ll get them back, I promise. Okay?”
“Can I have my doll?” I asked.
Adele looked up at the woman behind the desk.
“Can she have her doll?” she asked.
“No.”
“Not right now, sweetheart,” Adele told me, as if she were an interpreter bringing a gentle translation to a harsh foreign language. “But like I said, you will get it back. Honest, you will.”
Mutely I surrendered my bag to Adele, who placed it on the table. A moment later, Isabella did the same. The angry-sounding woman at the table told Adele: “It’s time for you to leave now.”
Isabella and I weren’t close. My sister probably suffered more deeply during her formative years than I did. She was angry and she was violent and she’d never had any use for me. Throughout our childhood years, she was as likely to cut or claw me as look at me. But we clung to each other then. I held onto her with all my might in the waiting room of the dependent unit and she put her arms around me and held me too. I could feel her trembling.
* * *
WHAT FOLLOWED WAS the darkest era of my childhood, easily the most painful period of my life. But there was a brief, bright reprieve before it began. I have a single memory of the dep
endent unit that doesn’t feel like choking sadness and abandonment, like something crushed on the side of the road. Before Isabella and I were taken to the girls’ dormitory, we were sent to the clothing room. Inside were what seemed like endless racks of donated clothing sorted by gender and size. We were allowed to choose six items of clothing and two pairs of shoes.
I had never chosen clothing for myself, and in that moment, I felt only excitement: the brief falling away of sorrow and terror as I focused on treasures all around me. I pranced up and down the aisles, a little half-gallop of pleasure at the sight of all the floral prints, velvets, satins, and silks. (That rush in response to a bounty of fabrics has never left me. My heart still pounds when I step into a showroom and I’m surrounded by lush panels of variety and possibility.)
I chose a drawstring peasant blouse with a delicate pattern of pink flowers embroidered around the neckline, then a cheerful red corduroy jumper. There were a few Christmas dresses in jewel tones with white lace collars, and I selected one of these next, in emerald.
I took a light blue sweater, the color of a robin’s egg and so soft. Its blue pearl buttons were iridescent, and I loved the feel of them beneath my fingertips. I found a pair of denim pants with little patches on it: a mushroom, a flower and a butterfly. Finally, there was a light green dress with strawberries stitched onto the deep front pockets.
For shoes, I chose penny loafers and patent leather Mary Janes. I was also given a new package of knee socks and a five-pack of panties.
Then the fun ended. It was almost time for lights-out.
The children’s residence was divided into two blocks, the girls’ and the boys’. One of the matrons brought us to a long room where dozens of children slept, and though we were each assigned our own bed, I crawled with Isabella into hers that first evening. I wrapped both arms around her and clung for dear life as, all around us, sobs and shrieks and screams tore the black air all night long.
Nobody ever responded to these screams. No adult came to investigate, or to quiet or comfort anyone.
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