American Daughter

by Stephanie Thornton Plymale

  “By the end of his fifty-year stint on the faculty, Thornton’s genius was legendary,” the profile says. “Dean B.F.D. Runk later quipped that he could have taught any subject in the curriculum except medicine and ‘if they gave him six months, he could teach medicine.’”

  The university also has web pages devoted to the history of its engineering school. When the senior Thornton arrived there in 1875, he set out to modernize the curriculum. Instead of being content to lecture the students, as professors had always done in the past, he assigned the most current textbooks and field manuals to his pupils and lectured only to supplement their reading. He identified real-world engineering problems and prepared case studies on them for classroom discussions. In 1935, after his decades of tireless service, the school unveiled a new laboratory named Thornton Hall in his honor. He died just two weeks after its inauguration.

  My great-great-grandfather’s influence on the engineering school was pervasive for decades after his death. Every dean appointed before 1973 had been one of his students. Thornton Hall remains the central home of the engineering school today.

  READING ABOUT THE senior Thornton, I felt galvanized by a sense of recognition. I’d brought such a similar vision to my own takeover, my makeover, of Heritage School—making my own curriculum as current, relevant and hands-on as possible. Now in the kitchen, a new conviction came to me, sharp as a sudden pain. Thornton was my rightful name. It belonged to me. These men were my true ancestors, in spirit as well as blood.

  Thornton. Thornton. I loved the sound of it. I said it to myself under my breath like an incantation, like a one-word prayer, an amen. It sounded certain and resolute and self-respecting. It was an upright, stately, sterling name, and I wanted it.

  And I would get it. I would change my maiden name to Thornton. I’d start the process tomorrow.

  Overcome by this sudden clarity, lit by it, I set my printed pages about the Thorntons on the table and rested my left hand on them, as if on a stack of Bibles. The right one I raised in the attitude of an oath. There in the darkened kitchen, eyes closed, I addressed the spirits of my departed forefathers.

  “I, Stephanie Thornton Plymale, do solemnly swear,” I whispered, feeling woo-woo and foolish and yet fervently in earnest, “to uphold your commitment to education. I promise to remain devoted to the excellence of my own school, to the welfare of my students, and to a purpose-driven existence. I promise to reclaim the Thornton name, in letter and in spirit. I vow to be worthy of its reputation, to carry it forth with integrity, and to strive to do it honor all the days of my life.”

  Chapter 21

  IT TOOK SIX weeks to change my name. Throughout those six weeks, and well beyond them, I thought about the Thorntons every day. As childish as it was, I had a fantasy of meeting my great-grandfather in some picture-book version of an afterlife. Would he recognize me as a daughter in spirit as well as in blood? Would he see all I’d done to escape the educational wasteland of my childhood?

  I learned to read when I was ten years old. Somehow, some way, I was in the fifth grade without ever having learned the sounds of the alphabet. I should never have been allowed to advance each fall during those elementary years, but I was. With each grade, I was more isolated, the gulf between me and my classmates only widening as time went on.

  My mother’s live-in boyfriend of the moment was Daniel, and he had the distinction of being the only adult who ever seemed alarmed that I was failing at school.

  “Florence, the kid is ten,” he said. “She seems smart enough to me. Why can’t she read?”

  “Because she’s lazy,” my mother told him. “Time and again, I’ve done my best to teach her, but she won’t even try.”

  My mother never tried to teach me, not once. She never even read to us when we were little. No Goodnight Moon. No bedtime stories. No nursery rhymes, no children’s classics, and no fairy tales. We never even had a book in the house until Daniel moved in, and then we had one: The Hobbit.

  It was a green paperback. On the cover was a dirt road cutting a swath through an emerald landscape. Here and there on the green slopes, smoking chimneys came up through the grass, hinting at subterranean homes. In the foreground, a wizard with a staff was striding toward a round blue door set into the hillside. The book was fragrant with mildew and yellowed with age, but it was intact.

  Daniel was in his early thirties with hazel eyes and dark-blond thinning hair, long and usually pulled back into a listless ponytail. He worked at RadioShack and probably made just enough to cover our monthly rent.

  I try to imagine where he and my mother could have met. Most likely in a bar. He always smelled of alcohol, but not in the rank and dangerous way I associated with Rick. It seemed as if he drank just enough to blur the edges of the day and tamp down any flares of wistfulness or ambition.

  Daniel resolved to teach me to read, and he turned to the only book at hand. He would read a paragraph, and then I was supposed to read a paragraph. He read slowly for my sake, but it never took him more than half a minute to read his own lines. A paragraph could take me half an hour.

  In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

  The opening to this book couldn’t have been more captivating to me. It was a description of a true home, and even at the time, I was aware that ours fell short by its standards. The only furniture in our house was a mattress on the floor of my mother’s room, and the television that Daniel had brought home from the store (my siblings and I slept on the floor with blankets). Daniel and I sat on that mattress each evening and together we sounded out the words, syllable by agonizing syllable.

  As hard and tedious as they could be, I never shied away from those evening lessons. I was desperate to learn and grateful, so grateful, for his gentle correction and his patience. All that year, like every other year, I’d sat at the back of the classroom, trying to will myself invisible so I’d never be singled out or called upon. My inability to read was a shame that blotted out all other thought.

  On Monday afternoons, the kids were shepherded to the school library in anticipation of Sustained Silent Reading, a half hour every day set aside for each of us to read whatever we wanted. Every Monday, I’d go to the fifth-grade section and pull a book off the shelf. I’d try to find one with pictures. During those eternal thirty minutes, I would sit with my book open in front of me, scan what pictures were there and pretend to read the words, staring at the meaningless print. Every once in a while, I’d turn a page.

  Now and then I dared to look around, and even at a glance, I could tell no one else was faking it. All the other kids sat transfixed, eyes scanning the sentences before them, occasionally breaking into laughter. Text that meant nothing at all to me was speaking to them. It was holding them captive, letting them in on wild capers and confessions and secrets. The silence in the room was charged with concentration, engagement.

  I wanted to be like them. I wanted my face to assume a look of absorption, one that wasn’t feigned. I wanted this code in front of me to transmit the messages that the others were receiving. I would have given anything to be initiated into its mysteries.

  It had always been like this. In second grade, every day after lunch, the teacher had read Stuart Little to the class for fifteen minutes, marking her place with an index card wherever she stopped and picking up where she’d left off the next day. I was mesmerized by the adventures of the tiniest member of the Little family, who resembled a mouse. Each day I waited eagerly for that treasured time, the most gratifying moments I’d ever known in a classroom. A few of the other kids, as hooked on the story as I was, weren’t content to have the story parceled out in quarter-hour increments. They checked the book out of the library or begged their parents to get it and they read ahead. They were proud and empowered—they didn’t have to wait like I did, for s
craps to be dispensed at someone else’s discretion.

  But now—sitting on that mattress, curled against Daniel’s warmth—my life was being altered. Three-letter words were unlocked first, and then longer ones, with special consonant blends and vowels that made different sounds depending on the letters that followed them. Daniel wrote words in a notebook to teach me. We did drills each evening before turning to The Hobbit. I would read a column of words—rat, mat, mad, car—and then Daniel would add an “e” to the end of each one, a magic letter that stayed silent but hardened the preceding vowel so that mat became mate and car became care.

  What was Daniel doing with us? Was he a fool for my mother, or did he just take pity on our family? Although he spent hours on that mattress with his arm around me, there was nothing predatory about him. I’d spent a year and a half in Ted’s house by then, and I knew the signs. Daniel had no ulterior motive, no desire to violate a child. He was just being kind.

  A lot of people would call him a loser. He was sad-eyed and soft-bodied in that red uniform shirt with the white “R” stitched inside a circle. Even at that age, I could see that my mother was using him for room and board, and he was letting himself be used.

  He was a hero to me, and I’ll be grateful to him until my last breath.

  There was no breakthrough moment during these reading lessons. It wasn’t like flipping a switch. It was more like the dawn seeping into a room at daybreak: first a ray and then a beam and finally a flood of sunlight, as I became able to decipher a word and then a string of words and then full sentences.

  The next morning was a midsummer’s morning as fair and fresh as could be dreamed: blue sky and never a cloud, and the sun dancing on the water. Now they rode away amid songs of farewell and good speed, with their hearts ready for more adventure, and with a knowledge of the road they must follow.

  With each piece of the code he imparted to me, another part of darkness was lifted. The lock on the door keeping me out had been broken and, just like that, I was inside the fortress, I was on the pirate ship, in the highest turret of the castle, at the royal ball, in a cove by the sea. I could time-travel along with everyone else. I could find out for myself how the story ended.

  THE JUDGE HAD just signed my change of name decree when the call came from the psych ward.

  “Your mother is experiencing a respiratory crisis,” said a woman who identified herself as the nurse on duty. “She’s losing consciousness from lack of oxygen. We would like your consent to admit her to the emergency room.”

  “Of course,” I said, pushing through the courtroom door and stepping out into the hall. “Is she okay right now?”

  “Without an intervention very soon, she’s likely to die,” the nurse said bluntly. “Can you meet us at the ER right away, so you can sign the release forms?”

  In her new bed in the oncology ward of the same hospital, my mother was gray-faced and wasted. There was a tube in her nose and others running beneath her hospital smock and into her arms. Though her eyes were open when I stepped into the room, for a terrible moment I thought she was gone. Her gaze was cloudy and opaque, sightless and empty. But then her eyes shifted in my direction. It was like seeing a corpse stir back to life.

  “Stephanie,” she rasped. My name seemed to cost her a terrible effort.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. “I came as fast as I could.”

  She reached out and plucked at my sleeve with one bluish claw. “Promise me,” she whispered.

  “Anything,” I said, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.

  “Promise you’ll bring me back to Bar Harbor.”

  I looked at her in confusion. “Bar Harbor, Maine?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s where I want to be.”

  I stood there for a moment trying to imagine what she meant by this. Did she want to be buried there? Or have her ashes scattered there?

  “What do you mean, Mom?” I asked. “You want to go to Bar Harbor when?”

  “As soon as we can,” she said. “Tomorrow if possible.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t know about tomorrow. But—”

  “I want to go to the candy store,” she said feverishly. “See’s Candies. The best in the world. And I want to go to the country club. I’m sure I’m still a member. I think I can get you in.”

  “That sounds lovely, Mom,” I said, bewildered. “All those things sound lovely.”

  “And I want to see William. It’s been so long.”

  “William who?” I leaned closer to her, brushing her sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead. “Who’s William, Mom?”

  “He was my boyfriend from Before.”

  Then she closed her eyes, exhausted, and in another moment, she was asleep.

  THAT EVENING, in bed beside Jim, I did an image search for Bar Harbor. The photos that came up on my phone were like a dream of summer: A-frame houses of clapboard and shingles, colorful buoys, lobster shacks, flower boxes in all the windows, and shops studded with the American flag.

  The next morning, back in her hospital room, I could see at a glance that she was better. She looked calm now, and her breathing was even. A hint of color had come into her face, and the spark was back in her blue eyes. She looked lucid; she looked good.

  “Mom, you’re better,” I said, drawing a chair up to her bed and sitting down. “You look wonderful.”

  This pleased her, I could tell. Even in a cancer ward, she wasn’t above preening. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes! Your cheeks are all rosy, and your eyes look so blue.”

  “Well,” she said. “It’s too bad there are no proper suitors around here.”

  I smothered a laugh. “Mom, speaking of suitors,” I said. “Yesterday you mentioned someone named William. You said he was your boyfriend from Before.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me about him, Mom,” I said. “Did you meet him in Bar Harbor?”

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “We went there every summer. My grandparents had a little yellow beach house. It was my favorite place to be.”

  “Was he your first boyfriend? How old were you when you met?”

  “I was ten years old and he was fifteen. He thought I was older because I was so tall for my age. I developed early too.”

  “Was his family rich like yours?” I asked.

  “Oh no. He came from a common family. His father was a mechanic.”

  This was a surprise. “And your grandparents didn’t object?”

  “They would have objected if they’d known about it. I kept it a secret from them. I was young, but I wasn’t a fool. When he sent me letters, he wrote ‘Willa’ as the name on the return address. They thought it was a girl writing to me.”

  She and William talked on the telephone as well. She did the calling because his family could not have afforded the long-distance charges. Her own grandparents never mentioned the expense, if they noticed it at all.

  “We stayed in touch for years,” my mother told me. “He came to visit me at my mother’s house in Florida. Even after he was married, we slept together whenever we saw each other.” Her eyes went distant and misty. “He was the love of my life,” she said.

  “Is that why you want to go to Bar Harbor?

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s the last place I was happy.”

  “Mom, you never told me any of this,” I said.

  “I don’t like to dwell on the past,” she said. “What’s the point?”

  “I know how hard it is to talk about,” I told her. “But you suffered so much in secret, for so long, and your story is important. I don’t want you to die without telling me your story.”

  “This again.” She sighed.

  “Please, Mom.”

  “You always do this. It’s so cruel.” She sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of resignation. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what happened to you,” I said. “Please tell me, Mom. I’m listening.”

  IN EVERY
POSSIBLE respect, 1953 was the ghastliest year imaginable for my mother. Her father died suddenly that June from stomach cancer. By all accounts, he spent his final days in excruciating pain.

  Three months later, her grandfather died as well. The cause of death was heart failure. I believe, in fact, that he died of a broken heart—that what happened to my mother was the death of him.

  The men who abducted my mother brought her to a windowless room in a low-rent apartment building on Preston Street in Baltimore. The room was little more than a cell. There was nothing in it but a bare mattress on a metal frame, with coils that creaked and groaned, punctuating every assault.

  My mother would find herself in one cell after another for the rest of her life. This was the first, the one that led to all the others. When she crossed the threshold of that room, the part of her life that she calls Before was over. She would never be able to return.

  They kept the lights off when they were with her and when they weren’t. She had no way to know whether it was day or night. Very soon she lost all sense of time. Only later would she understand that she had been there for ten straight days.

  These numbers defy comprehension. Ten days. Fifteen men. Eleven years old.

  Eleven was the age my own daughter kept her stuffed animals on rotation, taking a different one to bed with her each night so all of them would feel loved. The year she cried herself to sleep after her guinea pig died. The year she wrote every evening in a diary with a horse on the cover and spent most of her birthday money on stickers.

  The men were inconceivably brutal. They slapped her and kicked her and punched her. They spat on her and urinated on her and ejaculated on her. They taunted her and called her names. They violated every part of her body again and again. When she was finally hospitalized, her eyes were blackened, her entire body was covered in bruises, and she was bleeding from every orifice.

  When I reach for a comparison, I can find none. As a child, I experienced recurrent sexual violation myself. But even in the worst of times, I knew where I was. I had a bed with a blanket and pillow. I had daylight. I had long stretches of normalcy in between, interludes of school and chores and time with the animals outside. I had only one abuser. He made me service him with my hands and my mouth, but he did not rip me open. He did not beat me, call me names, blacken my eyes or bloody my face.