Rebel Mother

by Peter Andreas

  Joel received a couple of shirts and a pair of tan moccasins, along with special oil for the thick leather. As he still absolutely detested shoes, he hoped that perhaps moccasins would be the closest thing to not wearing them. He put them on for the trip back to Berkeley and then never wore them again.

  From my nine-year-old perspective, the day was idyllic, everything Christmas should be. We played Chinese checkers, Monopoly, and my favorite of all, Risk—the game of world conquest. War, it seemed, was perfectly acceptable in a pacifist Mennonite home as long as it entailed plastic pieces on a cardboard map. Rosalind asked if I played games with my mother.

  I replied, “Yeah, but she won’t keep score, she doesn’t believe in competition, so she won’t play games where people ‘win.’ ”

  “Ah, I see,” said Rosalind. “So should we not keep score?”

  “No, I like to win.” I grinned.

  But the real-life battle was taking place just outside of my field of vision. To me, this Christmas trip meant a chance to see my father after all these years, but what it was really about was an attempt, finally, to resolve the property settlement and custody dispute between my father and mother without resorting to courts and lawyers. Joel was my mother’s designated representative and intermediary. So while I was happily engrossed in playing Risk with my bearded, pipe-smoking uncle Paul, Joel and my father argued over the settlement terms across the hall. I pretended everything was normal. Uncle Paul flashed his knowing smile and tried to keep me focused on the game. Rosalind, aware that everyone could hear my father and brother, got up and instructed them to move to another room and close the door.

  With my father and Grandma Andreas at Christmas, 1974

  A couple of hours later, Joel and my father finally emerged, both looking drained. Joel called my mother, saying he was coming over with a proposal. Meanwhile, my play battle raged late into the evening until all my armies had been demolished. “Sorry ’bout that,” Uncle Paul said with a wink, resting his left hand under his pipe. “I guess I’m not such a peace-loving Mennonite after all!”

  Opening presents with Joel at Christmas, 1974

  We didn’t get to bed until midnight. I was not used to sleeping in a room alone, so I climbed in bed with my father and Rosalind, my father in the middle. They were surprised but didn’t seem to mind.

  The next day, my father and Rosalind asked me more questions about my life in Peru. They were especially curious about Raul and about my schooling. I explained that Raul had been a chemistry student, but I could not remember the English word for chemistry so I gave them the Spanish word and they were able to figure it out. I was used to mixing Spanish and English words, talking to Raul in Spanish and to my mother in both languages. Rosalind asked me if I liked Raul. I shrugged my shoulders and moved my hands in a so-so gesture. I tried to tell them I had learned how to multiply and divide, but again I couldn’t remember the English words, so I explained the process until they understood. My father must have been disappointed to see that my Spanish was better than my English, but he didn’t say anything.

  I had my own questions—about old neighbor friends in Michigan, about my Hot Wheels toy car collection in the plastic blue and yellow carrying case I had left behind four years earlier. My father assured me it was still in my old room in the house, ready for me to play with whenever I wanted to come to Michigan. “Everything is like you left it, Peter, waiting for you,” my father told me in a soft, soothing voice. “And the Ping-Pong table is also still there, all set up and ready for you to use in the basement.”

  Joel came back with my mother’s counteroffer, just in time for dinner. My father was outraged by her proposal. “I thought she wanted to settle,” he said again and again, shaking his head in frustration. He pulled out his documents and asked Joel to go over them with him one more time. Joel said no, that he was worn out, but my father persisted until Grandma told him to put the papers away and eat.

  My father didn’t say a word during dinner. He didn’t reply when I said, “You look sad.”

  The dinner conversation turned to football. Suddenly my father exploded, “As if football is the most important thing in the world to talk about,” and then stormed away from the table.

  The weekend arrived, and still there was no settlement. But I was excited—Saturday meant Saturday-morning cartoons, which I hadn’t seen since I was seven. I asked my father and Rosalind to make sure to wake me up early. It took some effort on their part to rouse me, but once I remembered why they were shaking me, I headed straight to the TV and stayed glued to it all morning, even staying there to eat my grapefruit and scrambled eggs. I invited Rosalind to watch The Lost World with me. She tried but quickly lost interest.

  Sunday was church day, but I refused to go. My Mennonite relatives were startled. My father tried to talk me into going for my grandma’s sake, and Rosalind tried to cajole me, but I declared that “religion is bad for the world.” I think I simply didn’t feel like sitting through a church service, never realizing how heretical that statement was in North Newton, Kansas. “My mother and Raul say religion is the opiate of the masses,” I continued, not entirely sure what that meant but determined to make my case against going to church.

  Grandma looked pained but did her best to smile through my unintentional insults. It was as if life for her was something to be endured, as politely, cheerfully, and respectably as possible.

  No one ended up going to church that day, not even Grandma, who never missed church. So instead we looked at some old photos Grandma pulled out from the closet—of me when I was a baby; of a proud-looking Grandpa Andreas (who died long before I was born) when he was a young father; and of her own father, my great-grandfather, who had been a Mennonite minister and lived until he was ninety-nine years old.

  My father and Rosalind were driving back to Michigan the next day. I was not ready for the nonstop gifts, games, and attention to be over. And I was not ready to say good-bye to my father after only a handful of days. “You know what I want?” I said to Rosalind. “I want to go back with you for a visit. And then I want to live with my dad half the year and my mom half the year.”

  Rosalind nodded and told me to tell my father this, and I did.

  “That’s not realistic,” he said, “Why don’t you spend the school year with us and summers with your mother?”

  I didn’t reply, but kept thinking about what that might be like.

  As a special treat, my father and Rosalind took me out to dinner at the Ramada Inn that evening. On the way to the restaurant and back, my father let me sit on his lap and steer the car with him, my hands over his on the wheel of his brown Pontiac LeMans. Delighted, I asked him if I could have a car when I was sixteen, and he said sure. “But will you still be alive when I’m sixteen?” I asked.

  Rosalind laughed and walked me through the arithmetic. My father was forty-eight; in seven years he would be fifty-five—almost certainly alive. We then figured out how old my brothers Ronald and Joel would be by then, how old Rosalind would be, and how old my mother would be—forty-one plus seven equaled forty-eight.

  Then Rosalind asked, “How old is Raul?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  She and my father exchanged looks.

  “Well, he’ll be almost thirty,” Rosalind replied.

  * * *

  The next morning I wanted to sleep in, but Grandma coaxed me out of bed with apple pancakes. She then packed lunches for my father and Rosalind to take with them on the long drive to Michigan.

  “I’m going with you. I’ll talk my mom into it,” I announced with more confidence than I actually felt.

  Joel came over from Grandpa Rich’s and we all discussed my plan. Joel looked skeptical. When my mother called, Joel talked to her before handing me the phone, shaking his head as I grabbed the receiver. I pleaded with her, both in English and Spanish. I started to cry. I would not be going to Michigan. That was that. After hanging up the phone I flung myself into a chair in Grandma’s living r
oom, tears flowing down my cheeks. “I’m not going. She says it’s too soon, that I have to wait to visit until you all figure out the property settlement thing.” My mother may also have worried, not without reason, that my father would try to keep me in Michigan—and that I might end up wanting to stay. But she didn’t say that.

  “I know, Peter. It’s okay, you can visit another time,” Rosalind told me.

  “Yep, no surprise,” my father growled. “That woman, she always has to have things her way.” He looked at me with a tired smile. “Peter, we’ll do everything we can so you can come be with us. Now come on over here.” I ran over and sat on his lap.

  “Peter, just remember three things,” Rosalind said. “First, your daddy and I love you wherever you are. We love you whether you come with us or stay here. Second, you’re a special, neat, fine boy. Three, we’ve had so much fun being with you.” She gave me a long hug.

  Later that morning, my father and Rosalind dropped me off with my bag and all my gifts across the street from Grandpa Rich’s house. They waved and honked, and then they were gone. I had no idea when I would ever see them again and already missed them.

  As I crossed the street, I clutched my new radio and thought about how fancy I looked in my new watch and jeans and boots. My mother wrapped me in her arms; I was all hers again. But in just those few days, I had been seduced by the American materialism she had spent years trying to shield me from, and gotten an enticing taste of what it might be like to live with my father and Rosalind.

  The Wait

  ALTHOUGH MY MOTHER now had me back, my new possessions and all, we couldn’t simply return to Peru because she and my father had not reached an agreement on the money. To force a property settlement, my mother would have to go through the Michigan courts and that would include risking a custody battle over me. She decided to gamble; she desperately needed the money, and for some reason had confidence she wouldn’t lose me. The court date—the showdown with my father—was set for August 11, many months away. It would be a long wait. We would remain in the U.S. until then.

  After Christmas, we stayed on at Grandpa Rich’s for several weeks. Immobilized from the neck down by multiple sclerosis and requiring a full-time caretaker at home after Grandma Rich died several years earlier, he was happy to have company. My mother winced whenever he introduced Raul to visitors as “the last Inca” and when Aunt Selma told Raul that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” but Raul didn’t mind or didn’t understand these paternalisms; he and Grandpa got along just fine, perhaps because they didn’t speak the same language. Raul would chatter away to him in Spanish. Flat on his back, Grandpa would listen intently and smile even though he had no idea what Raul was saying. There weren’t many other people for Raul to talk to. He might as well pass the time talking at Grandpa.

  We moved back to the old Berkeley commune early that winter. My father was outraged when he found out from Joel that I was living there with him, my mother, and Raul. He wrote Joel: “Does that mean that you have become a party to your mother’s scheme to keep Peter and his father apart? You had said that Peter should be able to decide where he wanted to go and then after his mother prevented him from coming to Michigan you took him off to California. What right or obligation do you have to raise my son?” My father added at the end of the letter: “I also want to help out Ronald but am at a loss to know how. Both you boys want your independence but neither you nor society appear able to cope with it. Too bad that Peter is forced to follow in the same footsteps.”

  When Joel did not respond, my father again wrote to William McGuiness, the Alameda County judge who had given my mother a divorce and custody of the kids years earlier, pleading with him to do something about the situation. Though the judge sent no reply, my father continued to send letters, including one that read: “I am again writing to you as I need to know if you are investigating the living conditions under which my nine year old son, Peter, is being held. The last word I had was that Peter was being kept in a commune at 1516 Walnut Street, in Berkeley, the residence of his 18 year old brother Joel.” The clerk’s office finally sent a two-sentence reply, informing my father that “investigation of living conditions is not a matter serviced by the court as an ex parte action.”

  * * *

  I started the term late at my old school in Berkeley, Whittier Elementary. I was placed in fourth grade, but I couldn’t keep up and after a few days refused to go back. So I was then dropped to third grade, and handled it well enough to stay. The commune hadn’t changed much, except that everyone, other than Joel, who had lived there before had moved on and been replaced. Ronald, now seventeen and more worldly after his solo adventures in South America, was living on his own somewhere else across town. We hardly saw him. He had been reinstated in high school and was close to finishing but had no interest in going on to college. In a rare letter to our father, he wrote:

  School is going along in a boring way. Most of my classes are too easy for me and the students seem very young. A lot of what I read and study is literature created by the academic world. When I look at the university community I see through the trivial uselessness of its intellectualism. Among my friends in Berkeley are many college students. . . . I’m familiar with the life of college students and all the ridiculous bureaucratic bullshit and wasted time. For these reasons and others I have decided not to go to college.

  I remember Ronald coming by the commune a couple of times, wearing lots of leather, revving his motorcycle. I was envious. I wanted a motorcycle, too, and begged him to give me a ride. Ronald liked to show off his bike, so it didn’t take much prodding.

  “What kind of motorcycle is it?” I asked, gliding my hand across the chrome handlebars and squeezing the black rubbery grips.

  “It’s a Honda 350.”

  “Can you give me a ride? Please, please?”

  “Hmmm.” Ronald paused and then smiled. “Oh, all right. But only around the neighborhood. I’ve got to get going.”

  We took a spin up Shattuck Avenue past Live Oak Park and then wound around the curvy roads through the Berkeley Hills. It felt strange sitting behind my brother and holding on to him, my arms tightly around his waist—this was the closest I could ever remember being to him.

  * * *

  My mother, Raul, and I moved into a vacant upstairs room in the Walnut Street commune. It was about the size of our Ocopilla room back in Peru except now we had hot water, a real kitchen, and the run of the house. And I was happy to see that the old little black-and-white TV was still there sitting in the living room, which hardly anyone ever turned on, leaving it all to me for my Saturday-morning cartoons.

  Almost everyone in the commune was gay at this point, and, as in the past, vegetarian. The members of the commune jokingly called it the commune of “fruits and nuts.” Susan, a small, roundish lesbian, was the friendliest and funniest, except when she was depressed and wouldn’t get out of bed. Michael, a tall, curly-haired gay man, worked at a library and danced ballet. Marci was the loudest, laughing and talking constantly, and seemed to have appointed herself head of the house. Jeff, a church organist, was the quietest. He had a young lover named Max—as well as a wife and child who lived nearby—and had taken over the basement of the house after Ronald moved out.

  Each person in the commune had a set of chores and was responsible for cooking one dinner a week. Raul intentionally scared people away from his first dinner by cooking a main dish made from cow stomach. On his next turn, figuring no one would show up, he bought a huge pork roast—his favorite food—and ate it almost entirely by himself, grinning the whole time. I, too, was tired of the bland vegetarian stir-fry we’d been eating nearly every night, so I enjoyed Raul’s pork roast as much as he did.

  “People in the house say you’re not very respectful about food,” I said to Raul between bites.

  “Ah, to hell with ’em,” he replied with a laugh and a dismissive wave. “They should learn to eat like real men, like us!”

  * * *r />
  Communal living did not dampen Raul’s and my mother’s enthusiasm for arguing. It just made their arguments more public. They frequently yelled at each other in Spanish while everyone was eating dinner. Raul would stomp away from the table to sulk in our bedroom, where the arguing would later continue when we would go up to bed. Everyone else in the house just tried to ignore them, but that was harder for me.

  One evening after dinner, my mother and I brought dessert up to the room for Raul as a peace offering. “Raul, look, we saved you a piece of pie,” I said in my most cheerful voice, holding the little plate in both hands. But he refused to touch it or even look at it.

  I begged my mother not to fight with him anymore: “Please, please, not tonight.” She nodded, gave Raul a quick kiss on the back of his neck while he was reading, and went to sleep.

  I thought that was the end of it, but Raul woke my mother up in the middle of the night, eager to argue about the book he had just finished reading. He accused her of not being a “true believer in the Third International,” the communist organization founded in Russia in 1919 with the aim of uniting communists worldwide. He insisted that there was only one correct political line and interpretation of history.