Freckled

by T W Neal

  Sorting laundry for the laundromat

  Age: 13, Isla Vista California, 1978

  We’ve definitely worn out our welcome at Maga and Egidio’s by the end of the school year when Mom announces she’s found us our own place at last. A woman named Tina from Mom’s twelve-step program rents us a one-room garage apartment in the college town of Isla Vista, a bedroom community for the University of California, Santa Barbara.

  There’s no choice: we’re moving again.

  I’ll miss Laurie, and I’ll have to start a new school in the fall, but at least we have a carefree summer ahead, and Isla Vista is a great place to explore.

  Tina’s a funny, raunchy, square-jawed woman who’s never seen without a Virginia Slim dangling from her lip. The best thing, besides the fact that we now have a room of our own (even if we all have to share it) is that she’s got a daughter, Kim, who’s just Bonny’s age.

  A small, safe town, Isla Vista’s flat, and Bonny, Kim, and I go everywhere on our thrift store bikes. We spend the summer roaming, playing Barbies, building forts in the eucalyptus trees at the edge of town, rolling down the dunes of the natural reserve, and smoking cigarettes stolen from Tina.

  One day Mom takes me, Bonny, and Anita for a picnic at the Santa Barbara Mission Rose Garden, one of my favorite places. I wander through the rose bushes, putting my face deep into silky, frothy blossoms and breathing in scent. I spot Double Delight, a white and red rose with cinnamon smell that I ordered at the Estate with babysitting money. Getting those roses, packed in plastic and sawdust from so far away, planting them, and waiting for their first blooms to reveal their beauty was one of my favorite things about that three-year stretch of stability in our lives at the Estate. Double Delight was just one of many things I loved and left behind.

  I spend a lot of time staying distracted, keeping busy so I won’t be homesick for the Estate and our freedom and fun on Hanalei Bay. If only Pop hadn’t gotten so bad with his drinking, and those kids hadn’t beaten me up . . .

  I look up from my reminiscing to see a man getting off a motorcycle parked near the picnic blanket Mom has spread out on the grass. Anita and Bonny are helping unpack the food, but they pause to look up as he walks across the grass to join them.

  I squint to see him better—my latest pair of glasses aren’t really working anymore.

  I’ve suspected my mom has a boyfriend. She’s been secretive, hiding with the phone in the bathroom, giggling as she talks to someone. She’s gone away for the weekend on a “business trip” and to an “AA retreat” and left us with Tina. Could this be the boyfriend?

  He couldn’t be more different than our tall, well-built, handsome father. This dude is shorter than Mom and has bowed legs like a cowboy without his horse. Even motorcycle leathers don’t make him look cool or intimidating—he has sandy hair and looks like a kid when he takes off his helmet.

  What the hell is Mom doing, a woman with three children, dating some young motorcycle guy?

  The man walks right up to Mom where she sits on the picnic blanket and leans down to kiss her, straightening reluctantly like he’d enjoy kissing her a lot longer. Mom gestures to the other girls, and he squats to shake their hands, smiling.

  A dark tight feeling of protectiveness rises in my chest. No way am I going to let this intruder disrupt our lives! I straighten my overly tight shorts and stalk toward them, my eyes feeling hot. The man stands up and meets my angry stare. “Hi. I’m Greg. You must be Toby.”

  Mom stands up too, all fluttery. “Greg is a friend from the program. We’re spending a lot of time together, and we decided it was time for him to meet you girls.”

  “I can see what kind of friend he is.” I fold my arms over my annoying new breasts. “And I’m not interested in pretending it’s okay.” I don’t want my parents to get back together, but I don’t want Mom dating even more.

  “Last I checked, it was perfectly legal for two grown adults to spend time together,” Greg says. “Listen, I’m not trying to take your dad’s place or anything. Got no interest in that. I just care about your mom and want to hang out with her, so I guess you’ll have to get used to me.” His pale blue eyes are level and calm, his demeanor confident.

  “When hell freezes over.” I stomp off into the rose garden to nurse my snit.

  Greg wears down my resistance over time, and I eventually have to admit that he’s a good guy. He may be short and too young, but he’s prepared to deal with all of us girls to be with Mom, and that says something about his character. He’s kind, funny, great at board games, and he makes Mom happy, even though I can tell by his uneven teeth that he’s from, as Gigi would say, the “wrong side of the tracks.”

  I admit publicly that I like him when he takes care of Mom through a bad cold, bringing her tea and soup, and rubbing her back. Pop would never have taken care of her, let alone any of us, with his selfishness and germaphobia.

  Fall rolls around, and I have to start eighth grade at a new school, Goleta Valley Junior High. This time, Mom is required to come in with my school records, and when the office ladies see how incomplete they are, they send the two of us to one of the counselors.

  “Wow. This’s a lot of moving. And a lot of different schools and educational settings,” the counselor says, sorting through the patchy file. She addresses me. “Your grades are great wherever they’re recorded. It’s a miracle you could do that. You’re a brave and resilient young lady.”

  I sit up straighter, smiling at this praise. Someone sees that I work hard and do the best I can, no matter what else is going on. It’s the first time an adult has praised me for being “resilient,” or offered any comment at all on our situation.

  I glance guiltily over at Mom. Her hazel eyes are wide and dark green with tears.

  I can tell this is the first time she’s realized that our pattern of moves affects me, that it would be hard for a kid to adapt to the things I’ve been through. She’s seeing me through someone else’s eyes, and she looks shaken to the core.

  Mom reaches for some Kleenex and covers her eyes with it. “It’s hard getting sober,” she says through the wad of tissues. “I plan to stabilize things now.”

  Mom’s quiet as we leave the long, low building with my new schedule. We get into the old VW bug that she bought when we were at Maga’s house. She leans her head on the steering wheel, then puts her hand over mine.

  “I’m sorry.” She blinks, looking out the window. “I’m really sorry for putting you through all this. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know you are, Mom, and I love you.” I lean on her and she hugs me, then starts the Bug with a rattle.

  But even with apologies, Goleta Valley Junior High is another huge, jarring, overwhelming social experience interspersed with academic struggles in math, where I remain behind but determined to stay on the “college prep” track.

  Standing in the free lunch line with the blacks and Mexicans to get food I actually need, ignored by both groups, I hide under a voluminous hoodie. I’m losing weight since there’s little at home in our studio with the tiny fridge. I like losing the weight, but not the worry about money, and I hate being actually hungry.

  I never find a friend to replace Laurie. I keep my nose in a book to make up for it as I plow through each day with my head down, glasses and overgrown bangs hiding my eyes, hoping for something better to come my way, someday.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Leaving on a Jet Plane

  Age: 13, Kauai, 1978

  We’re on a giant Boeing 747 back to Kauai to visit Pop for the first time, and I’ve survived extended misery. I’m looking forward to jumping in the water, running on the beach—but not to seeing my dad. Awkward doesn’t begin to describe what I imagine that will be like. We’ve been building up to this visit with a series of cards, letters, and phone calls, but as usual, my gut churns with mixed feelings when I think of him.

  Mom sits next to me, with Anita on the other side of her. Bonny’s on the other side of m
e and I’m fiddling with my packet of macadamia nuts, trying to get it open.

  “I have something to tell you girls,” Mom says. “Gigi and Grandpa Jim are buying us a house on Kauai.”

  “That’s great!” Bonny says.

  She’s too young to realize what this means—big changes. I narrow my eyes. “When is this happening?”

  “The house’s in escrow now. So—this isn’t a visit. We’re moving back.” Mom crinkles her foil wrapper nervously. “Your dad and I are getting back together.”

  “What?” My voice is too loud. I hear a roaring in my ears. “What happened to ‘I’m stabilizing things now’?”

  It’s been the worst year of my life, hands down: two half years of junior high at different schools, moving, academic struggle, confusion, harassment by Mexican chicks, compulsive eating, and reading to escape in a series of “forts” near our cramped quarters. In all of that, at least Mom was sober and beginning to really act like a mom, and Pop was three thousand miles away. “And what about Greg?”

  I must be shouting, because Bonny puts her hand on my arm and Mom frowns, making that “lower your voice” hand gesture. People are turning their heads to look at us from the aisles.

  “We broke up.”

  I want to puke. I finally really liked Greg. His heart must be so broken. He really loved her. “So, you just decided this—when?”

  “Your dad visited a month ago and I—we—fell in love again.” She has those red spots in her cheeks. I remember that long weekend with Tina in charge and Greg conspicuously absent—I thought the two of them had gone off together! But really, Pop was here in California, and we never even saw him while they plotted behind our backs.

  “Gigi and Grandpa Jim said they’d buy us a house if we got back together. I miss Kauai and our life there. Don’t you?” Mom fiddles nervously with the foil of the packet. “Doing this is stabilizing things.”

  “That’s so fucked up,” I yell, with no volume control whatsoever. “So, Gigi and Grandpa promise you a house and off we go back to that asshole? You’re a whore!”

  Mom slaps me in the face so hard my head bounces off the seat back. “You don’t know anything about it!”

  “I know you’re not acting like an adult or you wouldn’t treat us like this. You’d tell us what was going on. You’d ask what we wanted.” My face is stinging, my eyes burning. “Things were better back when you guys were drinking!” It’s the worst thing I can think of saying.

  I force my way past Bonny and into the aisle, hurrying to the bathroom. I go in and slam the door, locking it.

  I’m panting at my reflection: eyes small brown pebbles behind my latest pair of thick ugly Welfare glasses, ginger hair unruly, chubby freckled cheek reddened from Mom’s slap.

  I hate myself and my life with a profound despair.

  I wish I could teleport to another world, like on Star Trek. “Beam me up, Scotty.” I shut my eyes and pray to whoever visited me on that moonbeam at the Estate and told me everything would be okay. “Please just kill me now.”

  Nothing happens. I stare down at the little blue-water metal toilet bowl.

  I wish I could transform into another person. I’d walk out of the door of the bathroom and into First Class, grown up and dressed classy, with long shiny black hair and luscious brown skin, confident, sexy, smart, and on my way to somewhere amazing.

  I wish my parents cared about what I needed, instead of just themselves—and Kauai. Always Kauai, and its magnetic, addicting pull. I’d started to think we were getting free of it.

  I shut the toilet lid and turn to sit on it, putting my face in my hands. My eyes feel dry and hot as beach stones.

  I do like Kauai better than the Mainland. I’m sick of all the failed efforts to fit in and make friends, of feeling overwhelmed as I try to blend with hundreds of junior high kids in my aunts’ hand-me-down clothes while standing in the free lunch line.

  But one good thing has happened. Now I know I’m good at school. I get A’s wherever I go, even in math now that I’m caught up.

  Knowing that I’m good in school gives me a sense of possibilities. Of control. Of hope for my future. Things can’t be that bad because I’m at the top of my class. My family may be messed up, but at least I’m functional. Someday, somehow, school is what will take me to another place and I’ll make my life what I want it to be.

  I picture that for a moment: some interesting job involving reading and writing, maybe as a business owner, wearing a suit and heels. Or being a researcher, magazine journalist or a reporter, or even writing novels like the Andre Norton and JRR Tolkien books I love so much.

  I’ll have a house of my own surrounded by beautiful rosebushes that I never have to leave unless I want to. I’ll own a horse, and a goat, and a decent car, maybe a Honda Civic that starts up every morning without fail like my Aunty Jan’s. There will be lots of good food in the fridge, somewhere between health food and badforyou, and I’ll have someone smart and kind who loves me to share it with.

  More drama with Mom on the plane isn’t a good idea. She probably told me here so I wouldn’t make a scene in public. Like that worked.

  I splash water on my face and go back to my seat.

  “If you have anything more to say, wait until we’re off the plane,” Mom snaps. She looks like she wants to slap me again. “Drama queen.”

  “I’m done talking.” I make Bonny move over to sit next to her, and I won’t look at her.

  I’ve been betrayed.

  I thought we were building a new life. Stabilizing things. Without him. And I was doing my part, working hard to adjust and be a help with everything. I will never trust Mom the same way again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Tip Top Motel

  Age: 13, Kauai, 1978

  Pop meets us at the airport. I forgot how big and tall he is; it makes me uncomfortable when I got used to someone Greg’s size being the man in our lives. The younger girls hug him, but I don’t. He’s bald now, and thinner, with a few sad strands of comb-over, and he has a habit of twisting his hands together that I’ve never seen before. The wrinkles I noticed when Mom left for Guatemala have hardened into grooves. He’s a stranger.

  “I’m totally clean and sober,” he tells us. “It’s been a long hard road.”

  “For us, too.” I let him give me an A-frame hug at last. He doesn’t ask anything about my life and has no idea what I’ve been through, and quite frankly, I doubt he cares. He never had much capacity for anyone’s suffering but his own.

  Kauai’s humidity feels like a hot wet blanket. Looking around, I sigh with relief. The multi-ethnic faces around me are people groups I can identify and understand. The two-lane road we call a “highway,” with its one stoplight on the whole island, is blessedly familiar. California was so big, busy, and congested that I never really got my feet under me.

  Pop’s driving a secondhand van with one of his homemade beds in it, and he takes us to the sleaziest motel on Kauai, a cash-only low-rise made out of cement block with a weed-choked parking lot. We reunite as a family in a room with lumpy beds, cigarette burns on the sheets, and a wheezing air conditioner dripping into a plastic bowl. I wrinkle my nose at the geckos all over the window. I remembered their soft, camouflage-colored bodies and little chirps fondly on the Mainland, but I’d never noticed how much they pooped before—the motel room’s windowsills are thick with little black turds.

  We sit down on the beds for a family “confab.”

  Pop says the house bought by Gigi and Grandpa Jim is in escrow, and it’s only going to be a couple of weeks until we are in our own place where we will each have a bedroom. “You are going to love it,” he promises.

  He has a job, he tells us, working in a dive shop—but Mom’s eyes widen when he says that it pays six dollars an hour and its part-time, so “things will be tight for a while.”

  Looking at her expression, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what he told her to get her over here with all of us girls on a on
e-way ticket.

  In painful, embarrassing detail, Pop works through a list of “amends” with Bonny and I for hurts from the past, including the Cup Incident. He has the things he remembers written down on a piece of paper and holds it in the trembling hand that isn’t clutching Mom’s.

  There’s nothing I can do but nod and say, “I forgive you,” because he’s so humble and broken, so clearly glad to see us again. Mom gets over the surprise of his lousy part-time job and looks at him all soft and lovey-dovey.

  I feel sad and sick for Greg, who I never even said goodbye to. It shouldn’t matter so much, but I feel really bad about it, thinking of how he must feel—like we all dumped him. Some of us didn’t have a choice.

  Crowded into a lumpy double bed next to Bonny that night, with Mom and Pop on the queen next to us and Anita on the floor, I contemplate the water stain on the ceiling and think about the “amends” process. People doing the twelve steps do a “searching and fearless moral inventory” in Step Four. And then in Step Eight, they make a list of people they’ve harmed and become willing to “make amends” to them. In a later step, which was what our dad was attempting to do, they “make direct amends to such people wherever possible.”

  Apologies for the years of choices that led us to this place and time are a nice gesture, but they don’t make things better.

  Don’t apologize. Just get a fucking job and a house and make our lives better. Be a real parent.

  Mom never got much steady work the whole time we were in California with Anita to care for, and Pop hates working so much, he couldn’t provide for us without Gigi and Grandpa Jim giving him money all the time. Apologies aside, this motel is not a good sign. Hopefully, the new house will make everything better, as our parents clearly hope it will.

  I feel disgusting and guilty because I’m hanging onto anger and I know it. An apology is not a bad place to start, and Pop’s sincere. I should give him a chance. But the truth is, I don’t want to hope things are going to get better because then it will hurt worse when things don’t. Anger feels like armor, like it will protect me.