My kids were just so ... childlike.
Their very nature was perplexing to me. Vexing at times.
And more, I was plagued with a sense that I, due to my own dark past and resulting cynicism, would deprive them of that natural joy of being unbound, innocent, and free. How could I be a guide for such creatures as my own children? How could I turn off my own impatience and be as present to the joys of life as they were? How could I be the mother they needed instead of the person I was?
When I moved from Grandma and Grandpa’s trailer—when I came out of retirement—I found myself in a community called Stead
“I’m in Stead,” I’d say to myself just to hear the word come out of my mouth. Stead. I’m in-stead. I couldn’t say it enough. “I’m here now, instead of there.” In Stead, instead of being retired. I’m in Stead instead of living with Deb. I’m in Stead instead of being dead, which became a mantra sputtered from the mouths of the aunt and uncle who took me in. “If it wasn’t for us, you’d be dead in a gutter somewhere in L.A.”
They felt I was lucky to be in Stead.
AUNT PEGGY WAS almost petite compared to Auntie Carol, but her body wasn’t small, it was sturdy. With wide shoulders, wide hips, and an ample bosom, Peggy could have filled in Wonder Woman’s suit quite nicely. She was solid but womanly.
Peggy was twenty-six years old and a housewife who stayed home with her one-year-old, Kimmy—a sweet, chubby, angelic child with curls of blond hair and huge blue eyes. Peggy passed her time doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and planning meals. At the end of each day, she prepared dinner for Richard—tacos, enchiladas, Salisbury steak, chicken-fried steak, and something called rigatoni, which was mashed-up beef stuffed into pasta shells.
Richard was twenty-eight years old and born on September 19, which seemed to be an odd coincidence. How was it that I ended up in the home of a man who shared Bryan’s birthday and the day my mother died? I couldn’t fathom it.
RICHARD WAS A tall man with long arms and an oddly shaped torso. With no waist and nearly no behind, his pants slid down his narrow hips and hung midcrack. He was forever tugging them up in a distracted, habitual way. He worked as an appliance repairman, and at the end of the day his fingernails were black with the grease of his profession.
After dinner, most nights, Richard had a ritual where he would turn on the TV, root himself into the sofa and watch episodes of
Bonanza
and
Wild, Wild West.
All the while, he would carve grime from under his nails with a pair of clippers. He did the same to his feet, bending his leg wide around his belly in an act of contortion that seemed physically impossible. Toe jamb.
And Richard smoked. Chain smoker—one after another—all day, all night (until sleep finally made his mouth go slack). When he spoke to me, it was usually to command that I replenish his dwindling supply of smokes, locate his lighter, or empty his overflowing ashtray.
He’d call out, “Hey, no-neck, get me a pack of cigarettes”; “Hey, no-neck, get me my lighter”; “Hey, no-neck, clean out this damn ashtray.”
RICHARD WAS ONE of five children who came from what he would call “mountain people,” meaning hillbillies who (man and woman alike) chewed tobacco, threw back moonshine, grew their own marijuana, and unloaded ammo on empty beer cans shot from rough rail fences.
Mountain children were raised being called “no-necks.”
Children were “hands,” not people; they were like pesky livestock, best corralled, contained, and trained to do tough homesteading work.
Richard had had a brutal childhood. He had been whipped more times than he could count. He was proud to have endured—without a whimper—those bloodied beatings. He had gone hungry. He had tasted fear many times.
Richard felt my past was a holiday in Hawaii compared to his childhood and wanted to teach me the lessons of life that I hadn’t yet learned. He went to work on me immediately.
LATER I LEARNED that Richard was not only born on September 19th, he was also born in the year 1945. An investigation revealed that Richard shared both birthday and birth year with my birth father—Bill Wright—the man so eager to give me his name when the story began.
First Bryan was born on September 19, then Janet died on that day, then came Richard with that day as his birthday, and finally I was able to connect all of this to my own birth father—exact day and year.
There was no explanation for the synchronicity. The information, once revealed, made me feel as if I teetered on the edge of cosmic complexity beyond my capacity for comprehension.
While Richard seemed an impossible match as my father, he was an exact replica. Had I attracted him to me? Was there something unique in my chemistry that energetically vibrated with a character like Richard and if yes, why and how?
It seemed so odd that life gave me a father (Bill) and then took him away, gave me another father (Bud) and took him away too, and then, gave me Richard. Richard instead of Bill. Richard instead of Bud.
RICHARD AND PEGGY’S house was one level with three bedrooms and asbestos siding. A chainlink fence surrounded the yard and the grass was burned brown.
I was given a place to sleep in the sewing room at the back of the house and Peggy enrolled me in school, a big challenge due to the fact that few records were available.
I told her I had lived alone at the commune and dropped out of school but Peggy did not believe me. She made calls over the course of many days but found nothing. I tried to tell her, one more time, how I had only done a smattering of education—here and there. Again, Peggy rolled her eyes. She said I knew how to read and write. That kind of thing didn’t come from magic. There was no use in telling Peggy I taught myself to read and write. She wasn’t much for paying attention.
After taking some tests to place me in sixth grade, a full year behind kids my own age, Peggy and Richard became my legal guardians. In a few weeks, my bedroom set arrived from L.A. Deb had sent it.
My new life in Stead began.
ELEVEN
THE LITTLE BOAT
WHEN A HOLIDAY came around the calendar—Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July—Peggy and Richard cut themselves out of Stead and set up an exact duplicate of their life in the woods. They brought their trailer, a cook stove, coolers of food, packs of cigarettes, and pots for making coffee. Kimmy came too and with her came all her baby stuff: playpen, diapers, high chair, and toys. The only thing they left behind was the TV.
IT WAS LABOR Day and we were out in the woods. Richard was wedged in a fold-up chair, his foot near his nose. The canvas of the chair strained against his bulk and he carved at his big toe with his pocketknife. Kimmy was down for a nap. Peggy played solitaire at the picnic table.
There was nothing for me to clean or cook. The campsite was all picked up. And for a change, they weren’t bossing me around to get cigarettes or make a pot of coffee.
I pushed my hands into the pockets of my shorts and wandered toward the creek.
Richard called out, “Don’t go far.”
“All right,” I said.
I had adapted by doing what I was told, keeping my mouth shut, and just getting along. For the most part, it wasn’t so bad and Peggy was kind to Kimmy. I admired her for that.
A few feet down the trail, I spotted a pinecone the size of a football. I kicked it with the side of my foot and it rolled a few feet ahead. I caught up to the pinecone and kicked it again—harder this time—and it splashed into the creek.
The forest smelled like pine and earth and things that grew and died all at the same time. The ponderosa pine trees stood tall and solid and their high branches held firm to a bounty of pinecones and long needles.
ABOUT THREE MONTHS earlier, at the end of sixth grade, Peggy sent me on a trip to San Francisco to visit a distant cousin I didn’t know. The woman had a little girl, maybe seven years old, and I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I was being sent away—or perhaps the trip was a little test to see if another family would take me. I’m sure, given the right situation, Richard and Peggy would have passed the responsibility of raising me to someone else—like tired runners eager to pass off the baton. I was like a package no one had sent for. At least with Bud and Janet, they
wanted
a little girl. But Peggy and Richard? I sensed that the primary
incentive for my presence in their home was as domestic help and there was a pretty good chunk of change that came in my name. My Social Security and Veteran’s Administration benefits added up to a third of Richard’s earnings.
Before being sent to San Francisco, I questioned Peggy about the trip—the why and the what—but Richard yelled, “It’s none of your damn business why you are going. Just do what you are told.”
I WENT TO San Francisco, stayed a few days, and in the night my cousin’s boyfriend crawled into my bed.
It wasn’t intercourse but he did things a grown man had no business doing to a little girl. When I tried to get away, he pinned me down and told me to enjoy it. “You know you want it,” he said. “Come on baby, relax.”
Enjoy what?
I told my cousin what her boyfriend had done and she sent me back to Stead. My cousin told me not to tell but I wasn’t loyal to her. I told Peggy and Richard right away.
Richard said I was lying and Peggy just rolled her eyes. They both said I was quite a little storyteller.
I was blunt. I was full of questions. I had a way of talking about things no one else wanted to talk about—but frankly I remember a lesson from when I lived with Janet. She told me, “Just don’t lie, Jenny. Lying is like a trap and you always get caught.” Her words stuck with me, that and the fact that she told me that if I ever did lie, she’d wash my mouth with soap.
Fear and some good common sense were enough to sway me off the liar’s path.
But Richard and Peggy—perhaps because they were accustomed to being dishonest—were suspect of me as well, in the same way Peggy did not believe my story about missing school and learning to read. Richard did not believe this story. They had no idea that I had also been raped before—at a summer camp while living with Deb and that there had been another molestation when I was six.
If I
wanted
to lie, I would have conjured a really good one about rescuing kittens from drowning or helping an old lady across the road. My foundational identity was to be a divine hero. I would not, under any circumstances, lie about something as nasty as a man messing between my legs. “Why?” I wanted to scream at them. “Why would I lie about this? ”
THE PINECONE BOBBED down the fast-moving creek and I kneeled on the soft edge of the bank. I plunged my hands into the icy clear water and dug my fingers into the soft creek bed just to feel the sand and mud and rocks. I pulled up a few stones and they were smooth and round, worn that way by being in the creek. I built a little stack of the rocks, the way you do to mark your way on a hiking path. The stacks of stones said, “I was here,” in case anyone wanted to know.
A wedge of driftwood floated past and it was wide at one side and narrow at the other.
I forgot the rocks and snagged the driftwood. I turned the wood this way and that and it was shaped almost like a boat with a rudder.
At my back, Richard was still crouched over his foot and Peggy dealt herself a new hand.
I got an idea.
I went up the dirt path that ran along the creek and climbed a small rise. At the top was a still pool and I released the driftwood. I jogged downstream again.
In a few minutes, the driftwood floated down and the top was still dry, even after its journey. I decided it
was
a boat. I went back up the trail with the little boat in my hand and on the way, picked a few wild flowers. I laid the flowers on the flat surface of the boat and released it once more.
The boat bobbed on the current, safe and sound. “Such a good boat,” I said to the wood, not realizing I was talking out loud.
I added some pine needles, a rock, and a leaf and did the same trek up the side of the creek.
Up and down I went. I don’t even know how many times. It was that little hunk of wood, water, and sun. It was good. I felt happy in a way that was unfamiliar to me.
Eventually, inevitably, I named my boat.
I called it Catherine and felt so proud of myself for coming up with such a good name, all on my own. I said it over and over again—chattering to myself—
Catherine, Catherine, Catherine
.
WHEN WE WERE done camping and driving home, I sat in the back seat of the car and looked out the side window. Packing to leave a campsite was one thing after another—Richard yelled and Peggy
bossed. He called me “no-neck” and “good for nothing.” She rolled her eyes and sighed a lot. Between the two of them, it was like being in a blender. My nerves were shot.
Richard and Peggy were up front and Kimmy was on Peggy’s lap, asleep or on her way to sleep. She sucked her thumb—content.
Afternoon sun split light through the forest, making sideways streamers, and that’s when I realized that I had left Catherine at the side of the creek.
I patted at my pockets to make sure and yes, it was true. I had left my boat.
I put my hand over my mouth but not before I said, “Oh my god,” out loud.
Peggy jumped a little and twisted her head around to look back at me.
“What?”
I almost said, “I left my driftwood boat at the side of the creek,” but I didn’t. It sounded so stupid. Peggy was never going to understand. Richard would say something mean.
I started to cry instead, with gulping, hiccupping sobs that made it one hundred percent clear I was a bigger baby than Kimmy.