On both sides of my fireplace I built white bookshelves. I didn’t know what to put in them at first. I had the same problems with filling my bookshelves as I did with choosing paint colors and furniture for my house.
Why the mental freeze? Because I had lived with Eddie, who smashed anything creative I wanted to do with searing anger and incessant ridicule, and before that with Herbert, who smashed everything in me altogether. So, with very little money, I would go to Goodwill and Value Village and garage sales and have conversations with myself as I stared at things.
What do I like?
What do I not like?
What do I want in my house?
Do I like blue glass? Do I like antique perfume bottles? What colors make me smile? Does everything I buy have to have a use or can I buy it for the pretty aspect alone?
Who am I?
Who am I?
Fixing up my home can be compared to fixing up myself. It was a constant experiment.
Ploddingly, over months, I filled my shelves with all kinds of things I learned I love: very old books, shells, lots of clocks, colored glass, blue jars, and small paintings and embroiderings. I attached a piece of wood to form a mantel over the fireplace and painted the cheesy fake rock wall white.
I found three chandeliers at garage sales, and from each chandelier I have hung crystals, pink Christmas tree balls, or colored, fake jewels. I repainted the pink, aqua, and greenish walls in my home in rich mocha and café au lait colors, with one sage wall and one brick red wall thrown in. I decorated one wall with intricately painted trays and another wall with china plates.
My house is the first thing that is completely my own. The light flows in abundance, the colors are earthy, soothing, and because of the vanilla and cinnamon potpourri, it smells good. Most important,
he’s
never going to be here, nor are his huge TVs, his toy car collection, or his beer bottles.
No one appreciates their home, and their own safe, peaceful place, filled with the things that make them
them,
more than someone who has lived in chaos, bone-gnawing loneliness, and emotional upheaval for years. The kind of emotional upheaval that is so confusing, mind-twisting, and manipulative that you don’t know which way is up anymore, let alone which way is out. As in:
Out the door
. That feeling of utter gratefulness for a home that exudes safety, for those of us who have lived through our own personal night terrors, never goes away. At least, that’s what I think.
I painted my bedroom ceiling blue with lots of white stars, including the Big and Little Dippers and other constellations. I call it the Starlight Starbright ceiling. It’s what I stare at when my insomnia is chasing me down like a rabid leopard.
Sunshine came to me in my dreams. She was sitting on the chair in my room, her legs swinging back and forth. She was smiling at me, talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She was holding playing cards in one hand and wildflowers in the other.
Suddenly, two words came through and I heard what she said.
“Schoolhouse House.”
Schoolhouse House.
I swallowed hard, scrunched my eyes closed, then opened them again. She was gone.
She was gone.
I
knew
she was gone. I had been grieving, or shutting out my grief, and my anger, for more than two decades.
So here’s a question: Does grief end?
Does the effect of trauma ever end?
Does your mind insist on going over and over your sad, crushing memories because you haven’t dealt with them or because they were simply horrific? Does it make a difference?
Was I losing my mind?
I had a lot of time to stare at my Starlight Starbright ceiling that night. Would I ever go back to Ashville? No, I couldn’t. It would tear me apart like a blender on puree.
I cringed when I heard Herbert’s voice over the telephone.
“How is the anniversary party planning going? I haven’t had a report.” No hello, how are you, how are things at your house, how’s your job, how do you feel? Never. After I’d lost 100 pounds he’d said, “At least you now have a modicum of control in your life, Stevie.
Control.
You’re controlling yourself. Control will get you somewhere. It will get you out of your rut. You’ll have a life you can be proud of. You’ll get something done for once, be productive.”
When I lost 150 pounds he said, “Better.
Much
better. More presentable. Not such an embarrassment.” He’d actually nodded at me as if he’d given me a glorious compliment.
“Are you there, Stevie?” he barked.
Herbert did not mince words.
“Yes, Herbert, we must have cut out there for a minute. The phone line was interrupted; it’s a bit windy today—”
“Yes, yes. Tell me about my anniversary celebration.”
We hate the celebration, I wanted to say. Me, Lance, and Polly think it’s a terrible idea to celebrate forty years of indentured servitude on the part of Aunt Janet, and we think you’re dysentery. “The party planning is going well, Herbert. Everything will be in order.”
“Good. We’re counting on you, Stevie, to do this right. To do it well. To have everything ready, oversee the work your cousins are doing on my behalf. The invitations are going out?”
“Uhhh…”
“Do not say ‘uhhh,’ young woman. Are the invitations out?”
“They’re going out very shortly—”
“I haven’t spoken with Polly for days, but I understand that you are now in charge of the invitations. Good for you, too, Stevie, to have a part in this celebration, not just the kids. Polly works very hard. She has a career, Stevie, a
career.
She is focused and motivated and driven. That’s how you get somewhere, that’s how you do it, that’s how you become someone. You climb up the ladder, not down. Anyone in your way, go through them or yank them down, Stevie. Polly’s making something of herself, and I know her success must be hard for you, but you are who you are.” He sighed.
From the moment I lived with him, Herbert compared the three of us to one another. I heard all the time about Lance’s athleticism, Polly’s outstanding grades and top abilities in track and piano, etc. All aimed at telling me, in one way or another, that I was deficient. Not enough. I didn’t fit in, wasn’t good enough.
He harassed Lance and Polly about my high test scores. How come I was so much smarter? Were they stupid?
Why? I think it was for control. He didn’t want us getting close to each other. He wanted the conflict, the dissent. It made him feel powerful.
It made us feel like we were nothing.
Nothing.
“Remember, for the invitations you are to use the photos that I initially sent Polly, the one of our wedding, and a photo of us now, with the accompanying date and time of my anniversary celebration.”
He ranted on and on after that, until he ran out of steam. This took a while. Herbert is short, stocky, with a hook for a nose and a shock of white hair.
“Dinner on Sunday night, seven o’clock, Stevie. The whole family will be there, and I will expect you to be in attendance as well.”
See how he does that? Continually points out I’m not quite a member of the family. It is deliberate. “I’ll come and sit with your family for dinner.”
“I’m glad you’ve dropped the weight, Stevie. I was worried about the photos for my campaign Web site and my anniversary celebration with your size being such an issue, but it’s not much of an issue now.”
“Thanks, Herbert. I would have hated to ruin the photos with my body.” I felt my anger trip.
“Obesity is a sign of weakness. Weakness does not run in the Barrett family.” He cleared his throat. “Except with Janet. She was not born a Barrett, though, like you, so I have had to train her in our values, strengths, and traditions.”
I conked my head on the table. I hated talking to Herbert, I well and truly did.
“I’ll try to control my weakness,” I said, trying to smash down my anger.
“Excellent. Now, I’ll let you in on a family secret,” Herbert boomed out.
I shuddered. I did not want to know any of Herbert’s secrets.
“I’m having some trouble with your aunt Janet.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s getting uppity.”
I gagged. “Uppity?”
“Yes, I think it’s a midlife problem that she’s indulging in. Janet has led a very sheltered life with me as the protector and provider, the head of the home, and now she wants—” He cleared his throat.
“She wants what?” I thought of Aunt Janet. A woman swamped by her marriage and the unkindness that had been a relentless, erosive force for decades. Mousey brown hair, blouses buttoned to her neck, plain skirts swirling around a thin figure.
“She wants to spread her wings, flap a little. That terrible friend of hers, Virginia Ross, she’s the one pushing Janet to do more, says that Janet needs to develop herself, become herself, find out who she is through travel and reading and the arts, that sort of psychobabble baloney. She’s a raving, loony, nonthinking, bleeding heart liberal, Virginia is, and I have done everything possible to keep those two apart. I have even forbidden Janet to see her, but she has defied me.
Defied me!
The woman lives across the street, and Janet will actually sneak over there to visit her when I’m at work. The woman divorced years ago; she travels the world with a group of women, or even
on her own,
and then tells Janet how wonderful it is to travel, as if Janet could handle traveling. The woman is filthy rich, and for some inexplicable reason, she and Janet have become friends.”
“But doesn’t Aunt Janet need a friend, Herbert?” She needed many friends. And a life.
“Janet is a simple woman, Stevie. You and she have much in common.”
I rolled my eyes.
“She is most comfortable at home, keeping her home in order. She enjoys her role as wife and mother and does not need more from the outside world. She knows her job is to serve the family and be my helpmate. She gets her security and her esteem from her role as my wife. It’s an important role.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, surprised I did. I blinked at my own self.
Herbert stopped mid-rant. “How do I know what?”
“How do you know she enjoys her role as wife and mother?”
He sputtered. “Because I’ve been married to her for forty years. I know my wife. Inside and out. She’s not a complicated person.”
“Maybe she’s more complicated than you think.” Sheesh. Had I said that, too?
“What on earth do you mean by that, Stevie?” he scoffed.
“I mean, Herbert, that maybe Aunt Janet isn’t happy.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Of course she’s happy,” he snapped. The notion that his wife might not be happy was clearly not something he’d thought about. Was she even a person? Nah. She was a helpmate. Did she have thoughts and dreams? No. She was A Wife.
“She’s suffered on and off from severe depression your entire married life. I remember her leaving for weeks at a time when we were growing up.”
“That’s because she was drinking.”
“Have you ever wondered why she was drinking?” Was I still asking questions?
Another stunned silence, then, “Because of her weakness!”
“Maybe she was drinking because she was lonely. Because she felt alone and lonely and you didn’t make her feel loved or important.” I slapped my hand to my forehead.
“Nonsense. You’re sounding exactly like that Virginia across the street. Janet was weak, that’s why she drank. I have strengthened her and we have put that chapter of our lives behind us. I only need to remind her of her drinking years now and then and admonish her so she does not cause more problems for me.”
“Aunt Janet hasn’t had a drink in years, Herbert, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” Was I? No, I wasn’t.
“Yes, you are. And, if this Virginia Ross would stop putting thoughts into Janet’s head, we could go back to normal.”
“Does Aunt Janet want normal still? Is normal good enough for her?”
“Young lady, I did not call you to be questioned. I certainly did not call to talk to you about my marriage. How dare you even offer an opinion. Plan my anniversary celebration, get the invitations out, and send me a report immediately.” He hung up.
The thought of planning a “celebration” of Herbert and Aunt Janet’s marriage made me feel sick.
I had to meet this Virginia person, though. That was a given.
Maybe she wanted another friend.
I don’t remember many of the details of the first five years after I came to live with Herbert, Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly. I was eleven and I was traumatized.
What I do remember is a family meeting Herbert called the third day I was there. Aunt Janet was keening on the couch over the loss of her parents. Lance and Polly sat by her, quietly crying, until Herbert accused Lance of being a “sissy,” Polly a “crybaby,” and Janet “a damn mental case—are you turning into your sister?”
“With Stevie living with us from now on, there’s bound to be questions. You all are not to tell anyone,
anyone,
what happened to Helen and Sunshine,” he roared. “No one. You are to tell everyone that Stevie’s parents died in a car crash and that I, out of kindness and generosity, have agreed to give her a roof over her head. Snap out of it, Janet! For God’s sake, pull yourself together, woman!”
I shrunk into an even tighter ball on the couch by Lance.
“If you tell anyone our family secret,” he thundered, “you will leave my home. Janet, you will be committed, unwillingly, if I have to, to a hospital. Lance, I will shuttle you off to reform school. Polly and Stevie, you will go to a home for wayward girls. These are not places you want to be. You will have to fight off violent people, blacks and Mexicans and immigrants, every time you turn around. You will have to work all day under exhausting conditions. You will be punished there for the slightest infraction. This is our family secret. Never,” he thundered again. “Never talk about this embarrassment, this humiliation, this shame!”