It's all true

Child abuse is real and it is not a new phenomenon. Since time immemorial, children have been born to women who neither wanted nor loved them. In the Fifties, when I grew up, severe corporal punishment was allowed by both the society and the law, and a child who received such punishment was deemed to have deserved it. All parents, particularly mothers, were presumed to love their children, and so any pain inflicted on them in the name of punishment or discipline was acceptable. It was not until children were starved, their bones broken, or they bore incontrovertible evidence of beatings that the authorities might be willing to step in. Sexual abuse was swept under the rug...it simply did not exist in the minds of the citizenry...and emotional abuse was unknown. So, unless your mother broke your bones, set you afire, or starved to the point of emaciation, any complaints you might express to teachers, clergy or other adults was inevitably met with something like "so, what did YOU do to provoke your mother?" The innocence of childhood was somehow compartmentalized to provide for children provoking their parents to violence and the parents who "succumbed" to the provocation were viewed as blameless.

It took me more than a year to write the stories presented in this blog. And it took me many, many years to find a way to write them that was not so personal, so gut-wrenching, that I would break down mid-way through a story and be unable to continue.

When I discovered the distancing technique of writing in the third person...writing as if the protagonist...the victim...was another person, I was able to find the necessary buffer between my emotions and my mind. It was then that these tales were able to come out without undue distress.

Don't get me wrong...even with the distancing technique, I wept through each installment, sometimes unable to finish one until I had taken a break. Each foray back in time reopened the old wounds and when forcing myself to examine some experiences in the detail necessary to write them down, the pain...and sometimes the feelings of fear and hopelessness...would come rushing back.

It is said that time heals all wounds but I don't believe that. Time, by itself, merely puts soft layers over certain wounds, layers of forgetfulness or minimizing. Healing requires reexamination in the bright light of reason, it required re-experiencing old, painful feelings with the knowledge and perspective that time can bring. Healing hurts, sometimes more than the original wounding.

I took a few liberties...most notably changing names to protect the guilty and the innocent alike. If you know me, you know who the people really are, despite the name changes; if you don't know me, the names don't matter.

The stories are not in chronological order. Memory doesn't work like that. They are posted in the order they popped into my mind. Some memories trigger others, some memories come in waves of related experiences; others pop up based on a single, seemingly unrelated detail. These are presented in reverse order, the oldest story being the first one that came to my mind.

Comments are good but rude comments won't get posted. Neither will spam, even if it accompanies a comment. So, if you want your comment posted, please be polite and sensitive and don't leave links to spammy stuff...or to your own site or blog. This very painful exposure of the life of a neglected and abused child is not about your commercial interests or driving traffic to your own site. If you cannot have compassion for the pain of growing up abused and unwanted, for the aftermath of such an upbringing, for the hours of tears and hurt that went into writing this account, then please don't comment at all.

Turning a corner...

“Why doesn’t anybody want me?” she wept softly, hugging the baby to her.

“I did everything he wanted,” she sobbed, rocking the infant. “I did everything she wanted…why is it the only person who loves me is you?” She gently kissed the child’s downy head, the fine blonde fluff damp with her tears.

She looked around the dismal furnished room. Annie’s crib was crammed into a corner, leaving only a narrow walkway between it and her own bed. The one interior door led to an efficiency kitchen crammed into what was once a walk-in closet and, through a curtain in the kitchen, the toilet and a rusting steel shower stall. This, at least for now, was home.

She had left Rich. She didn’t know what else to do. They had only been married seven weeks when the Navy shipped him off to Southeast Asia, leaving her fatly pregnant and agonizingly alone. She wrote him almost daily, reams and reams of childish outpourings of love and hope and dreams recorded on ring binder paper in her round, immature hand, but as the months wore on and the mailbox remained empty, she had begun to despair. In his entire seven month deployment overseas, she had received perhaps eight letters, most of them written in those first few weeks. Between the time of Annie’s birth in March and his return in July, she had received only two letters, neither of them of any particular length or depth.

An invitation to visit was extended by Rich’s father and stepmother. Twelve long, swaying, lurching Greyhound hours later she arrived in the dusty, dry Central Valley town of Turlock and was swept away to Maynard and Thelma’s air conditioned double-wide trailer. Thrilled at the impending visit of their first “grandbaby,” Thelma had borrowed a white wicker bassinette and spent hours sewing a bright pink gingham liner with a tulle flounce for it, along with matching bedding. Annie, tiny, pale-skinned and virtually bald, was almost was lost in the vibrant pink, but Thelma’s welcoming effort was appreciated.

Thelma went out of her way to make her at home and engaged. An active, positive, upbeat kind of person, Thelma taught her new recipes, how to knit, new nursery songs to sing to Annie, and a host of other new things. She did her best to be a lively, entertaining and helpful houseguest, but her own sense of despair deepened with each passing day. She was fearful...afraid the silence from Rich meant that he had forgotten about her.

“It’ll be fine,” Maynard tried to comfort her in his clumsy, joking way. “Just you get yourself some black sheets, honey, and you’ll be fine,” he said. When she looked at him quizzically, not understanding his reference, he clarified with “He’s gotta be getting tired of them dark women on white sheets…he’ll be looking forward to a white woman on black sheets when he gets back!” She had not been amused, but was too inculcated with the requirement to be polite…especially to superiors…that she just nodded with a wan smile.

Annie, nestled snugly in her arms, had slept the entire twelve hours it took to get back home and they were settled back into their tiny converted garage cottage for a full week before Rich returned from deployment. A crowd of thousands was on hand to meet the ship, but Rick was easy to spot in his crisp Marine Corps uniform…there were fewer than two dozen Marines in their summer khaki shirts…amid the teeming mass of white navy uniforms. Shrieks of recognition and joy surrounded her, the sounds of women crying and children shouting “Daddy! Daddy!” filled the air. She made no sound, but stood on tiptoe and waved frantically, trying to catch his attention. But it was only when his feet stepped off the gangway and touched the dock and she was standing right in front of him, did he acknowledge her presence with a quick half-smile. Her heart sank…something was wrong and she could feel it in her bones.

‘Wait until I get him home,’ she thought to herself. She had worked hard to lose the baby fat and was now as slim as she had ever been. She had stopped nursing Annie at his request, but her breasts had retained their full, round shape. Granted, she had some stretch marks, but the Caesarean scar was hidden in her bikini line and should not be very visible. And, now out of Mother’s restrictive grasp, she had learned a few things about hair, makeup, and the provocative power of just enough…but neither too little nor too much…clothing. And to that end there was a sheer black lace-accented nightgown and peignoir at home…

It had not gone well. She was 18…he was 19…both of them were healthy, clean, attractive. Supposedly they had both been celibate during their seven month separation and yet…the black lace nightgown had been a waste of money, time and hope. Pleading fatigue…he had risen at 4:30 that morning, he explained…he lay down on the bed and simply went to sleep.

When he returned from work the following night, he brought his friend Rod with him and, despite the fact that none of them were old enough to buy liquor, the two of them killed two six packs of beer. Rod stretched out on the living room floor with a blanket and Rich collapsed on the bed in his clothes in a drunken stupor.

The third night was even worse…he didn’t come home. She had gone to the landlord’s house to use the phone, and when she learned that he had left the ship at four o’clock, like everyone else, she sat a lonely, tear-filled vigil until sheer fatigue drove her to bed. She awoke in the morning to Annie’s insistent demands for her breakfast only to find his fresh uniform gone and a crumpled one smelling of stale cigarette smoke and beer, on the bathroom floor. He had not even bothered to wake her.

The final straw came on Sunday morning, five days after he had returned. He had staggered in at 3 am and she had been awake. Not yet understanding the folly of arguing with a person when he’s drunk, she confronted him and got the shock of her young life…

"What do you want?" she demanded angrily.

“What I don’t want is to be married anymore!” he shouted drunkenly. “I hadda lotta time to think when I was out at sea, and I’m too young to be tied down to a wife and baby!”

“Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you asked me to marry you?” she shouted back, her fury effectively blanketing the hurt of his words.

“You got what you wanted!” he yelled. “You got a father for your kid, you got away from your mother, you got out on your own. What more do you want from me? Isn’t that enough?”

She stood there, stunned at what she was hearing. “You said you loved me,” she finally said in a small voice. She saw him shaking his head and a cold chill numbed her feet and began to climb slowly upwards. “Was that a lie, Rich? Wasn’t that true?”

He continued to shake his head as he sat on the bed, head between his hands, staring at the floor.

“Then why did you want to marry me, Rich?” She couldn’t seem to summon any tears, although her throat felt as if a tree stump were stuck in it and the back of her nose burned like fire. “Why?”

He continued to shake his head.

“Why?” she was screaming now. “Why did you marry me if you didn’t love me? We both knew Annie wasn’t yours, you can’t say you had to marry me…so why? Why?”

“Rosie,” he muttered, still looking at the floor.

“Rosie?” she asked, more calmly. Rosie was his girlfriend from high school who couldn’t wait for him to finish boot camp…all of six whole weeks…and come back to Spokane for her. Rosie had taken up with some other guy and ended up marrying him in rather a bit of a rush. “What does Rosie have to do with anything?”

He raised his head but kept his gaze on the floor. “I wanted to hurt Rosie the way she hurt me,” he said, his tongue stumbling clumsily. She could feel the coldness creeping past her belly and approaching her lungs. “She was supposed to wait for me but she didn’t…she fooled around with some guy and got herself pregnant. Do you know how much that hurt me?” He looked up at her, his face flushed and twisted with pain. “So I figured to get even…there’s no way she would know that the baby wasn’t mine, so she’d think I wasn’t being true to her. She wouldn’t be able to think she’d made a fool out of me. She’d be hurt to think I was cheating on her the way she was cheating on me.” He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “So, I thought that it would give us both what we wanted…you’d have a father for your kid and get away from that bitch you call a mother, and I’d be able to get back at Rosie the same way she got me.” He threw a forearm over his eyes to shield them from the overhead light and was quiet.

The coldness had crept up and stolen her breath. She had nothing and everything to say, but the coldness had frozen her tongue. She walked past him to Annie’s crib and lifted her warm, cuddly body, limp and heavy in sleep, and cradled her closely, then silently walked out of the room.

Rich woke late the next morning with a dismal hangover and an even worse attitude. “Coffee!” he demanded, staggering out to the kitchen table looking like death warmed over. “Gimme coffee!”

“Shhhh,” she quietly admonished him. “I’m trying to get Annie to nap. She’s teething and seems to have a touch of colic and…”

“Just get me my fucking coffee,” he snarled, “And spare me the voice-over.”

Alert to the sudden tension in the air, Annie stiffened, raised her head up and began to cry. Rich grabbed both sides of his head as the child’s piercing wail painfully penetrated his skull.

“Shut it up,” he growled.

“Rich, I can’t. She’s teething and her tummy hurts and…”

“Shut it up!” his face took on the frightening mask of irrational anger she remembered so well on Mother’s face.

She put the coffee on the table and hurried to the living room where she scooped Annie up from the quilt on the floor and tried walking and soothing her. But, no longer drowsy and driven by her own pain as well as the palpable tension in the house, the child was inconsolable. Annie wailed, she sobbed, she screamed, her little face screwed up into a red knot of misery. The tiny house filled with her cries, including the kitchen where Rich nursed his hangover.

He came tearing out of the kitchen, his bloodshot eyes bulging, his crisp red hair standing out in all directions. “If you don’t shut that brat up, I’ll do it for you!” he bellowed. “I don’t know what I am doing here!” he yelled, his body rigid with fury. “You can’t cook, you can’t clean a house”…he had found dust on the top of the doorframe during a “white glove” inspection when he first got back…“you can’t even take care of a four month old baby. What the fuck good are you? Now shut it up before I do it for you!”

Speechless with alarm, she rushed to the bedroom and hurriedly changed her clothes and packed a diaper bag. Holding the screaming baby in one arm, she took the bag out to the kitchen and pulled all of the freshly made bottles from the refrigerator and packed them.

Annie continued to scream and she grabbed her purse and headed for the front door but Rich was standing in the way, a murderous expression on his face. She did a quick about-face and ducked out the kitchen door, moving as fast as she could under the awkward weight of the baby and the bag. Where the hell was she going to go?

She ended up at Pat’s, the only person she knew who had a young baby too. Pat was living with her new boyfriend, Russ, in a bed-sit downtown. It was too small for them to put her up, even overnight, but at least it was a place where she could sit for a while and ponder her options. She was afraid of him now…she wasn’t sure if she could go back.

And so she ended up renting the vacant little bed-sit in the back of Pat’s building. She borrowed a blanket from Pat and slept in her underwear on the bare bed, Annie cuddled to her chest, and in the morning, after she knew Rich would be back at work, she went back to the little cottage and removed all her personal and household goods, leaving Rich’s clothes, shaving gear, and personal mementoes. She wept through the entire task, but she wasn't sure she knew why. She was afraid he might come back…she didn’t care if he hurt her, but she was deathly afraid he might hurt Annie. Each item she packed up drove the knife of despair deeper into her heart. She had had such hope of happiness…how was she to survive the pulsing mass of pain that had replaced it? What had she done wrong? Why had this gone so wrong? What had she done to cause it? Or failed to do to prevent it?

And now she sat on the sagging bed in the dismal, cramped little room. Annie delightedly played with her toes, gurgling sounds leaping joyfully from her tiny pink bow-shaped lips. Her little world was intact, as far as she knew…Mama was there with the clean diapers, warm bottles, and loving arms…it was a shame that this sweet baby had to grow up and learn disappointment.

She looked at her child. Was this baby the only person on the entire earth who wanted her, who loved her? There had to be someone else, didn’t there? Mark didn’t want her or his daughter, and Rich had been pretty clear about his feelings. Mother…Mother had never wanted her…and when she was unable to prevent the marriage to Rich, Mother had fixed her with a cold stare and said “you made your bed, now you lie in it…don’t come running to me when things get tough.”

Daddy? …he and Maggie had three kids and another one on the way. They didn’t want their household disrupted again…they had rescued her from the county hospital and taken care of her until she married Rich…that was surely enough. Her grandparents? They hadn’t wanted her past the end of the summers, she now could see. They probably hadn’t even wanted to take her for three months out of every year, either…she didn’t know what kind of bargain Mother had with her parents, but with the clarity of hindsight, she could see that something had been in place there. Her friends from school had dropped out of her life as soon as she got married…their paths were going very different ways. Was there anyone besides her precious Annie who wanted her, then? It didn’t seem so.

For three days she sat in the dark, tending to Annie’s needs, weeping, pondering, wondering. And on the fourth day, she got mad. How dare Mark turn his back on her like he did? How dare Rich discard her like a used tissue? There had to be men out there who would find her attractive, men she could make want her. A lot more than just the two of them, too! She pulled out her makeup bag and sat down in front of the mirror…she was young, she wasn’t ugly…she could find somebody…she could find a lot of somebodies…and she knew just how to do it.

Waiting

Waiting

“Wait here in the car for me,” Mommy said. “I’ll be back in about an hour.” Mommy gave her a sharp look. “You two behave while I’m gone…and keep your brother out of trouble.”

She hated waiting in the car with Brother. She was fine doing it alone, but Brother scared her when they were alone together in the car. Oblivious to any consequences to his actions, either immediate or delayed, Brother viewed the car as a giant toy for his personal amusement and brooked no attempts at interference. She might as well not even be in the car, for all her admonitions or objections to his behaviour accomplished. And while she knew he couldn’t drive it away since Mommy took the keys with her…this time…she knew that fooling with the gearshift lever and the hand brake could have disastrous results. Brother knew too…she had told him so…but he dismissed her as inconsequential and stood on the seat behind the wheel merrily shoving the shifter up and down the column, making motor noises with his lips and tongue.

Noting that the handbrake was set, she was merely tense and anxious about his pretence at driving the car. She didn’t know enough about how the thing worked to know if his slamming of the shifter up and down could put them in any danger, but she knew if the handbrake was set, they weren’t going anywhere. Which was good, because they were parked on a hill and this made her very nervous.

“Brother, stop it!” she pleaded with him. “Come sit in the back with me and I’ll tell you a story.”

“No!” he said petulantly. “I wanna drive!”

She watched him carefully, not sure what she could do to stop him if he started doing something truly dangerous. He was bigger than she was and weighed more, for all that she was two years older. A man exited the red brick building that Mommy had entered, and walked to the car that was parked in front of theirs, entered it, and drove away, leaving her now with a clear vista of the long, steep hill the car was parked on.

Nervously, she looked at the clock. Half an hour until Mommy came back. Could she keep Brother from doing something that would hurtle them down that hill and into the big grey granite bank building at the bottom? Maybe they would be hit by another car as they careened through an intersection against the light? Daddy always did something called “parking the car in gear” when they parked on a hill…in case the parking brake didn’t hold, he said. Had Brother changed the gear? Was their parking brake going to hold?

Brother had both hands on the steering wheel and was gleefully twisting it from side to side, screeching noises emanating from his lips. Simulating a crash, he gripped the wheel and shook it, making explosion and rending metal sounds. She was a wreck, keeping one eye on Brother and one eye on the clock. Maybe Mommy would get back early? Then he would have to stop.

“Are we there yet?” Brother cried gaily from his perch on the seat, adjusting the rear view mirror so he could see himself “driving.” He pretended to pull the car over to the curb and park it, shoved the gearshift lever up, as he had seen Mommy and Daddy do countless times, then reached for the handbrake. Trouble was, the handle was already pulled all the way up and when he tried to give it a bit of a yank, it wouldn’t yield that satisfying sound of the brake being set. His attention was instantly diverted to trying to release the brake so he could set it himself and she went immediately into panic mode.

“Brother!” she cried. “Stop! You’ll crash the car and Mommy will be mad! She’ll spank you!” He hesitated momentarily, looking at her. “With the strap!”

He shook his head. “Spank you!” he said, now wrestling with the handle. She climbed into the front seat and tried to pull him away, but he gave her a mighty shove, sending her sprawling against the passenger door, where she hit her forehead painfully on the chrome door handle. Her eyes smarting with tears, she returned to the fray, trying to get him away from the parking brake handle before he created some kind of disaster.

“Stop it!” she cried, fear making the tears roll down her face. “Stop it!” She slapped at his hands, which just made him angry. He let go of the handle, rose up on his knees, and punched her in the chest with his fist, then returned to his quest. When she was able to breathe again, now crying in earnest, she resumed trying to deter him from his goal. He put his pudgy, sweaty hand in the middle of her face and, bracing his legs against the door and putting his superior weight behind it, pushed her away until she was pinned against the passenger door. When he released her, he immediately resumed trying to find a way to release the parking brake.

She glanced at the clock and realized that Mommy was more than fifteen minutes late and a new fear struck her. What if Mommy wasn’t coming back? Dark, shadowy flashes of half-memories flitted through her mind, dim, fearsome things that darted through her consciousness too quickly for her to grasp, leaving behind only coldness and fear and a yawning sense of emptiness. An alarming sense of terrible familiarity swept over her like a shroud, enveloping her, invading her, filling her, and she began to weep piteously.

At first Brother ignored her, but when her sobs and wails did not subside, he grew disturbed. “Stop it,” he said, shaking her, but she only wept more loudly. “Stop!” he commanded, but his voice fell on deaf ears. The fear had consumed her, it held her hostage, and with each glance at the clock, it escalated. Two hours passed…Mommy wasn’t coming back…what was she going to do now?

A woman stopped by the car and tapped on the window, concerned about the hysterically weeping little girl huddled miserably in the seat, but Brother, finally heeding the rules for a change, refused to roll the window down. The woman walked away and Brother resumed trying to silence his distraught sister.

“Stop!” he demanded again. “Mommy will be mad!”

“She’s not coming back,” she wept, looking at the clock again. “She’s been gone almost three hours now. She isn’t coming back. What is going to happen to us? Nana’s not here…”

“Daddy will get us,” he assured her, but his lower lip was quivering a bit.

“Daddy moved away,” she reminded him through her tears. “Mommy made him move away…and now she’s gone, too!” She burst into noisy sobs again and, curling into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her head, she sank into a dark, empty place.


“What in the name of holy hell is going on here?” Mommy’s voice cut through the darkness surrounding her like a hot knife through butter. A claw-like grip on her shoulder dragged her from the corner where she was huddled, and she felt herself being shaken like a rag doll.

“You conniving little bitch!” Mommy hissed at her. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I? You have to go and pull some little attention-getting stunt like this and just embarrass the shit out of me!”

“She said you weren’t coming back!” Brother volunteered.

Mommy rolled her eyes. “Whatever made you say that, for Chrissake? You had your little brother in a panic, he ran into the lawyer’s office crying and upset everybody! What is your excuse this time?” Mommy shook her again. “Well?”

“You were gone…” she croaked out, her throat dry and sore from crying. “You said you would be gone an hour…and it was more than three…”

“What made you scare your little brother by telling him I wasn’t coming back? Jesus H. Christ, you’d think you’d know better than to do that. Why do you want to upset him like that?”

She just shook her head, sniffling, knuckling her tear-swollen eyes. “I was afraid…” she began.

“Of what?” Mommy interrupted with a sneer in her voice.

“That you weren’t coming back…you were gone so long…”

Mommy rolled her eyes skyward and sighed long-sufferingly. “And I suppose it didn’t occur to you,” she asked in a voice dripping sarcasm, “that I at least had to come back for my car?”

Besmirched

Nick Philby was the most popular boy in the eighth grade…probably in the whole school…and he liked her!

She couldn’t believe it when he asked if she would like to go for a Frostee after school. She couldn’t go, of course…she had to be right home after school or face Mommy’s wrath…but she was so careful how she phrased her decline of his offer so he wouldn’t think she was rejecting him, just this one specific meeting. They had different lunch periods, so she couldn’t have lunch with him…and besides, she always had lunch with Reenie…but she’d find a way!

She stepped out of her science class, her arms wrapped around a stack of books, only to find them snatched from her arms and cradled with Nick’s in his muscular grasp. Nick was a budding gymnastics star who could do absolutely amazing things on the rings and bars and had the physique to prove it. “Those are too heavy for a small girl like you,” he said, flashing his brilliant smile…his older brother was a dentist…“what’s your next class?”

“Mr. Shepherd,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “I have to stop by the restroom and wipe my lipstick off or he’ll make me spend the entire class period in the hallway.”

He shook his shock of sun-bleached hair. “I feel sorry for you. I’d hate to have a teacher who got on me for my clothes or something.”

She nodded, at a loss for something to say. What was Nick Philby doing walking her to her next class? Nick Philby was a jock, really, really cute, and really, really popular. The girls all batted their eyelashes at him in the hallways, the guys all wanted to hang out with him…what was he doing with her? She smiled weakly.

“Look,” he said, handing her back her books at the door to the girl’s room. “I know you have to go right home after school…how about I walk you home? Wait for me outside Shepherd’s class, OK?”

She nodded dumbly as he turned and dashed down the corridor towards his last class of the day. Who would have ever believed? Nick Philby and her?

Weeks later, Nick was still walking her home. He had come over on a weekend and had even managed to impress Mommy with his gentlemanly manners and deferential attitude, so much so, Mommy actually asked if he might have an older, unattached brother. She had shuddered at the thought, telling Mommy that his only brother was married. Mommy actually looked disappointed, especially when she drove by Nick’s house and realized that his family was one of the original land owners of West Beach and although they had sold off much of their acreage to housing developers, they still lived in a grand old Victorian, the grounds of which took up an entire city block. She was rather unimpressed with the house and grounds since Nana’s garden was even bigger and her house was just as venerable, but she did stand in awe of the priceless antiques…furnishings that were originals with the house…that were an everyday part of Nick’s life.

At first she didn’t think it was particularly odd that Nick brought her to his house when no one else was home. He was the only person she knew who had a maid, and when the maid was working, they stayed out in the little guest house, playing board games and kissing games. She was accorded entrance to the main house when there were only the two of them, and she found a kind of reverent delight in being able to actually touch furnishings of an age and quality that she had only ever seen before in museums. As much as she loved Nana, she had no illusions about Nana’s taste…pedestrian at best. This, she could just tell, was fine…very fine.

Nick liked to make out, not an unusual preoccupation for a teen-aged boy. She was not his first girlfriend, and he had considerable experience and, if she was any judge, talent. So when his mother went out one Saturday to spend the day as an exhibitor at the annual flower show in Cabrillo Park, Nick invited her over, ostensibly to play chess. Frank had taught her to play chess, and she didn’t mind that she was still a novice at it. Her games with Nick involved a forfeit of one kiss per captured piece, and quite often the game was forgotten halfway through as they found a great deal more pleasure in the forfeits. This particular Saturday Nick had set up the chess board in the parlour, an elegant room furnished in plush velvet settees, gleaming mahogany tables, delicate Dresden shepherdesses, and massive bay windows looking out into his mother’s beautiful cutting garden. The room was splendid…not overdone, but tasteful and serenely gracious. She loved it.

He gave her the seat on the settee that had the best view of the garden and, distracted by the beauty of her surroundings…and Nick’s flashing smile…it was not long before they were stretched out together on the settee. She had been having some difficulty with Nick’s tendency to have what the girls called “wandering hands” of late, and today was no exception. The kissing was lovely…exciting…and being in his arms made her breathless…but when one of his hands began inching itself around towards her breasts or down below her waist, she would find the spell broken and her passion quenched. It was really quite annoying.

Today, with the long, deep settee, they sprawled out and, lost in Nick’s kisses, she didn’t realize that something was amiss until she felt his hand fully cover her right breast. Snapped suddenly back to full awareness, she struggled to remove it, only to find herself pinned beneath him, her right arm trapped so that she could do nothing but flail it impotently against his back. “Stop it,” she hissed in his ear. “You’re crushing me…let me up!”

“Just relax,” he said in her ear, kissing her just beneath it where she usually found it titillating. Now she just found it alarming. “This feels so good,” he said with a kind of half moan, his hand tightening on her breast, his thumb brushing across the nipple. She felt a jolt of sensation that frightened her even more, and pushed at him again.

“I can’t breathe,” she said. “Let me up!”

He shifted his position a bit, just enough to ruck up her shirttail and bring her bra into view. “Stop!” she cried, truly alarmed now. “Stop it!” and she began to struggle in earnest. He groped her breast through the bra and began grinding his lower body against hers.

“Stop it!” she cried. "Stop it right now or I will scream!”

“There’s nobody here but us,” he breathed, rubbing his face against her bra cup. “So, you don’t stuff, do you?” he said, half to himself. “The guys in gym all thought these were fake.” He squeezed for emphasis, then shoved the cup upwards, revealing her entire breast.

She would have clawed him, but she had no nails…she would have hit him, but he had her hands pinioned. With sudden alarm she realized that he had carefully planned this…he had even asked her to wear a skirt today rather than her usual capris…dear God, what was he going to do? “If you don’t let me up this instant,” she hissed in his ear, “I will never speak to you again!”

“OK,” he said, closing his hand over her bare breast, his fingers and thumb pinching the nipple painfully. OK? she thought. Did he just say “OK”? Icy fingers of fear crept over her and she clenched her fists and pounded his back, wriggling back and forth to try to break his grasp. He laughed and pushed his pelvis harder against her. “I knew you’d like this,” he said with a chuckle and bent his head to put his mouth on her.

She screamed for him to stop, she struggled, she even started to cry, but all she succeeded in doing was encouraging him further. When he had her bra pushed up to her chin and both breasts bare and glistening with the moisture of his efforts, she began to realize that her skirt and slip were bunched up and nothing stood between them but her thin cotton panties and his chinos, which she suspected were not as securely buttoned and zipped as she would have ordinarily expected. When he moved one hand down towards her leg, freeing her hand, she lashed out with a stinging slap and bucked up against him, trying to throw him off. He just laughed.

“Shove up against me a few more times like that,” he chuckled, recapturing her hand. “I’ll show you how to do it right…”

As he bent his head to her breast again, she went absolutely rigid. “I will tell your mother,” she said.

“She won’t believe you,” he said, mouthing her nipple.

“I swear to you, before I leave here today, I will hide something in this house to prove I was here, and I will tell your mother. I will describe this room and the guest house and the kitchen and the dining room and I will tell her what you did to me unless you let me go right this minute!”

He went still, the grinding of his pelvis against her stopped, his mouth lifted from her now sore nipple, and he looked at her closely. She must have done a very good job of hiding her fear and projecting only her anger and determination, because finally he relented and let her up from the settee. She jumped up and turned her back to sort out her bra and shirt, then bolted for the kitchen door.

“Wait!” he called after her. “Wait a minute and I’ll walk you home!”


By Tuesday afternoon she knew something was wrong. She had refused to speak to Nick before school on Monday and ignored him when he showed up at her classroom doors or at her locker. “Don’t make me say something to embarrass you,” she finally said, just before lunch. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

He didn’t take it well. “You can’t break up with me!” he said to her in a low, angry voice. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “I can break up with you and I just did. And who do I think I am? Not your girlfriend anymore, that’s who!”

He stomped away, his face a study in fury, and she didn’t see him again. But by Tuesday afternoon she had had three boys she didn’t even know ask her for dates and many of the girls who usually ignored her were now pointing at her or nodding in her direction and whispering behind their hands. By lunchtime on Wednesday, a path parted when she walked through the halls, the girls stepping back as if afraid to get their fluffy felt poodle skirts soiled, the boys clearly appraising her. It was making her crazy…what was going on?

It was Reenie who provided the answer. As much as she wasn’t plugged in to the elite social groups of school society, Reenie was often an object of teasing and ridicule and Reenie’s friendship with her was well-known.

“What happened with you and Nick this weekend?” Reenie asked, happily swapping her pastrami sandwich for the nasty peanut butter which was the only thing Mommy bought these days for school lunches.

She shrugged, not wanting to go into embarrassing detail. “I broke up with him.”

“That’s not what’s going around school,” Reenie said, licking her lips over the peanut butter.

She went instantly cold. “What’s going around school?” she asked.

“Well, Nick says he dumped you because he finally got what he was after, and that’s why he was going with you all this time. It’s all over the school!”

“WHAT?” she shouted, dropping the pastrami in her lap. “He said WHAT?”

Reenie started to repeat herself…she could be a little dense and literal at times…so she held up her hand. “Nothing happened…he tried…he almost” here she leaned closer to Reenie and lowered her voice “he almost raped me.” She got up from the steps and excused herself. “There’s something I got to do.”

With Reenie hot on her heels, she stalked over to the circle of teenaged boys whom she knew would have Nick at their centre and shoved her way through the crowd.

“Hiya, baby!” Nick grinned. “Back for more?” The boys around him laughed appreciatively.

“You lying sack of dog turds,” she shouted at him, hands on hips. “I don’t know what kind of lies you are spreading around school about me, but I want it to stop.”

“Awww,” Nick smiled, “Feelings hurt because you weren’t good enough for me to want a return engagement?”

She stood there silently, rigid with rage. When the red haze finally cleared, she calmly looked around the circle of boys, the few girls, and at Nick.

“Ok,” she said. “Have it your way. I won’t tell them that you are such a terrible kisser that you had to hold me down against my will and force yourself on me. And I won’t tell them that you almost raped me. And I certainly won’t tell that that you ignored my threats to scream and my threats to break up with you…but when I threatened to tell your Mommy you let me up like a scared widdle kiddie. I also won’t tell them that I have refused to speak to you since then, and I most definitely won’t tell them that today after school, while you are hanging out at the Frostee shop, making eyes one of these girls and getting ready to pull the same stunt on her, I’m going to be over at your house having a nice little talk with your mother!” With that she turned on her heel and stalked back to her place on the steps, the crowd parting silently to let her pass, Reenie still at her heels.

“It won’t do any good,” Reenie said after they sat back down. “Your reputation will never be the same. Mud sticks, you know…and it dries hard.”

“I know,” she said disconsolately. “But it was worth it to set the record straight. Did you see the look on his face when I said I was going to tell his mother?” She smiled wanly.

One of the girls from the crowd sauntered over and took a rather dramatic pose, one hand on her jutting hip. “Nobody believes you, you know,” she said airily. “Nick doesn’t have to force a girl…especially a little nobody like you. We all knew the reason he was going with you was because you put out. And when he got it, he dumped you. We all knew you were nothing but a tramp…why else would someone like Nick Philby go out with you anyway?”

She looked over at Reenie and said in a loud stage whisper, "Well, if Nick doesn't have to force a girl, I guess we can assume that any girl who goes out with him puts out then, can't we?"

She then turned to the girl whose jaw was hanging open at her oblique insult. "Better get going," she said, nodding in Nick's direction. "There's a line of girls forming to put out for Nick...you don't want to lose your place now, do you?"

Snapshots

She wasn’t in the mood.

In fact, she hadn’t been in the mood for months. And James did nothing to put her in the mood anymore. Actually, it was kind of disgusting, if you thought about it…he would lay back on the bed, propped up with pillows, holding a magazine…usually one of his financial wizardry magazines…in his left hand and, while he read, fondle himself with his right. She could kind of ignore it while the covers were pulled up to his waist, but of course, his manipulations eventually made him warm and he would push the covers down and continue…his eyes never leaving the pages of dollars and schemes. Finally, when his penis was more demanding than his desire to find a way to get rich without any effort, he would put down the magazine and reach for her.

She was not in the mood. And tonight she told him so.

At first he seemed surprised. Then nonplussed. And then he was angry. “I don’t give a fuck about your ‘mood’!” he sneered, his free hand rough on her shoulder. “Now come here.”

“No!” she shouted at him, actually relishing the opportunity to sink her teeth into a fight that she had a chance of winning. She had been far too passive for far too long. “No! I don’t want to and I’m not going to! I have the right to refuse and I am exercising it!”

He sprang from the bed, standing beside it, naked, erect, and furious. His whole body was red and trembling with his rage…his eyes practically bulged. “You have a right?” he roared indignantly. “You have a right? What about my husbandly rights?”

She couldn’t help it…she giggled. He looked so ridiculous with his pulsing hard-on and the rest of his body trembling with impotent rage, and when he topped it off with that ludicrous antediluvian tripe about “husbandly rights,” she couldn’t help herself. That giggle, of course, sent him right over the raving edge, complete with arm waving and bits of spraying spittle as he raged incoherently for a time. Eventually the incomprehensible tirade subsided and he stood beside the bed naked, his arms crossed resentfully over his chest. “Well?” he said, his demeanour hostile and intimidating.

“Well what?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“What about my rights?”

“What rights?”

He was getting really angry now, but for some reason she was neither frightened nor intimidated. Surprisingly, liberatingly, she actually felt quite angry in return.

“My husbandly rights!” he demanded indignantly.

She looked at him coolly. “In a state that recognizes the concept of spousal rape,” she said smugly, “there is no such thing as ‘husbandly rights.’”

For just a moment, she thought he was going to hit her. Then, without warning, he returned to the bed and began to masturbate with great vigour while staring at her belligerently. Taking her book and cigarettes, she rose and left the room, slamming the door behind her. She waited until the light no longer showed under the door before she finally returned.

* * *

“Get me some coffee,” he said, eyes on the TV, one of his ubiquitous finance magazines spread across his lap. Why couldn’t the man just work to make a fortune? Why was he so fixed on finding some kind of get-rich-quick scheme?

“Can you get it yourself?” she asked mildly, gesturing to the sewing spread across her lap.

His baleful glare was her answer and, with a heavy sigh, she carefully set her work aside and went to the kitchen.

It had been one of those days…she dreaded weekends because he was home and he did nothing but complain. Today he couldn’t find a spoon (in the drawer where they had been for the last 5 years), he couldn’t find anything to snack on (in the breadbox where it had been kept for the last 5 years), he couldn’t find the shirt he wanted to wear (in the laundry, he’d already worn it this week) and a thousand other little things. He had been annoyed with her since morning because he was out of shaving cream…although he had neither bothered to tell her he needed some nor had he written it on the shopping list that hung on the refrigerator door…and the day had gone downhill from there.

She put the steaming mug on the coffee table and returned to the rocking chair, picking up her sewing and spreading it across her lap to resume. She picked up her needle and took a stitch.

“I can’t reach it there,” he said, nodding towards the coffee mug.

She raised an eyebrow. “So sit up, lean forward, extend your right arm, and you will be able to reach it.” She knew that sarcasm was probably not her wisest move, but sometimes it just popped out of her mouth that way. Sure enough, he snapped his head in her direction and fixed her with a venomous look.

“You are the one who put it in the wrong place, now get off your ass and move it,” he growled.

A swift shaft of irritation pierced her and she gave it voice. “Pardon me? You think I’m a fucking robot or something?”

He fixed her with a cold stare. “Wives are supposed to be utilitarian...good wives are.”

* * *

She couldn’t remember how many times they had had this argument. And every time she felt like they were about to reach a point of resolution, he would say “I don’t want to talk about this anymore” and refuse to communicate further. Until the next time the subject came up.

And so, as they stood in the dining room enmeshed in yet another déjà vu quarrel, she suddenly decided to throw in something new. “You know what the problem here is?” she asked.

“What?” he asked warily, looking for the hook. His suspiciousness stuck out like antennae.

“You aren’t willing to compromise,” she said.

His response was righteously indignant. “I do so compromise! I compromise all the time. All the fucking time!”

She shook her head. She knew better. He was like her mother… “my way or the highway.” He didn’t even know how to compromise…how could he believe that he actually did it?

But then, like a lightning strike, it came to her…perhaps he quite literally did not know what compromise was, what it meant, what it involved...maybe his definition of compromise was not the same as hers...

“James,” she said, sitting down on the sofa, certain in her own dictionary-definition. “Define ‘compromise’ for me, please.”

He looked at her as if she had suddenly grown a second head and with a perfectly straight face he said “Compromise is when I get what I want and you get what’s left.”

* * *

She was exhausted. She’d fallen asleep in the rocking chair again, when all she had intended to do was take off her shoes and rest for five minutes.

But today should be a turning point…today she had a fat check to wave under James’ nose…a check that rose to his challenge and should now shift the burden of household work. She trudged out to the kitchen, slipped an apron over her clothes and opened the refrigerator.

They always fought over the household chores. The argument was a simple one: he didn’t do any. When she left the trash bins for him to empty, they overflowed. When she left the lawn for him to mow, it went to seed. He didn’t even see to the maintenance of the cars, that was something else she took care of, taking his in for work whenever he was on a business trip.

Nearly a year before they had had a stupendous battle on the subject, with his point being that he earned nearly twice as much as she did, so he was exempt from household chores…he contributed in cash what she had to contribute in kind. “Sweat equity,” he had called it. She was livid. She commuted as many hours as he did, she worked as many hours as he did…they were both away from the house for the same length of time each day…so why didn’t they both allocate roughly equal time to the household? He did…quite literally…nothing. In fact, on their first Christmas in the house she had bought him an electric drill as a gift…now, five years later, she had worn out a set of drill bits on it and he didn’t even know where the thing was stored!

That had been the seminal argument on the subject…they had screamed at each other for half the weekend, him refusing to even put trash in the bin…he left used tissues, empty cigarette packs, discarded wrappers, wherever he happened to be when he discarded them. And her requests for him to take the bin to the curb on trash day fell on deaf ears. She was tired of trying to get him to participate in the household and he was adamant that his greater salary “bought” him out of the responsibility. “When you bring home a pay check as big as mine,” he bellowed at the end “then I will help with the housework…but not one second before!” And he had adamantly refused to discuss it again.

The chicken parts sizzled in the pan, browning nicely as she readied them for braising in the wine sauce. Tonight! she thought. Tonight! In my purse is a pay check for more than he earns in a month and tonight things are going to change!

He tucked into the Coq au Vin and steamed broccoli, nearly inhaled the roasted herbed potatoes, and shoved away from the table without a word. She couldn’t remember if he had ever commented on her cooking except to complain that something was not the way he expected it to be, although he did refrain from comparing her to his mother, whom he considered to be a dreadful cook. When he settled into his chair in front of the TV, but before he could get one of those attention-robbing financial magazines open in his lap, she stood by his chair and handed him her pay check.

“What’s this?” he asked, his eyebrows going up slightly as he looked at the amount.

“My pay check for last month,” she said, finding it difficult to keep her smile under control.

“OK,” he said, handing it back to her and reaching for a magazine.

She felt a bit deflated. “Hang on a minute,” she said. “It’s time for you to keep your end of the bargain!”

He looked at her blankly. “Bargain?”

“Yes,” she said, holding up her check. “You said when I brought home a pay check as big as yours, you would help with the housework.” He continued to stare at her blankly. “Well,” she said, waving the check,” I earned more than you, so it’s time to sort out who is going to do what around here!”

“Hmf,” he snorted dismissively. “That’s not a pay check, that’s a commission check. It doesn’t count.”

* * *

“I’m damned tired of you driving my car. Every time I want to use it for something, it’s full of baby crap and girlie shit…and it’s out of gas!”

She shrugged. “Then I need a car of my own, don’t I?” he had been resisting buying her a car, which was OK with her. As long as she had something to drive to take the baby to the pediatrician, the cat to the vet, and get to the grocery store and school and back, she was fine. She didn’t have to have a car of her own, but if he objected to sharing his, then that was the obvious solution.”

“So, what are you going to buy it with?” he asked. There was an unmistakeable sneer in his voice.

She looked up from her textbook. “I’m not. I don’t have a job and I don’t have any money, and until I finish secretarial school, that’s not going to change. I figure you can share your car, chauffeur me around, or front me the money for a car of my own. I’m OK with any of those options, so you choose.”

He was clearly annoyed, but he picked up the classified ads from the floor and spent some time poring over them as she continued studying.

“$2,500,” he finally said. “You can get a decent used car for $2,500. I can stand you that.”

“I don’t want a used car,” she said, not looking up from her book. “I don’t want to buy someone else’s bad driving and poor maintenance habits.”

“You want a new car?!” he asked incredulously. “No fucking way am I going to buy you a new car!”

She shrugged. “Sharing your car works fine for me.”

In the end he agreed to pay up to $2,500 for a car for her…and if she could find a new one for that money, he would buy it. And the very next Sunday she began poring over the new car ads, that Sunday and every Sunday for the next three weeks. And then one morning she shook him awake early. “Get dressed,” she said. “And bring the money. I’ve found the car.”

He snoozed in the passenger seat while she made her way to the Ford dealer in La Luna, an upmarket suburb of trendy fern bars, natural cedar siding, and chic boutiques. He shook his head, wondering what she was up to...you didn't find a cheap anything in La Luna, but she was already out of the car and marching up to the showroom door, newspaper ad clutched in hand.

“I want to see this car,” she told the salesman, pointing to the newspaper. James looked over her shoulder at the ad and his eyebrows nearly went into orbit…holy shit! She’d found a brand new Pinto for $2,442!

They added a radio for $50 and she was happy…and eight dollars under the limit he had set for her. The car would be ready for pick up the following day, the salesman told them, counting the hundred dollar bills James had placed in front of him. James glared out the window in a sullen, sulky silence all the way home and continued the gloomy visage for the rest of the day.

“OK,” she said that evening over the meatloaf, “What is eating you? I would think you would be happy…I not only found a car, I found a new that comes with a warranty and nobody else has had a chance to screw it up. So what is bothering you?”

He muttered something into his plate that sounded like “pail” or “mail,” but she couldn’t quite make it out. “What did you say?” she asked.

He looked up, glowering, his mouth full of baked potato. “You were supposed to fail, goddamnit! Instead, you went and made a fucking fool out of me!”

She put her fork down incredulously. “What?” she asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You did this to prove me wrong,” he said, almost hissing at her. “Instead of taking a decent used car, like I wanted you to, you spent all this time and effort looking for a new one just to prove me wrong, just to spite me, just to humiliate me!”

She was incensed. “I did not! My father is a mechanic and I know very well how people can screw up a car by driving it badly or not taking care of it. I have a baby to drive around and I have appointments to keep…I just didn’t want a car that would break down and strand me with him or make me late for school!”

“You did it to prove me wrong!” he yelled, slamming down his fork and storming away from the table. “You did it to make me look bad, to prove yourself right, to show how superior you are to me!” The door slammed behind him as he went out and she sat at the table staring at the remnants of supper, wondering exactly what had just happened here.

Best Friends

Reenie had been her best friend since the seventh grade.

They’d met at lunch time one day, each of them eating alone and ignored by the other kids. In the casual cruelty of youth, Reenie had been rejected by the other kids as unsuitable for friendship because she had a “wandering eye” and the doctors felt that she was not physically mature enough for surgical correction, leaving her with thick glasses and one eye that turned towards her nose when the other looked straight ahead.

They had sat at opposite sides of the steps leading up to the music building for several weeks, eating alone, ostensibly paying no attention to each other. Then, on a particularly chilly autumn day, Reenie had moved to her side of the steps where there was more sun, uttering only the words “Cold over there.” From such a diffident beginning sprung a fast friendship that had brought them through junior high and most of high school.

In the summer break after ninth grade Reenie had finally had the surgery to correct her eye and she started high school with a fresh new look. Reenie had a tiny, extremely curvy body and a sweet elfin face with large, expressive brown eyes. Unfortunately, the kids at the high school were the same kids they had gone to junior high with, so Reenie’s improved appearance meant nothing to people who had called her “Quasimodo” behind her back…and sometimes even to her face. Pretty, shapely, winsomely shy, Reenie remained an untouchable, irrevocably tainted by the past.

She could relate. Aside from the eczema on her leg that looked hideous and repulsed many of her classmates, she had been forcibly isolated from most of her peers and, by the time she started junior high, was completely out of the loop. She didn’t know what music the kids listened to, what was cool to wear and what was not, what entertainers the girls swooned over…in short, she was as far removed from the culture of her peers as her mother was. There was no teenager living in their house, just a smaller, indentured adult. An outcast in elementary school, her status remained quo in junior high.

But Reenie had gone to a different elementary school, so neither was aware of the other’s pariah status…not that it would have made any difference in the long run. Both were outside the junior high society and it was natural that, once they met, they should bond. It was a friendship that had supported them for better than five years and, to her complete and utter amazement, sparked no objection from Mother. In fact, it seemed to relax Mother’s restrictiveness, her friendship with Reenie. She was allowed to go places and do things with Reenie that would have been forbidden alone. And tonight, she and Reenie were taking the bus and going downtown to a USO dance.

Usually, she went to Reenie’s house to get ready…Reenie’s mother was sweet and gentle and she enjoyed her company. But tonight Reenie was coming here, they would eat dinner and do each other’s hair and make up, then dress up and take off for the dance. At the end of the evening, Reenie’s mother would pick them up from the bus stop and drive them home, her own mother of the opinion that it wasn’t snowing out (as if it ever snowed in Southern California) and there were no kidnappers or murderers reported to be on the loose, so she could damned well walk home, no matter that the last bus dropped them off only fifteen minutes before midnight.

She had gotten up early and washed her long, straight hair and put it up in rollers. Without a hair dryer, it would take all day to dry. Mother’s short, naturally curly hair needed only to be pushed into place with a finger when it was damp and then air dried…why on earth would she want to spend money on a hair dryer? Reenie would take her hair down and tease it and ease it into something full and elegant and sophisticated…then she would do the same for Reenie. They shared make up and jewellery, shoes and accessories…everything but clothes, Reenie being tinier than she was. Tonight she would wear the white tulle strapless semi-formal with the blue taffeta cummerbund and her white spikes…Reenie would doubtless show up in something sleek and form-fitting, like the purple sheath that showed her curves off to perfection. Reenie was so cute that the guys…except for the guys at their high school who simply could not forget her as “Quasimodo”…all noticed her right away. It was fun watching Reenie go all flustered at the unaccustomed male attention, a good portion of which spilled over to her. She wasn’t as cute and curvy as Reenie, but she was well-endowed and a lively conversationalist, so she got her fair share of the attention.

How she loved to dance! Checking to see that her hair was nearly dry enough to take down, she cha-chaed out to the kitchen, humming something with a Latin beat, to see what was going on for dinner. She stopped in her tracks at the sight of Mother frying pork chops.

“Um, would it be OK if I made a hamburger patty for Reenie?” she asked. Mother turned her head and fixed her with a baleful glare. “What? My cooking’s not good enough for your hoity toity friend?”

She shook her head. “It’s just that…Reenie doesn’t eat pork. She can’t.”

“Allergic?” Mother asked, her eyes back on the chops.

She should have lied and said “yes.” It would have saved untold drama and humiliation, screaming and hysterics. But, at that precise moment, she didn’t know that a lie would have been wiser than speaking the truth and since she was not in the habit of lying without compelling reason, she shook her head and said, offhandedly, “No, she’s Jewish.”

In that moment, time seemed to stop. Mother stood perfectly still…rigidly so. She made no sound, did not even appear to be breathing and only the sound of the grease cracking and popping in the frying pan gave life to the scene.

Her hand tightening on the spatula, Mother turned slowly and deliberately to face her. “She’s what?” Mother gritted out, eyebrows almost disappearing into her hairline. “What did you just say?”

Wary, but unsure about what she had done to offend, she took a step backwards. “She’s Jewish?” she replied questioningly.

“That’s what I thought you said,” Mother shouted, waving the grease-dripping spatula at her. “Jesus H. on-a-goddamned-crutch Christ! What is the matter with you, bringing a goddamned kike into my house?!”

She stepped back again, staggered at the ferocity of the onslaught. What on earth was going on?

“It’s not enough I have to listen to you babbling on about those snot-nosed little brats that you just can’t seem to remember are half brothers and sisters, it’s not enough I have to listen to you prancing around the house blabbering in your pretentious French, it’s not enough that I put up with that racket you call music…now you are telling me that all this time you’ve been sneaking a goddamned filthy Jew into my house?”

She was stunned. She knew Mother expected her to dislike Negroes and that Mexicans were viewed as being only good enough for stoop-labour. She understood that Asian people of all nationalities were considered “Japs” and “Chinks” and they were to be avoided because of The War…Mother had suffered severe deprivation due to war-time shortages and rationing and she laid her lack of silk stockings and fresh butter directly at their feet---why she didn’t hate Germans, too, was a bit of a mystery, except when you considered that Mother’s own heritage was mostly German.

“I cannot believe that you had the audacity to bring that dirty kike into my house!” Mother was still screaming. “She will not ever set foot in this house again! Do you hear me?”

She nodded in still-stunned silence.

“And don’t be bringing home any other kikes, either. You better call her up right now because if she shows up at my front door, I’ll throw her ass off the property!” The smell of smoke made Mother turn back to the stove and the pork chops that had been fried to cinders. A new wave of invective turned the air blue and she slunk out of the kitchen before she was shanghaied into cleaning up the mess.

She hurried away, shaking with shock and disbelief. She wasn’t allowed to have Jewish friends, either? Dear God, how was she supposed to tell? Was she supposed to interview everybody she met and make sure they weren’t Jewish before she could be friends? It was easy enough to sort the Negro and Mexican kids out…the dark skin and Spanish surnames were a dead giveaway. A thought suddenly struck her…Mother hadn’t said a word when she was going out with Danny Feldman…Mother couldn’t tell just by looking, either!

She picked up the phone and dialled Reenie’s number. “Hey…we were just leaving…”

“Change of plans,” she interrupted. “Mother burned dinner and is having one of her fits…would it be ok if we did this at your house?” She would die before she told Reenie the truth. What if she wasn’t allowed to hang out with Reenie any more? What was she going to do then?

“Sure,” Reenie replied unsuspectingly. “How about my mom picks you up and I’ll put some mac and cheese on the stove for us?”

“Bitchin’,” she said. “I’ll meet your mom out front. We’re gonna have such a good time tonight!” she promised, a bright smile in her voice. She put down the phone, shook her head, and hurried to pack up her things and be outside by the time Reenie's mother arrived...God forbid the poor woman should knock on the door and her mother answer it! Heartsore, embarrassed, saddened, she stuck the bright smile back on her face...it was going to be a long, long evening.

Baby Redux, Pt, II

“You gave us quite a turn, there, young lady.” She didn’t know if it was intentional or a result of the drugs, but the speaker was backlit by a diffuse white light coming in through the frosted…and barred…window behind him. It gave him an almost luminous, angelic appearance. She squinted her eyes to reduce the glare and looked away, her eyes burning and tearing in the harsh light. The man rose from his chair and pulled down the blinds, tempering the brightness and she felt some of her tension leave.

“Your pupils are still dilated,” he said, returning to his chair. “It may be another day or two before you being to feel like yourself again.”

She was in no mood for beating around the bush. “Who are you and where am I?” she asked.

The man, whom she could now see was rather large and shaggy and clad in corduroy trousers and a white lab coat…she could not focus her eyes well enough to read his name tag…laughed shortly.

“Dispensing with the small talk, I see. Very well then, I’m Dr. John Kendall and you are in the psychiatric unit of County Hospital. Anything else I can tell you?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, a wave of disappointment washing over her. She had failed. And now her worst nightmare had come true…she was going to have to face her mother over this… An involuntary shudder passed through her.

“Cold?” Dr. Kendall asked. “Would you like a blanket to wrap up in?”

She shook her head. “I’m not cold.”

There was a long silence between them, the doctor obviously waiting for her to step into the breach. The silence ticked on until finally she opened her eyes and looked in his direction. “Are we done, then? Can I go now?”

He smiled briefly. “Well, I guess that is up to you, but I thought you might like to talk about this…” He paused and waited.

She let a minute of silence pass. “About what?”

“Miss Janssen, it isn’t every day we get a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl in here suffering from a near-fatal overdose. Suicide attempts by young, intelligent, attractive girls such as yourself aren’t all that common, you know. I’d like to know what brought you to this.”

Another long silence ensued during which she turned over ways to give him the greatest amount of information with the least amount of effort. She still felt deadly tired and in no mood for an exhausting extended chat. “I’m pregnant,” she finally said, by way of explanation.

He nodded. “We knew that. Your mother seemed very concerned as to the condition of the baby…”

A short, cynical snort of laughter erupted from her lips, causing him to raise his eyebrows in interest. “You find this amusing?” he asked, his voice mild.

She sighed. She really didn’t want to talk. She was tired. She shook her head.

He waited again for her to speak, and when minutes had passed and she did no more than slouch in the chair with a glowering expression on her face, he took the initiative. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me what I said that you found worthy of a laugh?”

She sighed heavily. Obviously he was not going to let this go…who knew how long he might keep her here, picking at her wounds until either they bled or she screamed? She turned her head slowly to look at him. “My mother having any kind of concern over this baby is hysterical,” she said bitterly, “considering that last month she tried to force me to have an abortion in Mexico and now demands that I give it up for adoption. Concerned…sure, she was concerned…that I might not miscarry.”

“I see,” he said, putting his fingertips together thoughtfully and slowly nodding his head. She wondered if his technique was as transparent to other people as it was to her.

“And how do you feel about this?” he asked.

She looked at him incredulously. “It isn’t obvious?”

“I’d rather you told me so there is no misunderstanding.”

She shrugged. Why not? “All my life my mother has taken away everything I loved or had an attachment to. My toys…my dog, my cats, my parakeet that I raised from a fledgling…even my father. And now she wants to take my baby away,” she paused and looked away, her face shadowed. “I’d rather be dead.”

“So you are angry with her?” the doctor prompted.

“I’m not allowed to be angry,” she replied.

“Then you are feeling hurt…betrayed?”

“I’m not allowed to be hurt…or to cry.”

“So what are you feeling, then?” he queried.

She looked back at him, steely-eyed. “Nothing.”

A week passed. She learned the routine of the ward, was befriended by a pregnant inmate near her own age, Pat, and was informally adopted by an older woman who had always wanted a daughter, Nan, who had made a suicide attempt to escape her abusive husband. Pat and Nan seemed lucid and well-grounded, just victims of circumstances beyond their ability to control and she felt a kinship with them and their situations. Nan, in particular, she empathized with. A woman with no real education, no work experience, and a minor child at home, Nan was wholly dependent on her abusive, miserly husband who treated her like a servant and kept her without any kind of funds. She was amazed at Nan’s ability to be cheerful and caring with the others in the ward whereas she was so wrapped in her own misery and fear, she could think of little else.

Visiting hours brought Pat’s boyfriend and his buddy Rich, a cute red-headed Marine who, because he felt like a fifth wheel with Pat and Rod, chatted with her. Nan’s husband arrived and she was astonished to see that the man was in a wheelchair, his body bent and gnarled with rheumatoid arthritis. But Nan’s fear of the man was palpable, her normally sunny disposition transformed into a grey timorousness. It was strange to see someone transform before her very eyes, to become someone she barely recognized, just because a certain person entered the room. She wasn’t sure how to take it…and she wondered if the same thing happened to her…and then her Mother walked in.

She felt herself go instantly wary, like prickly spikes had suddenly popped out all over her body and each one had a sensor at its tip. The room felt suddenly dark and close, as if it had shrunk down to just the two of them and the space they occupied. A nurse touched her on her elbow and she jumped, startled. “Your mother would like to speak with you.”

She almost stepped forward, propelled by years of compulsory obedience, then halted herself. “Do I have to?” she asked. The nurse shook her head. “I don’t want to…” She could feel a sense of panic building within, a compelling urge to cut and run for safety, but the nurse’s hand on her arm restrained her. “She is going to yell at me, call me names…”

The nurse shook her head. “Dear, if your mother causes you any distress, we will ask her to leave.”

“She won’t go. You don’t know her, what she’s like…”

The nurse patted her arm reassuringly. “Visiting hour can be stressful for some,” she said. “That’s why we bring in some of the orderlies from the men’s side,” she said, nodding at several immense white-coated men lounging in the doorways. “If your mother declines to leave on her own, these gentlemen will help her out. Now come and sit down and talk with your mother.”

“How long are you going to keep goldbricking in this place?” were Mother’s first words, spoken only after the nurse was out of earshot. “Do you have any idea what this is costing me? Christ on a crutch, you could feed the entire population of one of those banana republics on what this place charges per day!”

“What do you want?” she asked, more abruptly than intended.

“Well, 'Hi, Mom, it's great to see you too!'" her mother said sarcastically. "I want to know when you are going to stop conning these people so they will release you. I know they can let you go after 72 hours and it’s been a week, so you must be doing something so they will keep you here…playing on their sympathies or just play acting.”

She sat there silently, her mouth half open at what she was hearing.

“Don’t you give me that stupid look!” Mother hissed at her. “I know you and I know what you are up to and it’s not going to work!”

“What?” she asked, unbidden anger straining her voice. “What am I up to? I wish you’d tell me because I have no idea, myself! You think I want to be here? You think I like institutions? You think this is what I was intending?”

“Of course,” Mother sneered, one side of her blood red lips curling. “Those things you took wouldn’t kill anybody, just make you sleep for a long time. The active ingredient isn’t fatal. So if that was your real intent, you certainly botched it! But I think you knew what you were doing…in fact, I know you knew what you were doing. It was another attention-getting device, another grandstanding play, another bid for sympathy. ‘Look at poor little me, pregnant and unmarried, and my mean old mother won’t let me stay home and parade my little bastard around for the neighbourhood to gossip over. Boo hoo hoo!’”

She stood up from the table. “I think you’d better go now.”

“Not on your life, girlie. You are going to hear me out. You tell that doctor what he needs to hear and get yourself out of here this week or I will make you sorry for the rest of your days that you defied me like this!”

She turned and started to walk away from the table, her face a tight, blank mask. She heard the chair scrape as Mother abruptly stood. “Don’t you turn your back on me and walk away, you insolent little bitch!” she heard her mother say. “Come back here…get your hands off me! Just who the hell do you think you are, grabbing hold of me like this…unhand me, you son of a bitching bastard!…I’ll have your job for this…”

She closed the door to the day room and went to her bed, a very slight smile playing at the corners of her mouth.


“I hear there was a bit of a disturbance at visiting last night,” Dr. Kendall said after she had been sitting silently in his office for nearly ten minutes. “You want to tell me about it?”

She shrugged. “Nothing to tell, really. My mother came, I didn’t say what she wanted to hear, she went off. Normal.”

“That’s normal for you?” he asked.

“No,” she answered with a mirthless smile. “Normal would include her clobbering me a time or two, but even she knows not to do it in front of witnesses. Might make her look bad instead of me.”

“Did you ever hit your mother?” he asked. She shook her head. Another protracted silence enveloped the room.

“You want to tell me why you did it, then…took all those pills?” he finally said. “You nearly died, you know.”

Cocking her head, she quirked up one corner of her mouth. “That was the point, you know.”

“Was it?”

She nodded and looked down at her chewed fingernails.

“Why not look for other solutions to your problem?” he asked. “Girls get into your situation every day…they don’t try to kill themselves.”

“They obviously don’t have my mother,” she replied dryly.

“Look,” the doctor said, “you don’t seem crazy to me. In fact, you seem pretty normal, all things considered. How about I write you a prescription for some tranquilizers and spring you from this joint?”

She looked up, alarmed. “And go where?”

“Why, home, of course.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m quite serious. You don’t belong here…this place is for really crazy people who are a danger to themselves and others. You aren’t crazy and I really don’t think you are in serious danger…you’re just under a lot of stress and didn’t have an effective way to cope…”

“I don’t think you want to do that,” she interrupted softly, studying her ugly hands.

“Why not?” he asked.

She did not raise her head, but her voice was dark, heavy, bleak. “Because if I have to go back there, I’ll make sure I am not found out the next time.”