Billings, Montana, December 1976.
Winter has begun in earnest. The three inches of snow that fell overnight now rests heavy on every surface, bending pine limbs into uncomfortable positions and resting in the crotches of the maples and the elms that surround us. It is late morning, and Mom has left the house. I heard her leave. I have no idea where she went and, frankly, I don’t care. My eyes burn with the lack of sleep, and her erratic behavior has set me on edge. So I didn’t watch her go. I didn’t even answer her announcement of leaving.
I’m tired, and my frustration borders on anger, which is really the flip side of fear. Since Thanksgiving, the stereo speakers have still been her main access to the outside world. Last night she talked loudly into them all night long, first one, then the other. Strange ideas slid out of her mind and into the electronics, as she asked someone on the other end for directions for what she was to do next or queried the disembodied silent people about their activities, all spoken in a code I was not able to translate.
Since Thanksgiving she’s become obsessed by three songs: Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock,” and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Blinded by the Light.” These she plays at top volume. “That’s so people who are listening on the airwaves can’t hear who I’m talking to or what I’m saying,” she explained.
Sometimes she’ll just play these songs on our turntable; other times she’ll sing along in her off-key voice, while tears stream down her cheeks. Years later will I understand the meaning each song held for her. Neil Diamond made visible the invisibility she must have felt being married to my dad and his constant belittlement that cut away at both of us, like a raging creek eating away the soil that borders it. Simon and Garfunkel voiced her declaration of value and substance, reminding her of her strength that allowed her to survive. And Manfred Mann provided an interpretation of her experiences that seemed to be exploding inside her head, emotional firework displays of overwhelming proportions.
But right now I don’t know these things. I know only that I own the records of Neil Diamond and Simon and Garfunkel, so she plays these constantly. I am overly familiar with the tick-tick-tick of the record needle as it settles into its groove. But she has to wait for Manfred Mann to play on the radio. Luckily for her, it’s a hit song, so it plays several times a day. On the weekends, between the songs and her shouting and marching in time to the percussion, I am assaulted by sound twenty-four hours a day. Well, probably twenty-two: she sleeps, on and off, a couple of hours each day. I am sure this is how she sounds on the days when I’m at school; I know this is how she sounds at night. Therefore, my coping skills are wearing thin.
So when she leaves through the front door and tells me she’s going for a walk, I don’t really care. I just want the silence and the ability to think without interruption. I want to be able to lie on the couch with my head on my arm, my ear resting somewhere near my elbow, and listen to the blood pump rhythmically through my veins. I want to watch the snowflakes outside the window dance their way to the ground, like in Disney’s Fantasia. I just want to sleep, which I do, falling off into a blissful silence.
Brrnnggg!!! The telephone jangles me awake. It rings three times before I am able to get off the couch and run to the kitchen, lifting the wall-mounted handset to my ear. “Hello?” My tongue is thick, and my mind is thicker as I try to wake up, to focus.
“This is Officer Kelsey with the Billings Police Department,” replies an official, serious voice. “Are you Susan?”
His words zing through my sleep-addled brain, and suddenly I’m on alert. “Yes?”
“Your mom is here at Deaconess Hospital,” he says without emotion. “We’re at Dr. Haw’s office, and we’re wondering if you could come down and talk with us. When do you think you can be here?”
I glance at the clock. It is almost three. Five hours. I’ve been sleeping five hours! The knot in my stomach that began on Thanksgiving is now a constant, and it tightens once more. I assure him in the strongest voice I can muster that I will be there in fifteen minutes. I grab my mom’s car keys from the counter and pull the coat from the closet, leaving through the same front door that Mom had closed behind her.
The car keys belong to the brand-new $7,000 peach-colored Saab Mom had purchased right before Thanksgiving. It is a beautiful car with European lines and European gadgets, like heated seats and a thick plastic ring that has to be pulled up the gearshift to allow access to reverse, the only gear in which the car can be started. This car has been a source of bitter contention, because it was purchased with the divorce settlement money. Money, Dad said, he didn’t work so hard for so she could blow it in one visit to the most expensive car dealership in town. But I think that’s why she did it. He said she couldn’t swing it financially; she didn’t really care what he thought. She was a rock, and she was an island.
I’m at the hospital within fifteen minutes and swing into a parking space, the sure-footed Saab skating easily over the snow-packed surface. This is why she’d bought it; it was trusty and great on snow. Not that she ever drove far. I scan the marquee of doctors’ names and their office locations.
Dr. Haw, Psychiatrist. Third Floor.
I am embarrassed to be here. I just hope that when I ask the receptionist for directions to his office she doesn’t think I require his services. I take the elevator, turn left after the metal doors open, and walk to a set of large doors, where a sign directs me to push a button. I do and am allowed into a carpeted hallway and then . . . the following several minutes are a complete blank, a movie clip washed with acid, stolen from my memory for protection.
I think I remember her being in a small, enclosed room that extended into the hallway. I think I remember seeing her face, eyes wide and wild with fear and anger, two sides of the same coin of madness, peering out through the iron bars that guarded the opening of a small window. I think her fingers were curled tightly around those iron bars that shielded her from the rest of the world. But I also think the world was shielded from her.
Then my memory returns, and I hear her angry words follow me down the hall, unmuted by the carpet. “Don’t go back there, Susie! Don’t you go back and talk to that son of a bitch. You run! You get out of here and run. There are a bunch of liars in here, a bunch of goddamned liars. They want to kill me, and they’ll kill you too if you go back there!” Her howls increase as I continue down the hall. I don’t look back. I’m scared and embarrassed and unsettled. I have no one to turn to, I realize as I walk through the conference-room door. The one person I have always been able to count on to tell me the truth or soothe the hurts or be the rock of my foundation is the one screaming incoherently now, back in that small, iron-barred room.
Dr. Haw greets me and introduces the two police officers occupying the far side of the conference table, gazing over an open manila folder filled with official documents. This will be the first of many meetings with Dr. Haw. Over the next several years Mom will refer to him as Dr. Haw-Haw-Haw and show that sly smile while she’s doing it.
Dr. Haw looks intense, with his light blue, almost glacial-colored, eyes. But a small, apologetic smile that seems to say, “It’s too bad we’re having this conversation, but here we are,” softens his angular, serious face.
My attention shifts when one of the officers clears his throat and begins to talk. “We received a call this morning around eleven.” He tries to be calm, gentling his voice to put me at ease, but his efforts are wasted on me as my heart beats wildly and my throat constricts. I can feel my composure growing more fragile and brittle, threatening to shatter, and I hope he doesn’t see it. He leans forward on his elbows, looks at me with his brown eyes, and continues, “Evidently the woman who called was concerned about your mom. What time did your mom leave your house?”
I pause. The pause is too elongated. “I guess about nine or so.”
“When she left your house, did she say where she was going?”
I shake my head. I can’t talk. Words are lodged above my heart, and I can’t let them out or the torrent of emotion will follow, the ice dam will break.
“Do you know if she had a coat and shoes with her?”
I swallow and shake my head again, my blood pulsing evenly in my ears. I’m in trouble. I should have kept a closer watch on her. “Why?”
Dr. Haw and the officer exchange glances. It is Dr. Haw who replies, “Because when the officers received the call from the woman, your mom had been walking barefoot in the snow, knocking on people’s doors and asking to be let in because she was cold.”
I almost laugh. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” the officer replies, a smile shadowed by pity gracing his lips. “That’s why we were called. But according to the person who placed the call, she didn’t feel your mom was dangerous. The woman invited her in, offered her socks, and gave her a cup of tea, which your mom took with milk and sugar,” he adds, his smile now genuine. “And then she listened to your mom ramble on for about fifteen minutes before she called us.” He stops then, watching me for a reaction.
My initial reaction is a silent question: did she go to any of the neighbors we know? But I ask, “Where did you pick her up?”
“Three blocks from where you live.”
I exhale and feel sick to my stomach. Her behavior has begun to seep into the world beyond our house.
Oh, the secrets a family keeps behind closed lips, behind normal gestures and conversations. Children seem to know which secrets to hold dear to their hearts without ever having been told. They also know how to keep them away from the prying and intervening eyes of others. I was the keeper of such secrets.
I kept secrets of Dad’s drinking. At his worse Dad would go through a gallon of vodka in a couple of days. He always kept a flask in his back pocket or in the side pocket of his brown jean jacket, as well as in the truck’s glove box and in his desk drawer at work. One was always within easy reach. I grew adept at reading his body language, the layers of the muscles on his face, around his eyes, his mouth, watching for that muscle along his jaw to dance or seeing if his eyes shone true happiness when he smiled. All these unspoken conversations passed between him and me constantly. I was always aware of them. I don’t know if he was. I was also always aware of the spoken conversations and listened carefully when he came home at night after a day at the office. I filtered every word, every cadence of his voice, to see if he would be lighthearted or heavy-handed. Would I be talking with the funny, playful Dad? Or would I be talking to the father who would bark at me at the dinner table to shut up, to quit yammering on about things no one was interested in? I had no idea if other families interacted like this. I didn’t often go to people’s houses, and rarely did I invite friends to ours.
I kept secrets of violence. When I was fourteen I got the flu and ran a fever of 103 degrees. Dad wanted to dump me, naked, into a bathtub filled with ice. He stumbled toward me, his arm outstretched. Mom argued that the shock might be deadly. “What the hell would you know?” he yelled and lifted the back of his palm near her face. Her eyes grew wide, and she ducked his reach and grabbed for the wall phone, dialing 911 with shaking hands. He reached around her and pulled the phone off the wall, leaving a hole that exposed the multicolored, now dead, wires.
As far as I know he never actually hit her. I think the threat of reprisal was too threatening for him. She was a good hunter, and she was not afraid of guns. It may have scared him to think of what might happen if he pressed her too far. So the wall was patched and the phone put back into place, and I got better and Dad moved out.
“We’re going to keep your mom here for three days,” Dr. Haw explains, as I fight my way back from the daydream. “We’re going to see how she’s behaving and hopefully we’ll be able to get her feeling better.” He pauses. “Has she been acting like this for a while?”
I shrug and nod, not wanting to be this honest; not seeing how I can’t.
“A week?”
“More.”
“A month?”
“At least.” I stop talking because the secrets are pushing at the back of my throat, threatening to come out my eyes in the form of tears.
He lets me regain my composure by continuing his conversation. “Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see her until tomorrow. We’ll get her settled into a room and give her a chance to adjust. Then you can come and see her. Do you go to school?”
I nod.
“Then we’ll see you tomorrow, after school.”
I leave and Mom’s violent cursing greets me in the same hallway, her face contorts in fear and anger at my betrayal and threatens all forms of abandonment. Only when the heavy doors shut behind me does her voice stop. Or maybe I just can’t hear it anymore. Although my heart beats wildly and my stomach lurches and my knees threaten to buckle, I continue walking, out to the car that will take me back to the stiflingly silent house. Only when I get into the car and pull the door shut do the tears run, uncensored, down my face and into my lap. The loneliness is the worst.
But loneliness is a price I am more than willing to pay to keep Dad in the dark about her break with reality. I don’t want to live in a house where it’s just him and me. So I don’t call him. I don’t call him to say, “Hi”; I don’t call him to ask for money; I don’t call him to tell him about Mom’s hospitalization. I just don’t call.
It turns out that the three days Dr. Haw said he would confine Mom is actually a seventy-two-hour involuntary psychiatric hold. To put that involuntary hold into place, patients must present a grave danger to themselves or to others. Mom, walking barefoot in the snow and knocking on strangers’ doors asking to be let in, met those guidelines. The hold is designed to allow doctors to diagnose and begin to treat the mental illnesses that place people into dangerous situations. I imagine those seventy-two hours provided Mom a feeling of almost overwhelming safety; she’d opted to remain on the psych ward, voluntarily, for two weeks.
The next two weeks are a blur, and she appears in my memory as a series of photographed still lifes, a slideshow of how she conducts her day when I’m around. My earliest visits find her in her hospital room, sitting on the edge of the bed. She’s calmer (the meds have kicked in), but she’s still saying things that don’t make sense, about people watching her, people she can’t trust because she doesn’t know who they’re reporting to. A man shuffles by outside of her door, and I am concerned for her safety.
After a few days I drop by when she’s in art-therapy class, a room with a long table and a linoleum floor and several people. There is a box of cheap watercolors in front of her, and she mixes these as she has mixed hues all her life, carefully in the tin cover, swirling, dipping, swirling until she lays the brush to paper, a child’s coloring book, and begins filling in the spaces between the lines. Or she’s cutting snowflakes with safety scissors, the same ones used in kindergarten and first grade. She carefully snips intricate shapes and patterns, her eyes intent on her art. Then she unfolds the paper and holds it up to me with a proud smile. As time moves on she paints the prestamped design of a leather belt.
And she does this all quietly, mechanically, as do the others in this group-therapy class. Every so often there are minor eruptions of inappropriate mutterings, shouted words, and deranged sentences strung together with no verbal punctuation whatsoever. Everyone else seems unfazed at these behaviors, even the teachers, going about their business as usual. I, however, watch with growing uneasiness as these patients wander without purpose and do the things children in elementary school do, their blank stares focusing inward as they speak and interact with whomever they think about at that moment. I remain unseen in their world. Sometimes Mom acts just like the rest of them.
How does anyone get better in this place? That is the question that keeps bobbing to the surface as I watch Mom in this world, as I give her a nod and an approving smile of the newest painting she shows me. There is no pressure to act any differently. What if she starts acting like this all the time? What if she never comes back from the edge of this particular abyss?
Mom’s been at the psych ward for several weeks. Although she checked herself out a couple of times, those departures never lasted more than a few days. Then she’d return and check herself back in. When I ask why, she says she feels safe there.
One day when I arrive, a girl of about twelve years of age is talking to Mom, her words and body animated. With Mom’s greeting, the girl turns her hyperactive attention to me, and I watch in fascination as her jade-green eyes dart back and forth, taking in every nuance of movement between Mom and me. I can tell by her speech and actions that delusions can take this young girl at a moment’s notice; nothing holds her attention long. A few days later Mom relays what the girl has told her in one of her more lucid moments. Her mother, she’d explained, was a prostitute, so addicted to heroin she’d turn tricks on dirty mattresses left in the alleyways of downtown. The daughter was always within hearing distance for safety but was required to turn her back so she wouldn’t see what her mom was doing. But she knew. The daughter began turning her own tricks the previous year, when she was eleven. She’d begun to take drugs soon after. That was why she was in the psych ward. One of the drugs she’d taken had given her a really bad trip. Although I listen intensely, I think, But she’s crazy! Who knows if what she’s saying is really true?!
We learn at such young ages to explain away those things we don’t want to confront. I didn’t want to confront the possibility that an eleven-year-old girl was prostituting herself and taking drugs to dull that pain. That was not a world I knew anything about. I didn’t want to know anything about that world.
Mom is released a few days before Christmas, and I am overjoyed. I buy a tree and together we decorate it with the Mom’s handblown glass bulbs, lights, and tinsel. We put out our traditional pieces of Christmas: the stockings, the candles. We drink hot chocolate, and we smile, we laugh. Just like old times. This is going to be a great Christmas, I think, a true homecoming. As I hang the tinsel on the outstretched greenery I realize it’s been four months since last August’s garage sale, that Mom has been “normal,” that we have been normal. Therefore, it’s been four months since I’ve felt grounded. So I believe that Christmas, and its roots in traditions, will make our reunion more powerful.
Except Christmas is not meant to be. The world becomes scary again, and Mom readmits herself the day before Christmas. Dr. Haw is not surprised and assures me it is the best place for her. I have no recollection of Christmas Day. Perhaps I’d sat at home or spent it with Mom at the hospital or gone to a friend’s house. But that memory of what I’d done, or where I’d been, is gone, irretrievably gone. I do remember begging Dad not to come from North Dakota for Christmas, and thankfully, he agrees to stay where he is. He does not want a repeat of Thanksgiving; I’m very sure of that. And he has no idea that Mom is hospitalized.
The day after Christmas I take down all the decorations and place them carefully away in their proper boxes. I vacuum and dust the house; I wash the walls and mop the floor. I clean the bathroom, scrubbing the tub, the sink, and the toilet, polishing the chrome until it shines like a mirror. I wash the windows with water and cornmeal, letting them dry a bit until rubbing them clean with newspaper, the way mom had taught me. I do it all to take away my fear, so I don’t have to think about the unknown future. I do it so something feels normal.
But I tell myself that I do it so it will be clean when she comes home. She does so in late January. She’s the same, except she’s “gone” a lot, difficult to reach and difficult to interact with. I continue going to school and now am thankful I don’t have to leave my first-period class for the regularly scheduled hospital meetings about my mom. Kids were beginning to wonder why I had been gone so much. So I had evaded any possible questions by putting my heart and soul into orchestra and choir practice, where there’s little time to talk. Now I drive to school instead of taking the bus, so my time with curious people is limited. And I’m unavailable after school. I come home, fix a snack, and do nothing. I don’t even tell my best friend about the craziness. When we see each other, I act as if everything is okay, same as always. But within a couple of weeks Mom begins playing the late-night records again, turning the volume up and yelling into the speakers. And my heart is crushed. What more can happen?
I awaken one night with Mom violently shaking my shoulder. “Susie! Hurry! You’ve got to wake up!”
My whole body vibrates as I try to come out of my torpidity, forcing my eyes open to the blackest of nights and wondering how long I’d been sleeping. My clock says it’s two in the morning. I went to bed at eleven.
“Come out to the living room, quickly!” Mom whispers, her words harsh and frantic in their appeal. Without question I pull on my robe and follow her along the short hall to the living room. All the lights are turned off, and the stereo is silent. Mom kneels down by the couch, getting as small as she can, and peers through our picture window. Our house sits high on the hill, near the rimrocks, and only the tallest tree tops, now bare in deep winter, block an otherwise uninterrupted view of the city.
“Do you see that?” Mom asks, pointing to the disjointed blinking red lights in the sky. “What do you think those are?” I hear the paranoia in her voice, and my stomach tightens. She looks at me, anxious and worried. Even in that darkness I see the blackness of her irises.
Here we go again.
“Well, I’ll tell you what those are,” she answers in my silence, her words staccato, jumping too quickly from her mouth. “Those are the Japs coming to bomb us, to get even for World War II. And you know what?”
I shake my head, dreading the explanation to come.
“Your father’s fighting for those sons of bitches! He’s getting ready to bomb our house.”
“How do you know this,” I ask, my voice hesitant, adrenaline rushing through my system, pitting my stomach even more. She points with her chin to the speakers. “They told me.”
“Who? Who told you?” I try to calm my voice, but anxiety creeps into other parts of being, my psyche.
“I don’t know their names; they never tell me their names.” The explanation is fast, her words whiz by my ears in a flurry, so fast I can’t decipher everything she says. “It’s all in code. They said your father would be flying over our house, and a bomb would drop, and we needed to get out of here.” She starts to move around the room, frantically looking for something, but then stops and cocks her head. Tired, sick, sleep-deprived, I have reached my limit of her nonsense.
“I’m going to bed.” My words are tinged with anger, as my heart fractures yet again at her expression, which now becomes one of hurt and betrayal. But I go to bed anyway, only to be wakened again by her insistent shaking. Judging by the darkness, I have been asleep only a matter of minutes.
“Your father’s dead.” Mom whispers, her voice gentle. “His plane just went down. It just came on the news.”
The news! Now that was real. The news wouldn’t lie. “What happened?”
“It was somewhere in North Dakota. He was flying back from one of his trips to DC, and it was in a small plane. But don’t cry. He’s in a restful place, finally.” She pauses and her voice hardens as she sees a strip of moisture trail down my cheek. “Don’t you dare waste any tears on him; he certainly didn’t waste any on you or me. Go back to sleep; we’ll talk in the morning.”
Surprisingly, I fall asleep, and in the morning she tells me to go school as usual. She’d make the necessary funeral arrangements.
In orchestra practice I tell a friend about my dad’s death, but I don’t cry. I can’t. It’s as if it is happening to someone else. He looks at me, his brows pulled together in concern. After a few moments of being unable to reply, he asks, “Why the fuck are you at school today?”
I have no idea.
Two days later when I come home from school, I am met by a note that’s been left on the kitchen counter. I would never recognize the handwriting as Mom’s, whose cursive has always been neat with deliberate scrolls. She’d learned penmanship in the 1930s, back when it mattered. This note is covered with scrawled words, shaky, jagged, and nearly illegible. It reads that she would be flying to Great Falls to see the Charles M. Russell Art Museum. She would be back by five.
Mom hates to fly. None of this makes sense. I check her bedroom. She hasn’t packed; her suitcase is still in her closet, and all her clothes are untouched. No toiletries are missing from the bathroom. Only her purse is gone. It is three-thirty. She will be back in an hour and a half, I think. But she isn’t. She isn’t back at five, at six, or at seven. I call the airline at seven thirty. I introduce myself and relay my relationship to my mom and explain the situation. “Can you tell me if she got off the return flight?”
“Ma’am,” the female voice drawls, “I can’t give out that information.”
“But she’s my mom. She hasn’t returned, and I need to know where she is.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” comes the rehearsed answer. “But I am not allowed to give out that information.”
“Can you tell me if she got on the plane in Great Falls to fly to Billings?” Panic centers over my heart.
“I can neither confirm nor deny your mother’s reservation on this flight.” I plead for her assistance. She answers with a clipped, “Call the police,” and hangs up. I hold the phone in my hand and begin to shake as the dial tone hums in my ear.
I call the police department; the information is written down with the statement, “Someone will get back to you.”
There is nothing more anxiety-ridden than waiting in a silent house for a mother, who has flipped out in every meaning of the word, to come through that door. Adrenaline travels at light speed along every nerve with each passing moment; fear settles deep in my bones. The only sound is the rhythmic tlock . . . tlock . . . tlock of the German cuckoo clock. When the bird exits the small doorway at the top and cuckoos on the hour, it is startling. At some point in the night I descend into a kind of madness of my own. I walk to my bedroom and gather together the five music boxes I own. I wind them up, one by one, and let them play; their mismatched tones and ugly cacophony are peculiarly soothing. They fill the silence. And that’s all I want.
It’s amazing what can be hidden from friends, neighbors, the world. I call Dad’s boss’s home number, but his wife answers. She tells me that Dad is still in Minot, but didn’t I have his number?
“I lost it,” I lie. She gives it to me, and I scribble it. Just in case I need to get ahold of him for some reason. Like if she dies.
It’s difficult for me to reach out. Our family has always been very private. Both of my parents dedicated themselves to keeping aloof from neighbors. “People are too damn nosy,” Dad would say if someone came to the door to say, “Hi,” or if they called on the phone. He didn’t initiate contacts, and he didn’t accept friendships. And Mom didn’t show any interest in having the neighbors be anything but, well, neighbors. And neither is close with whatever remaining family they have left in Ohio. I write down the number she gives me, just in case. And I continue to behave as if everything is fine.
It’s been two weeks since the police called to tell me they were still looking for Mom. One morning I am called out of my first-period aeronautics class to take a phone call. I am to meet with an officer at the police department who has turned up some information. It turns out Mom had indeed flown to Great Falls that day. Then, instead of returning home, she purchased a plane ticket to Houston. She then jetted over to Baton Rouge but returned to San Antonio, Texas, a few days later. They’ve established contact with officers in “San Antone” who have reported her patterns: she stays in her hotel room all day, probably sleeping. She eats breakfast in the attached restaurant, and at night she leaves and just walks around. She doesn’t interact with anyone; she keeps to herself. She’s not causing any trouble, the officer assures me. And I know I should be thankful she’s safe, but I want her home.
A few days later I receive a phone call from Montana Power wanting me to pay a delinquent bill. Who knows how long it hasn’t been paid? I explain that I have no money and my mom has left, and I didn’t know when she was going to get back. “She just walked out,” I tell the woman, nervous that the heat will be shut off in this early February winter. The caller says she’ll make a note and keep it on file to keep the heat on. Surprisingly, I don’t receive a call from the phone company or the water company, and even more surprising is the fact that nothing gets turned off. I’m not paying bills because I don’t know how bills are paid.
One day Dr. Haw calls to say he just got word from the police department that Mom’s been gone. He’s had no idea that she wasn’t living at the house. “How long has she been gone?”
“About a month.”
“You’ve been by yourself for a month?” His voice is incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing for heat, for the utilities?”
I explain the conversation with Montana Power, but I can’t explain why I’ve received no other phone calls, yet the utilities continued.
“What are you doing for money?”
“I have a checking account with a couple hundred dollars in it.”
“What are you doing for food?”
“I shop for cans of soup, stuff like that. I’m fine.”
“Do you need anything? Groceries?”
“No thank you,” I say. Mom has made it clear my entire life that we are never to accept charity. We’re too proud for charity. “I’m fine.”
He pauses, then asks, “Will you tell me if you need anything?”
“Yes. But I’m fine.”
I don’t recall Dr. Haw calling me again after that.
It is a lot of work to be isolated. Especially for me, since I am an outgoing person. To hold a secret is something that doesn’t come easily, unless the price to be paid is too high. This is what I know: I have no idea when, or if, Mom will come home. My life has been quiet since Dad’s been living in Minot. There is no yelling, no screaming, no verbal battering, no emotional sparring. But it’s so quiet, and I do anything to keep the stifling silence at bay. I turn on the radio and fall asleep to the music, or I don’t fall asleep and listen to Mystery Theater late into the night. Or I read until three or four o’clock in the morning, with the light on to tell people someone lives here. Or at my worst times I wind up the music boxes. Because if I don’t do these things the thoughts, the doubts, the uneasiness, the queasiness comes, and the “what ifs” start. What if Mom doesn’t return? What if someone at school finds out that I have no parents living with me? What if someone calls social services because my parents have abandoned me? Like my “real” family, a small voice whispers. But I haven’t thought about them in a long time; I’ve been too absorbed in worry about the family I have. Or what’s left of it.
At the end of February I come home to footprints. They plod across our driveway, up the concrete stairs, through the wrought-iron gate, into the backyard, and across the unbroken field of snow. My heart pounds because two years previous someone had robbed the house while we were on vacation, walking off with our TV, my parent’s silver tea set, and who knows what else. In a panic I run to the home of a close friend. “Can I stay here tonight?” I ask Danae’s mother, whose mouth suddenly turns down in annoyance at my request.
“I’m sure it’s nothing but the meter man,” she says, brushing me off. “You’ll be fine. Just go home.”
Irritation floods her words, and I am embarrassed to be begging for safety. “There’s nobody at home, and our house got broken into a couple of years ago. I’m really scared to be there by myself.”
“Why isn’t there anyone at home? Where’s your mom?”
“San Antonio.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“North Dakota.”
“Why aren’t they taking care of you?” Her tone is suspicious, and I can tell she’s upset that someone else’s problems have landed on her doorstep. Her expensive doorstep. She lives in one of the more exclusive developments.
I have no answer for her, but I listen to her huff and puff as she pulls on her boots and her coat. “Fine,” she answers, in a way that makes it clear my request has put her out. “I’ll walk over with you, and you’ll see it’ll be fine.” Her words are clipped, and her voice carries the frigidity of cracked ice.
The snow creaks beneath our boots as we walk, silent, through the cold. I struggle to keep up with her hurried pace. When we arrive at our driveway, she marches up the stairs, through the gate, and around the backyard, stopping to say, very pleased, “See? It was just the meter man. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be afraid of.” She stands with her hands on her hips, her breath rising lazily into the night air.
But I am afraid. And I’m embarrassed that I’m being made to feel ashamed of that fear, the very real fear of people breaking in, of being by myself through yet another long and painfully endless night, of the sounds that I hear and can’t explain, the creaking and groaning of an older house. And those are only the fears I can openly talk about. I can’t say the thing that frightens me the most: what if Mom doesn’t come back? “Please?” I am begging now.
Danae’s mother’s lips grow thinner, and her eyes are like blue flint. She exhales in total frustration. “Okay,” she says, “You can stay with us one night, but you’ll have to figure out what to do from here on. I can’t take you in.”
We trudge back to her house in silence, and the way she carries herself, three steps ahead of me, her body movements jerky and abrupt, screams anger. We enter in through the side door, and she leads me to the guest room, flings open the door, and points to the bed. I am so thankful to be here that truly I don’t really care how she speaks to me. I have one night that I don’t have to worry.
The following day I see my best friend, Cari, between classes. “Where were you last night? I tried to call you a bunch last night but you didn’t answer.”
“I came home and saw footprints by my house, so I went to Danae’s. I just didn’t want to be by myself.”
“Why would you be by yourself?” Cari asks, with a smile, as if I’m telling a joke. But I’m not, and the smile disappears when I talk about Mom leaving and how afraid I was after our house got broken into. I told her about Danae’s mother’s reaction and how upset it had made me. Cari looks at her hands and begins picking at the invisible hangnails that materialize anytime she gets uncomfortable in a situation. And I swallow because these days I seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable. She stays quiet for a long time and doesn’t look at me, but finally she shakes her head. “That was rude,” she says. I silently agree. And we don’t talk any more about it.
When I arrive home from the school the following day, I am met at the door by Cari’s mother, who’d pulled up in her Honda Civic and waited for me. She’s holding a suitcase, and I ask her why. She smiles, the gentle smile I’ve always seen her wear, and says, “Let’s go in and pack some clothes. You’re going to be staying at our house until your mom comes back.”
I’m embarrassed that I’ve put someone else out yet again because of my questionable welfare. “That’s okay,” I assure her, knowing Cari had filled her in. “I’m okay.”
“I’m sure you are,” she answers, as she follows me into the house. “But this is no place for a young girl to stay all by herself.” She cocks her head to one side and smiles, and her bright blue eyes tell me everything is going to be fine.
“How long have you been here without your folks?”
“Since the middle of January.” Well, really, since Thanksgiving, on and off, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I had to take care of the house.”
She laughs, an easy laugh that I haven’t heard from an adult in a long time. “Well, the house will take care of itself,” she says, as she goes into my room and starts opening drawers and tossing socks and underwear in the suitcase. “Go through your closet and grab whatever you want to bring with you.” Shirts, pants, and dresses go first, followed by shoes and a couple of stuffed animals. “Make sure you have enough,” she advises. “It may be awhile.”
“But I don’t even know where she is,” I admit quietly, holding the lump in my throat at bay.
“Then you’ll stay with us until all of this gets straightened out.” She smiles again, and I hold back the tears that can come now that finally someone is in control. “This isn’t up for discussion.”
I live with them for perhaps two months. I live with them while snow still lies on the ground and while the sun comes out and turns the leaves green. I live with them until one day I receive a phone call from Dad, whose anger is palpable.
“How long has your mom been gone?” he demands.
I try to be as evasive as I can, but I end up telling him, “January.” I don’t tell him about Thanksgiving and December. He will just be angrier with me for not saying anything sooner.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? What have you been doing all this time?”
“I’ve been living here, taking care of the house, going to school,” I explain, irritation edging my voice.
“Well, I had to find out from one of my co-workers that you’ve been living by yourself, and I wished to hell you’d have told me.”
I have no idea how anyone knew that. The woman who gave me his phone number? Anyway, my cover’s blown. He tells me in terse tones that he’ll be in Billings within the week. And I am livid and I am scared. My time with Cari’s gentle, intact family will be coming to an end.
A week later Cari drives me home, and I unpack and Dad and I have stilted conversations. He makes it clear I’m going to take over Mom’s duties. After school I’m to clean and vacuum the house and do laundry, iron his work clothes, and cook the meals. “What have you been living on?” he asks, as he opens the empty refrigerator.
“Soup,” I reply. “And cereal.”
“Well, we’re going to have regular meals, starting tonight. I want you to make something.”
I prepare the recipe I found on the back of a Campbell’s cream-of-mushroom soup can: dilute the soup and pour it over cooked rice. Dad is furious. He tells me how to make a stew, which he wants the following night. It turns out badly. All my meals turn out badly. I don’t like to cook because, although Mom did offer to teach me, I’ve never learned how. And I am not going to start now, screams my silent resistance.
On Saturday Dad wants me to cut his hair, like Mom used to do. “Just trim it over the ears and off the neck.” So I do, but the line is jagged, and he’s upset that I didn’t do it right. In fact, nothing I do is right. It reminds me of his drinking days, even though he has been sober nearly two years. He’s still a very angry, very critical, very unpredictable person, and I loathe doing these things, not for us, but for him. I don’t see it as my role; I don’t see it as my duty. And the resentment builds, like the pressure before an earthquake.
The next week is no better, so he decides one Saturday to lecture me on my shortcomings, which are significant. Then I begin to walk out, and he tells me to sit down and listen. So I throw myself into the La-Z-Boy and I listen. But I’ve learned a trick: if I stare at a spot, a picture on the wall, a ridge in the carpet, a brick on the fireplace, until it wavers and disappears, his voice disappears also. I no longer hear him. So that’s what I do; I stare until his words become muffled, the vowels and consonants disappearing into the air between us. But I see movement out of the corner of my eye, and his body has risen from the couch and is striding toward me at lightning speed. His face is pulled taut, his pupils black dots, his veins stand out against his suntanned skin. Anger oozes out of him like sweat on a hot day. I don’t wait to see how fast he’ll reach me, but instead I jump up and bolt for the front door. The knob is immobile in my hand, and panic rises into my throat. The door is locked. And the look on his face is pure rage. I try to unlock it but my hands shake, and I realize, with a sickening feeling, escape is no longer an option.
He reaches for my arm. I fall. He grabs my leg and pulls me toward him, and I scream. I kick and I scream. And suddenly I feel the palm of his hand across my face, and the skin is hot where his hand has been. I am mute. But I’m not crying.
“What in the hell’s wrong with you?” he yells. “You’re a crazy person!”
I pray then, as I lie on the floor. I pray fervently, passionately. I pray as I’ve never prayed before for Mom to come home.
A short time later, perhaps two days, perhaps two weeks, she calls. She’s bought an airline ticket to Billings. That is the one thing I do mention to Dad, because he’s got to find another place to live. This house is no longer his.
It is July and Mom and I have moved to a small apartment, a vast step down from our house on the hill. She sleeps almost all the time, and I move like a ghost in her presence. Although she wasn’t there to celebrate my birthday, she did attend my graduation, purchasing a set of blue Samsonite luggage for when I’d leave for college this coming fall. She also bought me a graduation dress at Sears, an empire-waist dress of white eyelet lace trimmed by black velvet.
I graduate with over seven hundred other students; you can imagine how many parents are there. I see her, though, sitting by herself on the second tier. And she smiles and waves. She tries to look happy, but she’s sad. She’s saying good-bye to an important role, being a mom I need.
But I wave back. I still need her.
“You know,” she says to me one day as I sit with her on her bed, “when I was in San Antonio, I never felt so free. I walked around all those streets in the early morning hours, and no one ever bothered me. I was never attacked; I was never threatened. It was like the light of God kept me in a bubble. It’s amazing really.”
I am here beside her because this is the only time we get a chance to visit. She sleeps a lot, and when she’s not sleeping she keeps to herself. Sometimes I offer to read to her, but after a few pages she covers her eyes with her arm and goes to sleep. Even when she’s awake she’s not fully engaged. Her eyes are no longer black; they’ve returned to the soft brown they’ve always been. But she always looks tired. I’ve been here only for about fifteen minutes when she lays on her back on the bed and covers her eyes with the crook of her elbow.
“You know, Jesus talked to me while I was down there.” Her voice is quiet, studied. There’s no awe, just a statement. I have no reply, so I’m quiet. “I was out on the eighth-story balcony, and below me was a kidney-shaped pool. ‘You can fly,’ his voice said. ‘You can fly and I’ll make sure you land in that pool. You won’t get hurt.’”
She stops then and looks at me. Her face takes on the look of one who has seen Jesus, who has been saved and seen the light of his salvation. There is veneration, a glow, a look of gentle astonishment. “I started to climb the little rail on the balcony, and I stood there. I stood there on that rail and knew that if I jumped, I would indeed fly and he would guide me all the way down to that pool that looked so small from where I stood.”
She pauses, and I am suddenly aware my breathing has stopped, and a pit in my stomach has begun to pitch.
“But you know, I decided not to do that then. I climbed back down and went in and lay down on the bed.” She replaces her arm over her eyes and is silent for a long time. Then, as if I am no longer in the room, she says quietly, “It’s amazing to think what almost happened.”