Even though the communication this time was on paper, not via phone or in person, a huge and complex array of emotions were stirred. It got me thinking of the old days, in another life. Some days, it seems these memories must belong to another person, they are so far and away from where I am now...other days, like today, I could be seventeen again or eighteen...
Wanna go?
Bob and I went over to
his parents at least a couple times a week that year. His dad wasn’t always around, but his mom
would invite us for dinner or we’d grab a pizza together. While we were there, we’d do our laundry. His mom had encouraged me to call her Mom and
refer to his dad as Dad. Bob and I were
“the kids”. She and I spent a lot of
time together doing what Bob called women’s work while he suddenly found
himself indispensable somewhere else – usually down the street visiting a
friend or a cousin, listening to music and drinking beer. This paved for the way for a lot of one on
one conversations between his mom and I.
I was painfully shy, but she seemed to recognize that and would draw me
out at my comfort level. Besides, you
became comfortable with someone pretty quickly standing side by side folding
your underwear. She called them
unmentionables, but didn’t hestitate to comment on how lovely they were. While having her comment on my underwear,
knowing that she knew her son had also seen them and probably removed them from
my body should have mortified me, it instead just added to the acceleration of
our close relationship. Strange, but
true.
His mom taught me lots of things over those baskets of
clothes. First of all, as shameful as
this may be to admit, I didn’t have a clue how to do laundry. My mom had always done mine. Moving out at seventeen, it was a whole new
world. Bob expected me to run the
household, doing everything from grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing
laundry, to paying bills because they were what he considered women’s
work. Even then, a glimmer of my future
cynicism broke through as I wondered what exactly he considered man’s work –
since he didn’t have a job.
A domestic goddess I was not. I only knew how to cook the most basic dishes,
although he raved over whatever I put on the table, as long as it wasn’t
burnt. He may have mentioned this to his
mom, because she soon took me under her wing, giving me a crash course in all
things related to the care and keeping of Bob.
As
his mom and I mated socks and folded shirts carefully to minimize wrinkles, she
taught me about coupons and budgeting. “But
princess, when you get paid, you right away take 10% of that money and set it
aside for yourself. Don’t even let
Booker know it’s there. Let that be just
for you if you want a coffee or a book someday or some pretty to make you
smile. You worked hard for that money,
you should have something from it that is just for you. Or set it aside somewhere only you know
about… you never know when you might have an emergency.” By the same token, she urged me to set beer
and cigarette money aside for Bob the same as I would money for groceries. “Men will go crazy without their little
vices.” she said with a knowing woman of
the world smile. She went over a routine
of household cleaning with me, encouraging me to always do my chores first,
because only then would I be able to truly relax. She said a clean house was a matter of a
woman’s pride. Besides, that way Bob
would never have anything to fuss at me about.
He would just brag all the time about what a wonderful little woman he
had. And wouldn’t that be nice? Finally, she cautioned me to never talk to
Bob until he’d been awake for at least an hour, anything sooner than that was a
recipe for disaster. I thought to
myself, Honey, who are you telling?
That much I already knew.
One afternoon, months after we’d formed this little Women
of Bob’s Life club of two, I found the courage to bring up Bob’s temper. The laundry room was in the basement, out of
earshot, and a safe distance for confiding.
I mentioned how he had thrown a set of keys against the wall and cracked
the plaster. It was something fairly
small, but completely alien to me. I’d
never seen anyone handle their frustration that way. My dad didn’t even swear. He might go to the garage where he could be
alone and tinker around with his tools. If it was really bad, you’d find him on his
knees…praying.
His mom nodded reluctantly in agreement. “Yes, Booker does have his temper. His dad can be the same way.”
Shyly, wanting to get closer, not further apart, I
ventured, “Does he break things when he gets mad too?”
“Sometimes.
But let me tell you how I fixed that.” she said, pursing her lips
together firmly, her thin tan fingers deftly folding clothes as she
talked. “One night a few years back,
when we lived in Galveston, Daddy came home from his friends and he’d had way
too much to drink. He had those mean
eyes-“ she stopped, and turned to
me. “Do you know the mean eyes?” I nodded that I did. She continued, “well, he had the mean eyes
and everything he said was a curse. I
just knew there would be trouble.” She
paused. “It’s the drinking that brings
it on, you know, they’re just fine till they get their noses in a bottle. Once they do, they won’t quit till the
money’s gone. Then they’re mad at you
cause they’re broke till next pay day.”
I
nodded like I understood. Bob hadn’t had
a payday since we moved in together. He
still hadn’t found a job. I was working minimum
wage to support us.
“Well,
princess, this one night Daddy came home so ugly and liquored up. I said something he didn’t like and he threw
a special pretty of mine right against the wall. Crash!
Into about a million little pieces, you know? I yelled at him, so he broke something else. He wouldn’t stop and I was getting fed
up. This wasn’t the first time he’d
broken my things. So I decided right
then and there I’d teach that bull-headed man a lesson. I went to the cupboard and found his favorite
bottle of whiskey…hurled it right to the floor.
Ah-hah! How did he like
that? Doesn’t feel so good, does it, big
man?”
She had me spellbound. “Then what happened?” I asked.
“Well, he didn’t like that one
little bit. So he broke something
else. Then I did. We went on taking turns until the sun came
up. When we ran out of things, there
just wasn’t anything left to break. Nick, that house was a disaster!”
I waited for her to bring this
little parable full circle. I was trying
desperately to follow her; I could sense that the telling of this story was
important to her. She was trying to
teach me something. But I couldn’t for
the life of me figure out what the moral could be? What was the sense in breaking everything you
own?
“Well, after that, we had to start
over from scratch. Dishes cost money, whiskey
costs money, everything costs money. It
took months and months before we had even half of the house put back together
again.” She shook her head, lost in the
memory.
“So, did he stop breaking things?” I prodded, my blue eyes riveted on her brown.
“Well…” she hesitated. “no, but it’s never been as bad as that time
since then. He knows not to go that
far.” She dipped her head into the
basket, whether to hide her face or retrieve the last errant sock, I’ll never
know. When her face came up, it was
plastered with a bright smile. “Well,
princess, our laundry is all done. How
about if I teach you to make one of Bob’s favorite dinners? I can give you the recipe to take home.”
“Sure.” I said and smiled back.
“That’s
my girl.” she smiled triumphantly, and
paused to tuck a lock of my long blonde hair behind my ear before hugging me
briefly to her chest. As we pulled away,
she held me by the hands at arm’s length, declaring, “We girls have to stick
together, right?” and laughed. Laughing
in response, I agreed and followed her up the stairs to the kitchen.
While
she taught me to make pork chops smothered in gravy with onions, I went over
and over what she had told me in my head.
I just couldn’t make sense of it.
How exactly did she win in that scenario? That might have been the day I started to
question her seemingly tireless sunny disposition, and began to watch her face
to see if her smiles touched her eyes.
Looking back, I can only see that she lowered
her standards, or kept them low, in order to make her husband seem better, like he was
making progress. Then she could
stay. It was okay because it didn’t seem
as bad as it once was. I didn’t take all
the advice she doled out that day; I never broke up everything in the house right
along with Bob when he was in a rage.
But the lesson on denying your own reality was one I took deeply to
heart. How sad it was that she was the
one who showed me how to do it.
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