Don't Call Me Mother (17 page)

I begin to pour.

Hate Letters and Harrison

Gram tears open my letters before I get home. It doesn’t matter to her that the letters are for me. It’s her house, so the mail belongs to her.

“Why can’t I open my own mail? It’s addressed to me, see?” I wave the envelope at her. She grabs it and lifts her hand, threatening to slap me, her eyes flashing. Her lips are gray, with flecks of old lipstick. I don’t like her right now.

“Yours? Excuse me, miss, did you say ‘your’ mail? For your information, nothing in this house is yours. You are my guest. You live here because I am kind enough to invite you. Everything here is mine, do you understand? This house is mine; everything having to do with you is mine. So shut your mouth.”

A dark wave of energy emanates from the green brocade couch where she’s plunked herself down in the usual mess, glowering over the orange tip of her cigarette. The new mail bears my father’s handwriting. I’m afraid to ask her what he says, so I start to play my cello, but as usual she yells at me, telling me that I’m doing it all wrong. “Why can’t you follow what Mr. B. says. You’ll embarrass me at the next concert.”

After a while, I put down the cello and go to the bathroom with my book, forgetting about time. She comes to get me. “Get out here. We have things to do.”

I put the book away, a fine Nancy Drew mystery. I can feel the storm brewing, the way you feel a slight charge in the air as a rainstorm builds up. The clouds go from gray to green and then turn an ominous purple. She is at the purple stage now, her face twisted, her eyes dark. She pours herself a cup of coffee and tells me to sit down.

“You’re going to write to your father.”

“But I just wrote…”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to understand who he is.”

“But…”

“Shut up!” She waves his letter at me. “He says that he’s not going to pay for any of your lessons. Do you have any idea how much I spend on you? You’re old enough to tell him what you think. Now write this…”

“But these are your thoughts, not mine.”

“You shut up and mind me unless you want me to get the yardstick. Listen to this.” She pushes her glasses up on her nose and reads: “Your grandmother wants things for you that you don’t need. You need to be a child, to play and have fun. Forget all those music lessons and concerts and privileges. Fit them into the budget with the money I send…”

She looks at me and says, “See that? He’s a selfish, stingy son of a bitch, and it’s time you knew it. Pick up your pen and get ready.”

A rock sits in the pit of my stomach. I pick up the pen and the paper she shoves toward me. I know what she’ll do if I resist.

“Dear Daddy,” she dictates. “How dare you tell Gram you won’t pay for my cello lessons. Don’t you understand—I mean to make something of myself…”

My hand stays still. “That doesn’t sound very nice,” I whisper.

“You shut up! Just write what I tell you. Say, ‘If you cared about me, you would help with my expenses. I take music lessons and need to have nice clothes for the recitals. I am good in school, and… ’”

“I’m not that good.”

“Now you stop that. You are going to write what I tell you! Get busy.” She threatens me with the yardstick, and my breath gets shallow. She sits back down with it across her legs.

She dictates a nasty letter to my father, saying he’s low class and doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t have enough money and takes care of me because no one else will. He owes her money. And so on.

None of this is what I think, and I would never say it. I object, again.

She continues with a diatribe about how stingy and mean he is. She’s said this before, but not with this much rage. She paces, smoking and gesturing, thumping the floor with the yardstick. Smoke swirls around her head, and the room is gray and dark. She won’t open the blinds. She forces me to address the envelope and sign the letter “Love, Your daughter, Linda Joy.” I put a stamp on the letter and fasten it with a clothespin on the mailbox.

That week I go to school, practice, and take my lessons, all the while worrying about Daddy. Will he be mad? Will he hate me?

Two weeks later when she picks me up after school, a letter is lying on the front seat. She barely stops the car long enough for me to get in. As she whirls away, she starts in. “That son of a bitch. He’s the most horrible man I’ve ever known. And to think that he doesn’t care about his own daughter. That damn father of yours is a selfish man who doesn’t care about you. If he did, he’d help take care of you.”

“He does too care about me!” I want him to come and see me. He’s the most fun of my three parents.

“You think he’s so great because he comes around once a year? Well, other girls’ fathers make sacrifices for their daughters. What’s so great about him? Tell me what’s so great?” Her voice rises. I know she wants me to say some particular thing, but what? I’d say almost anything to get her to be quiet.

“He works. He works very hard, he told me.” We drive by some of the girls from school playing jump rope in their front yard. I wish I could join them.

“Ha! Sure, he works hard. Him and Hazel, all cozy up there in Chicago. He could come more often. He would if he cared. He could give you more money. Believe you me, he has it. He’s selfish. When we get home you’ll write him another letter.”

Every two weeks she forces me to write my father a hate letter, and he writes back. When his letters come, Gram flies into a rage, pacing up and down the living room, smoke billowing from her nostrils.

She reads aloud: “I work damn hard. Young lady, when you grow up, you’ll need to know the value of a dollar. You can’t just expect me to dole it out. I have a budget. I see that you’re getting some bad habits, like Frances. You’ll be an unhappy person if you continue. Just spend what is in your budget and no more. After all, I came up from nothing to earn my money. I decide where it will go and how much.”

She argues as if he were there with us in the room. “Came up from nothin’! You’re damn right he came from nothin’, and he is nothin’. How dare he tell me to watch my money!” Her voice rises to a hysterical pitch.

“He said it to me. See, it’s addressed to me.” I point to the salutation, “Dear Linda,” at the top of lined L& N Railroad parchment.

“You know damn well he’s talking to me. How dare he! He’s a son of a bitch, and I won’t have him taking advantage of me.”

The dining room grows dark and she doesn’t think to turn on the lights. I’m stuck on the chair next to her. I can’t leave the room. If I move, she yells. I try to become invisible, thinking of more pleasant things. I think about Keith, his warm dark eyes, how he seems to like me. I think about the curve of my mother’s cheek, and how nice it feels when she scratches my back. I wish I could be with Blanche in her garden right now. I’d like to transport myself to Aunt Helen’s house, where she’d make us some nice homemade bread and Gram would calm down, but I’m stuck here with this hateful version of Gram. She doesn’t make dinner and seems to forget that I have to practice and have homework to do. For six hours she reads and rereads his letters, examining each sentence, memorizing his angry replies as night falls.

Finally, I whisper, “Can I make us some soup, Gram?” She nods yes, and I slink from the room. I hear the snap as she turns on the lights. I get out a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and heat it on the stove. I pour it into a chipped bowl, add crackers, and bring it to her on the silver tray with fresh coffee. She folds the letters, puts them in a copper jar near the couch, and begins sipping her soup and coffee.

The next day, without explanation, she goes back to being the nice, sweet Gram who rescued me.

One night that winter, the wind rattles the house and sleet plays a staccato melody on the windows. Gram starts reading me “Annabelle Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe. I’ve never heard such a beautiful poem. As she reads, the wind seems to match the poem’s rhythm. The wind accents the ends of the verses with hearty gusts. Afterwards, Gram’s eyes grow misty and her face wistful as she talks about her life.

“I understand that you miss your father. I didn’t have any father. I used to wonder how my life would have been different if he had lived.”

I ask her about herself, hoping she’ll tell me the stories that Blanche has already told me, wondering how her version will be different.

“I was born in 1894, and my father died a few months before I was born. You have no idea how much I think about him, and my little son. He was stillborn, the cord wrapped around his neck.” She sobs quietly. “I wonder, if he had lived… I might not have had another child.” She pulls out a Kleenex. I pat her arm, worried. If she hadn’t had another child, she would not have had my mother. Then where would I be?

She goes on, wiping her eyes. “He was born in 1914. I didn’t understand anything. Let me tell you this, young lady, you be careful around men. They’ll tell you all kinds of things that make you want to, you know, get close to them, but it’s just an act. They’ll tell you they love you and all that. They just want one thing, and if you give them what they want, they’ll leave you.”

She’s always telling me about bad things I should watch out for, but I don’t really know what she means. She pauses, sips her coffee, lights another cigarette, and goes on with her story.

“Things got bad with your grandfather after your mother was born. He was an alcoholic. I hate men who drink. Eventually I left and worked in Chicago. Through my job at the glove factory, I went to England on ocean liners. Such a life—dining at the captain’s table. People back then knew how to act and what to wear. The trunk in my bedroom, remember all those stickers on it? What a life! I’d give anything to be able to do it again. Promise me when you grow up you’ll take a ship across the ocean. Of course, everything’s changed now. That was before the war. I tell you, if only Americans knew what they did to England by being pacifists. Thank God that damn Roosevelt finally got us into the war. It was a crime to let the Brits fight alone.”

“What was the baby’s name?”

“What?”

“What was your baby boy’s name?”

“Harrison. Harrison Hawkins. I wish he’d lived. Just think how wonderful it would be to have a son. To have a man to take care of me. That mother of yours—so irresponsible.”

“How old was Mother when you left for Europe?”

“That father of hers. His family, they had their noses up in the air, I tell you. Always looked down on me. But who were they anyway—people living in a little one-horse town, nobody really. Just because they owned the newspaper didn’t make them special.”

“He took care of Mommy?”

“Your mother lived with my grandmother. Your mother is named after her, Josephine. When I was still young, and before I married Blaine, I lived with her so I could graduate from high school. You will graduate from high school, I’ll see to that. Most of my brothers and sisters just got to fourth or fifth grade. Education makes a difference. It used to be that girls couldn’t even go to school. You will go to college, read, and learn history and art. You’ll find out—life will be better for you. There’s nothing like culture; not many people appreciate that.”

Gram tells me more about her life tonight than she ever has before, and for the first time I see her as a complicated person with many different emotions. I climb up to lie in front of her on the couch, stretching my body along the length of hers. She puts her arms around me, her breath ruffling my hair. Without her, I think, I would have no one. I feel her heart beating next to mine.