Don't Call Me Mother (44 page)

For a long time after my mother died, she hovered as a ghostly figure in my mind and my dreams, just as she had when I was growing up. Any day she might show up at my door wearing a jaunty hat, any day I might get on the train to go see her in Chicago. She had lived for so long in my imagination, far more alive there than in my flesh-and-blood life, that I had a hard time realizing she was truly gone. It was a relief not to have a mother who kept rejecting me. Still, she was my mother, and I grieved for her—for what we never had and never would. I had to learn to quit waiting for her to transform into the mother I kept hoping for.

For seven years I delayed setting her gravestone in the Wapello cemetery. I visited her grave once a few years after she died, ashamed that there was no stone for her. I was uncertain about what to say on the stone, but I began to realize I was delaying this final step as a way to hold on to the ghost she had always been.

For a long time I tried to find the right words to encapsulate a lifetime in a single phrase. When I visited the stone carvers, they asked me what I wanted to say. I thought for a few minutes, and then realized that, finally, I could have the last word:

Josephine Hawkins Myers,
daughter of Lulu and Blaine,
mother of Linda Joy

A fitting end to a story of mothers and grandmothers is to tell about my grandson, Miles. Amanda gave birth to him on February 25, 2003. I was in the room, helping him emerge into the world to the strains of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” Connected to us in the room were all the generations of our foremothers. I could almost see Blanche and Gram and Mother hovering around. It is said that it takes seven generations to heal a family, and Miles represents the seventh generation from the original Josephine who began it all on a patch of land near the Mississippi.

Miles is now nearly two. His eyes light up when he sees me, his face opening into a big smile. Within minutes of my arrival, he picks up one of his books and nestles in my lap. “Read,” he commands me.

I love the feeling of his sturdy body nestled next to me, the dark glow of his brown eyes. “Nana, Nana, Nana,” he repeats over and over again as he touches my cheek. My daughter says that he asks for me when I’m gone, but for some reason, I keep being surprised that he remembers me at all. My old insecurities have not completely left me. “Of course he remembers you!” Amanda laughs. “You were there when he was born.”

I read
Goodnight Moon
to Miles. This wonderful book is a gift from his Uncle Andrew, who recently married a woman who adores him. Andrew waited a long time to get married, waiting to be quite certain in his relationship, determined not to repeat the family pattern of divorce.

As Miles snuggles against me, tears fill my eyes. Amanda gives me that look that says, “Oh, Mom, you’re so sentimental.”

“It’s so beautiful—we’re the first generation in one hundred years to have this.”

“You’ll never get over parts of your past, will you?” she says tenderly, giving me a kiss.

Miles looks up at me, squinching his face like a monkey. I want to laugh and cry from sheer joy. I am the bridge between my painful past and the vibrant present.

“I love you much,” Amanda says, beaming at Miles.

“Much,” he says back, meaning, “I love you.”

I know my children have internalized the shadows of my life. We have all talked about it—too much, according to them. I have taken full responsibility for the mistakes I made, but I can’t escape the fact that my sons and daughter were damaged by them. My fifty years of internal stress and struggle about my mother, my father, and Gram—not to mention the emotional and physical violence they inflicted—has marked me indelibly, despite my great strides in healing. My children are marked, in turn, but they are doing well, living their lives, working out the kinds of problems that everyone faces as adults.

I wrote this book to honor the people I have loved, to give them life again, to honor them in memory. I offer it as a legacy and a lesson, and let it go.

Today, I feel free of the past as I cuddle Miles and kiss his soft cheek.

He giggles. “Read more.” His small finger points to the page.

“I love you,” I say before I begin: “Once upon a time…”

But Miles interrupts me. “Much,” he says, cuddling closer. “Nana.”

Afterword

A memoir is a living document. The lives described within its pages live on; the themes and story threads, the dreams and dilemmas, continue through the passage of time. If you are a memoirist, you have the opportunity to think about your story beyond the confines of the page or “what happened.” Through finding your wisdom, courage, and voice, having written a memoir, perhaps you will discover new aspects of your story and yourself. The stories that follow are all intimately connected to my memoir,
Don’t Call Me Mother,
and tell about the resolutions I was not able to discover before writing the memoir. When it was complete however, the book took on a life of its own—becoming a living document which propelled me into more growth and discovery, and allowed me to develop and flower into a more whole person.

Time Traveling in Memoir:
Encountering the Past in the Present

I’ve seen how much truth there is in William Faulkner’s famous quote “
The past is never dead
. It’s not even past.” Though our bodies live in linear time, our minds and souls can lift off from earthly realms and into thoughts, dreams, and memories, transporting us into timeless places.

Unfortunately, some of the dreams and memories that stay with us the longest may not be from our happiest times. Dr. James Pennebaker and other psychologists have said that writing about these experiences helps to heal, and can lighten the darker moments of our lives. This is true, but sometimes a new experience—such as facing our dragons—is even more effective and can amaze us with its power.

Through the years, I have reflected on the dark dreams that came from my experience living with Vera. All my life I had nightmares about Vera; my memories of her dark, spidery basement had me in their grip for decades, causing me to tremble in fear and dread. I chose to write about them, and I discovered that nothing struck me down—no lightning from the skies punished me for telling my truths. But still the dreams continued from time to time—dreams of the Kansas landscape, fields of wheat, Vera’s house, railroad tracks, and the haunting whistle of a train.

To remind the reader briefly of the story I told in chapter two of my memoir:

My grandmother bought a house for my mother and me in Wichita, moving us from the apartment in Chicago where I lived alone with my mother. The tension between them was like twisted metal wires. The fierce expressions on their faces made them look like angry mythological goddesses, and they filled the rooms with smoke and rage, piercing voices and accusations. One day this conflict rose to a peak, and Mother announced that she was going back to Chicago—alone. I threatened to cry, hoping to make her stay, but she disappeared on the train in a puff of smoke.

Afterward, Gram and I settled into a routine: I played with my dolls; she called me Sugar Pie and read books. Then Vera and her brood came calling, along with her long-faced husband, Charlie, who was Gram’s cousin, and their four kids: twelve-year-old Bruce, ten-year-old Terry, six year old Ernest, who had curly dark hair and a sweet smile, and their little sister, Betsy, who was two.

The boys buzzed around like bees, and it was a relief when they left—but the visits continued. Each time, Gram tried to make a good impression by wearing one of her nice dresses and putting on all her makeup. She bustled around the house cleaning, and she started fresh coffee. Why there was such a flurry over the lady with the knife-sharp face and her aw-shucks husband was hard to understand.

Then, one day, Gram tearfully told me that I had to go live with Vera and her family in Wheatland. I promised to be good; I begged her not to send me away.

“I’m sorry, Sugar Pie, but your parents have decided, and I have to do what they say.”

“But why?” How could she send me away with those people?

“Vera has children, and they think you’d be better off with them than with your old Gram.”

For two days she washed my clothes and packed my suitcase, tears running down her face. I tried not to cry, knowing it would upset Gram if I did. My body grew heavy with dread. I whispered my wishes to the fairies—“Don’t let them take me!”—but I was only five, and I couldn’t stop the onrush of fate.

The details of my time with Vera have already been written in the chapter. What truly stuck with me through the years, though, were Vera’s glittering eyes, the damp basement where Freddie, their sixteen-year-old friend, crawled over my small body, the frequent spankings, and the cruel teasing by her children. The fact that there was no protection from any of it. The isolation. Wondering if anyone remembered me—my parents, my grandmother? Anyone?

Many times I’ve looked at photographs of me before and after living with Vera. I have revisited pictures of myself then: a skinny thing with big eyes and a vague smile, looking a little lost. In the early years of my healing journey, Reichian therapy helped release the traumas that had tightened in my muscles and cells. I would descend to Vera’s basement, or go back to a time when she beat me, her eyes glittering in the darkness. As the years progressed, I processed much of the intensity of the trauma, but fear and anxiety were still my constant companions.

Through visits to my Iowa relatives over a period of forty years, I kept track of Vera—Charlie, of course, was our relation, and he had a brother, Davie Dee, who still lived in Iowa. During one of my summer visits, Davie Dee and his wife, Bobbie, who were in their mid-seventies, came to visit. As always, Aunt Edith rustled up some homemade cake and put on the coffee pot to perc, and we all settled in around the table. Edith kept looking at me nervously, wringing her hands. Bobbie seemed a soft-spoken and kind woman, and the usual chatting went on about weather, the river, and the price of corn. When there was a break in the conversation, Bobbie took a breath: “You know, Linda, I’m Vera’s sister.” I sat very still, the old fears coursing through my body. “But I’m nothing like Vera,” she went on to say, as if she knew my history, or perhaps had seen a flicker of dread in my eyes.

Edith finally calmed down enough to pour the coffee. She must have felt nervous about Bobbie’s showing up like that, knowing my feelings about Vera. “Linda lived with Vera for a time,” she added on my behalf.

“I know,” Bobbie said softly. I chimed in that I’d thought of finding Vera and talking with her someday. This was an era when people were being urged to confront their abusers, though I was not at all sure I wanted to do that—even the thought of Vera still sent a chill through me. Bobbie shook her head adamantly. “No, that is not a good idea. You see, she was always… different. She’s always been kind of mean. None of us sisters got along with her.”

We talked about the fact that Betsy had taken her life in her thirties. “Poor girl” was all Bobbie could say. The cake eating and weather discussion proceeded, as they do in all Iowa visits, and they did so without strain now that the hard information had been shared. Bobbie looked at me a few times with sympathy, or some emotion I couldn’t name, in her watery blue eyes. I kept looking at this kind, white-haired woman, wondering how she could be Vera’s sister.