Her Mother's Daughter (50 page)

On Christmas Eve afternoon, Belle would roll up the children's hair in paper and send them up to bed for a nap at four o'clock in the afternoon. They could never sleep. They would lie there talking about what Joy would get and what there would be to eat. And for years Joy asked a lot of questions about Santa Claus. Anastasia had discovered the true identity of Santa Claus the first time she laid eyes on him, when she was two. She pointed to the familiar face under the red cheeks, the beard and mustache, and said “That's Uncle Eddie!” But she had been asked to keep the secret from the younger children, and she did. Joy continued to believe there was a real Santa Claus until she was six or seven, and now Ingrid and Errie had to be protected from the truth.

At seven o'clock, Mommy would get them up and they would put on their best clothes, and she would comb their hair in spaghetti curls, and they would all go out when it was dark and get in their car (if they had one) or Uncle Eddie's and drive to Aunt Jean and Uncle Eric's house. Their tree would always be bigger than Belle and Ed's: their house was bigger too. Ingrid and Errie and now the new baby, Dorothea, would be dressed up too, their eyes wide and sparkling, waiting. They had to wait a long time, while the grown-ups talked and sipped drinks; the children would play a little, but not much, because they were too nervous. At the stroke of midnight, one of the grown-ups—it was usually Uncle Wally—would look out the window and cry out—“Look who's here! I just saw him flying over the roofs across the street!” and all the little children would scream and run to the window, Anastasia following them for the appearance. And then the doorbell would ring and in he would come. Santa Claus! The children would shriek, and he would say “Ho, ho, ho,” and Anastasia would look to see which one it was this year—Uncle Eddie, Uncle Eric, or Daddy—and he'd be carrying a huge white bag full of toys. Anastasia knew that none of the toys was for her.

Santa would come into the living room and sit down, and the grown-ups would be giggling and offer Santa something to drink, or something to eat and this was funny because whoever it was couldn't eat or drink with that white mustache and beard pasted on his face, and he'd laugh too. And then he'd give out the presents. Joy always got a doll; and maybe a little carriage and blanket, and sometimes a dress from Eddie and Martha. Ingrid usually got three dolls plus lots of other things. Errie would get erector sets, and trains, and all kinds of mechanical toys, and the living room floor would slowly fill up with piles of presents, all toys. When it was her turn, Anastasia would shyly accept her present. She always got a book from Mommy and Daddy: sometimes she got one from Jean and Eric, and one from Eddie and Martha, too. But sometimes Anastasia got a blouse or a dress from Jean and Eric, and then she nearly cried. She would gaze over at the huge mound of toys her cousins had received and wonder why she couldn't have the little she wanted: books. One year, Eddie surprised her and gave her a whole stamp collection—two almanacs, stamps, a magnifying glass, and pasters. And he showed her how to use it: Eddie had a very fine stamp collection, Mommy told her. And once Eddie gave Joy and Anastasia necklaces he had made himself of stone he had found in the mountains, and polished, and strung together. Anastasia wished it had been a book.

The Christmas of 1941 when Anastasia was twelve, she asked for two things. She knew she wouldn't get both, but she couldn't decide which she wanted more. One was, surprisingly, a doll. She had seen it in a store in Jamaica when they were shopping before Christmas. It was a child, not a baby doll, and it came in a trunk with hangers, and you could buy clothes for it. She explained to her mother: “I know I've never liked dolls, but I like this one. I love the little trunk and the hangers. Maybe I could sew clothes for it if you helped me. It's probably my last chance to have a doll, because I'm almost grown up now. This would be the only doll I'd ever have.” The other thing she wanted was a printing press.

In the weeks preceding Christmas, Anastasia sensed an excited tension in the house in the evenings. Daddy was always down in the cellar—well, he usually was when he was home—but Mommy did not usually worry that she might go down there. She only went down to sharpen her pencils on the sharpener Daddy had hung above the second step down, anyway. But there was rustling and putting things away if she came downstairs at night. Still she never expected what she got. That was the most wonderful Christmas Anastasia ever had, and the first one she didn't feel envious of her cousins.

She got the doll: it was about a foot tall, and made to look about nine years old. She was wearing a brown-and-white check dress with a white pinafore, and a bonnet to match. But in the trunk, hanging on the hangers, were a little pale pink chiffon dress with embroidery roses at the neck, and a grey velvet coat with real fur on the collar, and a hat to match, a beret with a fur pom-pom. Anastasia turned these clothes over in her hands. She recognized the fabrics—they were from old clothes of Mommy's that had been put away in the trunk. The clothes were beautiful; as she examined them, she saw the many tiny stitches Mommy had made so that the clothes were exquisite, like real clothes, with tiny little seams and edges. They had tiny white pearl buttons and minuscule buttonholes, all beautifully stitched. And she knew it had taken Mommy many many hours to make this for her. And besides that, Mommy had made an identical set for Joy, who had the same doll, except hers was wearing a pink dress.

But then, she got
another
package, and as she opened it, she felt something excited come up in her heart. For there was the press, and ink and a stack of paper in it, and a flat wooden box that might have been a cigar box, with a hinged lid with a screw fastener. And inside that box were forty compartments, each one holding a different character. And she understood that her father had made this for her, and that his making it had been his own idea. For she could envision how it happened.

Mommy would have bought the printing press and shown it to him in the evening, after the children were in bed. And he would have examined it carefully, the way he always did, picking up pieces and parts and seeing how they worked, and deciding whether it was well-made or not. And all the type probably came in a single little bag, all tossed together. And he would exclaim, “Terrible! She'll never be able to use this. It will take her hours to find each character, whatever one she's looking for.” And he would sigh heavily. And Mommy would look at him questioningly. And he would mutter and carry the whole thing down to the cellar, and look around for something to use as a container. And then he inset, into the wooden box, all these tiny compartments, and did it so well that the inserts were solid and secure. Then he had separated all the characters and put them in their compartments, and that too had taken hours, and he had made this for Anastasia, without Belle saying anything. Anastasia never forgot it.

With the self-engrossment of a child, I never thought about the fact that during these Christmas Eve celebrations, grown-ups did not receive presents. One year, I recall, as I was in the kitchen helping Grandma and Mother and Jean set out the feast that followed the departure of Santa Claus, Jean held out her arm to Mother and said, “Look what Eric gave me.” She was wearing a beautiful silver bracelet with gems studded in it, amethysts, probably. And Mother breathed out, “Oh, how beautiful, Jean.” And it occurred to me that I had never noticed my father or mother giving each other presents at Christmas. They didn't give each other birthday presents either. They never got anything at all, at any time.

Only one summer—I was probably ten or eleven—an itinerant salesman drove onto our block in a car whose back seat was piled high with dresses. He went round ringing doorbells, and Mother went outside to look at what he had. When she returned, she showed me, proudly, two dresses. They were rayon prints, one with lilacs, the other a brown-and-orange paisley. Mother seemed so proud of them that I admired them inordinately, thinking all the while that they were nowhere near as pretty as the clothes belonging to my paper dolls. They had cost three dollars and two dollars, and they were the first new things my mother had ever bought in my memory, except her beach coat.

I had almost destitute years in my own marriage, but they didn't seem so bad. Maybe because the whole world wasn't depressed, as it was in the thirties; maybe because they didn't last as long. But above all, because I wasn't like my mother
(wouldn't
be like my mother), and refused to allow myself to care about things like clothes and food and cars and furniture. I cared only about having fun and taking pictures. Nothing else.

So I told myself. So I believed. It is amazing how completely one can fool oneself without ever fooling anyone else. I entertained myself and the children, daily, cheerful Nellie, Pollyanna, laughing, cracking jokes. But my kids remember quite another side of things.

“You weren't there,” Arden hisses at me. “Except when you were playing with us, you were somewhere else! You didn't want to be with us, you didn't want to have us!”

“I tried,” I say shortly. “If you can do better yourself, be my guest.” I leave the room.

“That's right, run away!” she calls after me in her vengeful voice. “That's your solution to everything.
COWARD!”

The coward cowers in her room with the door locked. It isn't true, I argue silently. I did want her, I wanted to have her. I just wasn't ready. It would have been different if Brad had taken some of the responsibility. If he'd felt any pleasure. It was his fault.

Sometimes, weighed down by the sorrow in her mother's stories, Anastasia would ask Belle if she had ever been happy. Then Belle's voice would lighten and she would talk about the wonderful beautiful girlfriends she had, about the wonderful times, visits to museums, the drama club, going to Pratt…

But there was always a cutoff point, and the more Anastasia questioned it, the more Belle evaded it, until Anastasia came to realize that what had cut off the good times was her birth, herself, Anastasia. And when she probed that, Belle was even more mysterious, so that when the truth finally emerged it was unclear whether Belle had finally revealed it, or Anastasia had deduced it and told her mother she knew. Anastasia doesn't know when that happened, how old she was when she sat listening to her mother's description of her shame, her thought of abortion, her decision to sacrifice herself to her, to Anastasia. And to the tearful shame that followed her birth, the interminable depression, the decision to have another child. Through all of it, Anastasia carefully avoided thinking that her mother had not wanted her. She thought about things as if she herself were Belle, as if Belle's perspective on the events were the only one possible. That her mother had not wanted her, that she had sacrificed herself mournfully to this duty and had conveyed considerable resentment to the object of her sacrifice, was outweighed by the enormity of the sacrifice itself, its completeness, and the intelligence with which it was carried through.

“I'd never say such a thing to my mother,” I say to Arden. But I had, many times, said, “You don't love me.” Just never: you didn't want me.

Sitting there in the bedroom, wiping my eyes, thinking it was good Arden could say such things to me, a good sign, the girl was growing up. And wondering: does any woman want a child? Does anyone on earth want to have to give up everything else in life to tend a squawling baby, stinky with shit, hungry all the time, noisy, demanding? Who would choose it? And do those who do choose it know what they're getting themselves into?

But is there any difference between that, having children whether by choice or not, and marrying? Caring about someone? Because why should we? Isn't there as much pain in that as in anything else? All those years with Brad, telling myself I was cheerful, having fun, when in the back of my mind I felt like a half-dead person, a person not walking on earth but floating somewhere above it in a grey haze of years in which nothing significantly changed, in the dull pain that comes from not letting yourself feel sharp pain. A numb suspension, a sense you aren't real. Going through motions. Long empty years, the emptiness in my eyes infecting my children. And now? The children are grown. It's years since I've cared about anyone except them, yet they're worse now than they ever were. Arden hits against me as if she wants to kill me: trying to pierce my armor. I can't blame her. I can't blame my mother either. Except once after a year of great change.

Anastasia had started high school in the fall of 1942, and had made some friends. She had started to go for religious instruction to make her Confirmation, and she had joined the church choir. Belle was glad she no longer went to Girl Scouts: buying all that equipment was too expensive, and Anastasia didn't seem to get that much out of it. Belle had taken a job herself, because it was clear that she would have to start to save now for college for Anastasia. It was only four years away. She couldn't do much, but she felt she could look presentable, so she applied for a job as a saleslady, and got one in the finest store in Jamaica, B. Gertz. She worked in its loveliest department, selling hats. But it was hard. She had to wear a dark dress and high heels and stand on her feet all day. Salesladies could not sit down, and even when there was nothing to do, they had to look busy. When Ed came home early, he would pick her up with the car, but many nights she had to take the bus. When she got home, her legs and ankles were swollen from all the standing, but she still had to cook the dinner. She did the laundry on her day off. She put every penny she earned in the bank. But she was very tired.

It was very depressing at home. Anastasia didn't know why she was so unhappy. Of course, high school was frightening, it was so big and crowded and the other kids were so much more grown up than she was. But she had joined the high-school orchestra, and played the piano during rehearsals. During performances, though, she played the cello, because Mr. Piatti, the conductor, needed a teacher to play the piano then. He lent her a cello and was giving her lessons free. She liked the cello, but didn't practice enough. She had lost some of her feeling about music. It had happened one day when she was sitting on the porch floor reading the latest
Etude.
And suddenly her head popped up, all by itself. It came to her like a punch, that all composers were men. She laid aside the magazine and sat, her shoulders slumped, pondering. She knew that there were things men did and things women did, and that some things were exclusive. For instance, a woman couldn't be a priest. But a man could be, well, not a nun, but a brother, which was just like a nun. Women and men were teachers, but men were principals. Women were nurses, men were doctors.