Letter to My Daughter (15 page)
Read Letter to My Daughter Online
Authors: George Bishop
My only regret is that I wasn’t there to see it, stuck as I was at home in Zachary. But “it was huge,” Anne assured me. A Channel 9 reporter came with a cameraman to cover the story, and it made the evening news that night, prompting my parents to cluck their tongues in disapproval. No wonder, they said, that I’d gone bad, considering the school I was in. What were those nuns thinking, letting the girls run wild like that? It only proved, my father said, what he suspected all along, that the pope was aligned with the Jews and hippies to hand the country over to the Communists.
But the sit-in worked. At their meeting Friday afternoon, the academic staff council found itself in a quandary. As much as they disapproved of the girls’ actions, the school couldn’t very well expel all the students who had tattoos now. Traci Broussard? Anne Harding? Soo Chee Chong? Impossible. So they voted to rescind my probation; I would be allowed to return to school on Monday morning and could graduate with my class after all. But they ordered that the school handbook be revised immediately to make explicit the policy regarding tattoos, clearly stating that, in line with its Catholic mission to provide a sound academic and moral education for young ladies, the school would henceforth bar any girl with a tattoo, visible or not, from attending Sacred Heart Academy.
“We won!” Christy Lee said over the phone that night. “Power to the people!” Sacred Heart would never be the same, she insisted. The administration could never again take the students for granted; they weren’t anybody’s slaves; from now on, their voices would have to be heard. In fact, Christy had already spoken to some of the other girls about starting a black student caucus at the campus. “It’s about time, don’t you think?” she asked.
• • •
Well. It wasn’t over yet. As you must know by now, Liz, such an upset to the accepted order of things can’t go unanswered. The next week there were angry visits and calls to the principal’s office, and letters to the editor of the local
Morning Advocate
deploring the shocking “tattoo incident” at one of the city’s most venerable institutes of secondary education. Psychologists weighed in with theories of sadomasochism and mass hysteria. The alumnae association got involved, the PTA got involved. A couple of fathers of students were prominent local attorneys, and they got involved. Three of the girls who’d gotten tattoos, it turned out, were under eighteen. The consensus among the parents and school administration was that someone, somewhere, had to pay. And as you must know, too, Liz, it’s easy enough to find a scapegoat. Just look for the person with the lowest standing, someone a bit scruffy who lives at the edge of society. In Hester Prynne’s day they might have locked the culprit up in the stockade, or tarred and feathered him and run him out of town on a rail. We, though, being an advanced civilization, have a thing called the criminal justice system. Within a week, Greg Renfroe, big gentle Greg, was arrested and his tattoo parlor shut down. He was quickly brought to trial and sentenced to nine months in the parish jail on trumped-up charges of corruption of minors and moral turpitude.
And Sister Mary Margaret, the kindest, most compassionate nun at Sacred Heart, and the only one who, as far as I was concerned, was really worthy of her habit—what became of her? At the end of the school year, Sister M&M was quietly transferred to an elementary school in El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. In a letter to me that summer, she sounded amazingly sanguine about the whole affair. She was looking forward to meeting her new students, she wrote. From what she’d seen so far, any skills she had as an English teacher would be especially useful there. She counseled me to stick to the Romantics; they’d never let me down, no matter what anyone else said. She closed, “Be good, and if you can’t be good, at least be sensible.”
Well. That’s about it, the essentials anyway. It hasn’t always been a pleasant story, I know. I suppose that’s one reason I haven’t told any of this to you until now. And I’m afraid it’s fallen short of my promise to give you the “truth about life.” At best, I’ve only given you the truth, or at least part of the truth, of one life. But maybe that’s the closest any of us can get to knowing the big Truth.
It’s approaching midnight. Your father has made chamomile tea for us. He came in and rubbed my shoulders for a minute. He sits watching from the sofa now, sipping his tea, wondering when I’ll put down the pen. He looks at me curiously. Soon, soon.
My tattoo, thirty years old, has faded with age, but sometimes I swear I can still feel it throbbing, like it wants to tell me something. I seem to feel it now telegraphing a message as I sit by this window waiting for you to come home—a reminder, maybe, or a warning: “I shall but love thee better … I shall but love thee better …”
I ran into Greg again after that, by the way. It was in the admissions office at LSU, where I went to work while I studied for my BA. He had enrolled in the school of social work, and would drop by from time to time to say hello. He was hired as a counselor at Louisiana Training Institute, the place where they send juvenile delinquents. He’s still there, as far as I know.
And even today I’ll meet a charity case now and then. Soo Chee, Anne Harding, Christy Lee: we all turned out all right, every one of us. We pass each other at the mall, or pushing our shopping carts down the aisle of the supermarket. We nod and smile at one other like we’re sharing a secret.
Look at us
, the smile says.
We survived. The scarred ones. The lucky ones
.
Because it’s true, Liz. We’ve been so lucky until now. So lucky. I keep thinking of those poor women on TV, crying and shaking their fists in the air. It’s not for themselves they cry, you know. Mothers don’t care about their own pain, but for the pain of the son who was tortured, or the husband who was shot. The pain of the daughter who’s run away.
You never tell me, Liz, but I know. You’re fifteen, you’re a girl, so you hurt. It’s the fate of all girls, and it’s what in the end makes us women. Small consolation to you now, perhaps, but what else can a mother say? Things will be better. Things will be better. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, I promise.
Well. I’ll finish this letter now. I intend to leave the pages on your bed so you can find them when you come home. Maybe you’d prefer a new cellphone for your birthday, but this is what you’ll get. Know, though, that all this doesn’t begin to say how much I love you.
It’s never too late to change, Liz. We could begin now by simply deciding to talk to one another. That’s all, just talk. It’d be as easy as taking a breath. As easy as turning the page.
I hear a car approaching. Your father sits up on the couch. Is it you? It could be you. I imagine your return. Lights sweep through the living room as you turn up the drive, and we rush out to meet you. Tears, hugs, forgiveness.
Welcome home, daughter.
Love always,
Mom
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G
EORGE
B
ISHOP
holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he won the department’s Award of Excellence for a collection of stories. He has spent most of the past decade living and teaching overseas in Slovakia, Turkey, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, India, and Japan. He now lives in New Orleans.
Letter to My Daughter
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by George Bishop, Jr.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hal Leonard Corporation for permission to reprint excerpts from
Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
. Words and music by Norman J. Whitfield and Barrett Strong, copyright © 1970 (renewed 1998) Jobete Music Co., Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. on behalf of Stone Agate Music (A Division of Jobete Music Co., Inc.). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured Used by Permission
eISBN: 978-0-345-51975-7
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