Some Wildflower In My Heart (25 page)

I imagined, however, a throbbing network of interstate communication concerning my flight, and because I lived in continuous fear of being apprehended by uniformed authorities, I could not sleep well. Nevertheless, as I preferred the fear of being stalked and located to that of being routinely molested, I felt an odd sense of liberation in spite of the strictures of my new life.

Concerning the baby that I was carrying, I was, of course, frightened, not only by the process of childbirth but also by deep misgivings about the child itself. I often grew inutterably distressed as I reflected upon the genetic makeup of a child sired by my grandfather. As he was my step-grandfather, I had no cause to fear the idiocies caused by inbreeding, yet surely, I thought, it was folly to think that one conceived by an act of brutality would be untouched by the flaws of its heredity.

If it were a boy, would I not see in him certain bestial likenesses of my grandfather and thus abhor him? If it were a girl, would I not see her as a symbol of my own ill luck and victimization and thus loathe her as I often loathed myself? I saw the child within me as both savior and nemesis. I could not destroy it, yet I could not imagine loving it. I could not decide whether it would be better to abandon the infant after its birth or to clutch it possessively. Could a mother
hate
her own child? Was the child evermore to serve as an instrument of torture? My thoughts during these months were a vortex of confusion.

I am certain that in the vast span of history I was not the only seventeen-year-old girl to endure such circumstances. Surely somewhere in the records of mankind another young woman—strong, intelligent, comely—has been despoiled as rapaciously and unremittingly as was I, has subsequently found herself with child and, friendless, has made her own way of escape, subsisting by her wits, earnest toil, and subterfuge. Surely I was not the only young woman to be governed by a strange antinomy: to regard her unborn progeny with fear and bewilderment, oftentimes with a full measure of ill will and horror over what she was nurturing within herself, yet to consider the bond of mother and child sacrosanct and thus to reject any thought of severing the tie.

Except for the necessary business of housing and employment, I rarely spoke during these months. Others kept their distance, asking few questions. In that my work was always exemplary—I ironed, mended, typed, and cleaned—my reticence was overlooked and perhaps even appreciated by many who hired me. As the weeks passed and my condition became apparent, I was no doubt accounted worthless by many—a “lost cause” as they say—since unmarried mothers-to-be were more severely censured during the sixties than at present.

The only acquaintance I made during these bleak days was that of a solitary middle-aged Hispanic woman who occupied the room next to mine in the boardinghouse and with whom I shared the bathroom at the end of the hall, along with another woman whose racking, chronic cough could be heard all night. In the beginning the Hispanic woman was as wary of me as I of her, but as the days passed she began speaking to me gruffly in the hallway. “Good day this morning” or “Outside is not warm today.” Her name, I learned from seeing her mail on the hall table, was Lucita Orozco. She was a large woman, nearly as tall as I, and broad of hip. One front tooth was missing; somewhat flat of face, she was not what one would call an attractive woman.

The landlord of the boardinghouse spoke to me one day in May, after my condition was made known to him, informing me that he allowed no tenants with children in his establishment. Though I had no plans at the time to do so, I told him that I would move before the baby was born. I did not, however, set about to make other arrangements, for as I had not seen a doctor during my pregnancy, I could make only a reasonable guess as to when the baby was due to be born. As it turned out, my guess was wrong by three weeks.

I will proceed quickly. The child was born at 3:55
A.M.
on July 2, 1962. I had turned eighteen in June. At a quarter past ten the night before, I knocked on the wall between my room and Lucita's and cried out her name. Though I had not asked her earlier for help in my time of need, I believe that she was expecting my summons, for she appeared at my door within a minute's time, carrying in her arms two thin blankets and several towels. Lying on top of the stack of towels was a pair of scissors. Strangely, I still remember the scissors. They had painted handles of red and a curiously large square bolt that fastened the two blades together.

I had expected discomfort, of course, but was completely overcome by the intensity of the pain. Lucita was efficient and surprisingly gentle. Looking back upon the hours of my labor, I recall her black eyes above me. The only thing I remember her saying over the next six hours is this: “Baby will come, baby will come.” For a while she held my hand so tightly that it ached. I was dimly aware of sounds: coughs from the woman at the end of the hall; the slamming of a car door outside; a muffled squeal that could have been laughter or fright; a faraway siren. In an age-old play Lucita and I were the only actors—no, not the only actors, for by the end another had made his entrance.

Though too weak for such a journey, I fled Evansville three days later, taking a bus to Bowling Green, Kentucky. I had been greatly frightened by a vivid dream of the landlord coming to my room, accompanied by my grandfather and the police. The taxi driver who transported me to the bus station carried my suitcase to the ticket window for me, and I carried Tyndall in a large canvas satchel. Miraculously, as if sensing the danger in attracting attention, Tyndall did not utter a cry.

It shames me today to remember that I never thanked Lucita for her comfort and aid. I did not even tell her good-bye. Six years after I left, however, I returned to Evansville for the brief space of ten months. I attempted to find Lucita, but she had moved away from the boardinghouse as had the former landlord. The idea has suddenly come to me while typing these words that, though the likelihood is small, the possibility does exist that Lucita, who would now be in her seventies, could someday read what I am writing and understand it was my fear and youth that pushed all thoughts of gratitude from my mind. Perhaps, I tell myself, she has always understood this.

Thus was my child brought into the world. My apprehensions concerning my feelings for him were laid to rest the moment he was born. I was anointed with love for him. To say that I loved my baby instantaneously and profoundly seems but a pale shadow of the truth. The thought that branded itself upon my mind when Lucita placed him in my arms was this:
He is beautiful and innocent
. I named him for my father: Tyndall Andrew Bryce. From a department store in Bowling Green I purchased a blue album called
Baby's Firsts
and set about recording within its vellum pages the many wonders I observed daily. I bought a Kodak camera and interspersed my written account with snapshots, which I glued onto the pages.

It is a terrible mystery to me that the same language, the same letters of the alphabet that I have used to report the marvel of his birth, must now be utilized to set on paper the pain of his death. On October 22, 1966, Tyndall died at the age of four.

I find it intolerable at this time to review the details of his death as if reciting a newspaper account—he was my son!—but to provide a conclusion for this chapter, I will record the barest of facts. Tyndall died two days after overturning upon himself a large cauldron of boiling water. He suffered unspeakably. He died, and I, too, truly wanted to die. For many months afterward I felt that every evil work had descended upon me to crush my heart and to siphon from my soul every drop of humanity.

“The abused child, not understanding the cruelty of his abuser, can only make sense of it by blaming himself. Since he must somehow be the cause of the abuse and since it continues, he becomes self-destructive and comes to think of himself as an unworthy person—doomed and stupid.” This is the theoretical stuff of which self-help books are made.

Some years ago I read parts of two books on the subject of sexual abuse, though I have not admitted this to Joan, and in so doing saw glimpses of myself and my past. Though I did not need a book to tell me that my emotional rigidity, my wholesale distrust of others, my cynicism regarding religion, my perfectionism, my escape into the land of fiction, and the like were the direct results of my grandfather's lustful exploitation of me, I suppose it was some small consolation to read that the manifestations of my suffering were somewhat normal, if such a word may be used.

In other ways, however, I saw myself as atypical. For example, I did not deny what had been done to me. I had never pushed from my consciousness the dreadful knowledge of my grandfather's sins against me, though one of the books stated that “children who are victims of frequent sexual abuse refuse to accept the truth, setting up a blockade about their memories so that they can survive.” My memory had no such blockade.

The other book claimed that “sadly, a child often continues to love the abusive adult, seeking ever more earnestly to win his favor.” This, too, was untrue for me. Not for the briefest particle of time did I ever feel for my grandfather anything approaching love.

On the other hand, much of what I read in the two books to which I have referred rang of truth. However, I did not complete the reading of either book, most likely not because I disagreed with the authors on so many points but because the closeness and heat of the truth stifled me. Denial? Perhaps some would term it thus. I prefer to think of it as maintaining a sensible distance from danger.

I must return to Birdie Freeman, however. But first, to review: I lost my mother when I was thirteen. I was the victim of my grandfather's perversions between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. I fled from my grandparents' home at seventeen. I bore a son out of wedlock at eighteen, and I lost my son when I was twenty-two. A clinical summary of human damage, to be sure, but the tone is what I wish it to be, for as I have said, I am issuing no plea for sympathy. These are facts necessary to the understanding of Birdie's effect upon me.

Between the ages of twenty-two and the recent past (I turned fifty-one on June 6), I ceased to feel by an act of my will. After the death of my son, I lay on my bed one night and formed a picture of myself in my mind. I imagined that there ascended from my body a tattered apparition of sorts that I knew to be my heart, frail and wounded, which took the form of a limp gossamer garment as it hovered above my bed. I saw myself rise and reach for it, lay it flat upon the bed, and begin folding it with care. With each fold, the thickness of the fabric remained the same, however; that is, though its length and width decreased, there was no compensatory increase in the third dimension of depth. I continued to fold it until there lay upon the bed a tiny diaphanous square of a single layer.

In my vision I then opened a large wooden chest, placed the square of fabric within it, and closed the lid. I pushed the chest into a dark closet, the door of which I then locked with an iron key. Grasping the key within my fist, I applied upon it such superhuman force that when I released it, there fell to the floor, compacted and transmogrified, a small but heavy lump of ironstone. I then saw myself recline once again upon the bed, at which time the stone rose from the floor, began a slow, searching orbit about the room, picking up speed until at last, bulletlike, it found its mark within my bosom.

Thus was my heart locked away and the key buried, so to speak. I had cut off all access and raised the drawbridge to my castle, for having been savagely attacked and irreparably injured, I intended to see that it would never happen again.

However, I had not counted on Birdie Freeman's assault upon my citadel. There is a lovely poem by X. J. Kennedy titled “On a Child Who Lived One Minute,” which, though mourning death, gives voice in its closing line to the great wonder of life as the narrator marvels that “so much could stay a moment in so little.” I only recently came across the poem, and I shuddered with the thrill of an idea well put, for of course it brought to mind first my son “so little,” whose four years of life were “so much,” and second, my friend Birdie Freeman, from whose small frame emanated such quiet and far-reaching explosions of kindness. “How far that little candle throws his beams!” cries Portia in Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice
.

Now to resume the chronicle of my acquaintance with Birdie. It was in November, perhaps two weeks following the drowning of the two young boys in Union, South Carolina, that Birdie latched upon the idea of hostessing a tea party for the lunchroom staff. She spoke of it frequently over a period of many days, discussing with us the particulars of time and place. Her ardor was so touchingly childlike that, although the prospect of spending an hour socializing with my three co-workers filled me with dread, I could not find it within me to dampen her joy by declining the invitation.

“I want all three of you to be guests in my house at the
same time
,” she told us early in the planning stages. “And I've decided that the best time for it would be in the early afternoon before Francine's children will be needing her at home. If we could find a day when the cleanup after lunch wouldn't take as long, we could try to leave here at one-thirty, if we
could
, and then get to my house and have our little party between then and three or so. Would that work for you, Francine, honey? Or would it be better on a Saturday?”

Francine pinched her nostrils together and replied in a clownish, high-pitched voice. “Any day's hunky-dory. I'll come for food anytime!” In a more sober tone she added, “But I guess a weekday would really be better 'cause our house is a zoo on Saturdays. Some weekends I think our trailer's gonna tip right off those cement blocks! It wouldn't really matter if I wasn't there right when the kids got home from school 'cause Champ knows where the key is and can ride herd for a little bit if I warn him ahead of time.” Francine's children have unusual names: Gala, Champ, BoBo, and Watts.