MAMA'S GIANT LEAP

(Footprint on the moon, July 1969. Photo from NASA. Click to enlarge.)

I can tell you in detail what I was doing this morning 40 years ago. It's the recent Moon Landing anniversary, and other hallmarks, which make it possible to be so precise. Plus my freaky memory, of course.

The previous Christmas, we had returned from a year in Aracaju, Brazil to spend holidays with family in North Texas and Southern Oklahoma before leaving for another year on my father's overseas contract, this second year to be in Singapore. The week between Christmas and New Year was spent in Stoneburg, Texas, where my mother (and many generations before her) had grown up, in the home of her adoptive mother, my grandmother Zura. Zura was in her 80s by that time, living alone in a crumbling farmhouse, and I think that is the reason my mother decided we -- her, me and my little brother Bill -- would stay in Stoneburg through the spring semester while Daddy went on to Singapore, taking his time in finding us a place to live.


Staying with my grandmother was not a good idea. She was hard to get along with and her house, for example, had no hot water. My parents were lucky to discover that a house kept by the local school for teachers was not occupied that semester, and its fence actually abutted my grandmother's land. In fact, she and her husband had built it as two-room cabin during the early 1900s. It had been modernized and expanded, now with three bedrooms and most conveniences. Daddy bought a load of cheap furniture with his overseas bonus, we moved in, and he happily took off for Singapore.

I was not happy with this plan, although I wasn't looking forward to going to Singapore, either. I thought Stoneburg was a hick town and at age 13 I was sick of hearing from every stranger I met that I was the spitting image of my mother. But that school and that place turned out to save my life and shape me inexpressibly. I had deep roots there I'd never really felt before -- a lot of the kids in school were distant cousins. There were a few extraordinary teachers, and the school was so tiny -- an average of 8 students per class -- that teacher attention was very available.

In my 8th grade class, that first day, I met a fat boy with yellow hair and light blue eyes who introduced himself as Loren. It turned out, not only were we related, but his mother has been my mother's best friend all through school, and his grandfather Tobe had been my grandfather Bill's best friend all their lives, including through World War I. Loren and I were basheert. By April, he had confessed to me that he thought he was gay, and I had confessed back to him that I only liked girls. We promised to stick by each other, marrying each other for cover if we had to.

A month before the end of school, I came home one day and, sitting on the counter of that rent house while Mama did dishes, I asked her if there wasn't a way we could stay in Stoneburg so I could go all the way through high school there. I pointed out moving around during high school had really messed up my older brother, and this way she could be close to her mother. Since that high school was also where Mama had graduated valedictorian, and her mother ditto before that, she wanted to give me, her beloved daughter, an equal chance.

But not going to Singapore at all was not something my father would tolerate. It would mean divorce. It would meant splitting up our family. I didn't know that when I asked it. I didn't know it until only ten years ago, and I found it out accidentally in a conversation with Daddy, who never put the pieces together for himself. Just as well.

Mama decided to stay in Stoneburg. I was thrilled, and as soon as school was out, I began spending much of each day at Bowie Lake with Loren and other friends. I had a crush on a girl who was giving me signals back. (She eventually became my first lover, but that's another story.) Mama was told by the school she had to move out of that rent house, and the only other dwelling available for rent in Stoneburg was the old Holihan place, barely habitable. It had one bathroom, accessible through what would be Bill's bedroom, and all its water came from a windmill. Which meant if the wind didn't blow (which it often does not during Texas summers), we'd run out of water. There was no heating, not an issue at the moment but a real problem come winter. There was also no air conditioning. But it was in Stoneburg, and that's all I cared about.

Mama had been hoarding the bonus money Daddy left with her for the spring and our travel to Singapore. She hired some teenaged boys to move our furniture, spent days cleaning up the empty old house, and shelled out for a window unit to go in her room at the front, which was really the living room. Our TV was a used 10-inch black and white, and our car was a rattletrap aged Buick meant to last us only a few months.

So, Mama, Bill and I watched the Moon Landing in the old Holihan house, volume up loud to compete with the shuddering air conditioner, huddled together on her bed despite the heat because it was so incredible, so impossible. Mama cried and cried.

But the other reason I wanted my body in contact with her is that she had been complaining of chest pain for almost a month. She said it was indigestion, and she was not eating regular meals with us. She looked pale and seemed to often have trouble breathing. I was starting to get scared. She wouldn't go to the doctor, said it would pass. What I didn't know is that we only had enough money to last, sorta, through the end of August. In August she'd have to tell Daddy we weren't coming to Singapore at all, not just staying in Stoneburg for the summer but permanently. She'd have to tell him she was leaving him.

The previous November, the Beatles had released their White Album. I couldn't afford to buy a copy, but I had borrowed it from one of my new friends and played it incessantly. Unless you were a teenager during that time, I don't believe you can comprehend the revolution each new Beatles release caused in our collective and individual psyches.

I was especially mesmerized by "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" because there were lines in it (a mistake which was retained by John Lennon) hinting at gender role reversal. You know: "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face" while "Molly has the children lend a hand." There were worlds of possibility in that simple flip.

So, on this morning 40 years ago, I was sitting in my hot bedroom, also at the front of house, with broken windows covered by cardboard and holding only a bed and dresser, listening to my record player (on the dresser) scratch out "La-la-la-la life goes on." Mama knocked at my door and came in with her hands held behind her back. I grinned at her, turning down (but not off) the music. I'd been expecting her ever since I woke up. It was my 14th birthday.

But her face looked ashamed, underneath the grin. She started with telling me what a blessing I was to her, how my birth had been her reason for existence. I liked hearing it, but I began getting scared again. Then she said there was no money for presents. She would make me a chocolate cake --

I interrupted to tell her, as I had other times in my life, that I didn't care about presents, what mattered was being with the people I loved. (My g*d, how true that has become, now that I don't have any of them any more.) I got up and went to her, hugging her. I wanted to stop the pain I saw on her face, and I didn't know how.

She pulled from behind her several books of S&H Green Stamps, 11 and a half, to be exact. She'd been saving them ever since we got back from Brazil, only shopping at stores that gave them out free with a purchase. She told me there was some neat stuff in the S&H catalogue and I could order anything I wanted, 11 books was a decent amount.

She and I both knew she was lying. The stuff in their catalogues was mostly poor people crap, or for grandmothers, and 11 books would not get much. Maybe a mass-cast plaster statue of the Pieta, or a plastic tablecloth in a flower print. But I made a production over the stamp books, thanking her and hugging her repeatedly. She cried then, and even now, it fucking kills me to remember the look on her face. If there is one moment in time I could go back and erase, that might be it. Erase it from her memory, not mine. Her humiliation was (and remains) unbearable.

Working class and poor kids will do almost anything to rescue their parents' dignity. That's why we have such a headwind against us, dealing with generations of conservative hate among the lower classes: To acknowledge your parents were dupes and dead wrong about most of that they taught you, it's asking someone to betray family. Often family that's no longer around.

I stayed home from the lake that day, looking through the catalogue and watching soap operas with Mama on her bed. I eventually ordered a card table, which I said I needed to write on in privacy. And, in fact, I did write on it, all throughout high school.

The next week, school started. Bill and I had no new clothes, and last year's notebooks, but I acted like it didn't matter to keep Mama from feeling bad. (It did matter: Starting your freshman year, even in that forgiving school, wearing a dress from last spring that was too small -- it was tough. Nobody said anything, which made it worse.)

After dropping me and Bill off, Mama drove ten miles into Bowie and finally went to the old drunkard doctor who, with his brother, also a drunk doctor, offered the only medical care in half the county. He was sober enough to immediately call an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital. She'd had a massive coronary at least six weeks before and was now in the process of dying.

A neighbor woman was standing in front of the school when I got out. She told me Mama was in the hospital with a heart attack and my Aunt Sarah had been called. Aunt Sarah was Mama's older sister, lived in Dallas, and she was figuring out a way to track down Daddy. The neighbor woman said me and Bill were to stay with them until Daddy got back, and there was no use for us to go visit Mama because she was unconscious and in the ICU. They wouldn't let us kids in.

I slept in a twin bed that night with this kind woman's 10-year-old daughter while Bill was put on the couch. I'd rather have shared the couch with Bill. We were both scared mute. The next morning, we were given breakfast and driven to school, where everybody was very nice and didn't have any reassurance that could penetrate.

Aunt Sarah didn't drive, and her husband, my Uncle Stuart, was a traveling salesman currently out on the road. She had a daughter at home, my cousin four months older than me, and a grown daughter already married. Still, somehow, Aunt Sarah got from Dallas to Bowie that day, and she told the neighbor lady to bring us to the hospital no matter what once school was over.

It was a tiny hospital. The waiting room was only an alcove with a single couch, no TV. Aunt Sarah apologized to Bill, whom she adored, that he was too little to possibly go in and see Mama. She promised we'd be back soon. She hooked her arm through mine and began pulling me down the hall.

I was terrified to see Mama, honestly. Aunt Sarah whispered to me "Let me handle this" and added "She's not waking up. She's going to die if she doesn't wake up." Nurses tried to stop us but Aunt Sarah literally pushed them aside like a blocker and shoved me ahead of her into the room where Mama lay. Mama was grey as ship paint, her mouth gaping open, her eyes closed. There was no door to shut out the nurses, but they gave up and said only "Five minutes."

Aunt Sarah took my hand and put it on Mama's hand, below the vicious-looking IV. Mama was cold and clammy. I wanted to pull away. Aunt Sarah leaned in to Mama's face and said coaxingly "Mary Jo? Jo, Margaret's here. Margaret needs you, Jo. Wake up and look at Margaret." She motioned me in, and I imitated her, saying hoarsely "Mama? I'm here. I love you."

Be damned if her eyes didn't flutter open. She looked horrible, unfocused, in pain, but she said my name and then asked after Bill. I told her where we were staying, that we were just fine (lie, lie, lie), and at that point nurses flooded in, realizing she'd regained consciousness. We were pushed out of the room, Aunt Sarah yelling over her shoulder "Hang on, Jo, I'll bring her back tomorrow." Triumphantly, we returned to Bill and Aunt Sarah pounded my back with a clenched fist, saying in a grim whisper "I knew it would work. I knew you could do it." Then she began crying, something we'd never seen her do before. I had no clue what to do except sit beside Bill and tell him Daddy would be home soon.

As if that was going to help. Mama was the one who kept everything going.

But two days later, Daddy was back, and in the meantime, Mama had started to rally. Aunt Sarah got me in for daily visits, more or less living at the hospital, I guess. The doctor told Daddy he couldn't move us around any more or it would kill Mama, and I think Aunt Sarah plus Uncle Stuart (who arrived by the weekend) backed that up. Daddy sold his small amount of company stock when he gave notice and bought us a house trailer, which we parked on family land in Stoneburg. And I finished high school there. Despite Daddy's fury at having lost his chance to leave us all behind, despite Mama having two more heart attacks, despite coming out with a terrible, abusive lover -- despite all that, those years in Stoneburg were the making of me.

When Mama finally died, 14 years later, I sat next to Aunt Sarah at the funeral, my arm locked through hers again, counting on her to keep me from dying of a broken heart. After it was over, back at the house, she put one hand on each of my shoulders and, looking intently into my eyes, she said "I'm your momma now."

There is no substitute for the loss of a mother like mine. But I accepted Aunt Sarah's offer as very much the next best thing, and I leaned on her non-stop until she died on 16 July 1999. I miss her, like Mama, every day. Especially this unendingly hot, painful summer.

Lalalala, life goes on.

(No video, only stills of the Beatles, but the song is the point anyhow.)

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

Read More...

Summary only...

24 JANUARY 1963

(Tiny Chatty Brother in exactly the clothes he wore when I got him Christmas 1963)

On this date 45 years ago, I went to school as usual. I was eight years old, in third grade, Miz Davis's class, at Bonham Elementary, Midland, Texas. I walked to school because my family had only one car and that was with Daddy, who was currently getting new training for his job in Irving, Texas, over 300 miles away. He was due to be gone another month.

But school was within walking distance, as long as the weather was not too cold to aggravate my asthma. We lived in Sunset Trailer Park, an oval dirt road with lots of big trees and trailers spaced around the ring, a playground in the middle. Each yard had a wooden fence, a rarity in trailer parks. We'd manage to snag a space at the corner, an extra-large yard backed onto a vacant lot.


On our left side was a young couple named John and Linda. John worked as a DJ at a radio station, and Linda stayed home with their 2-year-old, Little Johnny. She had bleach-blond hair piled up high on her head, and she visited Mama a lot. We were supposed to play with Little Johnny, but he was not much fun.

Their trailer only had one bedroom, but their furniture was a lot nicer than hours. John's hobby was drag racing, and there was a real red race car parked in front of the trailer, just big enough for one person. We were not supposed to ever even touch it.

President Kennedy had been assassinated in November. It seemed like grown-ups were still in shock from it. My parents had voted for Nixon, but after President Kennedy was killed, Mama said I was not to tell anyone they had been Nixon supporters.

Right before Christmas, Mama had told me and my toddler brother Bill that she was pregnant again. I was really happy about it: Maybe this time I'd get a sister. I needed a sister bad. I begged Mama to let me pick out the names for the new baby. Laughing, she asked me what I'd choose. I knew already: Timmy if it was a boy, Penelope if it was a girl. She said it was up to her and Daddy to name the baby, and it wouldn't be those names, but she wouldn't say what they would be.

I began doing two things every night right before I went to sleep. First, I did magic using an old broken watch of Daddy's, running the hour hand backwards for an entire day's sweep while saying special words that I'd read in books. Then I would pray to Jesus to bring me a baby sister. I figured one of the two would work.

Mama was in a bad mood most of the time, even at Christmas. I thought maybe it was from President Kennedy dying. She didn't go out much. She ate a lot of crackers and tomato juice. She was fighting with my teenage brother all the time.

For Christmas I got a Chatty Baby and a Tiny Chatty Brother, with matching flaxen hair. I had asked for a chemistry set. I named the dolls Penelope and Timmy. I played with them a couple of times, then returned to my reading. That year I was memorizing poems from a book Mama had used in high school, "Flanders Fields", "Gunga Din", "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and, especially, "The Highwayman". I read "The Highwayman" every day.

Daddy went off to Irving right after the New Year and had not been back yet. Fortunately, a block away (across Midkiff Road) was a grocery store, so Mama could walk with me and Bill there and get us food. She only had one dress that fit her any more, and she always wore that when she went out. Otherwise, she wore her housecoat all the time.

When we first moved to Midland, I spent a day playing with a child next door named Robin that I thought was a girl. He wore boy blue jeans and had short hair. He was as imaginative as me, and cheerfully shared the good roles with me. That night at dinner, Mama laughed when I called Robin "he" -- she said it was a little girl. Unfortunately, Robin had only been visiting her grandparents and did not live in town.

There was another girl in the trailer park, Donna, who was a few years older than me and wouldn't actually spend time with me but we were both voracious readers and discovered our individual book shelves held lots of titles that the other one didn't have. So we swapped books regularly. She introduced me to Trixie Belden and Honey.

I didn't have any friends. I'd tried to make friends at school, with a girl named Becky McCuistion and another girl named Jena Bowden. When Becky found out I lived in a trailer, she said she couldn't be friends with me, her mother wouldn't let her. I told Mama about it, and she swore for a long time, said terrible things about Becky's mother. Jena had me over to her house once. It was big and fancy. When I was leaving, she told me I was too quiet and my wheezing bothered her, she didn't want to play with me again. I didn't tell Mama about that, afraid of setting her off.

But my teacher, Miz Davis, liked me as gushingly as all teachers seemed to like me. She gave me special projects all the time, letting me work way ahead of the other kids. She brought me her own books from home, histories and biographies that Mama said were for college kids. They were fascinating, and as soon as I read one, Miz Davis brought me another. So I looked forward to going to school each day, even without any friends.

On this day, when I got home from school, Mama wasn't there. Instead, Linda from next door was in our house with Bill and Little Johnny. My older brother wasn't home from high school yet. Linda took my hand and said Mama was in the hospital, that she had begun having her baby except it was too soon and something was wrong. I asked if Mama was okay, and Linda cried when she said she didn't know. She told me Daddy had been called but would not be home until very late that night.

I didn't know what to do. Linda kept trying to get me to talk, but I was too numb. When my older brother got home, he yelled a lot and demanded to be taken to the hospital. Linda said she had to look after the kids, and they weren't letting anyone in to see Mama, anyhow.

We went to Linda's house for dinner. After dinner, though, my older brother demanded to go back to our trailer and that he we go with him. He said he looked after us all the time, and we needed to be home in case somebody called. Linda finally gave in.

Once we got home, he said we had to clean up the house to make it nice for when Mama got back. She'd not been doing much housework for a while. He gave us impossible chores, things we didn't know how to do. He put a broom in Bill's hand and began yelling at him to sweep the kitchen. Bill did his best, but he was too small to really manage it. My older brother screamed at him more and more, and Bill began crying in terror. My older brother grabbed the broom from his hands and swung it at Bill.

I shouted at my older brother to leave him alone. He turned and looked at me, enraged. I realized I had to run for it. If I'd gone down the hall, I might have made it to the back door and could have gone to Linda's. But instead I bolted for Mama's bedroom. Once in there, I was trapped. I dove headfirst into her closet, which is where he caught up with me. He hit me for a while with the broomhandle. When he was done, I went back to trying to clean the stove. He didn't pick on Bill any more that night, though.

When we got up the next morning, Daddy had been there but already left for the hospital. Linda made us breakfast and got me dressed. She insisted on putting me in a frilly dress, with petticoats and socks that had embroidered flowers on the cuffs, things I hated to wear. Bill stayed home with Linda and Little Johnny again. After school, Daddy was home waiting on me. He told us that the new baby was dead, had died right after being born. He had been a boy. I felt a chill when I heard that part: Neither magic or prayer had worked.

Daddy said Mama's uterus had ruptured because she had toxemia and she had been taken to surgery. They had removed her uterus and barely saved her life. She would not be home for a week. The baby would be buried the next day. My father's parents, fundamentalist Baptists from Oklahoma, were driving in and would stay with us when Daddy went back to work in a couple of days.

I asked if the baby had a name. Looking upset, Daddy said they had planned to name him Thomas Samuel. He would have been called Sam. Then he said he had to go back to the hospital, that my older brother would look after us until our grandparents got there late.

I told Daddy I didn't want us to be left with our older brother, that we should stay with Linda instead. When he looked at me, irritated, I told him that my older brother had hit me with a broom. My older brother grinned confidentially at Daddy, shrugging his shoulders, and said "They were misbehaving, refusing to help with housecleaning, but I didn't hit her, I just swatted at her." Daddy laughed, man to man, and told me I was to mind my older brother. He left.

Years later, after I moved back to Texas from San Francisco, I went searching for the birth certificate of my lost brother. I discovered he had been born on January 24. The next day, January 25, was my oldest brother's 16th birthday. I'm certain nobody ever remembered it at the time.

The next morning Grandmommy took me out to buy some funeral clothes. She decided on a dark navy skirt and sweater instead of black so I could wear it on other occasions. But I never did.

At the funeral home, Daddy, my older brother and my grandparents all looked in the coffin at baby Sam, but they wouldn't let me or Bill, though I begged hard. Later Grandmommy told me he had been blond, with blue eyes, and looked like Bill as a baby. I was confused; Bill had brown eyes.

The training Daddy was getting in Irving was supposed to make him able to have an office job with his company and therefore not have to move around us around all the time. At the end of January, he rented an apartment for us in Irving, then came back to Midland to sell our trailer and most of our furniture. We moved to Irving, with Mama not yet fully recovered from her surgery. She was quiet and pale.

While we were packing, she told us all that she had died on the operating table. She said she had floated up to the corner of the room and watched them trying to bring her back to life. She had floated through the walls, into the sky, and then begun traveling toward a distant light. She said she was the happiest she had ever been.

But then her mother, Hettie, had appeared. Hettie had died when Mama was a year old, so she didn't really remember her, yet she know instantly who it was. Hettie told her she couldn't die yet, she had things she still needed to do on earth. Mama said Hettie meant me and Bill, she still had to raise us. So she came back down, returned to her body, and after a minute, she was alive again, in terrible pain and grief.

My older brother got up and slammed out of the house. I was completely terrified. I never stopped being scared about losing my mother after that. I knew the only reason she was around was because of her obligation to me, and I kept hoping that would be enough.

The week after we moved to Irving, Mama turned 37. Daddy bought her a Chihuahua puppy as a present from all of us, whom she named Chico. That night we watched Ed Sullivan, as usual. There was a band called The Beatles on for the first time. Mama thought their music and appearance was horrible, and kept making jokes about them. But I liked the way they sounded, and their long hair. I kept my opinion to myself. The next day, though, on the way to school I sang under my breath "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."


(Link to some poems of mine written about the Midland era of my family, plus an ad for our trailer)

Read More...

Summary only...