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.]

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THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

(Card created by Liza Cowan in 1983 for her company, White Mare)

My second semester at North Texas State University, I signed up for a speech class to get rid of my "hick" accent. NTSU suffered from an inferiority complex in general, not being part of the UT system, and aside from its music degree and the honors program of which I was a part, every department I encountered there went out of its way to put down anyone seeming too rural or provincial. I'm sorry now I took the speech classes. I think the way I talked was probably lovely, rich and full of colloquialisms which do still come to me. My vocabulary was stellar and my grammar impeccable, thanks to the women in my family. The accent was no indicator of my intelligence or education.


But I was still in the closet about my class background, so speech cleansing it was. As part of that course, we had to learn a "piece" and declaim it with two or three other students -- not really a performance, no sets or props, but still on stage and with all attention focused on pronunciation. Ironically, we were encouraged to select from an assortment of dramatic works, and my little group chose A Streetcar Named Desire, full of florid Williamsesque accents and linguistic contrivance. I was given the part of Blanche Dubois, mostly because the other girl in my group flat-out refused and I was too shy to actually insist I couldn't possibly do it.

It was agony for me, in every regard. I got by, I think, because I had of course memorized my lines and that was half the grade. Also, the boy Tim who had the Stanley Kowalski role was a 90 lb. weakling with long blond hippie hair and a faint voice. What we really should have done is traded roles, me and Tim. Instead, the rest of the class managed to not laugh at us and the bored TA gave me an A mostly because I did shed my accent by the end of the year.

I loathed Blanche. The one line of hers that I appreciated was "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers", with all its lie and misdirected meaning and gender subterfuge. It actually comes up in my head often.

The last few weeks, it's been a mantra. I am relying on the kindness of strangers for survival. No sarcasm and no manipulation here, just frank reality.

It's hard to describe. I'd call it a state of grace, except that's such a christian reference. It does have an awe-some element of fear, and a sense of responsibility whose parameters I cannot completely scribe without encountering shame, still. (I'm working on it.)

I think about the choices I've made along the way which brought me to this place, and try to see the power in it. But there's also circumstances beyond my control -- at least, some of them are, but sorting out which are genuinely random and which are the result of my class training to assume helplessness is another sift I'm having to do.

Some of the changes from last month to now are intense, and mostly expressed in my body. I'm sleeping solidly, and waking up without panic. I'm eating real food, usually two meals a day, with fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grains making the bulk of it, instead of bologna and -- well, I don't want to say. Eating two meals a day instead of one or none has altered my chemistry and energy. I can "afford" to think about certain issues now, afford to do more around the house, afford to let myself cry.

Even more pronounced has been the change in my dreams. For three months before hope came my way, I had been dreaming several times a week that I was living with my family of origin again, one or all of them. I was usually the age I am now, but they were younger, during the years when we were in crisis and crammed together without community or sanctuary. These nightmares revolved around me trying to get space (literally), like a corner of a room to call my own, freedom from hostility, find a door to the outside, get to a phone, land a job, always juggling my needs against those of my mother and little brother (if they were in that dream). I would wake up feeling wretched. I couldn't go right back to sleep, so my sleep cycles had become two and three hours long. A bad cycle to be in.

No more. I have always had strong dreams, full of symbolism and creativity, and these have returned without any appearance of my family. Hallelujah.

Often I've come in, rested and fed, to my computer and begun writing about what I'm feeling and thinking. I haven't been finishing these pieces, because the future still seems open-ended to some extent. Here's one such effort:

"It's been months since we had cat treats in this house. Dinah had given up looking for the canister on the shelf next to my computer monitor. But with the grocery money available last week, I felt it possible to spare $2 and buy some Whisker Lickins. When I pulled the package from the grocery bag in her presence, she didn't register any recognition. However, when I popped the seal, her sense of smell brought her memory back in full force.

Since then, she's been unctuous and abnormally attentive. In fact, night before last, she crawled under my comforter and slept with me -- not in actual physical contact, which would have been strange enough to make me call 911, but still within reach if I so chose. It was startling, and made me realize, once again, how much I miss having a pet who is affectionate. Dinah will Allow Me to stroke her back, and that's it. No cuddling, no adorable reaching out. When she wants my attention, she licks my arm but that's not an expression of love -- she knows full well I don't like it, and it gets me to notice her. Negative feedback is fine with her."

Here's another uncompleted start:

"I just ate a huge bowl of frijoles negritos and brown rice, garnished liberally with garlic, onions, and peppers. And a couple of taquitos on the side. Excellent breakfast -- the only thing I'd add is cantaloupe, but tis not the season, alas.

The rice came out perfect, may I say. I set the timer and did not lift that lid, no matter what. Most days I can't resist a look. Positive reinforcement like this wars continually with a cook's fear of scorched pans. I wondered, how did people make perfect rice before the days of timers or see-through lids? I bet someone out there knows the answer. My best guess was that they set something to bake or rise at the same time which took exactly 45 minutes to look right, and when that was done, they knew the rice was done, too.

I once worked in office of six other women who were all on the no-carb, high-protein diet. Breakfast for them would be a small sirloin and half a pound of bacon. Lunch was equally obscene -- they had permission to avoid apples and carrots, for instance, because of their "carb count". Then, around 2:00, they'd start jonesing and talking feverishly about french fries or pancakes. Eventually pretzels would be sneaked out from someone's desk and they'd all have a few, then whine the rest of the day about how they had failed themselves. Meanwhile, their breath peeled paint from the walls and the gas was ignitable.

I brought in my brown rice, my roasted blue potatoes or Red Bliss, my quinoa and amaranth and stone-ground corn meal with pintos and squash. I tried to explain to them how whole grains are often nearly whole foods, why it was that massive peasant populations worked sun-up to sun-down on nothing more than rice or potatoes or whole wheat bread. But I was fat and refused to feel shame about it, so I was the leper who lived in an unclean hut."

--------------------------------------------------

The plain truth of the matter, I don't know how to thank you all. I really don't. Except to maybe show you (keep showing you) who I am, to keep doing the work I think I was born to do, and to keep holding out hope in the particular way I am able to -- a skill nobody else in my family possessed.

We still have a little way to go before I'm out of serious peril. Jesse is doing miraculous work, over at Group News Blog, raising funds for me -- here's his most recent post. In order to get some of the state-supplied services I must have to be safe, I have to undergo another round of doctor visits (to get documentation) because it's been too long since I had a complete examination. This means funds to pay for it out of pocket, plus transportation, plus assistance. Next month, maybe. Social services in Texas were shredded by Bush and have not been restored since. But I'll find a path through this swamp, now that I can eat and sleep and not fear eviction.

My mind keeps going to all the ways I've done extra for others, all my life. I'm not sure if this is me trying to convince myself I deserve this help, or if it is a way to give me common ground with all you out there who are choosing to send me love in the form of dollars. I had a friend for a few years who had severe environmental illness, such that she could not work, could not do her own dishes or housecleaning (no products safe enough), could not fill her truck with gas, had to wear a mask out in the world. I would go by her house after work and wash her dishes for her, get her car gassed up, go with her on necessary errands out in the world to keep her company and remind her she was not a freak, no matter how people looked at her.

I've wiped adults who've crapped themselves, help change catheter bags, talked people out of suicide, made meals and washed clothes and hauled groceries and been the person you call when you have to put a pet to sleep. I've done none of it for money, all of it for love, and I've done way, way more than my share. When I was mobile and seemingly able-bodied, I never stopped doing a little more than my share, every single day. When I saw someone panhandling, I gave 'em a buck. If it was a woman or someone with a kid or a person of color, I gave 'em half of what I had in my pockets, even if they reeked of booze or huff: So what if they're an addict, half the people I've known have had some form of addiction. That's between them and g*d. I've had people I love become homeless, you don't choose it any more than you choose falling off a cliff. And when I handed them the money, I touched their hand, their arm, I looked them in the eye and said "I hope this helps."

Was I paying it forward, then? Did I know, or suspect, or fear I'd reach where I am now? I honestly can't answer that question, but it keeps coming up.

I have a few memories of being a baby and toddler in India, of walking the streets of Kolkata in the arms of Nilmoni and her friends, the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa. I don't remember meeting Mother Teresa, though Mom told me I did, many times. I do remember feeling happy and safe with these women, that what they/we did was talk to people, all day long. Listen to them and talk back to them as human beings. I was glad to be not just with the sisters but with all the other people, the beggars and lepers and starving -- we were all the same, all good and doing our best. There was never any tension in these street scenes that transmitted itself to me. Life was good, even when it wasn't.

So, perhaps that is the source of my choices, my strength, my commitments. Or maybe, as one energy worker told me, I'm simply unusually strong.

Whatever --I'm glad to be alive. Glad to have found another way to keep writing my letters to the world, even as I live separated from you against my will. Glad you are out there and decided to reach my way. I'll keep writing, letting you know how things are.

Bless you.

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POOR PITIFUL PEARL

Maggie on her first birthday, 1956. I was allowed to demolish that angel food cake on the floor.

There were times as a child when I received no gifts at Christmas, or for my birthday.

You have no idea how hard that is to admit. I want to keep you from blaming my mother, but I cannot.


One thing I never talked with my brother Bill about before he died is that my parents forgot his birthday twice: The year he was three, and the year he turned 16. I never brought up the 3-year-old incident because I wasn't sure he remembered it, and g*d knows I didn't want to add to his burden. The 16-year-old forgetting he absolutely did remember. He waited in the living room all evening until Johnny Carson came on. Then he stood up, said to my parents "I can't believe you fucking forgot I turned 16 today" and walked out the door.

Mama called me in hysterics. I had no comfort for her. He didn't come back until the next night. By that time, my father had gone out and bought him a brand new Beau James custom pick-up. Bill totaled it two months later, nearly dying in the wreck. They couldn't afford to replace it, of course.

He was not a planned child, and there wasn't enough to go around for him. I'm not saying I wish he hadn't been born, and I actually once asked Mama if she would have had an abortion, if it had been available then. She paused for several seconds, then said no. I believe her. Still, he knew he wasn't chosen (as I had been) all his life. What does that do to you? One of the Lesbian songs I loved best during the 1970s was sung by Linda Shear, and there's a section in it:
"There ain't much to be proud of, living pushed against the wall
And I know mistakes can happen
But it's just as well they do
My mama says I was one
And most likely so were you"

When I was 5 through 9, I did get gifts. Usually not what I asked for or really wanted, but I never complained. I was always given at least one doll, although I loathed them and wouldn't play with them. It's what girls got, and in some ways -- dolls, having to wear dresses, keeping my hair long -- Mama didn't listen to me or buck the system. It was the 50s and early 60s. I wanted a Johnny Express, I wanted one of those metal gas stations for little metal cars, I wanted a chemistry set, I wanted a typewriter (did finally get that when I was 15). I was smart enough to know it wasn't being a girl that was the problem, it was how "they" defined girl. Way before feminism or Lesbian liberation, I was wise to their lies. I worry for girls now, who are all too often being told they must want to be a boy if they want to wear certain clothes and play with certain toys. Bullshit, I say.

When I was 11, my older brother had a nervous breakdown, supposedly connected to his diagnosis of epilepsy but since it was the last year of his actively molesting me, I suspect other things were going on. He got taken to a hospital in San Antonio where, after an evaluation by a psychiatrist, he was put into a locked ward. My parents drove the 70 miles there and back every day for two days, until the psychiatrist (Dr. Bailey) told my mother she was part of the reason my brother was mentally ill. She went batshit and refused to go back there.

The next day was my 11th birthday. Mama was too upset to get out of bed. Daddy offered to take me with him to San Antonio, and I declined until he made it clear I would not be allowed in to visit my older brother, I'd have to wait in the lobby. All righty, then. On the way there, he gave me $20 and told me they hadn't been able to buy me any presents, I should get something for myself.

I know that sounds pathetic, and it probably was, but in fact that was a great birthday. The hospital was in downtown San Antonio, and within walking distance was a Joske's with a book department. Daddy gave me no instructions at all about what to do with myself, so I left the hospital, went to the bookstore and browsed for hours. I bought five books (one was a thick adult text on archeology, one was a collection of cat photographs by Walter Chandoha that I still have) and I had enough money left over to eat at a lunch counter, having my first club sandwich and a chocolate shake while I read about Troy.

The next day, Daddy checked my older brother out against medical advice and that was that. I'm guessing they didn't have mandatory report laws about child abuse at that time. I wonder what Dr. Bailey knew.

In September, my older brother started college in Arlington, Texas, living with my uncle and his family in Irving to save the cost of a dorm. He didn't want to go to college, and we didn't have the money to send him, but if he wasn't in college he would be sent to Vietnam. That year, we slowly starved. By the time my 12th birthday rolled back around, I said all I wanted was new clothes for the school year.

My father was working in Brownsville and coming home only once or twice a month. On the way home for my birthday weekend, he stopped at some roadside place and bought me a Poor Pitiful Pearl doll, which was all the rage at the moment. I was 12, about to go into junior high, and he brought me home a doll dressed in fake rags with a plastic teardrop permanently fixed to her face. There was no other money to buy me clothes.

After he left again, Mama went through the box of ancient fabric in the corner of her bedroom, lengths she'd bought years ago and never got around to sewing into anything. She managed to buy a pattern, of an old-fashioned full-shirted dress with no ornamentation at all, and she used blue-and-white gingham to make a dress with it. That was the only new thing I had to wear as I started 7th grade. My other dresses, from 6th grade, were too tight but I squeezed into one on Tuesday, and while I was at school that day, Mama washed the blue-and-white gingham, drying it on the clothesline. On Wednesday, I wrote it again. On Thursday, I wore another too-small dress, and on Friday it was the gingham once more.

I felt like dying.

In that small town (about 1500 people), racial segregation was actually still enforced at school. About 10-12% of the population was white, the rest Latino. All the white kids of a certain age plus about 20 of the better-off, more assimilated Latino kids were put into the "A" class, and all the rest of the Latino kids were in the "B" class. All the teachers and school administrators were white. We were told to never socialize together across racial lines after school, and silently encouraged to play on separate parts of the playground during school hours.

My family was at the rock bottom of the white people. It was our only claim to "decency", being white. But the second week of junior high, I walked past the cluster of white girls who were all snickering at me in my blue-and-white dress. I went to the doors at the end of the school where the Latina girls gathered before class, whispering in Spanish (speaking Spanish at school would get you expelled) and talking about far more interesting things. I joined them, and at first they went totally silent, looking at me suspiciously. But then Alveisa Barrera, who already had breasts, said "You wear that dress a lot."

I answered "My mother made it."

She nodded as if that meant something. She blew a bubble (gum chewing wasn't allowed either) and asked me if I wanted to learn a dirty word in Spanish. I said sure. She taught me chinga, and they all helped me work on my accent, laughing rowdily, until the bell rang. I ate lunch with them that day, shutting up and listening, and after that the white girls had something else to laugh at me about. Something a lot worse than my clothes.

Alveisa, if you read this, I love you.

Still, I didn't know how long I could hold on. So in November, when Daddy came home with yet another offer from his company for us to be sent overseas -- it paid a living wage but was hell on families, and Mama always yelled him down -- I listened to them argue about it for a while. Then I walked into the room and said "I want to go. I want us to go." I didn't even know where it was -- turns out, it was Brazil. But it was an escape route. We'd have money. We'd be in a place where I could start over. I'd be out of reach of my older brother.

My mother looked at me as if I had betrayed her. Which I surely had -- it was the only time I took my father's side against her. He crowed in triumph, and she gave in immediately.

Stonewall happened while we were in Brazil. I read about it in Time Magazine and hid that issue under my mattress, taking it out after everyone was asleep and reading it over and over. I had a place to go where there were other women like me.

I turned 13 in Brazil. I don't remember what I got; it didn't matter, I was following the drinking gourd.

We came back to the States and my father went on to Singapore, our next destination, to start work and rent us an apartment. Mama decided to keep us for the remainder of the semester in Stoneburg, Texas, the tiny town where her mother lived, where she had gone to school. We'd join Daddy in June.

But I fell in love with that town, with those kids. I had roots there, for the first time in my life. I met the girl who would become my first lover, and a boy in my grade, a 6th cousin, confessed to me he was gay. Before school was out, I went to Mama and begged her to find a way so I could go to high school there, in one place, no more moving around. She was washing dishes, I remember, and she stopped, with her hands in the suds, for a long time. Then she said "All right. I'll do it."

I skipped out the back door to tell my friends, overjoyed. I didn't know until ten years ago that this meant she would have to leave my father.

She didn't know how to tell him. She just stopped writing him. She tried to make the money stretch out, because he wasn't going to send home any more after June. We had to move to a broken-down house with no hot water and sometimes no water at all (if the wind didn't turn the windmill). She began having chest pains and didn't tell anybody. On my 14th birthday, she gave me 11 books of Green Stamps, all she had, and told me I could order anything I wanted from the catalogue. I'll never forget the humiliation on her face -- that hurt much worse than not getting a present.

The first day of school, she dropped me and my brother off and drove ten miles to the nearest doctor. He immediately put her in the hospital -- she'd had a massive heart attack. A neighbor picked us up after school and took us to the hospital, where Mama was in intensive care. My Aunt Sarah came up from Dallas and got me in to see Mama, rousing her by shaking her and saying "Maggie's here. You hold on, she needs you."

Daddy had to fly back from Singapore. The doctor told him Mama couldn't move around any more or be left in charge of everything. Daddy was furious. He quit his job and began selling Amway, housetrailers, used cars, or land scams. He was a terrible salesman -- he convinced nobody. She still didn't tell him she had meant to leave him; her failure to pack up and join him was blamed on the heart disease. I didn't put the pieces together until a conversation with him ten years ago. I didn't spill her secret. She was dead by then, and he preferred to live in ignorance.

Going to that high school was the making of me. I began figuring out class, feminism, pacifism, and being a Lesbian there.

I was a wanted child. Mama planned to have me, and did the best she could with me. She was glad I had been born. The last two years, I've spent my birthday alone, but I do have, have had all my life, the fact that Mama wanted me.

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