Because I Said So (36 page)

I bought Armand a cell phone, and he began getting himself to basketball practice and home from school by bus. Sometimes he caught the bus to where I was working that day, so he could do some small task and earn a little pocket money. Ironically, he became the envy of the other fifth-graders in his private school,
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who longed for his freedom (but probably not the responsibilities that went with it).

Then one little act—
originally an act of desperation—began to turn my life around. Even with the children’s help, I had not been able to stay ahead of the chaos and the mess, and I couldn’t have them growing up inside of it. So I started getting up before dawn to do an hour of chores before getting them out the door to school. I’d make myself a cup of chai tea and putter myself into an awakened state. I watched the sun come up while I did my chores. And suddenly it was as if the sunrise each morning was giving way to a sense of renewal inside me.

First, I started making my bed again every day. By now Chris was sleeping downstairs in his basement “office,” which was as close to a legal separation as we could afford to get. So, upstairs, I had the whole big bed to myself. When I dragged my aching bones into the house late at night, I found real comfort in sinking down into the plumped-up pillows and crisp, smoothed sheets.

Then I cut and colored my hair—myself, of course (fortunately, curly hair is very forgiving)—and found that, for the first time in my life, I looked great in jeans, the reward for working off all that weight worrying. I gave myself my first-ever pedicure and found myself admiring my pretty feet in a pair of open-toed shoes I had bought on a business trip to Florida a few years before.

Room by room, I started to fix up the house with found objects and my newfound conviction that I could turn our sad little rental into a comfortable home. Of course, I painted—mixing the odds and ends from various paint jobs to create a soft sage for my bedroom and a buttery yellow to warm up the walls of the rest of the house, all without spending a penny. I made a bedroom for Cienna in the tiny breakfast nook, fashioning a headboard from a purple ballet skirt. I scavenged rugs, lamps, even chairs from job sites where people were giving them away. What I didn’t have, I bartered for.

I worked around the house’s quirks and cracks to create a
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cozy, eclectic home that reflects us, not the imaginary family in a stager’s repertoire. In winter, we built fires in our fireplace from the free firewood the local lumberyard gives away. The younger kids thought it was a hoot to go down to the lumberyard to collect the wood. A regular family excursion!

For the first time I could see clearly what was really solid in my life. I discovered that there was nothing my two closest girlfriends wouldn’t do to support me. If I needed to drop in just to

“cry it out,” they understood. When I asked if I could borrow a roll of toilet paper from one because I was just too tired to stop at the store on the way home, she saw through my excuse to the truth—that toilet paper is an expense food stamps don’t cover—

and sent me home with several rolls. Last year I cried when one of them delivered us a Thanksgiving turkey. The other paid my electric bill one month without asking or even telling me. I just knew that the disconnection notices had stopped coming. Who could ask for more? And how could anyone survive with less?

As strange as it may sound, I began to see the incredible richness of the life we now had. Instead of waiting, exhausted and desperate, for some light to shine at the end of a tunnel, I began to relish my journey and all its miracles, not the least of which were friendship and faith.

At night, I went to bed thanking God for every little miracle—

that I had two wonderful friends, that my car was still running, that I had had two calls that day for possible jobs, that all the painters had shown up for work and no one was drunk or too hung over to paint, that I had almost all the rent money. That we had a home. That I had the energy to keep going and my kids were still in great schools—that was probably more important than anything else.

When you’re broke,
Christmas can be more melancholy than it is merry. A few days before Christmas last December, I lost a painting contract and all hope of paying my rent. So I gathered myself and went down to the welfare office, figuring that this was the time to get whatever government help was out there. It was
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raining, and there was only metered parking. I scrounged through every seat crack and pocket of my car for money for the meter and finally found enough change for an hour. An hour later, I went back in the rain and scrounged for some more change for another hour. An hour later, I did it again, and during that third hour of waiting, it was finally my turn.

First of all, the caseworker said, I had to come in with my husband, which I knew was not going to happen. Chris’s pride was so damaged he couldn’t even stand to drive to our old street to drop the kids off to play; there was no way he would be able to bring himself to the welfare office. But my caseworker said I could go through the application process anyway to determine how much in assistance we were eligible for. So I did. It was $237

a month. Prorated for the seven days of December that were left, it came to all of $55.30. I left in tears, mostly of frustration.

Was it pure coincidence that that same day I ran into an old friend who knew all about the Season of Sharing fund, which helps families with short-term financial emergencies pay their rent? With help from that group, I paid the rent and had a little cash left over to Christmas shop at garage sales and used-clothing stores.

That year I got one of the best presents I have ever received. On Christmas morning, Andre surprised us all with wrapped presents. I couldn’t possibly imagine where he had gotten the money. It turns out he went to a used bookstore and bought everyone books, carefully selected and inscribed to inspire each of us.

I have begun to see that, despite all the uncertainty in my life, things always seem to work out, and this has become my mantra.

This faith has given me the ability to get past the fear, the depression, and even the resentment at having to do this all alone. It’s given me an optimism and humility that I pass on to my children, which helps them through their crises, at school and at home. I know this when Andre tells me that he does not need a backup plan if he doesn’t get a basketball scholarship because “that’s just not gonna happen, Mom.” I know this when Armand cheerfully cleans his old sneakers and adds colorful new laces, but doesn’t ask me for a new pair until his old ones have holes. I know this because, although my children are now the least privileged kids in their privileged schools, they
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don’t complain about not getting to go to the mall or the movies, which their peers do weekly, with wads of their parents’ cash. Andre just shrugs and says it’s a good thing the kids in his suburban white high school don’t know “what’s fresh,” so he doesn’t really have to have the “freshest” new clothes.

I am not saying that they never complain. Armand has cried to me that his friends don’t have to clean their whole house, just their rooms. Cienna, who is now seven, complains that she can’t go to dance class every day after school, so she has to manage with once a week. But I have a great summer planned for all of them—scholarships to basketball camps, science and technology programs, and cooking school for Armand, whose experience cooking dinners convinced him he might want to be a chef. In my new state of mind, it never occurred to me that anyone would say

“no,” and so no one did. The children will even have trips to Colorado to climb and mountain bike, thanks to airline tickets paid for with what’s left of the frequent flyer miles from my

“other life.”

And I’m happy to say that I have created a beautiful home for my family, something I never managed to do in our more affluent life. It’s a place where I feel safe in my room; where I read, write, pray, and renew my spirit. It is a place where the kids can have friends over without embarrassment, where we can all come home and be glad we’re there.

At Andre’s exclusive Marin school,
it is a tradition for the kids to get hotel rooms in San Francisco on prom night, so they don’t have to drive home from the dance in the middle of the night.

It would not occur to anyone there that some families may not be able to afford San Francisco’s astronomical hotel rates. But we could not. So Andre and his girlfriend stayed here—in the home that he used to avoid—when all the other kids were in hotels. My ladies pitched in and we gave the place a top-to-bottom cleaning, even folding the toilet paper in the bathroom as they do in upscale hotels.

And Andre and his girlfriend were genuinely happy to be here.

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It is now the summer before Andre’s senior year of high school, and he is a young man on fire. His grades last year earned him a full scholarship for next year. This summer he is washing windows and making enough money to pay for his clothes, dates, and even a basketball exposure camp, where he hopes he will get a shot at a college basketball scholarship. But even if he doesn’t, he aced his SAT tests. So the future is looking bright. I have to laugh now when he argues with his girlfriend because his highest priorities are school and basketball. And I have to say that I don’t believe any of this initiative would have surfaced had we still been comfortable financially.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I went to a Fourth of July bash at the home of the friend whose wedding reception I had left in tears. More confident now, taking my life in stride, I had no problem figuring out what to wear or what to say when I got there. And I knew I looked great when Andre told me,

“Wow, Mom, your arms are really cut!” My “buff” arms made me look like I spent hours in exclusive body-sculpting classes and personal training, although, of course, they were really from the hard work of housecleaning and painting.

Several of us got to talking about teenagers and their drive, or lack of it. You could say that I was once again out of place, but this time I didn’t mind: Most of the parents complained that they can’t motivate their teenagers to get off the couch, out of the house, or away from the PlayStation. One man’s son, who went through thirteen years of top education at the French-American school, is flipping burgers instead of filling out college applications. My former friend—the one who blamed me for my business’s failure—confessed that she and her husband had threatened to take away the driving privileges of their onetime soccer-star son if he didn’t get a summer job, or at least go to soccer practice.

Listening to them talk, I thought, if I had to lose my shirt to have children who inspire me and amaze others with their self-reliance and drive, then our family has gained more than we’ve lost. Maybe I’ve paid for their bright future with my losses, but what mother wouldn’t be happy to do that for her children?

Bald Single Mother

Does Not Seek Date

C h r i s t i n a K o e n i g

I must have spaced out again.
Everyone in my support group was looking at me.

“Huh?” I asked. “What was the question?”

The well-meaning counselor looked at me, lips pursed. “I said,

‘What will you tell someone when you start dating again? How will you break the news to him about your having had breast cancer?’”

“Oh, I’m not going to be dating anybody,” I shrugged.

She had to be kidding. Me? Dating? A bald single mother with cancer? What a catch. After enduring what’s known by us insiders as the slash, burn, and poisoning—surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and hormonal therapy—the idea of ever dating again had not really entered my fuzzy chemo brain. In all sincerity, I was just happy to still be around and enchanted with my beautiful daughter, especially since I’d certainly be infertile for the rest of my days, however many were left. Dating? Not even on the radar screen.

Months ago, the night before my first chemo treatment, I had gone for a margarita at this tiny, out-of-the-way bar—my decadent, guilty pleasure. I had been to The Matchbox only a couple of times during the four years I’d lived in Chicago. When I had first moved to the city, I was on my own with a one-and-a-half-year-old. Since we lived in a completely different part of town and
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I wasn’t much of a bar person to begin with, I rarely got to The Matchbox. It was hard to reach by public transportation and convenient to nothing in my life. So only when the planets lined up right—when I drove to work that day and managed to have child care arranged—did I ever get there.

But when I did, it was great. The Matchbox is a wedge of brown brick that looks like a boxcar and bills itself as “Chicago’s Most Intimate Bar.” And they got that right: it is minuscule, with about fourteen stools. On the corner of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Ogden Avenues, in a no-man’s-land near the expressway, it is also worlds away from the singles pickup scenes downtown.

Because of the close quarters, everyone talks to each other at The Matchbox. Carpenters, judges, cops, artists, poets—you never know who’ll be sitting on the stool next to you. But nobody ever hit on me. I loved it. I really felt comfortable. And the margaritas are amazing: made with fresh limes and served up in a martini glass rimmed with extra-fine bar sugar and garnished with long, skinny twists of lemon and lime.

I thought it was fitting to go in for a ceremonial margarita before I had the first of six rounds of chemo the next morning.

Sipping my second margarita, I leaned over to the bartender, Jay, and said “Hey, you won’t see me for a while.” Not that I was a regular anyway, he pointed out. Then I spilled my guts. I told him I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had had surgery. The cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. The average woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer is in her sixties, and since I was thirty-nine years old, the cancer was considered more aggressive and would have to be treated aggressively. I was going to lose my long, straight, blonde hair.