Don't Call Me Mother (19 page)

I know she must be wrong. It is incomprehensible that this could happen to me, this serious and messy event, however normal it may be. I want to run back to my dolls. Blood, eggs, this mystery awaiting some particular moment to burst forth within my skinny body, make me feel off balance. Around the tables of my Iowa relatives, the mention of childbirth or any suggestion of sex—a bastard child, a girl who “had” to get married—causes shivers of electricity. I don’t want to experience this dangerous thing that makes adults act weird.

Mother has revealed to me the mystery of women, as Gram did in her way. I look at my mother through new eyes, respecting her for taking on the job of telling me what a daughter should be told. At least Mother thinks it’s all natural and good. She doesn’t hate men, and I love her for that.

As we finish our conversation, Grandma Bernie calls out, “Hey you, want some chocolate chip cookies?” Smiling, her silver hair shining from a recent trip to the beauty shop, she carries them to the dining room table, filling the room with a delicious aroma. Mother cackles with delight. I realize that what she has just told me connects me like a river of blood and creation to all the women in my family, and especially to her.

After cookies and milk, Grandma Bernie opens a suitcase hidden in the closet. It holds a wonderful array of miniature doll clothes. “Your little dolls need some new outfits,” she smiles. I scoop them up, marveling at their snaps and buttons, pinked edges, and perfect proportions. I run to show my mother.

“Nice,” she nods absentmindedly, furling a lock of hair round and round her finger. Tiny curls, made from her nervous twirling, circle her face. She looks up again. “Well, at least someone does that for you. Grandma Bernie is really good to you!”

I spend a happy afternoon dressing and undressing my dolls. They remind me that I’m still a little girl. I play and play, imagining balls and fancy dates with handsome men. Being grown up is far, far away.

The next day we all get in the car for a drive. Part of any visit to Iowa includes driving on the back roads, looking at houses, picking up fruit at the roadside stands. Grandpa says that he wants to stop by the Wapello Cemetery. Bernie nods her approval.

“I don’t want to go there,” Mother says in the cadence of a spoiled child. “Let me get out.”

“Nonsense, we’re almost there.” He drives between high rows of green cornfields.

“I hate cemeteries,” Mother mutters between puffs of smoke.

Blaine turns into the cemetery and stops at a square white stone with the name Hawkins carved on it. I am used to trampling through grass and looking at headstones. All my Iowa relatives have already had their gravestones carved, leaving a space for the death date.

Mother stands beside the car, looking disgusted. Grandpa puts flowers on the Hawkins site. There’s also a gravestone with Harrison on it. “He was your mother’s brother who died at birth.”

“Why do you have to talk about that?” Mother whines. “Linda, get back in the car and stop talking.”

“Now Josephine, let her be. Why shouldn’t she know about Harrison?” Blaine says. “And over here,” he goes on, “is where I’ll be buried. Over here, my beloved mother is laid to rest.” Grandpa lays flowers on his mother’s gravesite. “My father is over here, God bless him.” He folds his hands in prayer.

Bernie keeps an eye on Mother, whose face gets meaner each minute. “For God’s sake!” She throws her cigarette to the ground. “Let’s get the hell out of here. This is so spooky. I hate cemeteries. I don’t see why you all have to be so morbid.”

“If you believe in God, then you have nothing to fear,” Grandpa Blaine lectures.

“Oh, hell. You and your damned religion. Let’s go.” Mother paces back and forth by the car.

“Is this the Harrison that Gram told me about?” I ask Bernie.

“Yes. He was born and died in 1914, one year before your mother was born. You’ll have to ask your grandmother about the details, but I know he died at birth. I’m sure she must have been very sad, but it happens sometimes.”

“Stop talking about him,” Mother screams. “Why do you have to talk about him?”

We get back in the car. Mother hugs the door, as far away from me as she can get. The gentle connection between us since yesterday’s facts-of-life talk has disappeared. The anxious, yelling mother is back. I watch her, wanting desperately to bring back the mother with the soft voice and gentle ways. I touch her arm, and she glances at me as if she has forgotten my presence. Grandpa drives home, talking softly to Bernie.

I can’t stop thinking about what this all means. One day, there will be a stone for Mother.

The Wedding Dress and Gram’s Secrets

After Mother leaves us in peace and returns to Chicago, Gram and I stay in Iowa for the rest of the summer. I love being with my down-home farm family, where it’s a different world from our house on Park Street. I feel freer, because Gram is less strict with others around. Each morning begins with Blanche slamming around the kitchen, then going outside to do the weeding. I love immersing myself in the cozy world of her cookstove and garden, enveloped in the smells of good cooking, healthy soil, and growing things.

On this summer morning, Blanche and I have already gathered strawberries and made coffee and pancakes by the time Gram straggles out of bed. She stumbles into the kitchen in her glamorous maroon robe with silver and green flowers.

“Lazy bird,” Blanche barks. “You’re wastin’ the day away.”

Gram smiles, forcing cheerfulness. “Good morning, Mama.” She leans toward Blanche to give her a kiss, but Blanche barely stops moving on her way to the cookstove.

Blanche teaches me how to feed the fire, my face crinkling with the heat, while Gram looks on disapprovingly. Blanche is a whirlwind of productivity—already she’s done the garden chores, made a pot of soup that’s simmering on the stove, and put breakfast on the table. In her estimation Gram is lazy, “always lying abed.” I know that Gram loves her mother, but Blanche’s home-and-farm orientation is what Gram escaped long ago, seduced by the fancy clothes and higher society of the big city.

Blanche finally takes a break and sits at the kitchen table, her fingernails caked with dirt, her hair frizzed around her head. Quiet for the first time since 5:30 this morning, she reads the paper. Gram sits back with her cigarette and coffee.

Blanche grunts and reads out loud. “Listen. ‘Mrs. Thomas Trent, daughter of the late Mr. Schimmel of Muscatine, is home from Boston to visit her mother, Mrs. Gertrude Schimmel. Mrs. Trent is the former Betsy Schimmel. There’s an open house at Mrs. Schimmel’s home on Sunday at two in the afternoon.’ What do you think of that, Lula? Want to go?”

“I don’t know any Trent or Schimmel.” Gram’s voice is steady, nonchalant.

“Her name is Betsy Schimmel. Are you telling me you don’t remember Betsy?” Blanche leans over the paper, glowering at Gram. I sit on the edge of my chair, my heart racing. What is going on?

“Mama, I don’t know any Betsy. Never heard of her.” Gram is suddenly edgy, though. She shuffles to the cookstove and pours herself another cup of coffee.

“That’s a good one. You don’t remember Betsy? I can’t imagine you ever forgetting her, with what she did for you.”

“Mama, I said…” Gram stands imperiously, arms akimbo, eyes sparking, glaring at Blanche. Blanche glares back. Gram stomps into the living room. I am too tense to follow. Blanche sits there stiffly, lips pushed together so tight they’re almost inside out. Gram comes back into the kitchen and blows a cloud of smoke almost in her face.

“Mama, why are you irritating me like this? I don’t know any Betsy.”

Blanche stands up and shouts, “You don’t remember the girl you borrowed a wedding dress from when you ran off to get married?”

Shocked, I stare at Gram. The look on her face tells me it’s true, but she says, “Dammit, I don’t remember any Betsy!”

“You’re lying through your teeth! You can’t forget something like that. Don’t play fancy to me. I’m your mother. I’ll never forget the shame of it. You never forget the day you can’t hold your head up with the neighbors.”

“Mama, not in front of Linda. Linda, go… go get ready for Aunt Dell’s.” Aunt Dell is Blanche’s sister who lives in a nursing home. I know that Gram is trying to get rid of me so I won’t find out anything bad about her. She’s always presented such a perfect picture of herself, as if she never did anything wrong in her life.

I leave the room but peer at the two of them from the bedroom door, holding my breath, my pulse racing. This scene reminds me of Gram and Mother. Do all mothers and daughters fight?

“I never borrowed it, Mama. I didn’t.”

“You did too, and you know it. You lied to me; you told me you were going to a party. How could you do that to us? I never got over it. Never.” Blanche starts to cry, something she almost never does. “And look what happened. Serves you right.”

Gram cries, too, clinging to Blanche. “I’m sorry, Mama, I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I can’t stand it. Mama, Mama…”

I finally understand. When Gram was young, she lied to her family to run off and marry my grandfather Blaine in Wapello. She must have borrowed a dress from Betsy.

Gram’s hair is messed up, her face streaked with tears. Blanche stands for a few moments with her hands at her sides, then she puts her arms around Gram and pats her. Soon they wipe their faces and go off to dress for the visit to Aunt Dell. Here it is again—more proof that the past is still tripping everyone up.

Looking for Lewis

An ice-cream moon hovers over us on this velvet-black night, the voices of the generations murmuring across air laced with moisture from the Mississippi. There is no beginning and no end to this night with its soft, friendly darkness. The wind caresses my skin, whispering its ancient secrets, to me and to the ghosts who hover around us, unmoored from the past.

On a summer night like this one in Aunt Edith’s yard, I am keenly aware of the threads of connection that weave everyone here together. The family tapestry includes many others who aren’t present. I’ve heard their stories so often—aunts, uncles, and cousins to Blanche, long dead. I sense that somehow they are with us even now in the soothing darkness. Their names flit around us like fireflies.

The next morning, the adults start talking about Lewis, Gram’s daddy who died so long ago. “Let’s find him,” Gram says. In a flurry, everyone gets dressed and piles into the car. How in the world can we find someone who’s dead?

Every summer the Nash Rambler carries my relatives and me down corn-rimmed roads near the Mississippi, behind the hills and byways, to the houses and farms where they all lived in earlier times. Eventually, we find ourselves at some cemetery, where the names of our kin are etched in mossy stones. I used to be scared of walking among the dead, but now I’m used to it. Cemeteries are peaceful, social places, with everyone chattering about who is who, almost as if the dead were still here, living in this stone city amid grass and birdsong.

Now we’re tramping the Letts Cemetery, where Blanche, Gram, and Edith peer at the gravestones, muttering the family names and their histories. Blanche has a big frown on her face. I ask Gram what’s wrong and she tells me that they can’t find Lewis.

I remember Blanche’s story of how he died of pneumonia so young, not long after they were married. “Lewis’s father was a farmer out of Grandview. That’s where we was married.”

Memory smoothes out Blanche’s face. “Aunt Jessie stood up for me. She lives down the road.”

“Maybe she could tell us where he is,” Edith says, confirming my sense that the dead are only slightly removed from the living. Aunt Jessie might know his current address.

Blanche and Gram seem pleased to be on our way to see Aunt Jessie in Grandview. Gram tells me that Jessie is the youngest sister of Josephine, Blanche’s mother, and that she lives with her daughter now. As the youngest sister of Blanche’s mother, Jessie is a generation above Blanche, but the same age.

Aunt Jessie comes to the door this hot afternoon, her white hair flowing down her back, her crinkled-up eyes happy to see Blanche. Their thin arms cling to each other in a lingering hug.

“Oh, Blanche, it’s so good to see you.” Jessie cups Blanche’s face in her wizened hands. “So much time, so much time,” she says, shaking her head.

We come in the house where Jessie’s daughter serves iced tea and tuna sandwiches. Blanche and Jessie lean toward each other on the living room sofa, nodding their white-haired heads as they talk. I’m curled up on the floor out of the way, but close enough to listen.

Their false teeth clack as they tell the old stories. “I’ll never forget your wedding to Lewis. New Year’s Day, 1894. A beautiful sunshine day, bright with new snow. The horses’ bells jingled. There was food from all over the neighborhood. The two of you… oh, my.” She glances at Blanche, who has tears in her eyes. “Lewis, such a nice boy. The wedding was perfect. Everyone was so young. It’s a shame, it is,” Jessie says.

“We couldn’t find him at the cemetery,” Gram says.

Jessie widens her eyes. “Well, he’s out there. I saw him buried.” She pauses, then picks up the thread of her story. “Blanche sure was strong. And then you was born, Lula…” Her voice rises at the end, suggesting that this event, Gram’s birth, was the good part of the story.