Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (35 page)

The principal had a fit and ordered the janitors to sterilize the locker room.

The girls from Genie’s class walked in to the locker room. They saw some of the smeared residue. They might have been disgusted, but they said nothing. They had been made to understand that this was something you didn’t make fun of.

As Genie undressed, showered, and dressed again, her mind wandered. In her English class, she had been reading books about adolescents, books like
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens and
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare. But the pain suffered by the adolescent characters in those novels paled in comparison to the torment suffered by her own sister in real life. “Nobody could understand what Geri was going through. Nobody could reach her. The pain she felt was mostly an internal pain.” It manifested itself in the slamming of doors, in sorrowful howls of frustration and rage, in occasionally punching herself or others, and in unfathomable incidents like the one in the locker room. The sheer inexplicability of those actions had made it possible for Genie to detach herself emotionally from the situation. Geri had seemed to reside in a world that nobody else could inhabit. It must have been excruciatingly lonely. But up to that point, all Genie had been capable of comprehending was the sheer sadness of it all.

The locker-room incident changed everything for Genie. For the first time since Geri had become mentally ill three years earlier, Genie stopped trying to distance herself from the illness. For the first time, Genie could acknowledge it for what it was. It was none of those things that so many people throughout society in those days—from the asshole boys on campus to the misinformed general public—presumed the nature of mental illness to be. It was neither intellectual feebleness nor social awkwardness nor adolescent rebelliousness nor parental worthlessness nor moral wickedness. “It was not something to run away from. It was an illness.”

Genie stopped feeling defensive about it around school or anywhere else, and then she stopped feeling guilty about it, too. Her dance instructor had described it in such a straightforward way that differed so markedly from the evasive reaction of the nuns. “I can start to face this now,” Genie told herself. “It’s not just Mom and Dad’s problem.” And as Genie bent down in the locker room to lace her shoes, it was as if the loose strands of her young life began to tie themselves back together again.

If the month had been January instead of February, Geri would have been okay. That would have been month Number 1. She went to the bathroom at school with impunity during month Number 1. But month Number 2 was dangerous. If she could’ve controlled herself a few more days until month Number 3, that would’ve been equally dangerous, because there was something equally insidious about the Number 3. The Number 3 discombobulated Geri, because it reminded her of the third finger. The vile finger. The corrupt finger. Any association whatsoever with finger Number 3 could lead straight to C.

Geri could never eat a Milky Way candy bar. The television commercials deterred her. “Three. Three. Three treats in one,” the narrator touted the chocolate, caramel, and nougat. “Three. Three. Three treats in one.” It irritated the hell out of Geri. “Three. Three. Three treats in one.” Whenever Geri saw those commercials, she just kept thinking about the third finger.

Geri never made it to month Number 4 at Redondo Union High School. She stopped attending the school in March 1971, just a few days shy of her 16th birthday. Mom and Dad agreed not to make her return.

Genie didn’t know about the Number 2 or the Number 3 at the time. Only Geri knew. But Genie came to understand in her own way why Geri had smeared the stuff on the lockers. “It was her way of saying that she just couldn’t go through with this.”

But, boy, did she have rhythm. Geri and Mary Jo watched
Soul Train
each week on television. Geri picked up the most complicated dance moves with ease. She thrust her chin toward one shoulder, pointed her knees simultaneously in the opposite direction, gyrated her arms in big circles, and snapped her fingers to the beat—everything always on the beat.

Geri found a soul sister in the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin, who turned the tables on doctors and psychiatrists with her smash hit, “Think.” Aretha belted out the song with all the pride, fervor, exhortation, and insistence that she had learned as a gospel singer on the pulpits of Detroit.

Aretha taught Geri how to vent her rage in righteous indignation toward anyone who had ever dared use her as a drug experiment. For those who had been so used, the song proclaimed emancipation.

“
Think” was the first track on the 1968 album,
Aretha Now
. Whenever Mary Jo put the album on the stereo, Geri boogied like she boogied to no other song, hopping on the playroom floor and swirling her fists in relentless rhythm like a rotary engine:

Dad and Mom almost never let loose during those years. It was not their mission to have a good time. Their mission was to provide for their kids, not for themselves. Even when they fought, they adhered to their common mission.

“
You kids never begged to come into this world,” Dad reminded us on several occasions. He did his best to fulfill the duty that he had incurred for having brought us into the world. He left early for work every weekday, drove far away, came home late, and tried to be pleasant, but he was always tired by then. On the weekends, he sometimes emerged from his doghouse and tried to be involved in our lives, but he was spent.

Mom was luckier. She genuinely had fun being a mom, cooking, cleaning, clipping coupons, and going to the grocery store to refill the refrigerator with bargains.

But Dad and Mom rarely carved out time for the purpose of having fun
together
during those years. One of the saving graces of their marriage was their ability to find humor and revelry in the simplest of situations.

Farts were a constant source of amusement. We used acronyms for different kinds. SBD’s were silent but deadly. LBH’s were loud but harmless. We held competitions and counted the seconds to see who could fart the longest. No one could compete with Mom. She farted with abandon, and her farts were by far the best. They usually started with an isolated, innocent puff, then gradually gained momentum, then crescendoed into the full rat-a-tat-tat of a drum roll, and finally climaxed with the doleful groan of a tuba. We called Mom “the orchestra.”

She humbly bowed.

Dad laughed so hard he cried.

Or they danced the polka on the hardwood floor that they’d installed in the playroom for our blocks and trains. Once every couple of years, Dad and Mom rolled back the coiled rug on the floor, put a Frankie Yankovic album on the stereo, and wowed us with their kicks and spins.

Frankie Yankovic—son of Slovenian immigrants, World War II veteran, accordion player, and bandleader—was “America’s Polka King.” Frankie Yankovic and His Yanks left Dad and Mom swinging themselves silly to the boisterous “Beer Barrel Polka” as we clapped from the couches:

Or they shared tender, inside jokes. Their bedroom shared a wall with Mary Jo’s bedroom. She could hear them mumbling and giggling as she lay in bed at night. Usually, she couldn’t make out what they were saying. They could’ve been talking about other people, about us, or about themselves. It didn’t matter. It put Mary Jo to sleep.

But one night was different. Mom was crying to Dad about Geri. A painful, mournful crying that penetrated the bedroom wall. Mary Jo heard some of the words clearly. “I feel like a failure as a mother,” Mom said. Nothing she could do seemed good enough to help Geri. “They’re going to take her away to a foster home,” Mom sobbed.

Dad mumbled steadily and reassuringly, comforting Mom and calming her down.

In front of us, Dad and Mom always seemed to be in disagreement about Geri. But behind closed doors, they consoled one another.

Geri lived out her teenage years at home. She worked toward her high school diploma with the help of a social worker who was sent from the public school to our home each day to make sure that Geri finished her lessons. She could proceed at her own pace and eventually earn her diploma from adult school. But a diploma alone wouldn’t give her many options for the future. Her employment prospects were dim.

Mom had another scheme up her apron. A friend of hers had told her about a nearby Italian restaurant that served amazing food. In a move that was as prayerful as it was bold, Mom walked into Augie’s Italian Restaurant in the middle of 1971, introduced herself to Augie, and instantly befriended the family who owned and operated the place. “I’ve heard so many wonderful things about this restaurant!” Mom not only broke the ice but also melted it.

The restaurant was nothing fancy, just a home-style Italian diner with linoleum floors, a few wooden booths against one wall, and a few tables and chairs. “But it smelled just like Mama’s kitchen,” Mom reminisced. “Augie cooked just like my mother!” The fresh tomato sauce. The oregano. The heartwarming ravioli. The zesty torpedo sandwiches. Augie and Connie Ciccarello and their two daughters served the public out of their humble storefront on the thoroughly unimpressive thoroughfare of Sepulveda Boulevard in central Torrance. “Perfect,” Mom sniffed.

“
I’m Italian,” Mom told Augie and Connie. “And I just want to see if I can do this. I’ll work for you for free.”

Deal.

Within a couple months, Genie started working alongside Mom. It was Genie’s first paying job, a breakthrough in the early 1970s as the masses of baby-boomer children flooded the job market. Then Joe worked there. Then Geri worked there. Even Stan, who was almost always buried in his studies, showed up to fix the salami slicer.

Genie and Joe each worked at Augie’s for a couple months, though not at the same time. Joe took Genie’s place. They each worked there just long enough to earn the golden badge of experience of working for minimum wage at a restaurant and then moved on to better-paying jobs, leaving room at Augie’s Job Training Program for the next Godges kid. None of the kids worked there simultaneously, but Mom worked alongside each kid, continuously working for free except for a Christmas bonus.

Mom coordinated the smooth turnover of minimum-wage employees. Genie, Joe, and Mom waited the tables, served the meals, cleared the tables, operated the cash register, prepared the takeout orders, washed the silverware, cleaned the floors, and brought home the leftovers.

Mom had several motivations. “I wanted to show the kids how much fun work could be. How easy. How tasty. I wanted them to see they could do something other than going to the beach every day. I wanted to get the hell outta the house. I wanted to learn how to work in a professional kitchen. And I wanted to give Geri a boost. I always had Geri in the back of my mind. I thought she could learn there. But she couldn’t.”

Mom succeeded on all counts but one. Things didn’t work out for Geri. She started working at Augie’s in December 1971 but lasted only a few weeks. It took her an eternity to wash a spoon, and she had to be reminded not to use so much soap and hot water to wash just one spoon. She couldn’t dry the silverware. She put them wet into their trays.