My mother and I continued in our relationship, me swinging from feeling tender and protective towards her when I hated my stepfather and his drunken behavior, then feeling tough and angry against her for choosing him against me. We scraped against each other like two shards of glass.
I asked for things to prove she loved me: piano lessons (would make too much noise, she said, and would wake Dirk up), flute lessons (ditto), a cat (she hated cats and besides, they smelled) or a canary (again, too much noise). We did get the dog, but she was something the boys wanted, too, and the dog could stay outside in the backyard, away from the master bedroom, which was in the front of the house.
Once Mom was home on the weekends, I didn't go to the library.
I don't know if it was the financial stress of having a house or whether Dirk had gotten over what I'd imagined was his fear of losing his driver's license again, but now he began to drink in front of us kids. Or maybe it was that he didn't have the responsibility of taking care of us on his own and therefore he could do what he wanted. He'd buy six-packs of Budweiser and start chug-a-lugging on Saturday afternoons. At first, we ignored him. But after the sixth can of beer, he would get maudlin. Billy would be the object of his affection.
"Ah, Billy," he would say, "I love ya." He came over to Billy and gave him a sloppy hug, his breath so foul when he burped the rest of us could smell it. "You know that, don'cha, Billy?"
Billy shrugged out of his grasp and wiggled closer to Jimmy and me.
Or Dirk would rag on Jimmy or me for something we'd done that he didn't like.
My mother said, "Dirk, leave them alone."
But Dirk couldn't. After a few weeks of this behavior, we kids got up when the beer came out and went into the boys' room. I went with them because I didn't want to be alone. Even then, sometimes he would pursue Billy. We learned to hide under the bed and keep quiet so he couldn't see us if he opened the door. Without us to distract him, he'd focus on our mother. We heard what he said, loud and clear.
We learned from Dirk the bad words men call women:
Pussy.
Cunt.
Whore.
Bitch.
His words flew like daggers in my chest. This was my future. My destiny was to grow up to be a woman. And I would become all those things, just like my mother. How could I hope to be any different?
The litany of abuse was endless. He would accuse her, she would deny it and beg him to stop. After awhile, it became obvious he would remain out of control all night. If we were lucky, he would go to the bathroom long enough for her to rummage in the refrigerator, open the door to the bedroom and toss some apples on the bottom bunk for our dinner. If not, we went hungry.
He accused her of all kinds of things: She didn't love him, she was having sex with men at the post office where she work (could she really do that? I wondered), she was planning to leave him the first chance she got. He even accused her of sneaking behind his back to see my father.
When I asked her about it later, she denied seeing my father.
"Then why would Dad say that to you?" I pursued.
"He doesn't know what he's saying when he's drunk."
But he kept saying the same things, time after time. It was like a reel-to-reel tape, his endless loop of accusations, her denials and begging for him to stop. It became routine to us; we knew what to expect.
Yet we were never smart enough to hide bread and peanut butter in the boys' closet. We could have had dusty picnics under the bottom bunk bed.
But I suppose then we would have forgotten ourselves and gotten too loud.
One summer day, Jimmy and I got it into our heads that we could hike up to the Nike base above Pacifica. I presented myself to him in my regular summer outfit of t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.
"You can't wear flip-flops on a hike," Jimmy said.
I dismissed his dictum. "Oh, I'll be fine."
Dirk and Mom must have been out for the day, so we had to take Billy with us. We walked over to the root of the mountain. You couldn't see the summit of a thousand feet when that close. There didn't seem to be a trail, or if there was one, we couldn't find it. We skinnied through the creosote bushes as we wended our way up. Jimmy was in the front. He often pushed through, causing the bushes to snap back and hit me on the face. To keep the greenery from hitting me, I caught the stems and kept grousing until Jimmy got the message and stopped doing it. I held the ends of the bushes as I passed, not wanting to smack little Billy. We'd forgotten to bring water or snacks and it wasn't long before my feet were prickled with foxtail stickers. I was not going to complain, though, and let Jimmy have the satisfaction of being right. We spent several hours bushwacking. Finally, Jimmy called a halt. He took one look at Billy, who was trying not to cry, and at me, quietly pulling stickers out of my feet, and decided we were done. When we got home, we drained a half-gallon of milk between the three of us and ate all the chocolate Hostess cupcakes we could find.
When Dirk wasn't home, I usually sat next to Mom when she was off work and we watched television at night so I could be close to her. The boys sat together near the set. During the commercials, she told me all the things Dirk did that were mean to her. She especially hated it when he got thrown in jail for drunkenness and he called to bail her out. One night when she had come to get him, he cursed her in front of everyone there. When they got home, she told him she'd never bail him out again. The next time it happened, she didn't. Dirk seemed to have forgotten her promise. He was surprised when she reminded him, but he didn't argue.
Mom never told me anything nice Dirk did. That made me hate him even more and wonder why she stayed with him. It made no sense. Eventually, I got tired of being sorry for her and resented her endless complaints. I never replied to her rants, but I wondered, if she hated him so much, why she didn't do something to change her situation. It wasn't as if she'd never gotten divorced before. How much pain and anger did it take to get up the courage to do it again?
Dirk liked to go to the races. Once when Mom was working on a Saturday, he took us with him. We wandered around the stands, picking up old tickets and matching them, like a game of Go Fish. The horses were interesting, but we couldn't get close enough to see them well. There was a lot of excitement from the adults when the races were running screaming, yelling, then a shower of losing tickets like confetti as each race ended.
My mother must have forbidden Dirk to take us again because we never went back. He began to disappear to the track on Saturdays. We could tell if he'd won; he would come home smelling of whiskey. If he lost, he'd come in and open the beers.
Occasionally, my mother's sister, Bea, and her husband would come up from southern California to visit. Uncle Tony and Dirk would go to the races together, but somehow Uncle Tony never ended up drunk. Uncle Tony actually seemed to enjoy himself and he came back happy even if he hadn't won any money.
I knew other families were different than us. The television families like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best were obviously made-up; I was never taken in by them. But I knew real girls at school whose fathers actually liked them, who would talk about things they did with their dads and how much fun it was to go camping or fishing or learn to dance.
For us, we weren't exactly a family. Whenever anyone new got introduced to us, Dirk made a point of saying Jimmy and I were "Lenore's children" and Billy was his son. He made it sound like his badge of honor, taking in some other man's children and supporting them. Every time he said that was a reminder that my father wasn't around and Jimmy and I were supposed to feel grateful to him for taking us in. But, in effect, Jimmy and I were partners in crime. Our crime was not being related to him.
There was no way I'd ever cozy up to Dirk. It wasn't just the molestation, although that would have been more than sufficient. I always felt we were intruders in his life. Jimmy and I were merely the baggage that came with our mother. His "real" family, our mother and Billy, would have been better without us. We were a constant drag on his wallet and his happiness; we were the reason he had to drink himself blotto on the weekends.
In the terminology of those days (and sometimes I still hear it), Jimmy and I were known as coming from a "broken home." Later, as divorce became more common, people spoke of "blended families," and, it is true, some parents managed, through hard work and compromises, to make it work. There was too much going on in our household, too much alcohol, unresolved anger and grief, to make blending possible. My mother and Dirk were like two-dimensional beings who'd gone through the paper shredder of arguments and come out worse for wear. They would tape themselves back together just until the next go-around where the same fights would shred them apart. Nothing was ever resolved.
Once when Aunt Bea and Uncle Tony were visiting with their children, I made the rounds of the circle where we were sitting with a package of Five-Flavor Life-Savers, asking each person if they wanted one. When I finished, Dirk said, "She asked everybody but me if I wanted candy."
I said, "Did you want one?"
"No," he said.
"I didn't think so."
I wouldn't have talked back if it had been just us and Dirk, but having "company" made me bold and I got away with sassing him.
My resentment toward my mother came out at school when we were supposed to write a Mother's Day poem. Everybody else was crafting love notes to their moms. I sat, mystified. How was I going to write a poem for her when I didn't even respect her? A girl in the next row wrote out long lines in cursive script, something we were just learning to do. I watched her and got an idea. I could write the same poem and give it to my mother. She would never know the difference.
The next day, our teacher had us both stay inside at recess. She held up both the papers.
"These poems are exactly the same," she said. "One of you must have copied."
The teacher must have realized it was me; I was the one sitting behind with a good view of the other girl's paper. Oh, no, I thought to myself. I can't confess. The teacher will send a note home for sure. My poor classmate asserted her innocence as well. I knew it was wrong to keep quiet, but I couldn't let my mother know how hurt and angry I was.
This was survival. If we both bore the stain of dishonesty, so be it. I didn't worry about the consequences for her. It was a wonderful poem and if her mother was really that lovely, surely she wouldn't be punished.
The teacher wrote to both our mothers about the plagiarism. I swore to my mother it wasn't me. She believed me. And she loved the poem.
A few weeks later, walking home from school, I found a cream-colored knitted glove on the ground. I picked it up. Several feet farther lay it's mate. I picked that one up as well, took them home and showed them to my mother. I told her about finding them.
She looked at me, puzzled. "You really found them? . . . Are you sure you didn't take them from somebody?"
Oh, I thought. She doesn't trust me.
Well, good, then. We're even.
Fortunately, school ended the second week of June. There were no Father's Day cards.
Some time after Dirk had invited me into his bed, his son Rod, from Dirk's first marriage, came to stay with us. At the moment, Rod was separated from his wife. I remember Rod as being old, but he was probably only thirty, with a big pot belly and straight dark hair he slicked back with grease, like Elvis. He slept on the couch in the little living room. One day, he passed me a folded-up note. I took it to the bathroom, opened it, and read, "I'd like to get to know you better. Write me back, but don't tell your Mom or Dad."
I folded the paper back up, excited the bathroom, threw it at him, then I went out to the yard to find Jimmy. I stuck next to Jimmy the rest of the time Rod was there. Rod and his wife eventually reconciled and I didn't have to worry about him lurking around the house anymore.
Once in the middle of a fight with Dirk, my mother grabbed her purse and headed out the door. Dirk ran to the boys' room to tell us, "She's leaving! You'd better go get her!"
Mom was halfway down the street when we caught up with her.
"Mommy, Mommy, don't leave!" Billy yelled.
I was thinking, "Take us with you!" After ascertaining Dirk had sent us, she consented to return.
Life was good when Dirk wasn't around. Sometimes I felt sorry for him. He was annoyed with me and Jimmy all the time and I'm sure he felt our annoyance at his presence. We were stuck together with no way to get out, it seemed.
Now that Jimmy and I were older, we cleaned the dishes. Mostly, he washed and I dried. I delighted in finding any trace of food still stuck on the plates and would hand them back, saying, "You missed a spot."
If we had time and I washed the dishes, I would let them sit in the drainboard until they were dry. I liked to listen to records while I worked. We had a lot of records, some of which were old, heavy vinyl 78 RPMs, brought from the house on Boutwell Street. Sometimes I'd listen to "Victory at Sea" or "Scheherazade," but my favorites were more modern LPs like Spike Jones' comedies like "Cocktails for Two" or Bill Cosby's stories about Fat Albert. But my favorite record was "The Music Man." I loved to sing along with Shirley Jones as Marian the Librarian. The record player was in the living room and it had to be pretty loud for me to hear it in the kitchen over the commotion I made in the sink with the soaping and water running for the rinse. One morning I was singing along while we kids were in the house alone. I had my hands in the suds and my soprano as high as it could go.
Jimmy came racing around the corner, yelling,"Shut up! I'm trying to do my homework and you're making too much noise." His face was red and contorted.
I turned from the sink, letting the soap and water on my hands splash on the linoleum.
He slapped me hard on the cheek.
I choked out the words. "You're just like him."
We both looked shocked.
He gave no reply, but went back to his room. I shut off the music and finished the dishes, then mopped up the soap and water from the floor.
We were both growing up.
I never sang in that house again.
…