My mother did it up in pink and ruffles, because I was a girl. Actually, I hated pink AND ruffles. I also hated being a girl.
Everyone thought Mom and Dad were madly in love. In public, she called him Babydoll and he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He was always patting her ass and petting her arm and squeezing her shoulders. Wives used to ask theirhusbands, “Why don’t you pay attention to me like that?”
The trouble was Dad couldn’t keep his hands off any woman. He played around. I think that’s probably what drove her over the edge—his fooling around, plus the drinking. I figured out about his lady friends at age five, when Dee, the divorced redhead (well, orangehead, actually, but the color looked sexy on her) who lived down the street started inviting me to come over and play at her house. Even at age five, I suspected that ladies who wore gold ankle bracelets and that much perfume weren’t interested in little girls who asked a lot of questions. Dee bought me a beautiful purple tea set made of real china and let me play with it in her basement rec room, which was a cool turquoise and gray. After I played awhile, pouring tap water into the pot and then into the cups and then serving several pretend friends, Dad would come over to Dee’s and take me home. One day I came up out of the rec room early to get more tea water and saw him kissing Dee in a way he never kissed Mom, and I knew Dee didn’t give me the tea set because she liked me. I went back downstairs to the rec room and broke every piece in the tea set.
There were other women besides Dee, and they all lived in the neighborhood. All but Dee were married. I usually could tell when one was having an affair with Dad, because she would play up to me, telling me how smart or cute I was, or offering to fix my hair. It made me realsuspicious about women. Men, too. I didn’t like how Dad used me for cover with his ladies. I never said anything to Mom, because we didn’t get along. I was tall and skinny, and she thought I was ugly and told me so. Often. I felt kind of sorry for her. I thought she might have been happier if she’d had my cousin Linda for a daughter. Linda had blond hair that went into soft natural curls. She was graceful and not too tall. She took ballet lessons and wore pretty dresses and never got them dirty. She put doll dresses on kittens. She joined the Girl Scouts and earned so many merit badges she hardly had room to sew them all on her sash. Linda was two years older than me, but I used to fantasize that maybe our moms got us mixed up on a visit and my mom took the wrong girl home. Mom used to dress me in Linda’s castoff clothes, but I never looked as good in them as Linda did.
I never knew how much Mom knew about Dad’s lady friends. Mom was angry a lot. Maybe she was hungover or maybe she suspected what Dad was up to with the women. One story will give you an idea of what she was like, and I’ll tell it because it kinda has a happy ending. I don’t talk about Mom much. I’m not looking for sympathy. It’s over. Anyway, I was nine and she’d been trying to brush my hair for church and it didn’t look the way she wanted and she screamed, “You’re hopeless, I can’t do a thing with you,” and she hit me in the face with the hairbrush, which left a red mark. I got out ofgoing to church that Sunday. That was the good part. I liked church even less than I liked Mom.
It was shortly after the hairbrush incident that she found Dad in a clinch with Marcy, her best friend, at a New Year’s party. Mom and Dad had a huge, screaming fight right in front of thirty people at the party. Those people all told the police about it after the shooting. Mom and Dad had a bunch of fights at home after that. Every time Mom saw Dad, she’d scream insults at him. Once, she called him a lousy lay. I didn’t know what it meant then, but it made him mad. He never walked out, though. They stayed together, fighting and drinking. I hid out
Everyone thought Mom and Dad were madly in love. In public, she called him Babydoll and he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He was always patting her ass and petting her arm and squeezing her shoulders. Wives used to ask theirhusbands, “Why don’t you pay attention to me like that?”
The trouble was Dad couldn’t keep his hands off any woman. He played around. I think that’s probably what drove her over the edge—his fooling around, plus the drinking. I figured out about his lady friends at age five, when Dee, the divorced redhead (well, orangehead, actually, but the color looked sexy on her) who lived down the street started inviting me to come over and play at her house. Even at age five, I suspected that ladies who wore gold ankle bracelets and that much perfume weren’t interested in little girls who asked a lot of questions. Dee bought me a beautiful purple tea set made of real china and let me play with it in her basement rec room, which was a cool turquoise and gray. After I played awhile, pouring tap water into the pot and then into the cups and then serving several pretend friends, Dad would come over to Dee’s and take me home. One day I came up out of the rec room early to get more tea water and saw him kissing Dee in a way he never kissed Mom, and I knew Dee didn’t give me the tea set because she liked me. I went back downstairs to the rec room and broke every piece in the tea set.
There were other women besides Dee, and they all lived in the neighborhood. All but Dee were married. I usually could tell when one was having an affair with Dad, because she would play up to me, telling me how smart or cute I was, or offering to fix my hair. It made me realsuspicious about women. Men, too. I didn’t like how Dad used me for cover with his ladies. I never said anything to Mom, because we didn’t get along. I was tall and skinny, and she thought I was ugly and told me so. Often. I felt kind of sorry for her. I thought she might have been happier if she’d had my cousin Linda for a daughter. Linda had blond hair that went into soft natural curls. She was graceful and not too tall. She took ballet lessons and wore pretty dresses and never got them dirty. She put doll dresses on kittens. She joined the Girl Scouts and earned so many merit badges she hardly had room to sew them all on her sash. Linda was two years older than me, but I used to fantasize that maybe our moms got us mixed up on a visit and my mom took the wrong girl home. Mom used to dress me in Linda’s castoff clothes, but I never looked as good in them as Linda did.
I never knew how much Mom knew about Dad’s lady friends. Mom was angry a lot. Maybe she was hungover or maybe she suspected what Dad was up to with the women. One story will give you an idea of what she was like, and I’ll tell it because it kinda has a happy ending. I don’t talk about Mom much. I’m not looking for sympathy. It’s over. Anyway, I was nine and she’d been trying to brush my hair for church and it didn’t look the way she wanted and she screamed, “You’re hopeless, I can’t do a thing with you,” and she hit me in the face with the hairbrush, which left a red mark. I got out ofgoing to church that Sunday. That was the good part. I liked church even less than I liked Mom.
It was shortly after the hairbrush incident that she found Dad in a clinch with Marcy, her best friend, at a New Year’s party. Mom and Dad had a huge, screaming fight right in front of thirty people at the party. Those people all told the police about it after the shooting. Mom and Dad had a bunch of fights at home after that. Every time Mom saw Dad, she’d scream insults at him. Once, she called him a lousy lay. I didn’t know what it meant then, but it made him mad. He never walked out, though. They stayed together, fighting and drinking. I hid out
Similar Books
