This scene is from the first time Nicky volunteers with Ryan, as I waited to be picked up and started to notice my mother in a different way.
I was nervous and excited while waiting for Ryan to come and pick me up, as if I was going on a first date with my high school crush. I couldn’t sit still and I put my hair up, then took it down, pulled it in a ponytail, then let it hang loose.
After dressing in jeans and my cheer jersey, I went bounding down the stairs and found my mother at the kitchen table. That morning, her body and round face, surrounded by her dark, curly permed and dyed hairdo, seemed to be smaller.
I didn’t realize how my life was changing. Even as I resisted, my boundaries were being redefined.
I was making new friends, getting closer to being on my own, and staying away from my house as much as possible.
The importance of my parents was diminishing.
My mother seemed to be only sad in those days. For years she had worked at Juvenile Hall, where she’d supervised girls who were runaways, in gangs, underage prostitutes, were molested or raped, or were considered out of control. Most were from dysfunctional broken homes or had been abandoned.
They came through like a chain gang, one after the other. In my mother’s mind, they were all the same, and their story translated this way: they weren’t understood, didn’t get a fair shake, and hated their parents.
If they complained to her that life was unfair, my mother offered this advice: “Get used to it. That’s life, and nothing’s fair about it. No one’s gonna pick you up and hold you, and it’s up to you to make your own way.”
What did my mother do for them? Oddly enough, many of those girls bonded with her. Like she did for Jenise and me, she’d bring themspecial treats: fashion and gossip magazines, makeup, snacks, a favor- ite candy bar and so on. It was the first time some of the girls felt they’d been heard by an adult.
Workplace of Daisy Young of Shadow Heart
Later when they were young women, many came back to visit her and share news about their changed lives. During these visits she’d stay late to talk with them, as if receiving a piece of love she had missed as a young girl and in her marriage.
Sometimes, I wished I was one of those girls.
I never could understand why she stayed late for them when Jenise and I needed her.
Did she love those girls in ways she couldn’t show to her own family?
Did they give her hope or fill her with the feeling that her life meant something?
Had she lost that validation now?
Was that why she buried herself in her romance novels?
My Mom used to share her stories from work with all of us. She would be proud and excited when she helped a young woman with a problem and her eyes would be alive and expressive as we all sat at the kitchen table listening.
But eventually, she had to quit her job because our father could not be trusted to take care of us on the nights she worked.
Now when she was home, she picked my father up from the front lawn after he’d passed out, helped him out of his truck because he was too drunk to get up, undressed him, and put him to bed, sometimes wiping him off after he’d peed himself.
She went to get his bottles of whiskey so he wouldn’t drive drunk to get them. She could’ve hidden his keys but that would have meant taking his verbal and sometimes physical abuse.
She could’ve disabled his truck in some way, but that would have meant he couldn’t get to work the next day, impacting our family’s finances.
Like a doctor prescribing painkillers, she doled out his shots to have more control over his life.
1. How did you parents interact when addiction was present?
2. Were you, your sibling, or other parent the enabler?
3. What were some of the ways you escaped and gave in to ease the difficulty of having to fight through your life?
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Thank you,
Pam
MAY
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