Before you can walk, you crawl

      We went to the beach and to Disneyland and I tried not to think too much.  My Husband got orders back to Washington.  I already knew I was pregnant, and although it was planned, I felt it as he became even more remote. He would take the phone into the bathroom for hours, speaking in hushed tones. I would listen at the door. Trying to pick up a clue as to what he was thinking or feeling, any sign of hope.  He was an island, and I could not swim.  We moved into the same small town I had come from.
   My friends from school came to see me, to rub my tummy and catch up. I was the first married and it seemed to put an invisible barrier between us. I was eight months along when my husband said we needed to go to my Mom's. It wasn't so unusual. He did odd jobs for her, so we went. When we walked into the living room he nudged me towards my Mother and said he was giving me back. I do believe I died a little just then. I turned to see if he was playing, he most definitely was not.  My Mother, to her own credit, didn't bat an eye. She told him she had given me to him and he couldn't give me back. Sweet Lord was this really happening? My humiliation was complete.  We somehow got  back home, and it was my turn to barricade myself. I stayed away from him and he spent most of his time with the friend I thought I had. After her daughter was born, he announced he was taking her to an AA meeting and that I needed to watch her new born. I must have been just short of nine months, and very sick, but I did it. I waited for them all night. They left at noon one day, and came home about ten thirty the next morning.  As soon as she walked in, I walked out. I went home. Into the room I had created for our baby. I stayed there sitting on the floor for a life time, long enough to give up on my dreams.

   I had an emergency c-section, my Husband was there for the birth and left right after. He didn't come the next day or the next. I called him early on the third day, he picked up and I heard her, my friend. In my house, in my bed. He hung up on me.  His Mother flew out to see the baby. she bought clothes and diapers and every thing a baby could need. He showed up dutifully everyday with her. She stayed for three and then she was gone, and so was he.

  The day I was discharged, my Mother took me home. He wasn't there when I came home. He said he had duty and would be home the next day. He could have taken leave. He chose not to. I knew he was seeing someone else. Someone he worked with. She would call the house and tell me that he was with me because I was pregnant. That he didn't love me and worse. I never hung up on her. I think I needed to hear those words. I needed to hear the truth. I started counseling right after my daughter  was born. I was at rock bottom and I needed to find a way to at least make it to my knees. If you can get to your knees you can always crawl.

Some Prayers Answered

    I landed at LAX late at night in my second full week of marriage. I was nervous, it was the first time I had flown alone and I hadn't been to California since I was a small child.  I was just as nervous to see my new husband. Everything went so fast.  I hadn't had the time or the inclination to consider how I felt about the turn my world had taken. I just went with the flow as I had done all of my life. With someone else making my decisions for me. I had become divorced from myself. I would come to realize just how painful that could be.
 
    I couldn't go back to my Mother, I wouldn't. I thought to call her, but there was no phone. I had no idea where I was, well that is not wholly true. I knew for sure I was lost. And make no mistake, lost is a place. It exists, deep in us all. When you've run out of the easy feelings. Pain and disappointment, hurt and loss. It is there waiting to creep in and capture what is left. It took a long time for him to admit the truth. Surely more than days, maybe weeks. But he did and it didn't matter. I was already broken. His words meant nothing. He apologized and confessed all. Begged me to forgive him and promised he would be better.   We moved into a small apartment off of the highway, got some rental furniture and I pretended I was happy.

  I would walk around the corner and up many blocks to McDonald's, further if I needed something from the grocery store. We lived just off the red light district. As I walked men would honk and holler out, or follow me. I tried to stay in the apartment and live off the food at the gas station across the way. Finally, I called my Mother. I didn't tell her, I couldn't. But we talked and she saved me. Or rather, she sent her Sister to. I thought of a nicer, kinder version of my own mother. She was the youngest of six and she was fun. She must have been in her mid thirties then, going through a bad divorce. She would come and take me shopping and to the movies. She worked at a beauty school answering the phones, and she would bring me along to get my hair and nails done, she kept me from being alone.

  I surely, would have starved if not for her.  I was almost nineteen and when my husband was home, he went out to the bars. He said he went to play pool. I didn't think about it. I never questioned him, or complained. I just endured.  This had to work, it was all I had. I prayed for my husband to love me, that he would be faithful. I prayed for peace in my heart and as the days turned to months, I prayed for a baby. Someone to love, and to love me. And in time, at least one of my prayers were answered.

If you say so, "I do"

  So, there I was, sleeping in another strange place. In someone else's bed. It wasn't so far from normal for me. I was awoken really early, like 6:30 early. I heard the door open and then came a voice "Some one has been sleeping in my bed and she's still here". Oh crap...oh crap...oh crap! I peeked out from under the covers and there he stood. I knew his name from a previous meeting, but I didn't know him and I was wishing that God would take me whole. Right there and then.  He laughed and left the room so I could get dressed. We talked for hours. my friend and I made breakfast for the guys and we spent the day, like so many others before and yet to come, laughing and playing cards and of course drinking cheap beer. We fell into a relationship so naturally. He picked me up on his way home from work. I  stayed for hours on end and then sneak my way back to J's. I felt I was important and was wanted by someone,  I was in love. He was reserved, which to me was safe, he was funny. Four years older than me and light years ahead in life experience. It was thrilling.

    He would come into the restaurant, where of course, he met my mother. She liked him immediately.  He asked me to marry him in October of my seventeenth year; I said no. I wasn't ready. I wanted to go to school. We didn't talk of it again.  I thought it was decided. I didn't know mother put their heads together, but they did and soon she was asking me to lunch. I went. Looking back, it's like I never learned. I hoped that I was good enough; that she would be happy with me, and hope of all hopes that she loved me. She wanted to talk about my future. I told her my plans, which she was already aware of and I tried to sound sure of myself and firm. I tried to stand my ground. I knew she was not happy with me spending time with my grandfather. She had a way of letting me know when she disapproved of my choices.  She made some off handed comment about how I might want to rethink that and then let it drop. Things went along very easily into December. Then again, my mother asked me to lunch. This time someone else was with her.  She came into our lives about the same time as my grandfather did. I didn't know her well. I had no opinion of her one way or the other.  I didn't think she and my father got along, but she and my mother were close. We met at a small eatery in Seattle. She  didn't believe in preambles. She jumped into what she had to say in a matter of fact way. She wanted me to know about my grandfather. In graphic detail she laid out her own story of abuse. I remember feeling numb. My heart was beating so fast and there were tears trying to make their way out. I sat rigid and listened to them both. "They only wanted what was best for me.They were worried for me." She had wanted to tell me long ago, but had tried to spare me. I didn't know what to believe. I didn't want to be there. I hated them both in that moment.  It was too much for me to take in. I said I had to go; I left quickly to get away from them; to put as much distance from their words as I possibly could.

  Broken, alone, again. There was nothing left to take from me. I felt adrift in a sea of pain. I skipped my grandfather's usual visit. I didn't call. I didn't know who to trust. I knew I couldn't bring myself to ask him. I knew I wasn't going to stay with him.  I wasn't going to college. I couldn't take the chance. I would rather die than know the truth.

   In the first part of my senior year, the career counselor called me to her office, asked why I was still in school. Apparently, I had more than enough credits to graduate and while, I could continue to go to school, if I wanted, they weren't going to give me more credits. It was suggested that I transfer to a nearby school, where I could graduate early. And so I did. I loved high school, loved my friends and the teachers. And I was leaving them all behind. Why was there so much leaving in my life?

   I was at my boyfriend's house when my Mother called, he had left for work hours ago. I had been lazing around enjoying the quiet. We had been spending as much time together as possible because his ship was leaving the shipyard and going back to Long Beach. He too, was leaving. My mother said she was coming to get me. That we had a wedding to plan. I asked her whose wedding, as I knew of no one even contemplating marriage. Her response was classically my mother. She said we were planning my wedding and to get ready.  And that is how it happened. My life changed. Everything changed. In three days I was married, in one week I graduated, and in two I was in a new state, I had lost the last threads of what I had imagined my life was to be.

A Change is Coming

     . For the first time I saw my Mother lose her composure with someone other than her children. It was volatile and dramatic but most of all exhausting. I stayed away as much as I could, which was fine with her. She still tried to match me with men. As much as she tried I balked. There was a bartender with a drug problem in his early thirties, an EMT who drank also, over thirty. I was seventeen, I felt hunted. I didn't want attention from men, especially older men. I just wanted to be a kid. To go to football games and cheerleading; mostly just be as far away from her as I could get.  There was an argument around then, between she and I. I don't know what it was about, but it was big, and I walked out. I didn't go far, just to the porch steps to sit and fume, out of her sight.
It had been practice for my own leaving. When I finally left I walked out with the clothes on my back. I walked for miles to get to a phone to call my Best Friend T to pick me up. I stayed with her family for a month or so. As friends, we were close, although like everyone else in my life she knew nothing of my childhood. We had more important things on our minds than the past. She had been given a car and it gave us freedom. We played the radio loud as we sped away from parents and rules. We were seventeen and the world was ours. It didn't take long for my Mother to try clawing me back. I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't speak to her for weeks. I cut her out. She, of course, would have none of it. She wasn't one to give up easily and she convinced T's mother to arrange a meeting. It was more of an ambush, really. My mother had a new plan. If I wouldn't come home, I could stay at a family friend's. That was the only way she would agree to me leaving. I liked T's house, but her parent's fought as much as my Mother and her new husband did. Maybe she was right, her way was better.

  J was a widower, which is probably a big part of why I agreed to go. I didn't particularly want to be around another man. A house of females seemed safest to me. There was a new freedom at J's, she didn't tell me what to do and seemed to like the company. In the eight months or so that I lived there I never felt comfortable, or that I belonged. But it was a place to stay and I was grateful. My grandfather renewed his efforts to get me to come live with him. I said I would after I graduated. It wouldn't be long and he started getting the packets ready for school. You see, he set aside my college tuition.  All of it; no matter what I wanted to do.  I had no idea what I wanted to do, or be. Someone had always run my world.
 
   T had a boyfriend, who was a sailor and we began hanging out at his house with him and his roommates. We played cards and had barbecues. One night we decided to go see Rocky Horror Picture Show, I hadn't seen it and had no idea what I was in for. Somehow there was a argument between myself and another friend's boyfriend that had tagged along. He reached over right before the end of the movie and grabbed my breast. Before I even had time to think, I smacked him, hard. I was supposed to stay the night at her place and she got so angry that she left us both standing in the parking lot. I was stranded. T wasn't going home, but I could stay with her at her boyfriend's. There was an extra room because one of the roommates had duty. I didn't have anywhere else to go. It was too late to go back to J's and so I went with them. And that was the beginning. My life changed forever by that simply twist of plans.

The Keeper of Secrets

  And so, back to her parent's she went. My mother, with us in tow. She must have hated it. We did not stay long. She could not abide her parent's judgements. And of course, my grandmother could not keep from saying how she had been right and my mother never learned or listened. It must have been a bitter pill, to be in your mid forties with nothing to show but failed marriages and unwanted children. But she rallied and found a restaurant to manage in a small town miles from her parent's. So, away we went again. My mother always bragged about how fast she could pack up our lives and be gone. Having a father in the military meant we moved cities, states, countries every three years. My parent's inability to keep their finances in order, meant that we moved houses sometimes every six months. We never had a home. Never got too attached.  It did not matter where we landed, we would not be staying long.

   I kept in touch with my grandfather and visited him often. He let me know that I had a home with him, and that I was always welcome. He taught me the importance of books and art. He encouraged me to find a higher power, he did not care what I believed in, just as long as I had faith that there was some point, a reason for it all. I borrowed great quantities of  books and found a new world. He wanted me to learn about money and to be independent of my mother.  He gave me an allowance every month, more than I needed.  My mother insisted that I open a bank account with her. She said if anything ever happened to me, someone else should have access. I trusted her... I know I should not have, as much as she insisted on proving her betraying nature, I insisted on believing in her being good and trustworthy. It was not long before the checks started to bounce and since the mail went to her P.O. Box, I had no idea. This was before online banking or debit cards. I was oblivious. My grandfather put the money in, my mother took it out. As in days past, my embarrassment came in school. She had written a bad check at a local deli and they posted it right on the wall. After lunch, in economics, I kid you not, a senior that I kind of liked, brought it up in front of the class. I had no idea what he was talking about. I went by the store after school, and there it was. Undeniable proof of her scheming, conniving nature. I was crushed. So to the bank I went, only to be told I was overdrawn unbelievably so. The money had just gone in, how could it be gone? Why? Why, would she do it? Everyday, we lived under the same roof and she was stealing from me. I still could not find my anger, it was so deep, buried for so long, that I began to fear it. I was used to keeping secrets and my emotions where the biggest secret of all.

  The hurt was right there on the surface. At first she denied it; She screamed and cussed and called me ungrateful. My brother and I worked at the restaurant for my mother and she already got most of that, for our share of rent and food. And now this? She would not put it back. She refused. It was not her account and she was not responsible. It was too much money for a girl of seventeen. I babysat to pay it off. After school, after work, anything to take down that check and others, they just kept coming. I closed the account. I went to my grandfather as if the shame were my own. And he put his mind to it and decided a credit card was safer. I would have it and he would pay for it. It was for important things, it was for emergencies and I used it once. My mother, not one to be out done, found a way. It would be years before I knew what she had done. Years of more lies and theft. When my sister got married, she took up a fund and we all gave $50.00 for a big screen TV. She pocketed the money and charged it to my account. She had called and got a duplicate card. She charged clothes and towels and trifling things, and no one knew the better.

  Shortly after moving to our new town, my Mother started an affair with a married man. He was high profile in the area, and it was another embarrassment. I went to school with his Daughter and she hated me for it. She confronted my Mother in the restaurant and that ended that. There were other men in and out and it scared the hell out of me. I kept my door locked and stayed out of the house as much as I could. One day a man came walking in the door like he belonged and announced he had brought the fire wood, but first he needed food. He sat in the living room expectantly, as my Brother and I stared at each other. As always, I made dinner. My Mother showed up later and introduced us to her new man, John. He was younger than her, but didn't look it. It was obvious that something was wrong with him. He didn't have the use of one hand and his leg dragged slightly. He spoke a little slow and seemed...slightly off. I wanted nothing to do with him. He was a starer and it didn't take much to make me uncomfortable.  Within weeks, they were engaged. In months, they were married. She brandished his bank book and bragged at the balance. It was a good sum, not outrageous. John's Mother had run his accounts and given him an allowance and in the twenty years he had been working, he had a tidy sum. My Mother went through it like a wild fire.

Meet my Stepfather/Grandfather

   I had no idea when my mother started talking to my Grandfather Bert. She never said. I had spent four or five months getting to know him right before we moved to Germany and I loved him. He was kind and sweet natured. He made me feel like I belonged, like I was special. He and my father, his son, did not get along. there had been a rift of some kind years ago and those few months when I was six or seven was an attempt to mend their relationship.  It didn't work and whatever lay between the two of them kept them apart. I did not mind leaving the states. I wanted a new school, one where I had not emptied my bladder in front of the whole class. One where the kids did not know my family. Once, when my mother came to the school, I don't know why. She had never come to any of those usual school things, but she appeared dressed in frumpy baby blue polyester pants and a matching top. With her thin straight hair, hanging down to her waist, no make up, unwashed and carrying around three extra chins and probably 200+ lbs on her 5'5" frame. She came and left, and everyone laughed. They laughed at her clothes and her hair and her largeness. They teased as only children can and before I even knew what I was saying it came out.  I told them that she was not my mom. She was my stepmother, ( I knew about this step thing now) that my mother had died. They were all stunned into silence and shame. And they never talked about her or usually, to me again. I was okay with that. So leaving was fine with me. But saying good bye to my newly discovered, much loved grandfather. was not. I cried and I begged, but it did nothing to change the fact that I was losing again.

   As with everything my mother did, there was a plan and while she would spring it on you  suddenly, she had been crafting it for much longer. She announced we were moving. We were going back home, to Washington. There were calls between my Grandfather Bert and my mother. He sent money for new tires, a tune up, for gas, and food, He paid her car insurance and we were on the move once again. I had barely been enrolled in my new school, so I didn't mind leaving it. I was going to see my grandfather; I was beside myself with joy. Our first stop when we arrived back in Washington was to my Mother's parent's home. They offered to let us stay, my mother was noncommittal. There was a tension between my mother and her parents. She had let them down and had caused embarrassment. And really, my mother and her mother as much as they were alike, didn't care for each other one bit. My sister said that my grandma decided if she liked you at birth and there was no going back once she had made up her mind. Being that she hated my father and my mother's marriage to him, I was not high on her approval scale. She muttered that I looked too damn much like him and that I was a tomboy. I just tried to stay out of the way while plans where being made. My mother would tell me my destiny in her own time. And she did. After two weeks or so she announced we were going to live with my Grandfather Bert. My grandmother didn't like the idea and as usual her husband, my Grandpa Mel, said nothing. So away we went. 60 miles down the road to a new home. My grandpa was welcoming and just as loving as I remembered. It became obvious that an agreement between he and my mother had already been reached. She would run his household, his second wife had cancer and was bedridden.  She would pay the bills and let the endless stream of health care providers in and then out again. He was a longshoreman and made his living on cargo ships trans-versing the Pacific Ocean. He needed someone to help with things while he was gone. So he put her name on his bank account, and left to travel the seas.

    In our first week at my grandfather's, my mother announced that she planned to marry my grandfather. She wanted to know what we thought. I was beyond stunned and dismayed. This was my father's father we are talking about here. I kept my mortification to myself. When my mother was plotting, objecting got you nowhere good. I don't know if my grandfather ever knew of my mother's great plans for their marriage. I highly doubt it. Being that she was his daughter in law and that his wife, while gravely ill, was still living. Again. this is my mother and this was her scheme. Everything went well while my grandfather was away on his first trip and we had a wonderful homecoming for him on his return. My mother, never one to stop spinning her web, asked for more. She needed money for our school clothes and school supplies and hair cuts and shoes. She needed things for the house and for his wife. My grandfather transferred more money into the joint account. He was a reasonable man, a kind man and he never questioned my mother's intentions. She counted on that.

  When he left again, she went shopping. She bought new clothes for herself and shoes and purses.  She went out all day and came home excited, carrying packages that she squirreled away in her room. Right before my grandfather was to return she took me to get a new dress and shoes to match. I was to wear it when my grandfather came home. And return he did. There were hushed conversations and tension I could not pin point the cause of. Something had changed. Over dinner my mother announced that she needed more money, she needed to buy more things for my brother and I. That things were SO expensive.  The next morning her constant wheedling brought things to a head. My mother broached the subject again and my grandfather, so mild and even tempered, snapped back. She had gone through $1,600 that was originally in the house hold fund. An amount meant to last three months. She had gone through $1,600 for school clothes and incidentals and still she wanted more? She became hysterical; naming all of my father's misdeeds, and wailed that she did not deserve this treatment. And in the end he called her out. He said she was a thief and a bad mother and ordered her to leave his house. He made it clear that I could stay. I was more than welcome. He offered me an exit from her and I could not take it. I cannot say if it was fear that made me go with her or something more. She was all I had and somewhere in my heart  I just knew, if I sacrificed enough, if I got the grades and cleaned the house and followed her plan she would love me. I just knew it.

Mother knows best

    Shortly after my father left for good, my mother decided she would leave as well. Finding a job 150 miles away, she packed up my brother and left me with my boyfriend David's, family. It happened very quickly. She came home and announced her decision to relocate and thought it would be best if I stayed behind. She said I could finish my schooling and that I needed to find somewhere to live. I was excited and sad all at once. My family was once more shattering, and there would be no one left. Now the loneliness I had always felt was to become a reality. But, I was also thrilled at the idea of life away from my mother and her constant resentment and open hostility towards me. She was brutal in her anger. Everything she had carefully built had come tumbling down and putting distance between her and I was her response. I had only dated my boyfriend about three weeks when my mother made her plans. I had no idea where I was going to go, but his mother was wonderful and stepped in saying I was welcome there. Life in their home was very different from anything I had ever known and I don't think I ever let down my guard. I wanted to, but I just could not trust. I watched David's father, keeping a wide berth of him. He was always polite, he did drink a lot on weekends and sometimes he and his wife bickered, but it was nothing like what I was used to. I slept in David's sister's room and we became fast friends. She taught me about make up and we spent hours styling our hair. I might not have felt at home but I felt accepted, and that. was everything.

   We spent our summer laying out, slathered in baby oil, drinking Diet Cokes. I learned to smoke, which I was never good at and quickly disregarded. We drank pilfered Miller Lites and laid under the stars making plans and sharing gossip. I never talked about my family and no one asked. It was like my past had never happened. My mother never called, but I missed my younger brother dearly. We had always been close and now, like everyone else, he had left me. The new school year started and I threw myself into it. I came to realize that David's family did not have much extra money. His father was a used car salesman who sometimes missed work because of his drinking. Things seemed to be more strained between the adults and we three teens tried to stay out of the way. David's mother, I think her name was Linda, sat me down one afternoon and explained that my mother had not been sending the money she had promised, and that they needed it. She had left messages for my mother, but had not heard back. She asked me to call and remind my mother. I was embarrassed and filled with dread. My parents had always had money problems. It seemed to never be enough. My brother and I worked in the kitchens of the restaurants my mother managed to pay our way. Our parents felt very strongly that we needed to be responsible for any expenses they incurred on our behalf. Both my parents loved to spend. My father, on radio controlled model airplanes and motor cycles. My mother loved clothes and shoes and little trifles. It was not unusual for them to go on a two day spending spree and not pay the light bill. This would start a round robin of bounced checks and threatening phone calls. It was a topsy-turvy existence at best.

  I made the call. My mother was curt and said that she would take care of it. I don't know how much she had promised to pay or if she ever sent anything, but I was mortified. I felt like a burden and all the new found joys of being part of a family unit were gone. Two days later Linda again took me aside and said my mother was sending for me. I was to leave the next day on a Grey Hound bus. I can not put into words my despair. I did not want to leave this family. I didn't want to live with my mother, but I was powerless to object or defy her. I said good-bye to my new life and a school that I loved, and got on the bus.

  It was not a joyous reunion. My mother was no happier to see me than I was her. We tolerated each other. Her in her bitter rage and I in my resentment and misery. So, my mother, ever the resilient sort, made a new plan.  She invited men over to meet me. First, a line cook who was 27 years old to my 16 and had a criminal record...I was frightened out of my mind. She thought that he would be a good boyfriend for me, she said. I resisted. Then came a 36 year old who was separated from his wife and a regular at the restaurant my mother managed. He had seen me there, he said, and he sent a dozen roses and love letters.  I started having trouble sleeping and eating. I was skittish and isolated. The more my mother tried to push me into the arms of strangers, the more I withdrew from the world. It was a tense, pressure filled time and something was going to have to give. And soon, it did.