New Scripts– The Beginning of Chapter Two
For most of my childhood my grandparent’s house was home for not only my grandparents, but also my mom, brother, and I, as well as my 2 aunts and their 2 kids. By the time I was in 2nd grade, the aunts had moved out. This left what I considered the “core” family.
I remember that both aunts were faced with disapproval, and each time news hit us of them making any decision it was brought before the critical council.
It’s no surprise that Mom didn’t go out much. She had had a few boyfriends, but not for that long, and not that I saw much. The few times Mom did go out, it was a big break from the usual SCRIPT.
When I was younger, I would panic, because I didn’t want her to be gone, and she usually worked all day so being gone at night felt like rejection.
Grandma would make an unavoidable display of disdain. There were lots of sharp words followed by “I’m just sayin’,” or when something finally struck a chord, she would just shrug her shoulders, shake her head and say “I don’t know.”
Grandma was very concerned about Mom being a slut, (which is ridiculous because she was a grown ass woman with two kids who worked her booty off. She deserved a damn break). Grandma would show her disdain when our clothes didn’t fit her ideas of modesty. We were not allowed to experiment with make-up because Mom agreed with at least some of these strictures. I take that back. My cousin could do or wear whatever she wanted (although the critical council would enact the disgrace of it into family code).
Our roles, and the expectations our elders had of us, were very much driven by ideas of gender. While my family clearly believed that no matter of work was beyond a woman, there was no excuse for acting like a tramp. I was expected to sit like a lady, and not play with other kids when I was wearing a dress.
News Flash: Sitting like a lady hurts like hell when your the fat kid with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. My hips do NOT do that. I remember my Grandmother being so mad at me for having a gap between my thighs when we went to some family gathering. She made sure I knew how shameful I was.
At the beginning of that party they were showing me off, and everyone seemed delighted I was there. I spent the whole party after that sitting with my thighs trying to press together as the pain in my pelvis grew. It was hard to walk to the car. At least I was small enough to get carried into the house after. We never brought it up again.
So on the rare occasion that Mom would go out, the house would take on a very adversarial SCRIPT. It was clear that the deviation was not approved.
Mom was supposed to be The Martyr. The One Who Failed, so she stayed at home and kept the family running. The one who would work with Grandpa but not make a paycheck because that was “family labor.” The one that would give up all associations outside of the family (with approved exceptions only) to perform loyalty to the family at all times.
People gasp when I say that my mom used to say all the time that she had children to have her own personal slaves. She didn’t come up with that on her own. While nobody said it to her, she had little-to-no actual autonomy. She was given a lot of sway and power ONLY as long as she willingly sacrificed herself and lived in display of her failure to become a wife.
Mom would tell stories sometimes of when she lived in Texas before I was born. She was in love with Texas. The people, the language, the places she worked. She lived with her sisters off and on, and they made it together down in The Lone Star State. She loved Corpus Christi and all of the vegetation. She did not love the snakes, fire ants, or panthers (which in my research are more likely mountain lions, jaguars, or jaguarundis. Nevertheless, she said that the peacocks would sound just like them and it was NOT what you wanted to hear when you were out in a field away from your truck).
There was a different mom who lived in the stories. She was spunky, and fun, and full of so much spirit. She was a force to be reckoned with. Every once in a while, in little moments, she would peak through in my childhood. I know she was still in there.
So when she met my dad she had to fight for him. She tried to do things slowly. She tried so hard to work hard enough to earn her joy, and to conceal how much it hurt that there was nothing she could do to be deserving of another love in her lifetime.
She was divorced. She was already a disgrace to the family who came back and birthed a bastard.
On Fridays, we would go spend the night over at Dad’s apartment, and Grandma made Friday’s intolerable. It’s amazing how much of her SCRIPT was just shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. She did spice it up with plenty of passive aggressive criticism that wasn’t said to my mom. Mom was out busting her booty with Grandpa, and I guarantee he worked her extra hard on Fridays. Everything had to be earned, and he thought making people jump was a lot of fun. It was said to me.
I was with Grandma all of the time. She watched me all day. I slept in her bed. I was the recipient of Grandma’s consciousness. Grandma didn’t find anything to be off-limits either. Really, in my family a low blow was just seen as a good point.
Once we got out of the house, Texas Mom was there. The oldies went on the radio and we all sang along. We’d go to the grocery store and get goodies for the weekend that were NOT EVER part of what we did at home.
We made popcorn in a microwave.
We rented movies.
Mom would make fruit salads, and we’d have a pitcher of juice in the morning with our breakfast.
She went absolutely wild.
Dad had a roommate, who began dating Mom’s older sister at the same time. He wasn’t there much, because he was over at my aunt’s place. There was a rumor that Dad had another roommate, but I never saw him.
We would sleep on the couches which was convenient because I would usually fall asleep about 10 minutes into the first movie. Needless to say, I was not extended movie choosing privileges, and my family loved to make fun of my inability to stay conscious during cinema.
I had my privileges card revoked actually. All that animosity about Grandpa letting me get away with things started leaking out. My brother and I had less supervision, and he discovered that he enjoyed intimidation. Mom and my brother had a very close bond. While I slept in Grandma and Grandpa’s bed, Mom and my brother slept downstairs.
He enjoyed scaring me. He enjoyed acting like Mom’s angel when she came back in the room.
Mom also took the opportunity to let me know how spoiled I was, and that she wasn’t having it. I needed to learn humility and would not be getting special treatment any longer.
I really think she tried and intended to be fair about it. Unfortunately, she had been watching the same family structures that had been holding her hostage working against her first-born in the same way. She was understandably angry. It just wasn’t my fault.
Mom and Dad continued to date and Mom and Grandma argued a lot. I don’t remember specific words, but I remember the tenseness. I remember them avoiding each other in a way that could be felt. I remember all of the looks of disapproval, and of pain and anger. I remember the planning, and I think they courted for less than a year before getting married (which Grandma also had opinions about).
Grandma made the wedding clothes, and Mom wasn’t allowed to wear white. She wore a modest dress with a light blue blazer and I had one to match because I was her maid of honor. Everyone hated how mine fit. Mom curled my hair that morning and it looked like I had an afro. Too bad I was so fat in the wedding photos.
We drove to the chapel all four of us together and I remember “Going to the Chapel” coming on the radio. It was one of Mom’s favorite songs and we cranked it and sang along.
Mom was so happy, and her heart was so full. I remember she let me drink a wine cooler at the reception, then I didn’t see her for the next two days. Grandma just walked around repeating “that’s what married people do I guess,” under her breath as she would peer out the windows and shrug her shoulders. She would throw in the occasional “Well, I guess she’s married now,” again under her breath and to no one in particular.
Shortly after that we moved to Indiana. Mom and Dad both started working for Peter. Peter was the coolest. He was generous, and helpful and kind. He was the dentist in the town we moved to, but he also owned a gun shop. Dad had just finished school as a gunsmith at the top of his class, and the guns made in this shop were pretty special. I’m not going into more detail about the guns, so you’ll just have to take my word that these were big “WOW” in the gun world.
Mom and dad bought a Jeep Cherokee and we moved to Indiana in that. We didn’t have a lot of stuff, and Mom clearly didn’t care. I didn’t either.
The house was not level, and it was right by a creek. The landlord lived right behind us, and he was a devout patron of the church next door who would block in our drive every Sunday.
On the drive to Indiana we stopped at rest stops and had picnics. We mixed all kinds of different sodas together in a big drink cooler. We made popcorn in a little motel room. We ordered pizzas from another. It was so fun.
I remember Mom seeming so free at last. She came to life on that drive.
Up to that point, I hadn’t spent much time with my mom one-on-one. Most of my time was with my grandparents. I had to learn her from scratch, and she was no longer the person I had gotten to know.
All the SCRIPTs were new.
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