Being Mean Page 6

  I am no stranger to the work world. During my junior and senior years of high school, I have worked in a number of places: as a cashier in a craft store where I also decoupaged wooden box purses, a sales person in a dress shop, a day camp counselor in the summer, and a model for the Dallas Apparel Mart and two popular department stores downtown. Decent jobs for a teen struggling to save money—especially the modeling gigs—but none have been a preliminary step on a career path. Work contributed toward my independence. I quit asking my parents for money, paid for the gas I used in Dad’s car, and started saving for college. As a bonus, I scheduled myself for shifts so I could miss our tense dinnertimes.

  Dave and my friends don’t work during the school year, occasionally snagging a summer job on a whim. It seems they stay busy studying for the SAT and going on vacations or excursions with their parents to areas where they can visit colleges they may attend. School counselors call them into their offices to discuss colleges and application procedures. No school counselor has ever summoned me for any reason, nor even asked if I were interested in college.

  I don’t really know what I want to be or what I want to study. Dad points this out when he is ranting about how stupid it is to pay for me to go to college, to study what? My desire to go to college may seem frivolous, but what I have become aware of is that it is imperative that I get out of my house and away from my parents. It is not just that I feel like going away to college could save my life, but I also want to do something meaningful and productive.

  Flipping through a UT college catalog, I read about courses for a major in child psychology. I have never seen a psychologist or counselor, but suddenly I want to be one, especially one who works with children. Often, I have fantasized about talking with a counselor, in private, to try to understand myself better and some of my disturbing dreams. For sure I would ask why I have such mixed-up feelings about sex, and that maybe I shouldn’t be having sex even though I crave it. And why do I keep having sex with Dave when deep down I know he constantly flirts with others, and may even be having sex with others? I just keep hanging on, smitten with his poems and promises of love. I want him to love me so much, and it feels like he loves me more when we are regularly having sex. I don’t have any control over myself. If only I could understand why I give in, why I act like I don’t have a voice or a choice. If only I knew how to stand up for myself. Maybe if I studied psychology, I’d be able to figure all this out.

  I take the SAT and score very poorly. It’s a hell of an experience, plodding through unfamiliar math problems. Glancing around, I see my National Merit Scholarship-winning peers doing calculations in their books, flipping through pages, erasing, looking so pensive and smart. When I get to the English reading section, something I am good at, I can’t focus or remember anything I have read. I am so nervous I almost puke. Afterwards I head home, close my bedroom door, and throw all the UT information in the trash. What was I thinking? Dave is applying to Yale, Carolyn is going to a university in Colorado, and I’m destined for El Centro Junior College, living right here with my two messed-up parents. For the first time in my life, I feel so hopeless I wonder about killing myself.

  Thank goodness I managed to keep a high grade point average during my three years of high school by only taking what was required to graduate, nothing challenging. No trig, no chemistry, no biology. Little did I realize that a high GPA would get me accepted into UT, regardless of my dismal SAT scores. Coming home from work, closing my door, and for three years burying my head in homework—often to block out my parents’ screaming, throwing, and slamming things—ended up working in my favor.

  Chris and Anne recently sent me information on the most affordable dormitories and work opportunities. I reserve a dorm room, send off applications for work-study programs, and line up a summer job not far from Austin. This is really going to happen! I have never felt so lucky or so much promise in life. I am going to college!

  Mom seems relieved that I will be leaving. The corners of our family triangle have become piercingly sharp in the last year as I have clamored to make college a reality. “You’ll probably get a lot healthier not living at home,” she admits, without openly confessing how toxic it has been to be around her and Dad arguing my entire life, along with the long, freezing silences that ensue. “You’re smart. You’ll figure things out.”

  Compliments from Mom are rare, especially one telling me I’m smart. For as long as I can remember, she has told me, “Don’t get smart with me!”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’m going to do my best.”

  She is washing dishes and doesn’t turn around. She tells me she has been taking a typing class and may try to get a job. That would be so good for her. Maybe she will even figure out a way to leave Dad and be on her own.

  Dad is furious, predictably. “It’s a stupid decision. Why go away when you can study right here and live for free at home? You’ll get down there and listen to a bunch of communist professors tell you what to believe. I’ll never pay for that kind of education. If you leave, don’t ever come to me asking for money.”

  In attempts to smooth things over, I tell Dad when I come home to visit, we’ll go out on his boat. “I’m getting rid of it,” he threatens, and he does in my first year away. I look at Dad and feel a memory stir of a camping trip we took together in his VW camper four years earlier. Right now, I don’t remember what happened, except how crucial not remembering became for me. I sense an awareness of how I practice going blank and numb. Dad and I never took another trip together, aside for occasional afternoons sailing when we spent our time in silence, except for pointing out birds or mentioning a change in wind direction.

  Carolyn picks me up the morning after graduation for our drive south, to a private camp, where we are both going to be counselors. Last night while packing up my room, I found myself singing. Occasionally I would catch sight of myself in my dresser mirror, smiling widely. Real smiles. Not the mask I’ve learned to wear to hide my feelings.

  All my boxes are taped and labeled, ready to be whisked away to Austin after the last summer camp session. It doesn’t even look like my room any longer, and it’s not—the twin bed in the corner, the desk and chair facing the front window, the empty dresser, the rocker I rocked in for so many years, calming me while Mom and Dad raged on. The rocker will be here when I visit home, but I am resolute that I will never again live here.

  I roll down the window in Carolyn’s new blue Firebird, close my eyes, and let the humid morning air wash over my face. I’m leaving! I am making something good happen! This is way more than an adventure; this is the beginning of the rest of my life.

  DETERMINED

  1970 (age 18)—Austin, Texas

  Littlefield Dorm, the oldest and cheapest on the UT campus, and the only one without air conditioning, is now my sixth home in the eighteen years of my life. My corner room on the second floor has big windows that overlook massive oak trees. Although my childhood Huffy bike looks a little silly chained to a tree outside my dorm, I don’t care. I made it to college, and I’m happy to be riding my old bike all over this huge university campus.

  I even landed two positions at the Anna Hiss Gym right next door, through the University’s work-study program. I serve as lifeguard two nights a week and archery supervisor the other three evenings—three hours a night, five nights a week. Thank goodness I took up archery this past summer while being a counselor at that private camp.

  The archery range at Anna Hiss is set up in the basement, which makes for a fabulously quiet place to study, since there is rarely anyone coming in for archery. I take breaks and shoot—draw, release, pop—zipping one arrow after another into the target. Calmness floods my body as I focus, like an endorphin release. This is so much better than lifeguarding, where I sometimes feel so droopy I almost fall off my perch smack into the pool. No studying there.

  It’s a huge relief to be living four hours away from my dad and mom. I’m eating, sleeping, and breathing more deeply. But college doe
sn’t feel easy for me. I don’t party, and skipping a class never enters my mind, especially since I find my classes stimulating. I study a lot more than my peers, but then most of them are not paying their way through college. Even Dave—still my boyfriend—has a free ride due to government money available as a result of his father’s death. Dave doesn’t appear concerned about the C’s and D’s he is piling up here at UT, or if he skips a whole day of classes.

  In high school, I struggled more for my A’s than most of my friends, even busting ass to get into an Honors English class. This is the first time I have ever been challenged and encouraged to think on my own. I have not mastered it yet.

  Midway through fall, I receive a phone call and hear a vaguely familiar voice, my oldest sister Paula. Eight years my senior, I was ten years old when she left for college. I never really knew this sister, and so never missed her much. I only saw her a handful of times after she left. At this point, I haven’t seen her for four years, after Dad kicked her and her new husband out one afternoon and told her to never come back. When she, her husband, and a friend had arrived home for a visit, clad like the 1966 hippies they were—long hair, artsy-looking clothing and jewelry—I found them fascinating. Dad was irate. They were vocal protesters against the Vietnam War, and my retired military father couldn’t stomach it. He demanded they leave his house, and Paula readily agreed, announcing she would indeed not be coming back. She meant it, even missing Pamela’s wedding not long after.

  “Wanna meet your oldest sis?” she offers over the phone.

  Last time I saw her I was almost fourteen, so this is our first meeting as adults. I’m a little nervous, and even wonder if we look like sisters now that I’m older.

  “C’mon over to my place,” and she tells me where she is renting a room. She and her husband have separated, and she decided to head to Austin where a number of her old college buddies are now living, several en route to becoming notorious Austin personalities and musicians.

  Her room is fabulous. Tall wood walls with peeling wallpaper hold gigantic windows and large pieces of her artwork. Rocks, feathers, bones, and bird nests rest amidst piles of books and interesting swaths of material. I have never been in a place that looks like this. An accomplished seamstress and fashion designer, she shows me how she has turned a tablecloth into a trendy piece of clothing.

  “How about a beer?” she offers. Still a virgin to alcohol, I decline. “A joint?” she counters. Nope, haven’t tried that yet either. Doesn’t matter to her as she makes herself comfortable with both, watching me look over every piece of art and run my hands over the variety of intriguing objects.

  I remember watching her get ready for dates in high school when I was ten years old. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A sculpted face still graces her tall, elegant figure, often adorned in striking, fashionable, and yes, hippie-like clothes, most her own creations. My parents reluctantly agreed to send her to North Texas State University in 1963, aware of her artistic talents, but couldn’t stand the trendsetter beatnik crowd toward whom she gravitated. In her third year in school, after endless arguing with Mom and Dad, she dropped out and took off on her own, despite their disapproval. Soon after, Dad made her absence from our lives official, as she, her husband, and their friend piled back into their anti-war and peace bumper-stickered old car, Paula cheerfully waving out the window as they drove away. She just never seemed as bad as Mom and Dad made her out to be, and I admired how she stood up to them and seemed happier for it.

  Finally, I had managed my own escape from Mom and Dad. Now, here in my university dorm, I am presently feeling challenged with my potluck roommate. Bettyanne arrived with a hope chest, a full-sized cedar trunk into which a young woman can stash things she believes she’ll need for marriage someday. When I come back from the University Co-op with a new Elton John album, Bettyanne returns with a set of dishtowels, affectionately tucking them in her hope chest.

  Even though this is far from anything I would do, I am genuinely trying to understand when I ask Bettyanne one day what a guy might put in his hope chest, “Say if guys kept these too.”

  Bettyanne ponders my question but does not answer. The hope chest soon gets moved into her closet. At least we now have more room in our tiny space.

  I homestead in a different, minimalist way. I tack up a few cool posters in our trundle bed room and install a caged hamster in my closet. I caught the little guy, who I irreverently named Sir Ham Sir Ham, scampering out of the Experimental Science building near our dorm one evening. Soon, however, I am fantasizing about having an artsy space like my sister’s and begin hanging out there regularly, never pressured in any way to do anything I am not ready for or interested in, and always warmly welcomed.

  One night when I don’t have any plans, afraid of Bettyanne diving into another show-and-tell with everything she has saved in her entire hope chest, I head over to Paula’s, arriving just as she is heading out to a party. She invites me to come along. I try to appear casual as we enter one of those classic old houses full of the artists, beatniks, and musicians for whom Austin is becoming well known. Porno-flicks flash through the smoke. I’ve never seen a porno-flick and try not to gawk. I sense that I stick out like a baby Alice in some kind of alternative Wonderland. Paula’s friends greet me with nods and smiles and someone manages to find me a cold bottle of Coke from a fridge stuffed with beer and tonic waters. Within the first half hour, I lose Paula as the place becomes packed solid. Conversation is impossible, but dancing offers me a chance to keep from looking like such a shocked teenager, and the music, at least, is familiar. Soon, however, I am feeling out of place and sad. I think about Dave out somewhere, probably partying and flirting, while I can’t relax enough to blend in with the crowd, or even try a puff on the communal pipe being passed around.

  Suddenly I feel desperate and lonely crammed between all these gyrating bodies and scramble for the nearest door. Part of me wants to go over to Dave’s dorm, but I’m afraid I might find him with another girl. Wanting to trust him does not mean that I do trust him.

  A tour of Bettyanne’s hope chest doesn’t seem so bad right now, or slipping Sir Ham out of his cage and stroking his soft fur.

  Paula calls the next day to see if I made it back to my dorm, noticing I was nowhere to be found when the party began dwindling down. I assure her all is well and that my walk back to my dorm was not a problem. Hanging up, I consider how this sister—while scrambling for safe ground herself in the midst of our family’s turmoil—may have been vaguely aware of my presence when I was a little girl.

  Several days later, popping arrow after arrow in the gymnasium basement, I ponder how Paula managed to escape Mom and Dad’s lives and forge her own way, and I feel determined to do the same. I unstring my bow, sit down, and open my Psychology 101 textbook.

  DESPERATE

  1971 (age 18)—Austin, Texas

  I knew the test was going to be positive. I have been completing my Red Cross Water Safety Instructor and Sailing Instructor certifications in east Texas, both required for my summer job starting in a week at a private summer camp up east. Wearing a two-piece bathing suit every day, I noticed my breasts and tummy swelling. I missed first one period, then a second.

  I borrowed my sister Pamela’s VW bug in Dallas and asked my best friend Carolyn if she would drive with me four hours south to Austin. There I could see a doc and get a pregnancy test at no cost at the University of Texas Health Center, where I just completed my freshman year.

  Now, Carolyn is patiently waiting for me in the Health Center lobby.

  “Let’s drive to Camp Vista so I can tell Dave, then we have to get back to Dallas tonight.” I methodically lay out the plans for the rest of the day and night. “And I’ve got to call Paula and ask if she knows someone who can do an abortion.” I am all business. No time for emotion or deliberations right now. This is an emergency and I am going to handle it. I begin looking for a pay phone.

  I am able to reach Paula
. She tells me about a retired nurse in Denton, north of Dallas, who performs abortions in her home. I wonder how she knows this woman but decide not to ask since Paula didn’t volunteer any information. My hands are shaking as I dial the woman’s number, praying someone will answer. Within minutes, I have an appointment scheduled for the very next afternoon. I am already ten-weeks pregnant and have a reservation to fly out of Dallas to Connecticut for my summer job in less than a week. I need this to be over.

  Dave and I were split up when Tim and I had sex, but, of course, Dave and I were still making love during our break-up. “Just because we are not dating each other does not mean we can’t be with each other physically,” Dave tells me. Even though he often wants to date others, I am still convinced he loves me—at least this is what I am in the habit of telling myself. Plus, how else would I ever get Dave back, or know if he loves me, if I refuse to have sex with him? The way Dave puts it, there is sex and there is making love, and we make love. So, with others is it just sex? Thus far, sex seems to equal love in my life’s equation, though I am not exactly sure why. Here at a university with over fifty thousand students I chose someone else from my high school, someone I knew, liked, and thought I could trust. Tim seemed sensitive and safe.

  Even though abortion is still illegal, health center docs are not yet recommending the new birth control pills to female patients, so ye olde pull-out-at-the-last-minute method has naively been my choice of birth control. Dave has always sworn that it is plenty safe, and the danger of this method never occurred to me. This is what we did all through high school, and it worked. I reminded Tim in the heat of passion while lying on the green of a golf course, and he promised he would pull out in time, though later I noticed there was not any sperm on me. Maybe some guys don’t have much sperm, I thought that evening. Now I am getting how it is for the guys: enjoy an orgasm, pull out if you have any wits about you, then forget about the consequences. It’s not your body, hence not really your worry. After all, a guy’s gonna do what a guy’s gonna do.