Bare Bones (4 page)

Keeping to myself was imprinted on me at a very young age. My mom and I hardly ever talked. I mean we had normal superficial exchanges like “How was your day?” “Good,” but nothing deeper than that. I can't remember ever having a single serious or real conversation with my mom my entire childhood. Not the girl talk, bully warnings, or the do-good-in-school speech. Nothing. I don't blame her for it; in fact I liked it that way. But the fallout is that I'm terrible at having normal relationships now. And I'm not talking just about romantic ones (although I'm not exactly a superstar in that arena). Like playing a musical instrument or riding a bike, I never got good at communicating because I never did it as a kid.

Although no one would accuse me of being a people person and I still do most things by myself, I probably wouldn't have been able to forge any kind of human connection if it hadn't been for my grandmother, Hazel Hurt.

My grandmother, a small, heavyset woman, was my dad and mom, both. If I had any sort of stable environment whatsoever, she was the one who provided it. Although she never remarried after my grandfather died of cancer, when my mom was around eight years old, my grandmother had plenty of friends. Loud and outgoing, she was even friends with Virginia Clinton, Bill Clinton's mom, while they were neighbors in the same Hot Springs apartment complex. Even though I would never have called my mom political, I have a photo of her and the future president from when she volunteered for his campaign to become governor of Arkansas. I played with Chelsea quite a bit at Virginia's when we were little kids, so I've been told.

Grandma made an impression wherever she went. She sometimes led services at the Pentecostal church she took me to as a young kid, playing the guitar and singing along. She loved music—particular the classic giants of country music like Johnny Cash and Conway Twitty. One of her all-time favorites was Randy Travis. We would sit and listen to old records constantly—and play cards.

My grandmother taught me how to play cards, count cards in a single deck, and even cheat at cards. She would play an Andy Griffith gospel album or even Ray Charles while we played five-card draw or in-between well into the night. Then, after a full night of music and gambling, we would leave before the sun rose to head out to the yard sales if it wasn't a Sunday.

From my grandmother I learned to master the art of the yard sale. You lay out your map of sales, circle and number them in order of possibility for good hauls, and make sure you're at the best one the earliest. You had to be at the most promising ones at the crack of dawn or all the good stuff would already be gone, because there were a lot of other people just like us who had been waiting all night to get deals on furniture, lamps, clothes, toys, and other things we couldn't afford in a store. Grandma was always on the hunt for religious paraphernalia, like crosses and Jesus figures. Me? I just wanted shoes that fit. The first pair of Air Jordans I ever owned were scored from a yard sale.

Music and poker and yard sales, that's what we did. Yeah, my grandma and I had some good times. She wasn't a strict disciplinarian (no one in our neck of the woods was), but she provided the stability I needed and lots of love. There were the late-night card games and early-morning rummage sales, but she also hugged me and said she loved me all the time.

Of all her children and grandchildren, I was the one closest to my grandmother. We even slept in the same bed for a while. In the place we lived when I was in elementary school, my sister and mother shared one bedroom while my grandmother and I shared another. We were that close.

It was years later, though, that I found out my grandmother had actually officially adopted me. I only discovered the fact when I saw a Social Security card on her dresser that said Bobby Hurt as opposed to my father's name, Estell. I was twelve, old enough to understand it but still confused why she had done it and why I was never told. When I asked her to explain she said, “I had to be your legal guardian for a while because your mom was gone.” And that was the end of the conversation. As much as my grandma loved me, she wasn't going to share those painful details. To this day I still don't know why she did what she did, or where my mother went when she left. She clearly didn't want me to know, because at some point my legal name was changed back to its original—Bobby Estell, which it remains today.

I wasn't going to bother my poor grandmother, who let me sleep in her bed and kept a roof over our heads thanks to her Social Security checks, with a bunch of uncomfortable questions. I worried enough that it was hard for her to have a calm and peaceful life because she was forced to raise me and my sister. I didn't want to make her life any more difficult. That worry was part of a larger anxiety I couldn't shake, the sense that I shouldn't be here at all, that I was a mistake. Maybe it was an overblown sense of self, but I felt responsible for my family's problems. It started with my mom, who was never able to have a real life, because when you get pregnant at fifteen years old, how great are things going to get for you? In my book, she never had a shot.

I felt guilty that my mom was stuck with me. When I first learned about adoption the way any little kid might (sitting in church, listening to adults talk), I wondered, Why didn't Mom do that? The thought wasn't marked by sadness or even judgment. It was just a logical question stemming from my surprise that she kept me. My guilt wasn't consuming but a low-level irritation, like a small rock hidden somewhere in my shoe. It stuck with me my whole childhood, even through what were supposed to be good times, like my tenth birthday party.

I didn't have a lot of birthday parties growing up for a couple of different reasons. The first was the money issue. When your mom is stealing Manwich, there usually isn't cash lying around to rent a bouncy castle. (Money, you'll see, is a recurring topic in this book, and at some point in reading, I'll understand if you yell at these pages, “WE GET IT, YOU WERE POOR!” But roll with me. It's my book. And if you tell your friends about it, and they buy it . . . I'll be even less poor!) My mom would always acknowledge my birthday with some kind of small celebration—usually just a cake. But when I turned ten it was a big deal to her, and she decided she wanted to do something special.

In the days leading up to the big party (a theme party: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), she was excited in a way I hadn't seen before. Returning from the Dollar Store, where she'd gone on a major shopping spree, she unloaded bags with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle masks, birthday candles, paper plates, and napkins. She had also bought a mini wading pool and a bunch of plastic water guns.

All the fuss seemed crazy to me, but Mom talked about how important it was that I was turning ten. “Double digits,” she said. “You're hitting double digits.” What did that even mean? That I was old enough to take care of myself? Maybe.

The party was held outside the Hot Springs house we were staying in with my grandma and a couple of cousins and was everything a birthday party is supposed to be. Food, cake, kids (mostly more cousins), water fights, balloons, and my mom running around and having fun. I was happy she was happy. But the party didn't make me feel special; it made me uncomfortable.

I don't mind birthdays as a concept. I don't mind getting older. But I hate birthday
parties
—at least ones for me. Other people's parties are fine. I'm just not a big fan of any sort of thing honoring me. Dinners, breakfasts, whatever; I don't like celebrations of me. I worry that people feel forced to attend (“We have to go; it's his
birthday
”), and I never want to be the one causing others to feel uncomfortable. I would rather do nothing than ask people to go out of their way for me.

That's how I feel now and that's how I felt when I turned double digits. Even as I watched a boy from down the road stuff cake in his face and my sister spray the weeds with a water gun, I was sure I was putting everyone out. Not to mention the fact that my mom must have spent every dime she had and didn't have in order to throw this party. The only part I liked was the green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask that I could hide behind. (Cue sad music.)

If I was going to be the center of attention—something I wasn't against and actually really wanted—I was going to have to earn it.

NERD ALERT

Though my dad was MIA, there were father figures in my life who I am really grateful for.

Although at times our biological dad lived only a few miles away, my mom, sister, and I never had contact with him again after he left. He came and went from Arkansas, moving around from state to state. I would occasionally visit his side of the family who lived over by Buckthorn Road, which snaked all the way up a big, densely wooded mountain. But not if he was in town.

How I knew he was there or not, I have no clue, because I never, ever mentioned him to anyone in my family and they showed me the same courtesy. I did such a good job of acting as if I had no interest in him that even I believed it. I didn't want to be known as the kid who cared about his dad when his dad didn't care about him. I'm sure there was a part of me that was curious about him, but there was no way I would ever give him the satisfaction of knowing that.

Some kind of force field developed where even in a town of seven hundred people and a family that included double cousins, my dad and I were able to completely avoid each other. It wasn't unlike in college, when after I'd gotten a girl to go on a date with me, she'd somehow avoid me for the rest of the semester even though it was only a campus of a few thousand students.

Only once, when I was thirteen, did I run into my dad. I had been at my best friend (to be honest, my only real school friend) Evan McGrew's house. There was a gas station/convenience store right next door. I had gone there for a soda, and when I walked in, there
he
was. It was as if I had seen an alien. I have no idea if he saw me or not, because I immediately ducked behind a shelf of candy bars and snuck out the front. He certainly didn't follow me out or anything—I doubt he saw me, and if he did, he surely wouldn't have cared.

My heart was thumping, though. It had been about eight years since I'd last seen his face. Anxiety overtook me in the moment, followed quickly by anger. I'm sure underneath it all was sadness. Now, I see that. But at the time I responded by making a dash for Evan's, where I explained the fact that I had returned without any soda as my simply having changed my mind. I avoided confrontation like the plague. While I was willing to leave my actual father behind in the aisle of a convenience store without a word, I still wanted some kind of dad in my life. So I sought out father figures where I could. Luckily, a few kind guys took the bait.

Church was an easy place to look. Mountain Pine was a very religious place. Church was important to me because I needed somewhere to go, somewhere to have a group and fit in. I didn't really have religious feelings; I believed what I was taught to believe. My grandmother had taken us when we were young. When I was old enough, I took myself, not out of love for Christ but because I wanted to be around adults who were consistent and cared. I knew by going to church I would stay out of trouble. I knew what I didn't want, which was to wind up like my mom: a teenage parent with no shot at a future. I enjoyed school, but they don't really let you stay there much past 3
P
.
M
. I needed a positive place where I could get some sort of guidance, so church was the best bet.

For me that place was Mountain Pine Baptist Church, where I spent Sunday mornings and nights and Wednesday afternoons as a member of the youth group. During summer I attended church camp, and later, in high school, I was president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I didn't go to that church because of my family. My grandma kept attending her Pentecostal church. Mom's church had become that chair in front of the television. I went to church by myself, mainly drawn to Mountain Pine Baptist because of its location (five blocks away from where we lived) and its youth director, Robert Parker, who was a great influence on me and many of my friends. He influenced us not by having one-on-one talks with us about anything deep but by taking us places. Whenever I was with him there were always a few other kids around at least, and we did all kinds of things from hunting to rodeos. I went to my first-ever concert with him when we went to see the Christian country band Diamond Rio.

We also hung out at his house all the time. Robert and his wife, Missy, would gather a lot of us from the area and invite us to stay at their home Saturday nights, so they could make sure we were at church on Sunday morning. Those nights were filled with movies and board games until we passed out in the sleeping bags they had thrown on the floor for us. Sunday mornings meant a full breakfast and lots of laughs around the table. Through Robert and Missy, I got a taste of the kind of home life I had only dreamed about.