Going Down Swinging (33 page)

9.12.74 (T. Baker) There is increasing pressure from Mrs. Hoffman and from Grace for their seeing one aother another. Mrs. Hoffman has started attending AA again (some members visited her in the hospital)and I have had some calls from AA members. I am trying to hold off as long as possible on visiting, until Mrs. Hoffman begins some definite program.

11.12.74 Mrs. Hoffman has found a new apartment at 2810 Carolina Street – a basement suite with rent at $200 per month. Arrangements for moving were made and she is settling in. I expect that her separation from her old neighborhood will do her a world of good. The new apartment is brighter than her previous one. Mrs. Hoffman has now talked to Grace by phone. I expect increasing pressure for a visit.

I have had several very hard sessions with Mrs. Hoffman and we have had our first substantial talk about her problems – alcoholism and prostitution. She has grown much more lucid, and the possibility of Grace’s coming home for Christmas has given her a goal to work towards. She still denies that her problems extend as far as they do (when I raised the question of Kingston Penitentiary, she laughed and told me I’d been misinformed. She said it was Jake Carrington, her ex-husband who’d been imprisoned) She has been responding, however, slowly, and has finally gone to see Mary Allison at the Alcohol Foundation. She is regularly attending AA as well. Her health is very much improved; she doesnot have the “shakes,” is not as tired as she had been etc.

Mrs. Hoffman’s central problem is in her role as victim. From all she has told me, it seems she has led a rather deprived life as an adult, chose partners who closely mirrored the abusive and controlling nature of her father. I don’t have a lot of information about her childhood but the abuse she suffered sounds primarily psychological (Her interests all disparaged or discouraged) Some physical abuse took place as well, though, as her father was firm believer in corporal punishment. She sees herself as a victim of circumstance, misunderstood, lonely, etc. To maintain this image, she has repeatedly done things to sabotage herself or chosen situations that would guarantee failure – and so reinforce her self-image. She seeks dependency, and concomitantly, sympathy. As far as possible, I have denied her these things, and have directly or indirectly forced her to act on her own. Her attitude from November (I can’t do it on my own) has changed appreciably She is getting a great deal of support and sympathy from AA but she has also learned to accept herslef more and do positive things that will enhance her life, rather than destroy it. In this respect, I see her pill-taking and drinking binge, which prompted her friend to call the police, as actually a cry for help.

Grace Eleven
DECEMBER 1974

I
T WAS AROUND
two weeks after my birthday till Todd Baker called with Mums number. He said other stuff, but the words were just like green shredded paper around the numbers for me. It was after dinner on Monday night and raining harder than ever. Mrs. Hood was ironing in the kitchen. Wendy sat at the kitchen table doing homework and Lilly was on the floor with Spike, chucking the ball across the kitchen.

“Lilly, stop throwing the ball so hard or go down to the basement,” Mrs. Hood snapped all the sudden and sprayed the sheet on the ironing board with a bottle of water.

“Wha-a-t! I’m hardly throwing it! It just does it—it’s rubber, you know.”

Wendy looked up from her homework and stared at the back of her sister. Lilly’s head whipped around. “You shut up!”

Wendy stared and didn’t move her lips. Lilly pulled her whole self around and told her, “Quit it, Wendy, nobody asked you nothing! Mum, tell Wendy to quit it.”

Mrs. Hood stood her iron up. “Why don’t you both give me some peace and quiet. I don’t want to hear any more—Wendy, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing, and Lilly, go do your homework.” Wendy gave a little smile and stared more at Lilly.

I hung up the phone, back on the wall. “Got my mum’s number …” I said it just to say it, even though they weren’t going to care. Wendy pushed her lips up under her nose and went to her homework. I was saying it mostly to her and I didn’t know why.

Maybe because one night a week, when Mrs. Hood was at the restaurant where she worked, Wendy was in charge of Lilly and me and I never knew what was going to happen. The week before, she took out a photo album and showed me pictures of herself from the summer. I told her she looked Indian, wondering what it would be like to have that dark skin and hair, like Sadie’s. Wendy slammed the album shut and said, “I look Hawaiian—everybody says I look Hawaiian.” Dinner was ready; Wendy made spaghetti and sauce from a recipe of her mum’s and she put the album away and told Lilly to set the table. I had two things against me so far that night: first I told her she was putting too much salt in the sauce, and now the Indian thing. My stomach was twisting again. Wendy put the pot of sauce and spaghetti on the table and served us each before she bowed her head and said, “Dear Lord, we thank you for this food you have put before us, and we thank you for the rain today that makes the plants flourish and we ask that you give us patience in this trying period and patience that we may endure until the time of the end. Amen.” Lilly
amen-ed
a little louder than she had to. Wendy looked at me. I whispered
amen
at my plate. We picked up our forks and twisted up some noodles. Lilly slurped hers in. “Lilly, don’t be so loud,” Wendy told her without looking.

“Yes’m.” Lilly kept acting like one of the
Waltons
that night.

I picked up my fork and held it a second, wishing there was a way I could just eat with my hands. And wishing she hadn’t gone and mixed it all in together; I’d’ve rather had just noodles with butter. It took me a while to get some in my mouth and it was salty all right. I looked at Lilly; she swallowed and gulped at her milk. Wendy watched me. I was going to gag. I held my breath for a second, took a drink of milk and washed it back. She said, “Well, how is it?” Lilly didn’t say anything. Seemed like we were supposed to prove how good we were by not saying how sick it tasted. I moved around in my chair and there was a roll and ping in my stomach. Then a pop.

Lilly’s head whipped up from her plate. “You farted!” and she was still using her
Waltons
voice, then she screamed it at Wendy, “She farted! Ew.” My face got prickles. I dropped my fork and started to giggle. “Ew! She done it on purpose. That’s disgustin’.”

If it wasn’t for the giggle, I would’ve been paralyzed stiff. Wendy pushed her lips under her nose, then put down her fork. I gritted my teeth and swallowed the giggle. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

Lilly slouched in her chair. “You, miss, are the most disgustin’ pig in the whole world. Ah cain’t eat this now. Ah hate you. February is not never gonna come.”

Wendy finally opened her mouth. “You’re a heathen.” Except she said it like Kingdom Hall, not like
Waltons
. But it made me do another quacky laugh—whenever Mum said “heathen,” it was a joke. Wendy said, “I think it’s your bedtime, Grace.” I giggled a bit more, knowing it wasn’t funny for sure now. “Grace. Go to bed. You don’t eat what’s put in front of you and then you do
that
right at the dinner table. Go. Now.” I put down my fork, put my hand over my mouth and left. I laid in bed watching the clock, listening to Lilly stay up almost two hours past our bedtime.

“So. I’m going to phone her,” I said. Wendy didn’t even look at me and they all stayed doing what they were doing. I stood with my head against the phone, wishing I could rip it off the wall and drag it to a closet where the coats and clothes would keep my talking from going right into everyone’s ears. I huddled around the phone and dialled, scared all the sudden that I wouldn’t know what to say. The iron was spitting behind me and Spike slammed the ball into the cupboards.

When she answered, it was like I just fell into a giant tub of mum and her voice was gurgling around me. I could see her and smell her. I could feel her like breath on my face. Her voice smelled clean and like the olive oil she poured in her bathwater all the time. I could feel her patting the middle of my back, vibrating my ribs, and hear the amethyst rock clicking in her ring like crickets.

She sounded out of breath. There was a little shake in her voice when she asked how I was, how the family looking after me was and my new school, and if I missed her. I kept saying “fine” until it got to the missing-her part and my throat squeezed. I said, “Yeah,” and I said it again because I couldn’t speak hardly.

Her voice kept being all over me and she asked a zillion things about nothing and I wanted her to keep thinking up stuff to say, until she got to, “Well, let me get a pen, Lamby, OK, what’s your number there and we’ll phone each other … oop, wait … OK, what’s her name, the woman looking after you?”

I tried to keep the butterflies down. Everything would be OK. Mum could call and maybe Mrs. Hood would like her and invite her here for tea sometimes and things would get better. I said, “Mrs. Hood,” into the receiver and Mrs. Hood’s head jumped up, her eyes all buggy. I thought maybe she burned herself, but I kept going. “It’s
327—”

“No!” She stood her iron up, her lips stuck in an
0
.

“What?” I looked at her.

“What what?” my mother said. “What’s the matter?”

Mrs. Hood shook her head and her lips pulled back like she was going to get hit in the face with something. My brains went all quiet. I said, back in the phone, “Um, it’s—”

Mrs. Hood hissed at me, “You cannot give out this number!” My throat squeezed again.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” Her voice welled up in my eyes.

“Mm, I can’t. I’m not allowed. Said I can’t.”

“What do you mean you’re not allowed?” Her voice was snaking up.

“Mrs. Hood said I can’t.” Mrs. Hood hissed from me saying her name again. The line was quiet. “Mummy?”

“Well isn’t that just lovely.” Mum’s words were like bites. “Baker says they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses—whatever happened to ‘honour thy mother and father’—that
woman
forbids you to give your number to your own mother? What, pray tell, does she think I’m going to do for chrissake?”

“Don’t know.” I wanted to go stuff myself between my mattresses. “I’m sorry. I can keep calling you. I’m sorry.”

“And stop saying you’re sorry—Uh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I just mean it’s not your fault. You can bet Baker’s going to get an earful about this, goddamn little draft-dodging nothing. Bloody low-lifes trying to separate a child from her mother!” More quiet. “Are you still there?”

“Uh huh.” My chest was going to fall out my back.

“Hmm, well, I guess you can’t say much with them in the room.”

“Uh huh.”

She sighed. “OK, well, you’ve got my number now, right? So the next time you go over to see Sadie and Eddy, call me from there. You’ll be over there, won’t you?”

“Yup.”

“I wish I could have been with you on your birthday, honey.”

“Uhhuh.”

“Well, we’ll have our own little celebration together, I have presents for you, you know. I don’t know when he’s bringing you, but soon, I think—don’t be upset, angel, we’ll get through this, we’re tough, right?” and she sang a bit of “You and Me Against the World,” by Helen Reddy.

“Uh hmm.”

“Don’t worry, OK? I love you—I love you to pieces.” I said
me-too
and she said, “Just a few days till we see each other and then it’ll be Christmas and we’ll have all that lovely time together.” I
uh-huh-ea
again and she let a big breath out with, “OK, lovey, I’ll let you go. Call me, OK?—we’ll do it on the sly, he-he.”

Eilleen Ten
DECEMBER 1974

Y
OU ARE IN
your new apartment, trying to make it look cheerful, clean, at least, as you’re waiting for the fruit of your womb. You’ve made a chocolate birthday cake; it’s kind of low-slung in the middle, filled in with extra icing because Grace loves the icing more than the cake. Or is that you? Can’t remember. Does she like pickles? and what kind of chip dip? and you’ve been saying things like,
it doesn’t matter, just so long as we’re together
, while wrapping her presents and wondering will she even like Silly Putty or is that too young?—but it’s OK because you’ve compensated with a black-velvet-strapped Timex that looks grownup as hell and shit, how does one wrap a watch box so it doesn’t look as crappily slapped together as the rest of the loot? But she’ll just tear it all off anyway; rip it like she’s fighting her way out of a wet paper bag because that’s half the fun. That much you remember.

She’s due any minute and so you go back in the bathroom and check again. Do you look motherly? Is this what mothers look like? You blot off some lipstick. No, now you look sickly, you’re not a woman who shines without lipstick. And you pace back in the kitchen, it’s a huge kitchen, she’ll like that. It’s a basement, but at least it’s in someone’s house: safer, not so anonymous. Right now you’re of a mind to have people know who you are, at least the you you are now. To hear
hello
followed by your name makes your backbone straighter, helps you feel here.

If you didn’t have to sleep in that bedroom, it’d be better. The five days you’ve been here, you’ve waited till the very last second to get into bed because there’s something about that bed in that room with nothing else but a dresser; it becomes apparent that your life is one empty Cracker Jack box and you really have nothing, not even a phone number to the only thing that you love. Fucking Baker, you let him have it for that, telling your flesh and blood that she may not give her whereabouts to her own mother. You’d hate him if there was enough there to hate, American weasel. Draft-dodging little turd. Wonder if he gets a nice gold star on his report card for this particular absconding. He barely addressed your demands, said he hardly thought it was an issue with which to concern yourself at this point in time and furthermore it was against the rules. The rules. What do the rules say about kidnapping? What do they say about dragging a kid out of her school, uprooting her, placing her with religious freaks?