Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (10 page)

Mother kept in constant contact with me on the phone. “Hon,’’ she said one day, “I think I should tell Aunt Ethel, don’t you?”

After all those years of “Don’t tell Aunt Ethel,” this was a change. But I agreed that, yes, she should be told.

So Mother called her sister and began, “I have something to tell you about Betty …” to which Aunt Ethel quickly said, “Oh, what? I’ll go downstairs and tell Maisie …” and further mentioned that, as it happened, at that moment my cousin Maisie was having her weekly gathering of several friends—most of whom I knew from high school.

Not wanting “all those people” knowing our business, Mother backtracked and said, “Oh, never mind. I’ll tell you some other time.” She never said another word about it.

Decades passed. A few years ago I asked Maisie if she knew I had a mastectomy and she said, “Yes, Betty, I do know.”

And Aunt Ethel had known too. All those years, and they had never said a word.

Clearly, once a family gets into a secretive pattern, it becomes hard to break.

O
F COURSE, VANCE
was very upset to hear that anything could possibly be amiss for his typically together mother, and he called and wrote as often as he could. Vance’s calls and letters were full of exciting tales of his musical endeavors and travels. Always his number one fan, Ellen listened intently to these reports.

It may have been during this time, while Ellen was still in high school, that she started to have some ideas of pursuing a musical path, like Vance. She was naturally musical, with a nice singing voice, and was already starting to write poetry and songs. Interestingly, she would later have several comedy bits that were music-related.

Unlike Vance, who performed as a musician and had acted in plays in school, up until this time El hadn’t done any kind of acting or performing. In fact, some of the kids who remember her from high school have recalled that, though popular and friendly, she could also be somewhat shy. Certainly she was nothing like the many comedians who have histories of being class clowns. But she was funny. In those years, whenever I was angry with her about something and was trying to correct her, she would imitate my facial expressions until my anger gave way to laughter. Her humor was growing more spontaneous and more sophisticated.

As it turned out, Vance ventured into comedy before Ellen did. By 1976, he had started writing sketches which were so well received that he and his partners decided to take the plunge and go to New York City. Eventually the act made it onto
Saturday Night Live
; Vance was the notorious “Mr. Hands,” the archenemy of “Mr. Bill.” Oh, no, Mr. Bill!

I was proud of my two extremely creative kids. Of course, I do remember being less than happy when Vance chose not to get a college degree but to dive directly into music and then comedy. I’d hoped that when I returned to finish my college education, I would be setting a good example. But it was his choice to determine his own path. Multitalented and a creative person to his very soul, this was who he was. I would no sooner have tried to talk him out of being who he is than I would try to talk Ellen out of being who she is.

On the other hand, I was completely shocked by a phone call I got from Vance in the middle of 1977. He was living in New Orleans, after having returned from fast-paced New York, and was developing television ideas for local productions. Up until this point, I had been hearing about his high hopes for a sketch comedy pilot he had written called
Cuisine Deluxe.
He worked on it for months, and everything was ready to shoot in a local TV studio that he had arranged to get for only one night; everything had to be torn down the next day. In a stroke of bad timing, there was a power black-out and everything was ruined. This may have brought on Vance’s complete about-face, of which he informed me that day with his phone call.

“Mom,’’ he said, “I joined the Marines.”

I waited to see if there was a punch line coming. When I understood that he was completely serious, tears came to my eyes. I asked him, “Vance—why?”

Because, he explained, it was the best way to get the kind of discipline that he felt he needed and that he hadn’t received in his growing-up years.

“Oh?” I said, still baffled. Talk about getting hit from left field. I don’t think it would have shocked me any more if he had called to say he had been abducted by aliens. Added to my shock was fear and a feeling of helplessness. The Vietnam war had ended only a few years before and was fresh in everyone’s memory. Vance in combat? In the Marines?

“What did your dad say?” I asked, grabbing for something, anything, to change the reality of what was happening.

Vance said that Elliott, being an ex-Navy man, told him he wished he had joined the Navy. But it didn’t really matter what we said, since he’d already gone through the whole enlistment process. He was in the Marines.

When I asked Vance if maybe this was because his last few projects hadn’t worked out well for him, he replied, “I guess so, Mom. It’s just time for a big change in my life.” He was fully determined.

I wasn’t happy about it, I told him honestly. But I certainly respected his decision and his conviction. This was something he had to do on his own journey into manhood. All I could do was give him my love and encouragement and pray that he would find what he was looking for.

W
HEN ELLEN GRADUATED
from high school in June of 1976, I doubt that she knew what she was looking for or had any idea where her destiny would take her. But I think that she had already decided that it was absolutely going to take her somewhere, that she was going to be somebody. Apparently she also knew that it wasn’t going to happen in Atlanta, Texas.

One night, through tears of pride, I watched her graduate from high school. The very next day, she moved back to New Orleans.

Elliott came up to Atlanta for the graduation ceremonies, bringing with him his new wife, Virginia. We had them over for breakfast the next morning. Then they loaded their car with all her things and off she went—out of my life.

The effect on me was devastating. We missed each other terribly.

In the beginning, Ellen had a hard time finding what she wanted to do with her life. Mother generously offered to pay for her tuition, but after just under a month at the University of New Orleans, Ellen could see that college wasn’t the right path for her.

Living with her father, stepmother, and two young step-sisters wasn’t the same as living at home with me. In our conversations and letters, I could sense that Ellen was going through the difficult process of cutting the proverbial cord. Then, again, this process of leaving home was complicated by the fact that after all our moves, “home” wasn’t so much a physical location but really wherever I was.

This was why Ellen made three different attempts to move back to Atlanta—to be with me—only to flee the smallness of the place within weeks. Once she even tried going to work at the glove factory where I was working. She lasted a few days, if that.

After she left for the last time, I wrote the following, which was later published in a literary magazine at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, where I would eventually transfer to finish my bachelor’s degree:

To Ellen

A rosebud is perfection, but

to try to keep it so by tying it in place

with silken ribbons would destroy it.

and we would never know the full-blown

beauty of the mature rose.

It grows when it is time.

We tried to stay together.

So many false moves—but

It was wrong for me and wrong for you.

It was time for mother-daughter to let go.

It was time for us to grow.

Not many months after I wrote that poem, and about a year after Vance had shocked me with his announcement that he had joined the Marines, I found myself on the beach in Pass Christian, Mississippi, hearing an even more shocking announcement from Ellen—”Mom, I’m gay.”

As she cried and I hugged her, a hailstorm of conflicting emotions continued to pummel me from every direction. There was my shock and disbelief, yes, together with my fear that was very much on the same level as my feelings when Vance enlisted. As it must be for all mothers, the prospect of either one of my kids being hurt was unbearable. And with this revelation from Ellen, I was probably even more scared, mainly because of my ignorance. How could I protect her from the unknown?

Since I couldn’t, my irrational impulse was somehow to convince her that this wasn’t really who she was. And so, when I asked, “Maybe this is just a phase?” Ellen took it to mean that I was ashamed of her.

It took El almost twenty years to tell me that. Thankfully, she said that I never made her feel rejected or unloved. But nonetheless, my denial and my worry were conveyed to her as shame.

Ashamed? Hearing that made me feel awful, especially after twenty years. By that time, it had been so OK with me for so long that I had almost forgotten about the difficult process I had gone through. Of course I was never ashamed of Ellen. But after hearing what she remembered, I started to think hard about that time, the feelings I did have, and just how I had gotten to the point of total acceptance.

Looking back, I saw that for me, as for many people, the steps toward understanding could be compared to some of the ones I went through when I was bereaved—the stages described earlier as denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and then, finally, acceptance. The process of coming to terms with my daughter’s sexuality may not have been that clear-cut, but it was definitely a process of growth. And I did experience a sense of loss.

What exactly that loss was, I didn’t yet know at the time when the first shock waves were hitting me. But as El and I walked back from the beach with our secret and into Helen’s house, I knew then and there that we were not the same people anymore. We said nothing. I wondered if anyone could tell that we had both been crying, but no questions were asked.

Not much was said on the drive back to New Orleans. When we dropped Ellen off at her father’s house, I gave her what I hoped was another strong, affirming hug. “I’ll call you,” I promised, letting her know without words that we had more to talk about. El nodded in agreement.

Watching her go into the house, I was able to fathom a part of my loss. She wan’t my little girl anymore. Just as I had written in that poem. It had been time for her to grow and find herself, and discovering her own sexuality was very much a part of that growth. But I had never pictured her with another woman. In my mind was a picture of her with a strong man—and her smiling face in the newspaper’s engagement section.

When El and I talked a few nights later and I mentioned my disappointment about the engagement picture, I immediately felt foolish. It began to dawn on me that my feeling of loss was not so much about Ellen as it was for myself These were my own losses about which I had been in denial, my own disappointments, and the ideas I had about her having the fairy-tàle life with a Prince Charming of her own-—a life I hadn’t succeeded in making for myself.

What really got to me in Ellen’s letter, which arrived shortly after that phone call was her comment: “I’m very happy and I’m sorry you can’t approve—I know you can’t understand—you probably never will.”

At this point B., never known as Mr. Sensitive, figured out that something was upsetting me. “C’mon, Betty, honey,” he said, in that drawl of his, “tell me what’s eatin’ you up.”

With all the effort it took me to finally stammer, “El … Ellen told me she’s … she’s gay,” he must have been expecting earth-shattering news. But this revelation was no big deal to him.

“Aw, hell,” he said, “is that all?”

B.’s reaction made me feel a bit better—that is, until a month later, when we were home visiting and B., without asking me, decided to take it upon himself to betray what I considered a strict confidence and tell Mother. B. just brought it up, announced it over dinner, as casually as if he’d just asked Mother to pass the salt.

I froze in my seat and glared at B. Mother looked momentarily shocked, but that passed quickly. She turned to me, patted my hand, and reassured me that she loved us all. Mother didn’t seem to be bothered much by the news. What a relief! A few months earlier, I recalled, B. had volunteered some other information that upset her a lot. He really had a big mouth.

That earlier night, when we were relaxing at Mother’s, he blurted out, “You know, Betty really enjoys sleepin’ in the nude.”

Mother was horrified. “Bets,” she exclaimed, “you weren’t raised that way!”

Well, there wasn’t much room for change in her household.

B. really went too far when we were driving one day. He was at the wheel, I was in front with him, and Ellen was in the backseat. I was asking about her friends—questions about the places they were going, what kinds of things they were doing for fun.

B., crudely direct as ever, asked Ellen, “What do you do for sex? What exactly do two girls do together?”

“I don’t want to talk about that with you,” Ellen replied with a look of disbelief. The subject was changed, but the atmosphere was uncomfortable and awkward.

That incident—which reminded me of my own ignorance about homosexuality—may have prompted me to head to the local public library. Helen visited around this time and, after I broke down and shared the secret about Ellen, I told her how much the books I was reading were helping.

Helen was shocked, but more than anything, she wanted to reassure me that this news didn’t change her high, loving opinion of Ellen. Then she confessed how little she knew about homosexuality. “What do the books say?” she asked.

“Do you know,” I told her, “according to historical and anthropological experts homosexuals have been part of our human race from the time that we evolved as a species, typically 3 percent to 10 percent of the population? And in different cultures they have been much more widely accepted than in ours.”

This made sense to her, scholarly as she is. “As I think about it,” Helen said, “I’ve read before that lots of famous and successful people have been gay.”