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Surrender

I have this t-shirt. It’s deep purple with black three-quarter length sleeves, and it fits me just so. It has a faded screen print of the band Queen circa nineteen seventy-five on the front, and looks the appropriate vintage even though I recently bought it at a chain store. I should have been wearing this shirt the day I entered seventh grade, which happened with little or no warning about two thirds of the way through my twelfth year. I walked into a whirl of honeysuckle and grape Bubble-Yum mixed with smelly armpits and Stridex and it soon became apparent that elementary school had been a woefully inadequate prep course for the ball busting coming of age free-for-all that is junior high. If I had been wearing this shirt, and the attitude it possesses, it’s entirely possible that it all would have been different.

Instead, I trudged through the heavy glass double doors of William B. Travis Junior High on the first day of school in some horrid pastel seersucker elastic waist-banded matching outfit that my mom had picked out for me at Weiner’s Department Store. I unthinkingly accepted this decision, as kids do. But one step across that threshold, in that outfit, made me realize that she could no longer be trusted. One glance through my coke bottle glasses, around the corner and down that long hall, told me that this was where we began to divide. The pretty ones queued up with the sporty ones. The confident and charming well-dressed smart ones, whose moms did not shop at Weiner’s, went to the front of the line. The rest of us were ushered to the corner nearest the kitchen in the cafeteria, where it smells of rotting vegetable matter and warm bleach. We began to talk in mutters, scratching around each other, trying to find the common space in order to determine the reason why we were all there together. The realization fell over us as the industrial air conditioning blasted on and the bell rang for us to go to class. We watched the pretty line make its way out into the hall and it became clear: we had been lied to. We were not, in fact, created equal.

Camus reportedly once remarked that few realize how much energy some people spend just trying to appear normal. This was probably on his first day of junior high. I stood in the hall as the newly crowned kings and queens of the seventh grade ambled to their first classes, running my tongue over the braces that had been shellacked to my teeth that summer, paralyzed. I felt lumpy and conspicuous, the last piece that wouldn’t fit in the box.

A note had been sent home at the end of the previous school year, letting my mom know that I was being shifted from “accelerated” to “level” classes. My grades had been slipping, due to to maximum boredom resulting from a never diagnosed learning disorder. Starting junior high on a completely different schedule from the kids I’d known most of my life didn’t seem such a big deal. I preferred my own company a lot of the time anyway. Not that I spent any of it studying.

I don’t remember anyone ever really pushing me to do homework. My mom went to work full time when I was eight, and we settled into the new Seventies latchkey generation. Bus number fifty-two dropped us off at the end of our driveway around three o'clock in the afternoon. My brother Scott retrieved the house key from the magnetic box stuck to the bottom of the built-in vacuum cleaner canister in the garage, then we tumbled through the back door. I poured us each a glass of Coke, grabbed the bag of Cheetos and we plopped down on the bean bag chairs in front of Gilligan's Island. My after-school memories exist here, or inside the mosquito netting that surrounded my bed, my cat Lert ensconced in my armpit, my other hand holding a book. The light is golden, warm and diffused and filled with dust motes. A place to dream, not to study.

My mother was a dreamer, not an academic. She was a voracious reader, but thought very little of her intellect. She had been raised in a post-war world that believed college was the ultimate opportunity. But she chose not to go. Big Mama and Grandaddy told her it would be just fine if she got the requisite teaching degree at a small local school. Mom had dreams that pushed at the edges of that bubble. She wanted to be a nurse, she wanted to leave home and go to a state school. Except nice girls didn't become nurses. Imagine the things that they would be exposed to. No one would marry a girl like that.

She stayed at home, working at Minnesota Mining and breaking hearts. I'm pretty sure she got bored. She was twenty-four when my dad rolled into town, to visit his sister. She agreed to a blind date, and they fell, madly. She agreed to marry him three days later. Hasta la vista, small town life. Except she took that small town with her. She took their voices and their narrow minds and put them on when she was feeling unsure. She saw herself, mere housewife and mother, as lesser than. Maybe this made it easier to go to work when things got tight. This self-doubt prevented her from ever offering an opinion when I asked a question relating to school. I stopped asking.

My dad sat down with me a few times when I was trying to shoot multiplication tables through the ten-inch thick steel walls in my head. I felt as if he were speaking Japanese to me. Every fiber of my being vibrated with wanting to leap from the chair and fly to my room. But one night the light of understanding beamed upon me, when he showed me a different way to work a problem, the way he had been taught during the Depression. I handed in my perfect homework the next day and received an F the following, because they didn’t like the way we had gotten there. I realized then that the whole endeavor was a crapshoot at best, and decided that reading my book under my desk was more beneficial than any integer or adjective.

My parents were somehow mystified when I was taken off of the academic fast track. They had no clue what to do with me and determined that leaving me alone was the best course of action. My siblings had never had an ounce of trouble in school so Mom and Dad hoped my neurons were just delayed and that I would snap out of it eventually. The one thing that kept them from doubting that they had picked up the right baby at the hospital was my test scores, which predicted that I was probably not a moron.

One morning, that summer that occurred between sixth and seventh grades, not long before we commenced on our annual family vacation to visit aunts, uncles and our glorious cousins in North Carolina, I woke up with pain that no child should ever have to endure and approximately nine quarts of blood leaving my body simultaneously. Puberty fell under the auspices of Topics Not To Be Discussed (which consisted mainly of anything related to sex), so I knew little about the ravages assaulting my pudgy little body. My brothers had been given a book called Moving Into Manhood the year before, which I assume was my father’s idea. I had scoured it thoroughly, finding nothing pertinent to me, but plenty of items that I filed away for future use. The only instruction I received came from a filmstrip in the fifth grade, the one that innuendoed around the curses of being a girl. I read my book during the film and stored the little bit of information I picked up alongside Bonanza reruns as something that might occur someday.

That morning I rummaged through my sister’s supplies (with which I was immensely familiar because going through her stuff was what I lived for) and sorted out what I needed. I shoved my bloody Scooby Doo pajamas to the bottom of the laundry hamper then went back to bed with my blotchy skin and a bad mood that I still haven’t gotten over.

The next day my dad got up at four a.m. This wasn’t unusual; he was always an early riser, as he commuted an hour into Houston five days a week. But on this day we were all dragged out of bed before it was light. Dad strapped the matching pale blue hard-sided Samsonite luggage to the roof of the station wagon. We slurped some Froot Loops and were loaded into the car along with several impeccably folded road maps, Wet Ones, a carton of Benson and Hedges menthols and a giant Igloo cooler full of Coca-Cola and ham and American "cheese" sandwiches on white bread. Everything you need to haul six people halfway across the United States in less than three days. I watched our neighborhood slip away in the crepuscular light, already feeling an associated wooziness brought on by the warm piney damp of the east Texas morning air wrapped in exhaust fumes, my hormones bringing up the remembrance of carsickness gone by.

My mom figured out what was going on with me by the time we reached the first Stuckey’s, just this side of Louisiana, and kept discretely trying to ask me about it, which only added to my mortification. I think this is when my anger toward her solidified. I decided then that I was never going to speak to her again. I leaned my forehead against the window, wishing I could read my book, knowing I would lose my Froot Loops immediately if I tried. I watched the road show, which became more familiar with every year.

These trips had begun in 1970, the year that Shell Oil decided to move their headquarters to the tallest building in Houston, Texas. It was July. Dad piled us all in the Ford Country Squire, squeaking and squinching along the black vinyl seats, barely cramming ourselves in before he slammed the simulated wood-grain paneled doors behind us. Black vinyl. July. Texas. I was only six, but I’m pretty sure this is when I began to doubt my parents’ ability to make good decisions.

I had a bad Ramona Quimby bob and a buffalo gap between my teeth, one of two middle children in our perfect group of girl boy girl boy. I hadn’t a care in the world. I had just finished a blissful year of kindergarten, in the pre-competition days of naps and snacks and crayons. Leaving New Jersey and moving halfway across the country seemed a terrific adventure. Scott and I rode in the way back and played travel bingo while watching for cemeteries. Upon sighting one, our hands would fly up to the ceiling of the car where they would have to stay until we passed, in order to keep the ghosts from rising up and stealing us away. I napped with my doll, not the least bit ruffled by Jodi and Jimmy arguing over the radio. She was the most beautiful baby doll in the world, a going away gift from my best friend Nancy Messina. It hadn’t yet registered that I would never see Nancy again, not until my sister Jodi pointed it out to me. She then began to detail the ways in which our parents had ruined our lives by moving us to Texas, which was full of cow poop and stupid country music. This was the beginning of our unsettling. My head met the cool glass of the window for the first time.

I watched the world go by and created stories in my head. I dreamt of the songs I would hear when it was my turn to sit up front and be in charge of the radio . Our car trips were hot and smelly and sticky and cranky and long, yet I don’t have one bad memory of them. Not the Summer of Blood, nor any of the summers to follow. They've been sprinkled with the fairy dust of passing time. I grew up over those summers. They taught me to appreciate anticipation. I still remember the quiet thrill that crept through the car as we turned onto the crushed rock driveway of my aunt's house.

We had seven cousins on one side of the family, and six on the other. We actually liked each other. We listened to Paul McCartney and Wings records and shot pool and played foosball. We rode bikes up and down fantastic hills, the likes of which we never saw along the banks of the San Jacinto River. We came together and had meals as one gigantic family. There is a strength, a fiber that comes from this, knowing your roots on this level. It managed to bump me out of my hatred for the world, some of the time.

I spent most of that summer before seventh grade sprawled on the glider on my Aunt Anne’s screened-in porch, feeling the breeze move across the wrist that was holding my book: Carrie, by Stephen King. Perhaps not the best choice for a seething twelve-year-old in the midst of menarche, but Mom never questioned anything I read. A much-unappreciated freedom at the time. I lay there and read, hearing my mother and my aunts as they sat around the kitchen table smoking cigarettes. I remember none of the words that they said, but I remember falling into the completely natural rhythm of being in a tiny three bedroom house that was filled to overflowing with people that had the same blood running through their veins.

I imagine my mom was hurt, by my complete rejection of her at this point in my life. I imagine this was a bit of what was discussed around that kitchen table. She never discussed it with me. Not once. She probably knew that she had failed me on a massive level in so many ways. I imagine this hurt her even more.

The trip home was always such a letdown. We still enjoyed the nights at the Holiday Inn, the picnics and the truck stops, even though they never had a bike plate with “Mollie”, or even “Molly”. But Texas heat and school were all we had left to look forward to. My mom took my sister and me school shopping after we got back. We went to Weiner’s and bought horrid outfits. Which I now remember thinking were okay, at the time. This was usually followed by lunch at A&W, where Jodi and I always got the Teen Burger, Mom always got the fish and chips. I talked about Shaun Cassidy and Andy Gibb, my mom asked if I was still looking forward to choir class. My sister told my mom she was thinking about going away to college in North Carolina. I wondered if I could have her room once she was gone. And then realized it wouldn’t be the same without her stuff in it. Or her.

We performed this ritual many times. It wasn’t even in the same neighborhood as perfect, but it was all we had. When I dragged my hormone-laden lumpy self through the doors of William B. Travis for the first time, it would have been nice to be able to see through my self-absorption, to notice my mom behind the scenes, cheering me on with all she had within her. She almost never told me no, when I decided I was going to embark on a new endeavor. She never told me: You can’t do that. So I always assumed I could, even though I often quit when tasks proved difficult. She also never forced me to continue something I determined was not for me, but gently told me, over and over, that I could come back to the piano, to horseback riding, voice, sewing, ballet, painting, guitar, acting, whatever, whenever I wanted to. She had enough faith in me for the both of us.

When my grades fell even further by the end of my eighth grade year, she marched up to my school and demanded to see the dean. She forced him to pull my aptitude tests and pointed out the part where it said clearly: “not a moron.” They moved me back into advanced classes the next year, where I was more lost, but less bored, than ever.

I made it through junior high. I still had no concert t-shirt. But I had gained a little bit of belief in myself, through new friends who had the courage to poke at me through my book and say “hi.” They had my back when we were invited to our first co-ed party, where I drank the glass of beer proffered by the cute, popular boy who gleefully informed me it was, after seeing my face upon my first sip, actually urine. It turned out to be soapy water and yellow food coloring, but it made me feel vulnerable, and I did not like that. Vinyl became my armor and my life changed forever, that summer just before high school.

We were eastbound again, somewhere between Arkansas and Tennessee. We pulled into a Shell station for gas, then it was my turn to sit up front. I clambered over the back of the seat, plopping down between my parents. My mom smoked and read Good Housekeeping. My dad dutifully wrote down the mileage after he filled the tank. As we pulled out onto the interstate, I began turning the dial. I must have picked up a college station from somewhere close by. I heard a drum rat-ta-tat-tat followed by a thrashing power pop guitar that lead into a killer key change and lyrics that fired every neuron in my head. I sat straight up then leaned over and put my ear up against the radio as the song ended, listening for the dj. I had to know who this was. My mom remarked how I used to do this same thing when I was small, when Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat and Tears came on the kitchen intercom.

Mother told me, yes she told me, I’d meet girls like you. Like me? I thought. Whatever happened to all this season’s losers of the year? I was right there, sitting in between my mom and my dad, our thighs stuck humidly together, maybe feeling a little bit like I wasn’t alone anymore.

When we made our annual school shopping trip that year, I spied Robin Zander and Tom Petersson on the cover of Heaven Tonight in the record store downtown. I stifled a scream. I begged my mom to buy it for me. She told me I’d have to pay it back with my babysitting money, and work on trying to get my grades up. I would have gladly sold my soul if Mephistopheles had appeared at that moment and offered me a different deal, so I agreed, even thought we both knew the odds of these things happening were slim at best. This was the first music I felt like was mine, and it began shaping my identity out of the soft clay. She let me have it. My mother never censored a single thing I listened to, not Cheap Trick, nor Prince nor the Sex Pistols. She didn't even make me take down my poster of Frank N. Furter when my aunt came to visit. It was easier for her this way, I understand that. But this was also part of the fabric of which she was made. She wanted to do things her own way, but the tethers of family and what's right kept her essentially on the straight and narrow. She did her best to point us in that same direction. Yet when my foil wrapped copy of Forever by Judy Blume was picked up in the school-organized censoring sweep toward the end of eighth grade, my mother fumed. She walked into the dean’s office the next day and demanded my copy back. I'm pretty sure she knew what the subject matter was. She may have been grateful for the lesson in sex ed she didn't have to give. But I also think that this was the firebrand that lived inside her, poking its head out. She wouldn't stand up for herself, but mess with one of her children and you may as well just offer up your hairline for a scorching.

The compendium of tacit lessons my parents imparted dumped me out on the other side of high school seemingly intact. I went dutifully off to college to pursue their post-war dream. It took many years of jumping through hoops to realize I had different dreams. I still have a bad attitude a lot of the time. I still love Cheap Trick. I am the sum of all my parts. And I am thankful.