I grew up all over the place. At one point in my school days, I was enrolled in 3 schools in one month. That was an interesting time.
My mother let the kids go to Virginia to visit relatives for the summer. Actually, I am not sure if she really had that much control over what Grandma did.
Grandma was a drunk in a dress who dipped snuff and put on airs. Mom told me that when I was born, my grandmother doted on me and it all ended when my father took me away with a promise to bring me back. He just didn't say it would be several years later when his next wife grew tired of taking care of a child.
What I remember about her were the impromptu trips we took and how she would spit her venomous words at me while doting on my younger brother. The trips would start when I was called out of class to go with my Grandmother. My brother and I would crawl into the back seat of that old Plymouth. Grandma would be in the driver's seat with her bottle of wine disguised in the brown now wine bottle shaped paper bag. The top of the bag was wet and clung tightly to the top of the bottle. I could see her can of snuff in her open purse with her white gloves.
Grandpa didn't drive. He hadn't driven since he lost his eye while working for DuPont in the early 1950's. He called her “Nanny” and they were quite a pair.
Grandpa bought her wine every week. Everyone in town thought he was the drunk. They didn't know that the properly dressed woman who accompanied him in the car was the real drunk. She wore her little hats and her gloves and her dresses were always ironed. She always had a smile for the public. At home she was mean to me and contrary to everyone but my little brother. She idolized him.
It was years before I knew that my mother would come home to an empty apartment and have no idea where everyone was. This was the time before cell phones and GPS and laws against drunk driving. Mom and her husband would come home from work. The apartment was dark and void of human existence. Then she would call the places in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia where she thought her mother would go.
I remember Grandma and Grandpa in heated arguments about her driving. Then there was the spitting. Every traffic light or stop sign had a dose of spittle (she would open her door and spit her snuff when she stopped) and after awhile would be the gulps of wine from the “concealed” wine bottle. The thing that was truly amazing is that the few accidents that she was involved in were not her fault and to my knowledge she was never detained and never arrested.
The arguments that the grand parents had were often times comical. They had 10 children and every now and then it would escalate into something like this:
“Nanny! Why can't you treat me right?”
“Shut up, George!”
“I just don't believe that boy was mine!”
“That's right, George! His father was a gentleman!” She stood proud and drew the word gentleman out, enunciated clearer than necessary.
Now, I have no idea if there was any true cause for concern about the parentage of the children, but it was disturbingly funny to listen to. All the children were grown, on their own with children of their own. If you owned them all those years, why bother at that point? What did it matter? I mean, just give it up!
The year I was enrolled in 3 schools in 30 days started as one of those trips. One of those trips where everyone disappeared while Mom was working, but this would be the last one. Mom had finally had enough. I was 12.
I wound up at Aunt Oblivious's home. I told her that I was tired of all the fighting and arguments. She contacted my father and they made the arrangements for me to take the train to Tennessee. She never told Mom that I was leaving until Grandma came to pick me up to take me home.
I did not know at the time, how disturbing it would be to have your child disappear. I was a child only thinking about myself and how happy I would be if things were different. If things were better, I would be happy and Daddy would make it better.
My father had just moved to Cumberland, Tennessee and it was a 4 bedroom home with 2 bathrooms, woods and lots of land to play on. The formal area was upstairs and I would be living in my own room with my own TV and they had a piano. I wanted to learn to play the piano. The baby grand piano was downstairs where I could learn to play.
The time to enroll in school came quickly and my father decided that I should learn to be a good Catholic girl. How better to do that than to attend a private Catholic school. I had always gone to public school so having nuns as teachers was discomforting. Mom had told me that when she went to Catholic school, the nuns had been mean to her and hit her with rulers for stupid things like her shoes (which were too big) falling off in class. Right away there was the issue of trust.
It did not take long for me to be removed from Catholic school. I think I lasted a week. My father's visit to class confirmed my departure.
The nun asked this question, “If a rosebush talked to you, what would you say to it?”
She called on several others and they answered with what I thought were stupid answers. They said things like,
“I would ask it how it could talk.”
“I would say hello.”
“I don't know” was my response. To me, I thought it would depend on what it said to me and I just wasn't sure that I wanted to talk to a rosebush anyway. Crazy people did things like that.
She asked me the question again and I gave her the same response. She asked me a third time like if I heard it again, I would have a different answer, but nothing changed and my answer remained the same.
My father took me home early and gave me his “I am disappointed in you” speech with a heavy dose of the “how could you embarrass me” speech thrown in. It ended with the “if you aren't going to co-operate and learn from that fine institution” speech then you will just have to go to dreaded public school.
It didn't matter to me. I wasn't learning anything at Catholic school except how to sing. What daddy didn't know was I was in accelerated classes back home with Mom. I was already a year ahead of the curriculum.
Public school was okay and all the neighbor kids went there so at least I had friends. But it just wasn't to be either. I was 2 years ahead of their curriculum but they also had singing. I got good grades but I was bored.
After 2 weeks, his second wife decided that she couldn't handle me. Her promise to give me piano lessons ended with, “Learn it on your own and I'll see if you're really committed to it and then we will pay for lessons.” My practicing songs for school was met with. “What are you doing? You can't carry a tune in a bucket.” So I didn't practice where she could hear me. I needed braces. I got a tic in my hair. I got bit by a chipmunk I tried to save from the cat. I stepped on a nail while nosing around a house that was under construction. While trying to adjust the spring on a ball point pen the refill shot out, hit the ceiling and left an ink streak about 4 inches long. I was there when two men came to “see” her while my father was gone. I was no longer the cute little girl that she photographed 3 years earlier. I was in between and there was not enough cotton to fill out what she said God had forgotten. I was pre-puberty and I was a kid.
My father came home from work and they had a raging fight in their underwear and within 24 hours I was on a plane headed to Maryland to live with my mother. I heard them arguing through the walls and the ceiling in my room in the basement. I sneaked upstairs to see what was really going on and I saw them arguing. My father yelled something at me and I went back downstairs.
I should have started packing then, but I waited until I was ordered to pack. His wife told me she would send the rest of my stuff later. My father drove me to the airport with some half baked apology/accusation and that was that. His wife had me wear a dress that obviously didn't fit my form. But like she said, "What God has forgotten, we'll fill with cotton."
When I arrived in Maryland, I was enrolled in Riverheads Junior High School. It was the following summer that I went to the University of Maryland to attend summer classes.
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