Jennifer Lauck's Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"

12.
The Little Boat

Peggy is a heavy set, thick woman, with dark hair she keeps back from her face with a hair band. She has wide, thick hands and wide hips. She is tall and stout. A sturdy German woman, Grandpa likes to say.

Peggy is a housewife who stays home with her baby, Kimmy. Peggy does laundry, shops for groceries and plans meals. At the end of each day, Peggy prepares dinner for Richard—tacos, enchiladas, Salisbury steak, chicken fried steak, and something called rigatoni which is a mashed up beef stuffed into pasta shells and then covered with red sauce.

Richard is even bigger than Peggy but where her shoulders are wide and strong, his slope and his pants ride low on his narrow hips. When Richard bends over, half of his behind is there for everyone to see. His stomach is so round that he looks pregnant with twins.

Richard works as an appliance repairman. At the end of the day, his fingernails are black with the grease of his profession. After dinner, Richard takes his spot on the sofa to watch episodes of Bonanza and Wild Wild West. He carves grime from under his nails with a pair of nail clippers. He does the same to his feet. Toe jamb.

For the rest of my life, I will remember the sight of him in front of the T.V. and the way he could bend his leg wide around his belly. Richard was a contortionist.

And Richard smokes. Chain smoker—one after another—all day, all night (until sleep finally makes his mouth go slack). When he speaks to me, it is usually to replenish his dwindling supply of smokes, locate his lighter or to empty his overflowing ashtray.

He calls out, “hey, No Neck, get me a pack of cigarettes.” “Hey, No Neck, get me my lighter.” “Hey, No Neck, clean out this damn ashtray.”

I go to look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom. I look right and left at my own neck. I have a neck and I even feel up the back of it to make sure. My neck is long and obvious. Why does he call me that? Richard does not explain.

Richard and Peggy’s house is a one level with three bedrooms and asbestos siding. A chain link fence surrounds the yard and the grass is burned to brown, tan spiky nothing.

Every house on the street is the same—ranch style, asbestos siding, dead grass and chain link.

If beauty has an opposite—it lives in this neighborhood and in the hearts of these people.

I sleep in the sewing room at the back of the small house and for the first few weeks, I have a fantasy that our arrangement is temporary. I am sure some upset will happen and whoosh, I will be swept out of all this ugliness. There is reassurance within when I dream of leaving. I tell myself that anywhere would be better than this stagnate, dreary place. I’d even welcome going back to L.A. and living in the commune. At least in the commune, I had been relatively free. Compared to Richard and Peggy’s, the commune was a little slice of heaven.

This vision gets me through the rest of the summer and then three things happen to whittle all hope to dust.

One, Peggy puts me into school. She has a terrible time doing this because there are no records of my going to school in L.A.

I try to tell her about living alone at the commune and how I dropped out of school. Peggy did not believe me and said I had one wild imagination. She made calls and tried to get some evidence of my education but the facts were the facts. No school records. I tried to tell her, again, how I had only done a small bit of school, here and there but was constantly being pulled out for all the moves, the deaths and so on. Again, Peggy rolled her eyes. She said I knew how to read and write and did math too. That kind of thing didn’t come from magic. There is no use in telling the woman how I taught myself to read and write and learn a bit of math. She doesn’t listen to a word I say.

That’s when the second thing happened.

When I was finally signed up for school—taking some tests to place me in 7th grade, which was a full year behind—I overheard Peggy explain that all my records had been destroyed due to deaths in the family. She also said that she was now my, “legal guardian.”

The third thing was the arrival of my princess bedroom set. Deb sent it, in a moving truck, all the way from L.A. While I set up my furniture, I realized that I wasn’t going anywhere.

❃


The only thing to do is stay in my room, read a book and hope nothing else goes wrong. And that’s what I do, all the time. I sleep and I read.

Sometimes, Aunt Peggy will put her foot down and make me leave my room.

“Go play with kids, get some fresh air, it’s not natural the way you are inside all day.”

Outside, I sit on the curb, in front of the house until she lets me in again. I do not play with other kids. No one is like me.

❃


The rules are simple. I help with dinner, I clean the dishes, I set the table, I fold laundry, I look after Kimmy, I change her diaper, I get Richard his cigarettes, lighter and ashtrays. And I do not back talk, which is any conversation from my side of things. I am to be seen and not heard. If I do all this, there is a kind of peace. I adapt. This becomes my life.

❃


When a holiday comes around the calendar, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Peggy and Richard cut themselves out of the house in the military subdivision and set up an exact duplicate of their life in the woods. They bring their trailer, a cook stove, coolers of food, packs of cigarettes and pots for making coffee. Kimmy comes too and with her comes all her baby stuff: playpen, diapers, high chair and toys. The only thing they leave behind is the TV.

It’s Labor Day and Richard is in a fold up chair, his foot close to his face. The canvas of the chair strains against his bulk as he picks at his big toe with his pocketknife. Kimmy is down for a nap. Peggy plays solitaire at the picnic table. There is nothing for me to clean or cook. The campsite is all picked up. I wander off into the woods, following a trail that leads to the creek.

Richard calls out, “Don’t go far.”

“All right,” I say. I push my hands deep into the pockets of my shorts and my foot glances off a pinecone. I kick it a couple feet, catch up to it and kick it a couple feet more.


I have been living with these people for close to a year now. I am twelve years old. Each day passes pretty much the same as the one before.

A part of me, watching them in action, wonders if they represent a true family. Is Richard a genuine husband? Is Peggy the model of a good wife? Is this what “normal” looks like? I don’t feel part of their triad or the rituals of their lives—I detest camping, doing dishes and taking care of Kimmy. And I cannot comprehend how Peggy is in complete service to Richard. She doesn’t even read a book or have friends. Her entire existence and meaning circulates around Richard, which seems so odd. He’s such a jerk. She insists he’s misunderstood and there is so much good to Richard, as if she needs to convince herself.

The air smells like pine and earth and things that grow and die at the same time. The ponderosa pine trees stand tall and solid and their branches unfold high on the trunks, holding pinecones and long needles.

The pinecone I kick is half the size of a football and when I catch up to it, I kick it again. It wobbles off toward the creek.

About three months ago, at the end of the school year, Peggy sent me on a trip to San Francisco to visit a cousin I didn’t know. The woman had a little girl, maybe seven years old and I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, Peggy decided to send me away because they didn’t want me anymore. I tried to ask but Richard got steamed. He yelled, “Do as you’re told, you good for nothing no-neck kid.”

So I went to San Francisco, stayed a few days and in the night my cousin’s boyfriend came into my bed. He was a big man with a beard. He put his hand over my mouth. I could not move with his weight on me. He spoke in my ear, told me to enjoy it.

“You know you want it,” he said. “Come on baby, relax.”

I told my cousin what her boyfriend was doing and she sent me back to Richard and Peggy. My cousin told me not to tell.


I kick the pinecone one more time and it pops up, arcs into the air and drops into the creek. The pinecone bobs downstream and I watch it go.


When I came back from San Francisco, Richard seemed very upset. He said I was a real screw up and that’s when I knew he wanted me to go away. He was hoping I would have stayed in San Francisco—even though no one said that out loud.


I squat at the edge the creek. It’s a wide span of fast moving crystal clear water and in the bottom are stones and twigs. I press my hand into the water, icy cold and move the earth of the creek bed through my hand. The earth is many colors, brown, tan, white and black.

I’m like an apple, not yet ripe, that’s been cut into over and over again.

When I was six, my cousin Steve came to stay at Number One on Twenty-Eighth. He was there to take care of Bryan and me while my mother was in the hospital. He only stayed for a few weeks. He smoked marijuana and made B.J. lay on top of me without clothes. He told B.J. to touch me, the way girls liked. He wouldn’t let me leave the room. I got all dizzy and passed out while they laughed.

The next time, I was eight and the Adonis swim instructor took me to his room, pulled his swim trunks off and did things I cannot remember. Terrible things. Thank God for slippery memory.

Now my cousin’s boyfriend and I can still feel his hand over my mouth. I can still taste my tears mixed up with the taste of his hand—salty, bitter. I can still feel the pain.

When I finally told Richard and Peggy what happened in San Francisco, Richard said I was lying and Peggy just rolled her eyes. They both said I was quite a little storyteller.

If I wanted to lie, I would lie up a good one about rescuing kittens from drowning or helping an old lady across the road. I would not, under any circumstances, lie about something as nasty as this. “Why?” I wanted to scream at them. “Why would I lie about this?”

But I didn’t scream. Speaking up was back talk.

The only way to survive is to forget. I bury the memories and lose track of where they went.

I dry my hands on my shorts and sit at the side of the creek for a long time. I hold my arms around my knees and get quiet in a way that is different for me. The voices that are usually in my head go away and it’s just me and the water and the sun.

A little cut of driftwood floats past and it’s wide at one end and narrow at the other.

I snag it from the water and turn the wood this way and that way. I size it up.

At my back, Richard is still crouched over his foot and Peggy deals herself a new game. With the driftwood in my hand, I go up the dirt path that runs along the side of the creek. I climb a small rise and stop when I find a still pool of water. With great care, I release the wood and go back downstream.

In a few minutes, just like I suspected, the bit of driftwood floats down. The top is still dry, even after its journey down the fast water and I decide it’s a boat. I go back up the trail with the little boat, picking a few tiny wild daisies as I walk. I lay the flowers on the flat surface of the boat and release it into the still water again.

A kind of excitement is in me, to see if the boat will carry the load down without tipping. I jog to my waiting place.

The boat bobs on the current, safe and sound and I can’t help but smile. Such a good boat. I take the flowers off and add some pine needles, a rock and a couple other things.

Up and down I go. I don’t even know how many times. It’s just me, that little hunk of wood, water and sun. It’s good. I’m happy working to find the perfect equation of balance. Eventually, inevitably, I name my boat.

It’s Catherine with a C, like a queen, or maybe a princess. The name Catherine feels magical, divine, inspired and even unique. I don’t know anyone named Catherine and I feel proud of myself for coming up with such a good name, all on my own. I say it over and over again. Catherine, Catherine, Catherine.

❃


When we were all done camping and drive home, I sit in the back seat of the car and look out the side window with a harried feeling under my skin. Packing to leave is one thing after another—Richard yelling and Peggy bossing. He calls me a “no-neck” and a “good for nothing.” She rolls her eyes and sighs a lot as if I am a test on her nerves. Between the two of them, it’s like being in a blender. My nerves are shot.

Richard and Peggy are up front and Kimmy is on Peggy’s lap, asleep or on her way to sleep. She sucks her thumb and is cradled in Peggy’s arms.

Afternoon sun comes through the forest, making streams of light fall sideways. As we drive out of the forest, all the craziness calms down and that’s when I realize I left Catherine at the side of the creek.

I put my hand over my mouth but not before I say, “oh my god,” out loud.

Peggy jumps a little and twists her head.

“What?”

I think about saying, “I left my driftwood boat at the side of the creek,” but I don’t. It sounds too stupid. Peggy is never going to understand. Richard will say something stupid and mean.

I burst into tears.

“What’s the matter?” Peggy asks.

I shake my head. I don’t want to cry. I want to make myself stop but I can’t. I am just mortified I left my little boat behind.

Richard adjusts the mirror to look back at me.

“Shut up already,” he says. “You’re going to wake Kimmy.”

“Richard, enough,” Peggy says. She reaches over the seat, touching my knee. “Are you hurt?”

I shake my head to say no and I’d do anything to just grow up and stop being such a baby. I wipe my nose with the back of my arm and look out the window like that might help but nothing helps. Catherine is at the side of the creek, alone in the dark. I left her. I abandoned her.

I can see her in my mind, surrounded by leaves and daisies and rocks. She was my boat. My good, sturdy, wonderful boat, with the best name in the world but I left her. I just can believe it. I want to die.

Peggy keeps her hand on my knee and I know she is worried and confused and even a little sad. I can see goodness in Peggy that makes me forgive her for being with a jerk like Richard. She’s not terrible; she’s not a monster. She just has bad taste.

Richard says I’d best shut up or he’ll give me something to really cry about and Peggy sighs since she doesn’t know what to do.


When we get home, I go to my room and close the door. At my desk, I pull out a sheet of paper and write “Catherine, all time favorite girls name.” I put the sheet of paper into my Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia, under the letter C, so I’ll never forget.

At the time my books came out, between 2000-2004, there was no such thing as the promotional trailer! But does that stop me? Indeed, no!

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