Are You Sitting Down? (34 page)

She developed a habit of raising up her skirt or dress and exposing herself to Hank or to any male friend that was around.
She laughed at it as being funny, but she wasn’t us
u
ally wearing undergarments underneath so it could be quite embarrassing.
A school nurse suggested that Benita was suffe
r
ing from a psychiatric problem known as a
nasyrma
.
It was something neither Mama nor Daddy knew the meaning of, much less could pronounce correctly.
The nurse explained that it was better known as “flashing.”
Daddy thought it was a bit funny, but the nurse took it quite seriously.

“Exhibitionism, or flashing, is exposing yourself for your own gratification.
Anasyrma is doing it for the reaction from onlookers,” the nurse explained.

Daddy did not take
Benita’s condition too seriously until he went
in
to the barn one day and discovered Benita sitting on top of Hank in the hay loft.
She’d pinned him down and was a
t
tempting to have sex with him.
Daddy blamed Hank and gave him a beating, but Hank said he’d tried to get out from under her but when he pulled her off of him Benita would bite his fingers.
By then, Benita was acting out at school and it was suggested that she stay home.

When she became loud and disrespectful toward Mama and Daddy, it was decided that she should be sent away to a special school for children who misbehaved.
As oddly as Benita came into my family’s life, she went out of it.
Benita was only twelve years old, and I was jealous because she got to take a train ride.
I’d never been on a train before.
Mama a
c
companied her and was gone for four days, returning without
Benita
.

Mama and Daddy received letters in the mail notifying them of Benita’s condition.
It worsened
, and medical tests co
n
firmed Benita was slightly mentally retarded
.
I had written to Benita twice a month since the day she left
, until after I met and married Frank
.
She never once wrote back.
Daddy and Mama passed away within months of each other just after I turned twenty-one.
 
My sister, Sheila, died less than a year later.
She was hit b
y a car.
My other two sisters and two brot
h
ers each married and started their own families.
We all forgot about Benita, the unruly little girl with a one
-
way train ticket.
It was easy to do since she wasn’t our blood, but it was wrong of us because we were the only family she ever had.
I
tried hard not to
forget her, although my letters to her eventually dropped to just one a month, and then maybe once or twice a year.

In 1980
, at the age of thirty-three I gave birth to Seba
s
tian.
Travis was four years old.
Ellen was ten, and Martin was sixteen.
The kids loved having another baby in the house.
Ne
i
ther Frank nor I had thought about a fourth child, so Sebastian was a surprise.
Sebastian would definitely be the last, but that all changed nine years later.
In 1989, a
letter came from
Rin
g
gold
,
Georgia
.
Ringgold is just across the state line, south of
Chattanooga
,
Tennessee
.
The letter was from the assisted living home where Benita had been living after her stay at the psych
i
atric hospital in Summerville.

Benita was dead.

Like her mother so many years ago, Benita had died giving birth to a daughter.
 
An orderly had taken interest in Benita.
The letter did not say if he had raped her, only that he had been fired when it was discovered she was pregnant.
The baby was a girl and had been turned over to an orphanage in
Savannah
.
In going through Benita’s things when cleaning out her room, a nurse had found a large box of all my letters.
She decided to take time to write to me to let me know what ha
p
pened.

Frank knew of Benita, but I had never spoken about her to any of the kids.
At the age of forty-two, I had long forgotten about raising another child but I could not leave that baby to possibly be raised in an orphanage.
Weeks passed and I was riddled with guilt over having left Benita in institutional care for all these years.
Frank and I decided to contact the orpha
n
age about adopting the baby.
It was the only way to make things right.
I owed that much to Benita for not having been a presence
in
her life.

We flew into
Chattanooga
and rented a car.
The drive
across the
Georgia
state line was beautiful.
Autumn had just set in across the countryside, turning the trees from green to fire red and burnt orange.
It made me wonder what it had looked like so many years ago to Benita sitting on that train next to Mama, not knowing it was the last time she’d ever see Mama again.
In Ringgold, I was impressed with the living f
a
cility.
It was clean and the staff was friendly.
It did not resemble a cold hospital or bleach-tainted retirement center as I had pictured.
The rooms were carpeted and looked like small apartments filled with personal items, photos, and
comfortable
furniture to make the inhabitants feel more at home.
Instead of bleach, the air was filled with the sweet fragrances of mint and honeysuckle.

“Who paid for this?”
I asked a nurse, while waiting at the front desk for someone to collect Benita’s things for us, in awe of how accommodating and relaxing the center was.

“Her parents did,”
the nurse said, in a heavy Georgian accent.

“What? I never knew of that.”

“
A lot of long term patients live off donations given to us or government aid if they never worked or have no family, but Benita’s parents left quite a bit of money to the facility for her care.
She
lived quite comfortably during the years she spent with us,” the nurse explained.

I was amazed.
Mama and Daddy had never talked about money for Benita, and there was no mention of her in either of their wills.

“Comfortably?
What about the orderly and the pre
g
nancy?”
I asked.

“M
r
s. White, Benita and that orderly were in love
, but their relationship was against company policy.
Since he was not r
e
lated to her, he could not discharge her, and employees are forbidden to marry patients who live here.
We all knew of their bond, but they kept it hidden as best they could.
Her pre
g
nancy was exciting, but also unfortunate for both of them.”

“For both of them?”

“He lost his one true love, ma’am.”

“Since he’s the father, did he not want the child?”
Frank asked.

“After losing Benita and being dismissed from his job, I’m afraid he took his life, sir.
That’s why the baby was turned over to the orphanage.
There are
no
other
living relatives
b
e
sides you and Mrs. White
.
”

There were just three boxes of Benita’s belongings.
Two were filled with my letters.
She’d kept every single one.
The center offered to ship them home to us.
We thanked them for all of their generosity.
Before leaving, I asked what had happened to Benita.

“Cremation.
Would you like to have her ashes?”
t
he nurse asked.

I thought about it and decided no.
This had been her home for so many years, so I felt she belonged here among the pe
o
ple who knew her better than I did.

“We were going to spread her ashes next to him.
He’s bu
r
ied in a cemetery not far from here,” the nurse said.

“The orderly?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me.
I’m sure they both would like that.
By the way, what was his name?”
I asked.

“Jeffrey Clare.”

The drive to
the orphanage in
Savannah
was long and tea
r
ful.
I was ashamed of myself.
How could I have gone all these years being absent from Benita’s life?

“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Frank asked.

“I have to,” I answered.

Two days later, there were three of us on the plane lea
v
ing
Savannah
.
We flew into
Memphis
, where Martin had driven everyone down to pick us up and to meet their new baby sister.

“What’s her name?”
Nine year old Sebastian asked when I held the pink bundle down so he could see her chubby face.
Frank and I both had thought of the same perfect name when filling out the papers at the orphanage.

Clare.

Justin

I often marveled at the idea that had Travis and I been legally married and
if
two guys w
ere
as normal as any other couple in society, would more of his family have come to my
funeral
?
Only his mother
and youngest sister, Clare,
came
to the grav
e
side
.
To the rest, although they had known me for ten years, I was just a close friend
to Travis
.
I wasn’t offended for my own sake, but I was for his.
Had Martin or Ellen’s spouse or God forbid one of their kids died, there would be no que
s
tion about it.
Travis would be there for them through it all.
That’s what families do.
If I’d been a woman, would they
have
mourn
ed
me?

I never told Travis, but I never felt like part of his fa
m
ily.
They all had time to accept their brother as he was.
He came out in high school.
There were boyfriends before me.
Maybe they told him to his face that they were okay with it, and that was fine as long as they didn’t have to see him with someone.
I had never been introduced as the boyfriend.
We were both a
p
proaching thirty, and Travis had
always
brought a “friend” for the holidays.

Lorraine
tried her best to make me feel at home, but a woman who purses her lips when she walks in on her son holding another man’s hand while watching TV still has issues over his sexuality.
When she got him alone, she told Travis she’d prefer no public displays of affection, just in case it made an
y
one uncomfortable.
He sheepishly agreed, not knowing it was his own mother who was
the most
uncomfortable.

When I would come with him for an
overnight
stay,
Lorraine
put us in his old room despite there still being twin beds, and there
being
one other vacant room in the house with a do
u
ble.
Unbeknownst
to her, we locked the door and both slept in one of the tiny single beds anyway, crumpled into each other like overgrown kids.
I always looked forward to the silent love making.
We unmade the empty bed in the morning to make it look slept in just in case his mother walked by the room.

Such inconveniences on our relationship were the only e
x
ceptions to who we were.
I never said anything because I knew how important Travis’s family was to him, so I sto
m
ached it and pretended to be excited to take a trip home with him.
That and I never had a family of my own to be happy or upset about it.
To at least get to sleep in the same room with Travis at his old house was a
luxury
.

At my parent’s place, Travis would have been confined to the sofa with me upstairs in my single bed.
Mom would have stayed awake just to listen for the sound of feet going up or down the stairs in the middle of the night.
Knowing how much Travis would have been uncomfortable there, we would
have been
better off in a hotel.
But, since his Mom lived less than two miles away we always stayed there.

I envied seeing him and his brothers and sisters together.
Despite their flaws in life
—
and they all had them
—
at least he had a family to fall back on.
I had an overbearing mother and father who still pinched my cheeks and said “good boy” when I got straight A’s in
college
.
No matter how much I hated it, I was the glue that held their loveless marriage together.
I d
id
n’t know how they would get along without me, and while I was alive, I didn’t care.

I blamed them for my small town misery where I was the piano playing fag in school.
I was the only boy who took piano lessons, and I only took them because my parents made me.
Just like everything else, I excelled at the piano.
I was the top pupil my music teacher had.
She always had me go last at our recitals because I played the best.
She said after all the wrong chords and slow keys they’d sat through, the
parents
deserved to hear something as good as Mozart or Beethoven.
At eight years old, I ate up her
praise
like candy.

I wrote a paper in school about how I wanted to be the next Liberace.
Kids laughed and called me a faggot right there in front of the teacher.
I had never seen Liberace.
I didn’t know how he looked or dressed.
I had only heard his name and his music when Mom played his records.
He was magnificent at the piano, so I ranked him right up there with all the other great musicians I knew: Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.
Liberace’s name sounded like it belonged right beside them.
After th
e mockery over my paper
, the next time Mom put on one of his records, I ran to the player and ripped the record right off the turn table and threw it across the room.

I was a smart student and a genius musician
,
at the mercy of my parents
,
stuck in a Mayberry town that suck
ed
the life right out of its inhabitants.
I dreamt of some
Las Vegas
scout sitting in at one of my recitals and coming up to my pa
r
ents afterwards to offer them a great big check and my chance to become famous.
He’d sweep me off to
Hollywood
to help sharpen my skills.
I’d have an agent, a manager, a wardrobe specialist, and a ton of other important people standing by to cater to my needs.
I’d never see my parents again, and the next time they saw me I’d be playing piano as a guest on Johnny Carson.
Who knew dreaming could be so worthless?

Music is supposed to make people happy, but it didn’t work that way for me.
It
usually
made me miserable because it was something my parents encouraged, and anything that provided them with selfish delight was something I grew to hate.
And so, I rarely played the piano ever again once I left
Dogwood
.
I sat down from time to time at a piano in
any
room and searched for the feeling that brought joy to any other musician’s face, but the feeling would not come.
It was overshadowed in my head by the faces of my parents.
The magic of the music had somehow missed me.

Travis
came out to
his family
during his senior year.
I doubt I would have ever come out to my parents
at all
had I never met Travis, but then again, who knows if I would have ever moved out.
It wasn’t easier living at home with them; it was convenient.
I made enough money to support myself, but needed someone—or something—to push me out of the nest.
I had never intended to stay with them as long as I did, but just like the small town we lived in, it seemed impossible to break out.

I don’t like to think I used Travis as a means to escape
.
He would never see it that way
either
.
His love life before me was almost nonexistent.
He had only dated a handful of guys, not
h
ing serious, but that’s still more than I c
ould
owe up to.
I never knew anyone else in
Ruby Dregs
who was gay.
If there was anyone, I guess they were closeted like me.
We were all the “dregs of society,” as rival schools liked to joke about the town name.
Despite everyone in school knowing what I was—calling it out behind my back in the hallway everyday—I
had
never admitted it out loud to anyone until the day I met Travis.

I was a year behind him in high school.
He didn’t know who I was, but I knew him well.
I think I had a crush on him when I was a junior and he was a senior because I drew a heart around his class photo in my yearbook that year.
That was the year I signed up for track.
I’d never played any sport before, but how hard could running be?
I was tired of being the choir and orchestra nerd.

I was a pretty fast runner, always coming in
first, second, or third
in our meets.
I quickly gained respect from my team members, the same kids who
had
called me names in the hal
l
way the whole first two years of high school.
Guys who ran track weren’t like other jocks though.
We were smarter and did better in class.
Travis was the same way, except he played tennis.
We both wished we’d known each other in high school.
Travis later told me he was never made fun of back then, but I knew he was.
Massive torment from our peers would have ensued had we both been seen walking side by side between classes or sitting together at lunch.
The teen angst and depression would have torn
a
fragile friendship apart for no real reason at all.
Kids are so mean to each other, especially teens.

So, I like
d
to think it was meant for us to never meet back then.
High school was soon over, and the name calling had stopped.
And like everyone else, we were shocked at a world full of nothing after high school.
The possibilities were endless, and yet all those stupid jocks that taunted us now drove their trucks around town looking like zombies.
The best part of their life was over.
Now, they had to get jobs in fact
o
ries or at burger joints and support their pregnant girlfriends, dreaming about the glory days growing farther and farther out of reach.