Authors: Ginny Gilder
That's what your body is doing. What about the rest of you? Your eyes should be focused directly ahead, transmitting information to help you mimic the body motion of the person in front of you. But you can't help yourself. You sneak a peek at your oar; is it in sync with everyone else's? You check out the crew in the next lane; who's ahead?
You'd better not be talking: it interrupts your breathing, takes too much energy, and distracts your teammates. The only person allowed to speak is the coxswain; talking to you is a key component of her job. She reports on your progress and your competitor's position, corrects egregious technique, calls the racing strategy as determined in advance, and keeps you pulling your hardest by whatever means necessary, including cheering, cajoling, commanding, demanding, demeaning, threatening, begging, and bribing.
But your internal dialogue is constant. Is winning worth this excruciating pain? YES! My legs feel like wet noodles. This sucks. SHUT UP! Is that the power twenty for the halfway mark? Are we ahead yet? LET'S TAKE 'EM! Am I skying again? I can't keep doing this. DON'T STOP! This hurts. I DON'T CARE! PULL!
All rowers are multitaskers, especially during the drive. We track our movements with the rest of the crew to maintain our synchronicity
and rhythm. We need to be at the same place all throughout the drive, not just starting and finishing together.
We pull our guts out while we argue internally about whether to keep going; we keep going as long as our drive is strong. Drive comes from the heart, birthed by desire, fueled by passion, toughened by pain, fired by loss and grief. It keeps us going past the point of reasonable, and that's when we discover our greatness.
Drive was not a familiar concept in my eleven-year-old universe, given its grounding in experiences I had yet to discover. Loss and grief are expert educators, however, and I proved an adept learner.
Mom didn't ever try to kill herself so overtly again, but she never returned to her old self. She was ambulatory, but barely. Her trademark, matter-of-fact approach to life and her businesslike grip on order vanished, replaced by a plodding vacancy. We didn't starve or get evicted, as Dad continued to pay the bills. But the heart of our family beat more faintly without Mom's take-charge energy to fuel all of us.
Dad didn't ask how things were, and we knew not to offer any information. He was a big believer in the power of “don't ask, don't tell,” so news flowed from the Park Avenue penthouse to his hotel home in a trickle. After several months of apparent calm, he decided the nurses weren't needed and let them go. I had grown close to Anne, Mom's day nurse, who took the time to ask questions and listen to my answers, and who understood my ache for my lost mom without trying to talk me out of how badly I felt. Watching her go, I felt abandoned again, as another grown-up I could count on slipped out of the picture and left me to fend for myself, with only my big sister to rely on.
Without an adult presence to steady Mom, we were all fully exposed to the vagaries of her moods, and our house grew more somber. Peggy and I picked up the slack when Mom couldn't go shopping, make dinner, or clean up. Yvonne, our house cleaner, continued her weekly appearances to vacuum and dust our house into a modicum of cleanliness. But despite her best efforts, a once-weekly thorough cleaning could not keep our kitchen pristine. Mom's decline was impossible to ignore once cockroaches discovered our kitchen, moved in, and started having babies. Seeing those creepy crawlers race for the dark
corners, trundling their rectangular egg sacs behind them like suitcases on wheels, disgusted me so much that I stopped going into the kitchen without heavy shoes on. I made it my business to stomp as many as I could, but I never grew accustomed to the shivery shock of opening a cabinet and having one scurry away.
Loneliness descended as I adjusted to the loss of my mother. She was alive before me, yet she was gone. As for Dad, he kept a stiff upper lip, determinedly cheerful. He had escaped Mom; he could ignore her problems and pretend everything was fine. I couldn't help but hate him a little. He had left me, all of us, to fend for ourselves. He didn't ask how we were doing, and I came to equate his not asking to his not caring.
Nonetheless, I didn't believe Mom's accusation of his infidelity. I knew my father was not having an affair. He was not that guy. He never mentioned a girlfriend, never said BG's name. Mom was wrong. I never fully disputed her position, but my refusal to join in when she ranted about him told her all, and she resented my loyalty.
On a sunny Saturday morning in April, seven months into my parents' separation, I waited on the corner of 81st and Park for Dad to pick me up. He had moved into an apartment by then, four blocks away, on 84th Street, just off Madison, and was taking me to the Belmont race track, just the two of us, to figure the odds and bet on the horses. I recognized him walking up the avenue, but he wasn't alone. Confused, I focused on the person beside him. Her height and carriage seemed familiar. Suddenly the details organized themselves into an agony of cognition.
Eyes burning, fury choking my airways, disappointment ripping my faith apart, I turned around and raced back to the apartment, up the elevator, and into my room. I slammed onto my bed and buried my head under my pillow. I wouldn't answer the house phone when the doorman called to announce my father's arrival.
My mother didn't know I'd left or returned. She called down the long hall, “Ginny, your father's here.”
“I'm not going.”
“What?”
“She's with him.”
I heard her voice on the phone, a spray of indignation splashing in my direction, as she lectured my father. I knew she was secretly happy; he had proven her right.
“Ginny, come talk to your father.” I got up and trudged down the hall. I was unpracticed at defiance. I grabbed the receiver from my mother.
“Ginny, where are you? Come on down.”
“I'm not coming.”
“What? Why not? You've been looking forward to this. I know you have.”
“No, I'm not going with her!”
“With whom? Oh ⦠Why not? Come on, Ginny, try to be a grown-up.”
“You said it was just you and me going. It's not fair.”
“Ginny, it will be fun, I promise.”
“No, I'm not going. I don't want to be with her.”
“You're being selfish. I'm disappointed in you, Ginny.”
The thud of his disapproval landed hard inside, smacking down much of my fury. Still, I could not shake my sense of being wronged, nor could I excuse his refusal to acknowledge the messy truth. That day, my father lost the benefit of my doubt.
As our family's ship lurched onto its side, I scrambled to hold onto something, anything, to stop from sliding into the cold murk. I caved into the external pressure to go with the program that everything was okay. In the process, I buried the truth to save myself from drowning in dysfunction and so missed a key lesson: secrets are not buoys, but flimsy plastic rings that leak air from the moment we inflate them.
My friends helped. I didn't have to lie to them about what was happening. I didn't even have to talk. All they had to do was visit our apartment two or three times after school. Mom's disheveled appearance, slurred words, and unpredictable moodiness told the story, along with my embarrassed apologies for her behavior. They stuck around anyway. They didn't pry or tease. Spending time with them was like reaching an oasis where the truth found just enough water to survive.
But still our family continued to dissolve. No one ever mentioned alcoholism or whispered mental illness. My father married BG less
than sixteen months after Mom's suicide attempt, solidifying his role as a stranger to our daily lives. He never asked for details and never heard the truth about the unfolding drama in the Park Avenue apartment he had fled without looking back. Peggy and I were left alone to share our observations with each other, interpret Mom's actions, speculate about the causes of her breakdown, and justify her erratic behavior.
Peggy and Mom fought all the time. Peggy often ended up walloped by hand, smacked with a hair brush, or grabbed by the hair. One night she slathered her body with Vaseline to keep Mom from grabbing her. A glob fell on the hall rug as Mom chased Peggy in the dim light; Mom stepped in the grease and slid across the rug, skinned her knee, and opened up a raw circle on her elbow. As she lay on the floor howling with rage and frustration, I wondered if our home had become a monster's den.
Mom transformed into one of the wealthiest bag ladies around. She took no care of herself. She seemed only to want to sleep. The same scenario repeated day in, day out. Every morning, I peeked around the corner of her bedroom's open doorway to see the lump huddled under the covers. Lights still off, curtains closed.
“Mom, it's time to get up.” No response.
Every morning I picked up the coffee mug in permanent residence on her bedside table and checked its contents. I always found a thick smudge of nasty dark stuff partially dried on the bottom. Leaning over her, I'd catch a whiff of old pee and long-unwashed body stink. I'd inevitably gag, then swallow hard and constrict my throat, and force myself to reach down and shake what I thought was her arm.
“Mom, you really have to get up. The Littles need to go to school.” A hand would snake out of the covers, imperiously wave me away. A sound often followed it, a cross between a snarl and a groan. I would grab her empty cup and leave without waiting for another non-answer. “I'll get you some coffee, okay?”
In the kitchen, the electric coffee maker was dry but dirty, its bottom caked with scum, with coffee grounds scattered on the counter. More coffee stains decorated the counter top, artsy blobs comingling with ragged circles, marking the extent of my mother's bitter habit. Always black, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. Fresh and steaming, sludgy and decaying, no matter: she drank it however it came.
Back in her bedroom with a fresh offering. No chipped mug for her morning ablutions. I always brought her a clean cup, sunshine yellow with a matching saucer, a snippet of elegance to give a shot of prim and proper to the day. Maybe she'd take the hint. I knew better than to hope, but I couldn't help myself.
I stood above her inert body, holding the coffee. As gently as possible, as if my tone or choice of phrase or anything else I did mattered, I said, “Mom, come on. I made you some coffee. It's right here.”
Most mornings, she eventually shed the covers and sat up. I looked at her, hair askew, mouth turned downward in a sour greeting, the thin strap of her sleeveless nightgown slipping off her shoulder. I held out the cup, balancing it easily with an experienced hand. She took it wordlessly, sipped her first hit, and closed her eyes.
She appeared downstairs a half hour later with the Littles in tow, shuffling out of the elevator and past the precisely attired doorman, his dark gray overcoat decorated with epaulets and shiny brass buttons marching down his front. A long winter coat buttoned up over the disarray of her flimsy nightgown, shoes without stockings, her hair uncombed, yesterday's makeup in all the wrong places, unwashed and smelling of decay, muttering under her breath, she grasped Muff's and Dixie's hands and stepped into the chill to walk them up to the Brick Church elementary school five blocks away.
Up and down, back and forth; this was our life. A little bit of good infused the great deal of bad. One night she splurged and took us all out for Chinese. We kids were all excited: Shirley Temples, eggrolls, sweet and sour pork, spare ribs, slim pancakes with Mu Shu pork, hot sweet tea, fortune cookies! Mom seemed a bit unsteady and distracted but didn't fuss. No yelling or screaming. Then after dinner, as we trailed behind her toward the door, Peggy nudged me. A dark, wet stain was spreading down the back of Mom's dress below her butt. I looked back at her chair, caught sight of the seat dripping, and saw the carpet darkening beneath it. I cringed and hurried out, relieved that at least we'd be gone when the mess was discovered.
Sometimes, though, she would straggle into the kitchen and conjure up a meal that felt like old times. Sometimes she would wash and dress and spend the day out and about, like she used to. There was no predicting her behavior. No wonder Peggy and I developed our own
shorthand to alert each other to Mom's frame of mind at any given moment. “She's in one of her moods” conveyed the warning of trouble ahead and the imperative to avoid it.
Mom and Peggy continued to fight, and two years into our new life, Mom sent Peggy away to boarding school, Emma Willard in upstate New York. Just like that, I became the oldest kid in the household, with no backup or ally. I lost my partner in crime, my confidante, my fellow prisoner, and my shield. After Peggy left, Mom resurrected some sense of normality during the day. She did laundry, went food shopping, and ran errands. Life fell apart at night when she turned into Mr. Hydeâdemanding, erratic, hysterical, cruelâbefore retreating to her bedroom and passing out.
To ward off isolation, I resorted to nightly phone calls to my friends. Then, in one of her tirades, Mom lost her temper and locked up all the phones except one: the emergency red wall phone with an extra-long cord in the kitchen.
That kitchen. A grimy field of battle. My imagination crawled with thoughts of roaches crouched in the hidden spaces behind drawers, under floor tiles, between walls, stacked on top of each other, wedged everywhere. I knew what awaited me every time I opened a cabinet, a drawer, the garbage can, even the dishwasher. Whenever I needed a plate, a spoon, a cup or glass, a pot or pan, some cereal or rice, a can openerâor to hear a friend's voiceâI had to contend with the enemy. The roaches epitomized the new era in our household. Life seemed normal during daylight hours; after sunset, everything changed.
One night when Mom was sufficiently conscious and composed to prepare dinner, she stuck around to keep us company while we ate. Toward the end of the meal, as she brought the pots and pans to the sink, she saw some slim dark shadows hustle across the floor.