Morning Is a Long Time Coming (2 page)

Then Grandma placed her freshly lipsticked lips against my cheek and I got to hoping that her red print wouldn’t stain me for the duration of the day.

Without actually making contact, my father made a slight kissing sound next to my cheek. And as I turned to give my mother my compliment, she gave me an obligatory kiss and an obligatory smile before saying, “I see you’ve combed your hair. Too bad you didn’t remember to do that
before
the ceremony.”

I must have combed my hair before the procession. I couldn’t have forgotten something that important, could I? An image of how horrendous I looked with my hair as unkempt as an orangutan thrust itself upon me. I felt private fury over my public humiliation.

“I was really hoping, Mother”—I heard the sounds of a hurt little girl within my own voice—“that on my graduation day you would have been able to find something nice to say.”

“Well, I certainly did,” she insisted. “I said your hair sure does look a heck of a lot better now than it did while you were up there on that stage.”

I remember asking my mother years ago why was it that she said so many things that hurt my feelings. And I can still see her laughing riotously as though she were enjoying herself for the first time in a long time. “You oughta thank me,” she said. “’Cause I’m the only one who cares enough about you to tell the truth. Are you such a baby, Patricia, that you’d let the truth hurt?”

Maybe those had been the words that had robbed me of my clean, unobstructed right to anger. All I know for sure is that somewhere, someplace, my private fury became mixed
and muddled with guilt every time she made me her victim. Was it fair to become angry with her just because I was too much of a baby to handle the truth?

But one question continued to nag at me: Was she actually saying all these hurtful things for my own good? And were her constant reminders about my hair, my clothes, and my general lack of attractiveness actually painful or did it only seem to be so to supersensitive me? Because what wounds me wouldn’t necessarily wound anybody else. And certainly wouldn’t wound her. Or would it?

After all, I can’t believe—I mean, why on earth would a person who’s supposed to love me stretch so far to maim me? If there’s an answer then I would like to know what that answer could be. Cause I don’t know. I really don’t know!

I guess it was Madame Curie, more than anybody else, who showed me what it was I had to do.

Lying across my bed one evening last winter, I was reading a biography of the great scientist which told how she had to laboriously go through eight tons of pitchblende to isolate just one gram of radium.

Well, in some way, it struck me that I had to do that too. Had to scientifically find a way to isolate the essential gram of truth from among Mother’s vast volume of words and actions.

If I could devise a kind of replica of one of my mother’s insults and then use it against her while at the same time proclaiming that I’m only doing it in the name of love, how would she respond? If she didn’t bleed, wouldn’t that prove that there was nothing wrong or brutal about her and her words? That there is only something off target with me for reacting so vehemently to so little stimulation?

By the time I had perfected my plan for isolating my own gram of reality, several weeks had passed and it was Thursday, December 29. I told myself that it was necessary for me to wait two more days. Mustn’t dilute the effect. Must wait until she was most vulnerable—until New Year’s Eve.

She was wearing a silver lamé evening dress which hugged the generous, but still surprisingly solid, curves of her thirty-eight-year-old body. And even without the upper swell of her breasts, she would have received attention. Had to give her credit for that.

She fluffed her black almost shoulder-length hair away from her ears, while her diamond earrings caught the light from the vanity table’s lamp. I watched her eyes coyly flutter up and down just as though she was already beginning to enjoy the masculine attention that she would soon receive.

I drifted deeper into her bedroom to lean against the edge of her pink satin bedspread. “Getting ready for the big dance?” I asked pleasantly while wondering if I had either the heart or the stomach to follow through on the plan. But I had to. Had to end the confusion and the guilt. Once and for all, I had to know if I had the right to my own anger.

“If I talk to you, you’ll make me late.”

I tried for my sweetest voice. “What time does it start?”

“No special time.”

“Don’t you have to meet the others at the Peabody Hotel at a certain time?”

“If we leave Jenkinsville by five thirty, we should be in Memphis by six thirty, and I wish you’d stop gawking and let me get dressed.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to gawk. It was just ... just your hair,” I said, wondering if I had left enough bait.

Slowly she made a forty-five-degree turn. “What about my hair?”

Without answering, I rose to appraise my mother’s hair. She was waiting for me, for my judgment, and it made me feel powerful. “It’s nothing,” I shrugged. “Nothing important.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I only meant that I don’t want to upset you ... not on your big night.”

“Tell me what’s WRONG!”

I heard myself sigh exactly like she sighs. As long as I could remember it was one of mother’s short-cut ways of telling me that I was wasting far too much of her valuable time. “Well, it was just that I was wondering why you didn’t ask Eileen to put a rinse in your hair. All of those gray roots are beginning to show.”

“That’s NOT true. You’re imagining things!” Her voice was pitched up an octave. “You know that I would never let my roots show!”

As people began leaving the graduation. My grandmother whispered in my ear. “Patty darling, now that school’s out maybe you’ll come to Memphis. Visit with Grandpapa and me.”

“Well ...” I said, waiting to see whether or not she was going to include Sharon in the invitation. It’s not that I dislike my fourteen-year-old sister, although God help me, sometimes I do. It’s just that I’m tired of being compared to Sharon the pretty or Sharon the sweet. But more than that I hate Sharon for depriving me of my alibis.

One of my really comforting alibis states that people would like me if only I were a Baptist. Well, Sharon is no more Baptist than me and everybody likes her. And then there’s the most comforting alibi of them all: My parents don’t know how to love anybody, so why be disappointed that they don’t love me? The only problem with that is that they do like my kid sister pretty well.

But it’s okay, Sharon, I can understand that. Most of the time (if we can forget those few ugly times when my jealousy flared) I like you too. A whole lot.

The really strange thing about my grandparents is that in spite of Sharon’s obviously superior virtues, they—I must be mistaken—but they do seem to love me more.

Grandpa mentioned that I could have “almost full use” of the Buick while Grandma talked on about the Ridgeway Country Club. “The pool is open and I think it’s past time you started mingling with some of your own.”

She turned to her daughter. “Pearl, if you don’t want Patty to marry some
goy,
then you have to see to it that she mixes and mingles with her own kind. Being the only Jew in town is no good!”

It was then that Edna Louise Jackson’s mother poked her head into our cluster. “Forgive me for intruding, Pearl, but what did you and Harry think of Edna Louise’s speech? Just forget that I’m her mother and tell me what it is you truly ... believe.”

“Why, Cora,” said my mother, “now nobody in this world has to tell you that Edna Louise always does a fine job at whatever it is she does.”

Mrs. J. G. Jackson trilled a laugh. “Oh, now, I wouldn’t say ‘always.’ ”

“Well, I would,” insisted my mother. “And not only that, she’s the most outstanding person for a girl that I’ve ever met.”

My father added, “Not only did she give a fine speech, but she sure did look pretty as a picture.”

What I wanted to do was scream at my parents. Scream out that Edna Louise wasn’t their daughter. I was, and I needed something too! But instead of screaming, I dug my nails so deep into my palms that I felt stinging, and then I squeezed out a smile so that neither of them would ever suspect that I so much as cared.

Edna Louise Jackson’s mother lit up like a five-hundred-dollar juke box. “Oh, I thought she looked right nice too. And her words were inspiring, weren’t they, Harry? Truly inspiring.”

Then my mother suddenly remembered to introduce Mrs. Jackson to “my parents, the Frieds, from Memphis.” After a round of pleasantries, Mrs. Jackson found her way back to the subject of Edna Louise. It was as though she hadn’t been completely nourished by my mother’s and father’s banquet of compliments and was now attempting to extract another feast from my grandparents. But they both refused to feed her. I guess I knew somehow that they’d give to me before they’d give to a stranger.

Mrs. Turner cruised past our cluster. “Patricia, go line up with the others. Representative Stebbins wants to personally congratulate all the graduates.”

I got in line behind Edna Louise (sometimes it seems as though all of Jenkinsville gets in line behind Edna Louise) to await my turn to shake hands with the great man. Superintendent Begley introduced her. “This is one little lady
we’re all mighty proud of, Miss Edna Louise Jackson. She was not only Class President, but was also voted Most Likely to Succeed.”

Representative Stebbins pretended to chuckle. “Well, well, well, looks like I’m going to have some fierce competition from you in the political arena some day.”

“You probably know of Edna Louise’s daddy,” added Mr. Begley.

Mr. Stebbins’s face was caught in a moment of surprise. “Jackson? Now don’t you go telling that your daddy is Mister J. G. Jackson?”

“Why, yes, sir,” Edna Louise smiled coyly. “He most surely is.”

When it came my turn, our superintendent introduced me as “the daughter of one of Jenkinsville’s leading merchants. Patty Bergen.”

“Patty Bergen,” repeated Mr. Stebbins as though he was trying to make a connection. “Where have I heard that name before? Weren’t you one of our fine Stebbins-for-Representative workers last year?”

“Uh, no, sir,” I answered, trying to get distance between us before the connection was made. But by the time I had reached the gym’s outer limits, I had already begun my medicinal self-ridicule: The only search for a connection that was going on was in my own imagination. An important man—a lawmaker like Representative Billy Bruce Stebbins—would have more pressing things on his mind than attempting to conjure up some long-forgotten newspaper stories of six years ago.

As a great sense of relief and foolishness swept over me, I turned suddenly to glance back at our commencement speaker, who was caught—caught staring at me as Mr. Begley,
cupping his hand around his mouth, spoke directly into the legislator’s ear.

I felt fury freeze my face. I’ll never speak your name again. You, Mr. Begley, are the worst. Always pretending to like me, pretending that I’m as good as anybody else. Well, I’m not as good as anybody else! Even before Anton, not you or anybody else hereabouts would ever believe that a Jewish girl could be as good as anybody else.

Then my internal thermostat whose job it is to keep everything temperature-controlled at 98.6 must have experienced a sudden collapse. Fever, like a windwhipped fire, began raging through my body and up toward my brain. I was afraid that I was going to burn to death.

As I reached the oversized gym door, I tried to push. Wanted to get to the air and away from the people. Wanted to push, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything, but hold onto the wooden door brace. Had to hold on just to keep from going down.

Someone—it was a woman—asked me if I was fainting and as I watched the gym spin and blacken, I answered, “No.” Then Mrs. Turner materialized to ask me a variation of the same question. This time I closed my eyes against all questions while making sickness my only concern.

“She’s burning up!”

“Her folks are over there.”

“Get them!”

The thought of either my mother or father rushing to my aid, placing their hands on my forehead, supporting my weakness with their bodies, helped me gather what strength I had left. Using it all against the cumbersome door, I opened it and half tumbled out into the dank day.

The outside wall of the gym steadied me as I groped my way around the whitewashed building. Directly in back, I stopped in front of a clump of unkempt grass. My head was revolving clockwise while my stomach was heading counterclockwise.

“ULP!” I watched with uncommon interest as the green clump took on a sour-smelling, lumpy, cream-colored covering and I knew that I was already recovering, for my mind briefly strayed to things other than my state of health. I began to suspect, for example, that I’d never again eat chicken à la king and, for the first time, it occurred to me to be grateful that I had been a bottle baby. For if my sour-spirited mother had nursed me, her breast milk would have only contained curdled

At the outside bubbler, I swished water around my mouth, vigorously patted my face with wet hands, combed my hair, put on fresh lipstick, and came to the conclusion that chances were excellent I’d recover. There was only a little weakness left and anybody can tell you that that just isn’t in the same league with burning queasiness of the stomach.

Anyway, I think I’m okay now and maybe I should be grateful to the behind-my-back whisperings of Coach Begley for teaching me something that I had never really wanted to learn: Once a penalty is called against a player it is in effect for the duration of the game. Only in my case, my penalty would last for the duration of my life.

Just because it’s been a good long while since anybody has called me “Natz” or “Nazi lover” doesn’t mean that people have suddenly stopped remembering. Because every once in a while, I catch a certain look—a certain strange uncomprehending look—on somebody’s face and I know, know as
sure as anything, that they’re thinking about me and what I did for a German prisoner-of-war so long ago.