What She Left for Me (19 page)

Jana knew it probably wasn’t the right time, or fair either, but she posed the question that had been on her heart.

“Mom, why did Social Services take you away?”

Eleanor looked at her for a moment, and Jana fully expected a snide comment. But instead her mother closed her eyes. “My mother died.”

Jana had often wondered about her grandparents but had never been allowed to ask much about them. “How did she die?”

Eleanor’s eyes seemed to glaze over. “Why do you want to know?”

Jana hadn’t expected this. “I don’t know. I guess to share it with you. You sound so sad. I know it must have been painful. You were just a kid.”

“I don’t think talking about it will make it any better,” she said without emotion.

At least she isn’t yelling at me.
This conversation was much better than any Jana could remember having with her mother previously on the topic of family members. Still, if she didn’t want to talk about her mother’s death, Jana suddenly wanted to respect that.

“Well, how about telling me about my grandmother? I don’t know anything about her—nothing,” Jana said, hoping her mother would open up.

Eleanor’s surprise was reflected in her face. “Tell you about her?” She sighed. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Start anywhere. Tell me about a good day—a day when things felt right.”

Eleanor leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I can’t say that anything ever felt exactly right. I was always different. Nothing like my parents. Even then, I wanted nothing more than to have order, and their world brought me mostly chaos.”

Jana was intrigued. “So tell me about it.”

Seventeen

The memories rushed over Eleanor and swept her back to a time shortly after the police fiasco. They had moved the commune, which wasn’t hard to do considering many people lived in old campers, tents, and trailers. But it had started a sense of insecurity in Eleanor that she was hard-pressed to understand, much less deal with.

“I don’t like this place as much,” Eleanor told her mom.

Melody was an eternal optimist in most things. “This isn’t so bad. We’ve got a few trees and plenty of good water.”

Eleanor looked around her at the scrub ground. “But there isn’t any good grass. Most of the yard is just rocks and sand.” She hated this desertlike terrain. It seemed so barren, lifeless. Even more, she hated the fact that they had fled in the dead of night like criminals eluding the law. Eleanor could still remember the feeling that they would be stopped and forced to turn back around. She was terrified that her father and mother would go to jail.

Her mother seemed oblivious. She worked on a piece of macramé, sitting cross-legged on the ground outside their trailer. They were now living in her father’s former office. It was all they had and, though cramped, it was better than living outside like some of the folks who had followed them to this area. Melody’s cutoffs were caked with dirt from washing clothes at the river, and her T-shirt was torn in several places from years of wear. Still, Eleanor thought her a pretty woman. She didn’t worry about makeup or fancy ways to fix her hair, but her beauty was still evident. There weren’t even any signs of worry on her face.

This was simply one more change in their life. It wasn’t like she desired any kind of permanency. Eleanor knew this full well, for her mother spoke about it all the time.

“We’re just a vapor—a mist. Here today and gone tomorrow. Even the Bible says so,” her mother would say.

“Why can’t we live in a house like other people?”

“What are you talking about? You’ve lived in a house before.”

“But I mean in a real town, with running water and television.”

Her mother stopped what she was doing. “Why would you want the hassle? There are all kinds of rules and complications. I’ve lived like that before. It’s all about work and about money. You never have time to enjoy anything.”

“But other people like it. I’ve heard some of the people talk about living like that. I think it would be fun to have all those neat things.”

Shaking her head, her mother tried to explain. “People talk about owning things, but the truth is, things end up owning you. The more you have, the more time it takes. You, like, never realize it because it just sort of happens. Little by little. All of a sudden you realize you have to fix this and clean that, and pretty soon you need more money to get more things. It only leads to greed and envy. I know. I saw it all the time when I was a girl.”

Eleanor sat down beside her mother. “Tell me about when you were growing up.”

Melody shrugged and went back to the piece she was working on. “I grew up in a pretty big town. There were lots of people, to be sure. I had my own bedroom and lots of toys. I was born late in my parents’ life—after my mother had lost several babies.”

“Lost them?” Eleanor asked.

“You know, she miscarried them. They died before they were born.”

“That must have been sad.”

“It was hard on her, so when I was born she was extra excited. My sister was sixteen years older than me, so it was like having a new family. Kind of like with me and you—I was sixteen when you were born. My mother spent a lot of time with me. She used to take me shopping and to movies and symphonies. My father used to yell at her for all the time we were together. He said she was shirking her other duties.”

“What duties?”

“They were rich, so they had to attend a lot of parties and events. They were always doing something with someone, but my mom sometimes said she was sick so she could stay home with me.”

“She lied?”

Melody shrugged. “Something else was more important. Sometimes that’s the way it is.”

“So it’s okay to lie?”

Melody looked at Eleanor and appeared to think about her answer for a moment. “Sometimes it’s necessary. If Momma had told the truth, my father would never have allowed her to stay home. She wanted to be home, so she did what she had to do.”

“Still, that doesn’t seem right.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Well, if everybody goes around lying so that they can do whatever they want, nothing will ever get done.”

Melody seemed unconvinced. “And what needs to be done now that can’t be done tomorrow?”

“Well . . .” Eleanor thought about it for a minute. “What about Dad? He’s a doctor and people sometimes need him for emergencies. What if he tells that person that he can’t help them because he feels sick? But what if he isn’t really sick—he just wants to spend time with me?”

“Then someone else will have to help with the emergency.”

“But there isn’t anybody else. Dad’s the only doctor here.”

Her mother sighed in exasperation. “Eleanor, you worry too much. Life isn’t all that complicated.”

“I’d just like it to make sense.”

Melody laughed. “Well, I doubt that will ever happen. Not with the way people act and think. Even my own parents were far from understandable. My parents sent me to boarding school when I was about your age. I hated it. They didn’t care, though.”

“Why did you hate it?” Eleanor pulled up her knees and propped her folded arms atop them.

“First of all, it took me away from my mother, and we were having a lot of fun together. I was scared too, but nobody cared. My dad said it was the way things would be done, and my mom told me to be brave and make her proud. I was depressed for weeks after I arrived at the school. I was a little bit chubby when I left home, but within six weeks they were worrying about the fact I’d dropped thirty pounds. I simply wasn’t eating anything. My dad ordered me to start eating and stop being such a big baby, so I did my best.” She shook her head sadly. “He never cared how I felt.”

Eleanor felt sorry for her mother. She sounded so sad. “Why else did you hate it?”

“There were too many rules. They told us how to dress—we had to wear this awful uniform. White blouse, long blue sweater, and blue skirt. It was so confining. I remember once I forgot to wear a slip under my skirt and got detention for a week.” She shuddered as though she were still wearing the thing. “They told us how we could wear our hair, and we weren’t allowed any makeup or jewelry. We had to do our homework at a certain time, in a certain way, and we could never question our teachers about anything.”

“But what kinds of questions would you have asked?”

Melody didn’t answer for a minute. “Well, I would have questioned their negativity toward Communism. They were so terrified of it that they blasted it at every turn. They were always speaking out against the Russians. Always telling us they were our enemies. But Russia wasn’t the enemy—they were. They couldn’t stand people being such free thinkers.”

“But why? Isn’t free thinking a good thing?”

“Of course it is. But it’s also a scary thing for people who think they have all the answers. The establishment of that school thought they knew the right—and the only—way to do things. They had their rules and they demanded everyone conform.”

“Did your mom miss you?”

Her mother stopped working but didn’t look at Eleanor. “I think so. I sure missed my mom. She and I were really close until I disappointed her and made my own way in life. She grew hateful, just as my father had always been, when she found out I was pregnant with you. After that, she wanted little to do with me.”

“Why would she be mad that you got pregnant? Didn’t she like babies?”

“She was mad because I was so young. She said that I’d ruined my life—that I had the chance to become someone special. I thought I already was.” Melody looked at Eleanor, and Eleanor thought the expression on her mother’s face was one of regret.

“But,” her mother continued, “she was right on the issue of age. I was too young. I don’t recommend having a baby at sixteen. You have no time to explore the world or do other things, because you have a child and some very heavy responsibilities. It’s not cool at all. It’s a drag because you’re always having to worry about whether they have enough to eat and drink and clothes to wear. And if you don’t have money to take care of the baby, that creates a problem.”

“Did your mom stop talking to you because of me?” Eleanor suddenly felt consumed with guilt. She had caused her mother great pain and never even knew it.

“She stopped talking to me—stopped associating with me—because I wasn’t married. It was a shameful thing in her society. People just didn’t do things like that, and she was really upset. I was only fifteen, and she was completely scandalized by the entire situation. Plus, the school kicked me out, and that made it rough for her with my father.”

“What do you mean, you weren’t married?” Eleanor felt as though her mother had gut-punched her. “You and Dad weren’t married when you made me?”

She frowned. “We never married, Ellie. I thought you knew that. We told my parents we’d eloped, mainly so they’d stop hassling your father. He was a new doctor helping at the boarding school and . . . well, I was underage when I, like, started sneaking out to be with him. Of course, this was against all the rules. He was so cool. Such a free thinker. I loved hearing his ideas and thoughts on the world. He hated that school as much as I did.”

Eleanor’s mind was whirling. “Wait!” She jumped to her feet, little swirls of sand and dirt falling from her as she moved away. “You and Dad aren’t married?”

Melody looked genuinely surprised. She pushed her blond hair back and leaned back on her hands. “Of course not. Why should we be? We have a free and open relationship. We can be with anyone we want to be with—we just chose to stay with each other.”

“But that’s not right,” Eleanor declared.

“Says who?”

“Well, that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to have a ceremony and make it special. We even have weddings here in the commune.”

“They wouldn’t be deemed legal by the state,” her mother countered. “We do it merely for the fun of doing it. Sometimes it makes people feel more married. But do you realize the stupidity of
legal
marriage? You go pay money and get a license—a piece of paper—that says it’s okay for you to live together, pay bills together, raise kids. The state is telling you that this is okay, and not because they think you will be happy with each other or that you are a perfect choice for each other or that you think alike enough to make a good couple. They say it’s okay because you’ve paid your money. That’s all.”

Eleanor felt sick inside. The idea that her parents weren’t married truly bothered her for some reason. She’d never considered it before. She and her friends always talked about falling in love and getting married. How could it be that her parents weren’t a part of this?

“Then you go to some church or judge and they say a few words over you, and that makes you married. Just like that. Why should I be a part of that? I love your dad and we’ve had all you kids because of that love. The rules of the state don’t change that.”

“But what about promising to stay together?”

“You mean a commitment?” Melody shook her head. “We are committed in our own way. But, Ellie, if your dad decides he wants to be with someone else, why should that bug me? Sure, I’d miss him and I wouldn’t stop loving him, but why would you want to force someone to be with you when they didn’t want to be there? You can’t hold on to people like they’re some kind of possession. Your dad isn’t some nice piece of furniture I found at the store. He’s a human being with his own mind. I don’t own him and he sure doesn’t own me.”