Introduction
What is it about Venus? Willendorf: so voluptuous and round, her armless figure inviting fertility and pleasure without contest. Then there’s Titian’s Venus, Manet’s Olympia and the Coup de Gras of course would be Venus de Milo. One thing they all appear to have in common is a demur desire to breed with any virile man who might be interested. I have long wondered about the whereabouts of Ms. Milo’s arms. I am sure that history ascertains their whereabouts, but I have a different theory.
Most people understand Milo to refer to the Aegean island Milos. I, however, believe the arms of Venus reside, not in the Milo of Europe, but in a lesser-known Milo. A Milo with less distinction, but with colorful quirks aplenty: Milo, Kentucky. There it is still a man’s world, but the Venuses have arms.
I spent much of my time as a child deep in the hills of Kentucky. Driving through the hills, it was if each mile of twisting road took back a year that had passed. By the time my mother and I arrived we had slipped back 10 or 15 years from the world we left behind in Ohio.
As a child I found it to be a fantastical place. When you are there you hear bluegrass music even when no one is playing. It is a place personified by multi-colored trailer homes on stilts, toilet planters, firearms, Little Debbies, and RC cola. There was a man there who had tamed himself a pet possum. The possum wore a pair of tiny overalls with a small hole so that his pink tail might be liberated as he rode passenger on the man’s shoulder. At night people peed into coffee cans that they stashed under their beds. It was much easier to do that than to go outside to the outhouse. I couldn’t wait to get my own can. I had decided on Folgers rather than Maxwell House. I felt the red was more stylish. There were town characters with colorful names. Birdman walked back and forth the length of town, day after day, stopping intermittently to place important calls on an invisible switchboard. Shotgun was missing an eye, so I have always assumed that is somehow connected with his name. Applejack was a woman who knew how to handle an apple, and I’m still not sure how Soupman earned his name. Fatty and Tildy lived together, but Fatty was thin and Tildy was fat. I was constantly trying to work up something for myself by suggesting possibilities like “sassy” or “lightning”, but my granny said to forget it because you had to “earn ‘em.”
My mother loved the hills of Kentucky. It was where she had grown up, and even though she had never lived there as a grown woman, to her it was home. That being the case, I name her my first Venus. There are four. Of all of the Venuses I will mention, my mother was shaped most like the Venus of Willendorf. Constantly on a diet, she was big and round and soft everywhere with giant breasts. She had a big heart and a critical eye, especially when it came to her oldest child. Deemed the family artist, she was called upon for advice and assistance with anything from decorating to hair color.
The second is my grandmother, who is affectionately known as “Honey.” There has been wide family debate, most of it occurring behind the back of said grandmother, about the institution of that affectionate name that neatly replaced Grandma, MawMaw, Granny or any other title that sounded perhaps more matronly. Honey insisted that the grandchildren invented the name of their own accord, but it’s been whispered that she coached the babies to make it so. In her defense, she was only 33 when she was inaugurated a grandmother, and she did at that time maintain a 24-inch waist. Honey was strikingly beautiful as a young woman. As the years passed she did everything she could to hang on to that former splendor.
The third Venus is my Aunt Jo. As a young child I thought her name was Anna Jo because hillbilly drawl very seldom remembered to “t” the aunt. She was the sage spiritualist of the group. Always packing a bible, a load of prescription medication, and juicy fruit gum, it’s possible that she was my favorite. Aunt Jo maintained the same hairstyle from 1958 to her deathbed in 2009. This may sound trite, but it was no simple feat. It required perms, dyeing, pin curls, an odd green gel called “Dippity Do,” and copious amounts of teasing. I think of her as a hillbilly hybrid of a medicine woman and a sphinx. No matter what happened she did the right thing. If she ever spoke ill of anyone, which may have happened occasionally, it was always soberly balanced with a request that we “bless his (or her) heart.”
The fourth, and most commanding Venus is the matriarch: my Granny Grace. She was my great-grandmother, and the mother of Honey and Aunt Jo. Since she began her grandmother-hood at the tender age of 31, she had spent more of her life as a grandmother than anything else. While none of the Venuses believed in the consumption of alcohol, Gran kept a bottle of Listerine handy at all times. Her breath was exceptionally fresh, as she preferred swallowing to spitting. Granny was skinny and bent. Everyone knew that she had cash stashes surreptitiously placed about her property. I was privy to one particularly top-secret location. She would fold bills into her thigh high nylons that she would roll down into a neat milk chocolate donut right above her knee. If you looked closely, you could catch a hint of green.
I remember being small and looking up at these women as they paraded around together in girdles and hair rollers. They were so curvy and voluptuous; always applying lipstick and speaking sharply about men that I never remember once being present. The Venuses taught me about love, death, men, drugs, babies, and God. They taught me how to laugh at tragedy, tell if a storm’s coming, fix scuffs on my shoes with magic marker, and most important of all, to always pretend like everything is alright - especially if it’s not.
Chapter 1
Most people today have a tumultuous relationship with the word love. It is entirely overused. One might say that they love Twinkies or a crisp fall day. They might say that they love their mom and dad, or they might say that they want to “make love” (which is of course very different from the first two). It seems cheap to use a word like love when it’s willing to pair up with just about any old idea out there. But regardless of its chameleon-like tendencies, the Venuses taught me about the many facets of love. Most of my schooling came from simple observation.
I was convinced as a child that the Venuses did not love me. I knew they had affection for me because they cared deeply about whether I’d had enough to eat and whether I had gotten the potatoes out of my ears after bathing. They just were not very liberal with the above-mentioned L-word. It was their practice to gather around the kitchen table and talk for hours about cousins, scandals, deaths, and especially the way things used to be. When a particularly beloved individual would come up in the discussion, the Venuses attempted to top one another with statements of admiration. It sounded something like this:
Aunt Jo might say, “I know, I know. I had Michelle go into town and check on Apple Jack. I worry about her stayin’ over there by herself, but she won’t hear a word about me hirin’ a girl to stay with her of the night.”
Then Granny would say, “Law, Jo. That Michelle is the best thing that ever was.”
Then Honey would say, “Jo, they’ll never be another one like her.”
Then my mother, who was still a bit of a Venus apprentice, would add something about how she’s growing into such a pretty young woman and that Michelle’s personality reminds her a little of Grandpa’s.
This sort of thing went on regularly. I began to worry on the account that they rarely said those sorts of kindnesses about me. As I began to more closely observe the behavior of the women, I noticed that often times the person that they lauded and showered with magnification had just left the room. Now I understood. These women were covertly dispensing their love gossip-style. If you really loved and admired somebody, you should talk sweet about them behind their back. I decided to test out my theory while simultaneously confirming that I was loved.
For this particular scenario the Venuses were gathered around the table in Aunt Jo’s burnt orange and brown kitchen chatting about a poor soul who had been stabbed to death two counties over.
“Jo, I’ll tell you one thing. After hearing a thing like that all I can think is that you need to get yourself some sorta extra security. Do you have a gun? You know I keep a little pistol by my bed just in case,” Honey says. “In fact I got one so tiny it fits right down in my purse. It’s got a little pearl handle,” she begins burrowing into her oversized designer leather bag to retrieve the evidence.
This suggestion is ironic to me as Aunt Jo has all manner of dead bolts, extra sliding chain locks and sliding bolt locks already installed on all of her doors. You would’ve thought she was living east New York rather than a tiny Kentucky town.
Granny interjects something about not being able to fire a pistol as well as a shotgun, and I decide that it’s time to make my move. I grease the wheels a little by heading to the coffee pot and silently refilling the lipstick-stained cups of Honey and Aunt Jo. Granny’s cup never had lipstick on it, but I knew that she didn’t drink coffee unless there was a near gallon of creamer in it. For some reason she preferred the powder sort of creamer to anything natural. I carefully spooned in a hardy amount of Cremora before pouring her coffee. The conversation never stopped.
“Dan doesn’t believe in owning a gun.” Said my mother. “He keeps a ball bat on his side of the bed.”
“Ever body should own a gun,” Gran declares and Honey ferociously shakes her head in agreement.
Here’s where I make my exit. I nonchalantly exit the room. As soon as I pass through Aunt Jo’s western style saloon doors, I circle around and creep as quiet as an old Indian guide and lay silently on the floor by the kitchen door to see if they will latch on to my bait. I listen so hard that I can hear the hairs in my ear twitching. I wait, and sure enough.
“You know, Lynn, that Tonya’s a good girl. She come in here an filled my cup up without me even askin’ her to.”
“I heared that kids today don’t respect their elders, but I believe your girl’s an exception.”
“She’s just exactly like her mother.”
“They’ll never be another one like her.”
I don’t hear my mother comment, but I know that it is customary to hold a humble silence if you are directly responsible for the individual receiving accolades. In the dark, tucked behind a dinning room chair, I am beaming.
The ways the Venuses showed their love varied. Honey, for example, displayed it by buying lavish gifts for us. When we left Ohio to visit the hills of Kentucky, she would have a trunk full of pristinely wrapped packages that came from fancy department stores. Aunt Jo once told me that Honey, from the time that she was very young, had been a little different than Granny’s other children. As a young girl, Honey had painstakingly cared for her clothes. They were always pressed, clean, and hanging even if a brother or sister’s clothing space had to be sacrificed to make it so. Honey wanted to leave the hills and do or be something important. She was tired of dusty outhouses and poverty, and longed for a shiny urban world of fashion and excitement.
Honey’s love for an individual was directly proportional to the amount of money spent on the gift. That being said, it is understandable why in most cases it was necessary for her to leave the price tags on her gifts. If she‘d gotten your gift on clearance with a red tag, then you would’ve known that her love for you was fifty percent off of what it could’ve been. Honey was always careful to make sure everyone had a gift, and that the total number of gifts she brought was equal for everyone. However, she was not always equitable about what was in each box. My poor brother would get four gift boxes, and so would I. In each of his boxes would be one item: a shirt, a pair of pants, a belt, a sweater. When I opened my boxes I would find a full outfit in three of my boxes and a pair of shoes in the last. It was no secret that Honey was partial to little girls. Fortunately, the sage Aunt Jo also picked up on this and balanced Honey’s bias with a few gifts of her own for my brother.
Honey’s love for her mother was immense, so it was no surprise to anyone when she showed up at Granny’s house with a brand new color TV. I was especially excited since our family was still watching TV in black and white. I wanted to see the color of Captain Kangaroo’s jacket. Honey finagled the antenna until we were able to see a channel, and we all gathered around to watch an episode of Hee-Haw. I wasn’t always sure why the adults were laughing, but I laughed whenever they did so as to appear mature.
Granny accepted the TV with both excitement and suspicion. “Joy, it was awful nice you of to bring us this here television, but you knowed that we was just as happy without it. You don’t have to buy me and Dad such expensive gifts.”
“You’ll love having this TV. You can watch Lucy. I know you love Lucy. She comes on every morning and don’t forget Hee Haw. You love Hee Haw.”
“Well, thank ya, Joy.”
I personally was thrilled about the TV, and soon had Gran on board. They broadcasted all the good reruns in the morning, so the two of us would sit and have our fill of The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and our favorite: Gilligan’s Island. I was partial to Mary Ann, but she thought the professor was “mighty handsome.”
Honey was pleased with this reception when we departed for home. It didn’t last though. She, my Mom, and I returned to Granny’s house for a visit a few months later. Once Honey had loaded in her luggage, which was quite substantial, she came out into the living room applying a quick two coats of coral frost lipstick. No mirror was needed for this well practiced maneuver.
“Mommy, what happened to the TV?”
“Nothing, Doll, it works jus fine. Daddy had to fix it up a little. That front part kept wanting to fall off. You know, they just don’t make things the way that they used to.”
“So, that’s why there’s a band-aid on the front of the television. I won’t even ask about the coat hanger.” She was not amused.
Granny nodded. Just as I thought the uncomfortable moment might be heading toward its conclusion, Gran said something that will forever live in my memory.
“Ya’ll ever watch that show with the little bitty nigger boy that lives with the rich white man? I think that little nigger is THE funniest…”
Now the reason this statement was so monumental to my ears was that only a few weeks prior I dropped a bad word bomb on my parents. At this time we just happened to live in government housing (a.k.a. HUD), so I learned a lot of really interesting things I might not otherwise know. My parents never cursed around me, and subsequently, I wasn’t always sure which words were on the official “bad word list.” On that particular day, I came in to the living room and announced the rumor that I had heard while playing: “Shelby and Curtis *#@!*-ed under the slide at the playground!” Without delay I was given a severe lecture and description of all words on the “bad word list, as well as grim consequences if one were ever to escape my lips within parental earshot. I knew that it was only because I had uttered the word in childish ignorance that my hind-end was still attached, and I wasn’t going to burn in the everlasting fires of hell. It turns out that there is a hierarchy to bad words. Some are bad, but do not make the “the worst words ever” cut. These are words like “sucks,” and “piss,” and “butt.” My parents explained to me why Granny’s bad word was so awful. My Dad was a minister and felt very strongly about racial equality, so Granny’s word classified in the top 2 “worst words ever “ category, I’ll bet you can probably guess the other.
Back in Granny’s living room, I glanced over at my mother and saw that we shared the same look of horror in response to Granny’s comment. Completely overcome with a burning need to right this wrong, I shouted with every bit of righteous steam my seven-year-old body could muster, “Gran! You just said an awful word! A terrible, terrible, awful word that you should never say! And you said it TWICE!”
My mother, who I think may have been hoping for the Lord’s return to break the tension, blinked in shock at my outburst. Even though it was understood in our household that the n-word was among the worst words one could say, my mother wasn’t sure where it ranked along side of respecting your elders - which she felt I had clearly breeched with my outburst. Since she had no control of Granny and absolute power over me, she decided to react to the situation she could control.
“Tonya, go get me the paddle.”
“But Mom, you heard what Gran said. She said n-n-n….” I tried, but I couldn’t even do it to tattle on Gran.
“You just yelled at your great grandmother. Someone else may do something wrong, that doesn’t give you the right to do something wrong too. If you do, then you’ve got two wrongs instead of just the one.”
As I went to our luggage to find the paddle I cried loudly, feeling this is a clear-cut martyr situation. The paddle traveled with us wherever we went. It was an old butter mold paddle. In the olden days when ladies used to churn their own butter, they would use molds and paddle to stamp decorations on their butter. Ours had a couple of flower patterns and a swan carved into it. If your punishment is severe, your welt might come up in a flower shape. I reached in the case and found it. Gripping the heavy handle in my hand I took it to my mother, fantasizing about first spanking Gran and then my mother.
I can see it like it happened this afternoon: As I approach Granny says, “Now Lynn, you don’t need to spank that child.”
I am confused, but unwilling to take sides with a user of the n-word.
“Gran,” my mother says, “You don’t need to be involved in this. This is between me and my daughter. Tonya let’s go into the bedroom.”
I turn pathetically around to follow my mother to what I deem to be the gallows. Just as I do Granny grabs the paddle from my mother’s hand and throws it in the little crack behind the couch.
“Whatcha gonna do now, Lynn? I knowed you are too fat to get back in there and get that paddle. No spankings at Granny’s house ya hear?”
Granny looks at me and I’m still not sure how I feel about her. She says, “Tawnie, listen, when we was little everybody used to call colored people that. If I had knowed it would make you feel bad, I wouldn’t have said it. Times used to be different than they are now.”
“That’s a bad word Gran,” I said. “To me it’s as bad as the s-word or the d-word or the other d-word or the f…”
“That’s enough, Tonya” my mother says. She and I are both aware that I have the freedom to go hog wild now that the paddle is safely lodged behind the couch, but I decide to listen to the tiny cartoon angel that I imagine on my right shoulder.
“It’s okay Granny,” I say finding new feelings of forgiveness as I realize there will be no flower shaped welts on my rear for the remainder of our stay. “I like Different Strokes, too. That Arnold is pretty funny. Do you think he’s as funny as Gilligan?”
She would say it again in years to come. Every time she did I’d feel sick to my stomach and remind her that I hated that word. Every time she did, she’d tell me about how she had grown up in a different world. I was grateful at least that she knew that the “different world” in which she had grown up was passing. She loved me, and even seemed pleased that I would be part of a different way of thinking.
Granny showed her love a little differently than Honey, it came in quarters and the simple act of listening. I can still feel the way she would press a cool quarter into the palm of my hand. While closing my fingers around it with hers she’d conspiratorially whisper that I should go buy myself some “blow-gum.”
While the quarters were great, there’s no greater gift you can give a kid than to listen. Kids are constantly being told to be quiet and to listen; it is rare that an adult is truly interested in what a child has to say. But this was true of Gran, who sometimes seemed to feel more at home among children than she did adults.
I specifically remember the day I sat on her porch crying. Granny had been silently rocking in her chair and I had forgotten she was even there.
“Child, why are you goin’ on like that?”
“Well, I have to play with these old Barbies of mom’s. Everybody I know has Sun Lovin’ Malibu Barbie with real tan lines. My Barbie’s are old, they have weird haircuts and their legs don’t even bend, see? Plus, mom won’t even buy them panties, so if Ken wants, he can look right up their dresses and see the promised land.”
“You’re right, you’ve got it pretty rough,” Granny said. “I might be able to help you with them Barbies’ under-drawer situation.”
Granny went in the house leaving me on the porch feeling justified and powerful for receiving empathy from an adult in the absence of broken bones or gushing blood. She returned a few minutes later with a little metal canister of Band-Aids. “Here we go,” she said picking up one of my Barbie’s (it was Midge, she had freckles and a flip like Jackie O). She took the tabs off of one of the Band-Aids and careful placed it so that the little absorbent white square went right over the supposed private parts of Midge and the sticky tape went up the front and back of her looking very much like a pair of Band-Aid colored underwear.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty smart.”
“They’re just like yours, with a cotton crotch and everything,” Gran added. “Your Barbies got any dishes?”
I shook my head.
“Better come on in the house and we’ll get ‘em set up. I got a bunch of pop bottle caps that will make a nice little set a dishes.”
Aunt Jo showed her love by always telling you the truth. I know that whole idea of truth is suspect. Truth is always subject to the human that perceives it. When I speak of Aunt Jo’s truth, I am talking about her perception of truth. She was willing to share it. It’s easy to think that we all do that, but we don’t. We hide what really think and speak what we believe someone else might want to hear. Sometimes, we fail to observe our lives so that we can live in sweet existential bliss and completely ignore even a perception of truth. Then there’s the worse offense where we lie to create a truth that we know to be false in order to keep from facing some blaring issue we’d prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. This sort of thing can happen when an abusive marriage doesn’t fit into our schedule, or when a sweet pigtailed little girl turns into a black-clad, chain-smoking rebellious teenager. When things don’t work out the way that we pictured them, we often pretend that they did. I guess what I’m talking about can be boiled down to integrity and character. Whatever it is, Aunt Jo had it in spades.
I came to appreciate Aunt Jo’s honesty especially as a teenager, but not always at the moment when she delivered it. My mother was exceedingly critical. I felt that no matter how hard I tried I would always fall just short of her expectation. If I cleaned the entire kitchen, doing all the little extra things like scouring the sink and cleaning under the stove burners, she seemed to only notice that I missed the top of the refrigerator. I love my mother. I know now that she plenty of her own demons with which to deal and that she was doing the best that she could. She was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 29, and was wheelchair bound sometime during my freshman year. As a teenager, I felt entirely frustrated about doing anything she asked because I knew that no matter what degree of effort I put into something, she would find the one minuet thing I missed. This resentment began to grow and eventually I found some new friends, some cool black duds, a nose ring (it was fake, a real piercing wasn’t worth the parental anguish), and a new attitude to go with my sophomore year of high school.
At 15, I was under the mistaken impression that going “down home” to Kentucky was much less important than my budding social calendar. Despite my efforts to talk her out of it, my mother decreed that we would be heading there and that I wouldn’t be taking any of my new “depression-wear” with me, especially those ridiculous Doc Marten’s shoes. She said that while that sort of thing may fly in Dayton, Ohio, it doesn’t down in the hills of Kentucky and that people would think that I was drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. She came into my room and chose clothes that she felt would be appropriate. My anger began to simmer. We met Honey and loaded all of our stuff into her Cadillac (she had recently given up sports cars for an ’85 Seville that looked like someone had smacked it in the back with a tennis racket).
As we traveled down the winding-road-time-machine that deposited us in Kentucky, I listened to the front seat chatter of my mom and Honey as they talked about what was going on in their respective lives. I was surprised to hear the way my mom talked because she sounded like everything was wonderful. What about chemo, and our money problems? What about that new spot of cancer that they found in her jaw? And where exactly did that positive person go when it came time for her to deal with me in private? I wondered what it was about me that put her on edge. The simmering anger was slowly reaching a boil.
When we reached Kentucky everyone had gathered at Aunt Jo’s for vegetable soup and fried Treet sandwiches (this is something like Spam if you’ve never had it). I loved eating at Aunt Jo’s house because the cabinets were always stocked with the world’s softest, most refined white bread, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms and a supply of pop as far as the eye could see. Besides that she always made up a few desserts that were usually cake mixes that had been altered to make them even more appealing. There was Snickers cake, Twinkie cake, and Jello cake. Some had added candy bars or whipped cream. After everyone had eaten and two or three had declared that Jo’s soup was “the best they’s ever eat,” I started to relax a little and enjoy being in this little alternate universe. My family had moved so much, this little piece of Kentucky was the closest thing to a home I’d known.
My mother instructed me to unload the car and carry the bags upstairs. I dug through Honey’s giant purse to find the keys and headed out to the car to get the bags. It was my practice to carry as may things as possible so as to minimize trips out to the car. I had so many bags and packages balanced in my arms that I had to open the screen door with a foot. I stumbled into the kitchen dropping a package as crossed the threshold.
Mom couldn’t let this pass. To me she said, “Tonya, you need to carry less.” To the rest of the room she explained, “It looks like hard work, but really it’s laziness. She doesn’t want to have to make too many trips.”
My mouth responded before my brain with, “At least I’m carrying the stuff in, I could just sit here at the table with you.” I picked up the stuff and headed upstairs to put it into the rooms where we stayed. I knew that if I had said that sort of thing at home, it would have resulted in punishment, but in Kentucky the paddle was still metaphorically behind Granny’s couch. My smart-alec comment may not sound like much to most. I had friends who cursed at their parents or called them names. That sort of thing did not happen in my family. Respecting your elders was on par with “Thou Shalt Not Murder.”
The visit continued on with the usual practice of retiring to Aunt Jo’s living room after the kitchen was clean to discuss various people in town and what had ever happened to ole fill-in-the-blank? Aunt Jo’s living room had no television. Instead it had a gold velveteen couch circa 1972, and two blue chairs that sat on plush gold carpet. An ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling. I lay on the luxurious carpet and stared up at the chandelier to be sure that there were enough seats for the older people. I closed my eyes and pretended to be nothing thinking that all of their voices were some sort of ancient female song that had been sung for ages without ever changing.
As was her custom, Aunt Jo rose very early to prepare a most exquisite breakfast. It was the only time you could catch her in a pair of pants, the rest of the time it was either skirts or coolots. There would be eggs, sausage or fried bologna, gravy, biscuits, and the most amazing homemade apples I have ever eaten. Since I was never one to sleep in, I usually joined her in the kitchen and under the guise of helping her prepare the meal. Mostly though, I just sat and talked. Sitting backwards in one of her kitchen chairs with my legs splayed and hanging most un-ladylike over each arm of the chair, I was telling her about our cockapoo being in heat as she stirred the reducing apples with her hair in rollers underneath a red chiffon scarf. She tapped the spoon twice on the side of the pan to knock off any clinging syrup and reduced the heat even more. Replacing the lid, she rounded on me and said, “You had better not talk to your mommy like I heard you do last night.”
“Anna Jo, Mom picks at me constantly. She never thinks I do anything right and she reminds me of it constantly. Sometimes I wonder if she even loves me. I feel like I just get on her nerves.”
“ You’re right. You mommy is overcritical of you and has been ever since I can remember. I have never liked it. The pressure she puts on you is more than most adults could handle.”
“Thank you!” I said raising both hands in the air toward heaven like a saint in a Renaissance painting. I finally felt understood and justified.
“Hold it right there.” She said shutting down my theatrical moment. “I’m not saying that what she does gives you the right to act the way that you did last night cuz you was out of order. You need to forgive your mom for the way she is. If you have a grievance with her, you voice it in a way that’s considerate. Being respectful doesn’t mean that you let her run over you.”
“Forgive her?! She doesn’t even think she does anything wrong.”
“Yes, forgive her. Your mother is going to die. I don’t know when, but sooner than she should. When she dies you will not be haunted by her actions as much as you will your own. If you start working on forgiving her now, you will be haunted less by both.”
I looked at her in her brown polyester pants and rollers. It was not customary for anyone to mention the elephant in the room. For us, the elephant is that my mother was going to die. We all tiptoed around that like a sleeping baby. She looked back at me. With her face void of make-up I could see wrinkles and tiny blue veins that I had never noticed. I looked into her pale blue eyes and saw tears.
Without once looking away she said, “Your mother loves you. You remind her of her and it’s all she can do not to jump in your shoes to protect you form every hard thing she’s had to face. It’s time for you to grow up and realize that parents don’t know what they’re doin.’ They’re fakin’ it just like you are when you pretend not to be scared by the fact that your mother is dying and you all don’t have two plug nickels to rub together. Stop lookin’ outside yourself for some sort of explanation for your actions. You own ‘em. If you do ‘em, you own ‘em. Nobody makes you do something. You choose. I suggest you choose to treat your mommy better, despite the fact that she stays on you like white on rice. I suggest that you forgive her for that so that you can have a little peace. I suggest that you take a minute to sit in her wheelchair. She’s 32 years old and she’s going to die before she had much of a chance to live. You represent a life that she won’t get to live and wants to protect. She wants it to be perfect because it’s her second chance. Too much pressure for you, but that’s what she’s a doin’. I want you to go in the living room and think about that for at least five minutes. Then go wash your face and come down here and set the table.”
Aunt Jo’s “tell it like it is” approach didn’t solve all of the problems between my mother and I, but it did prepare me for the day when the inevitable happened. Thanks to the words of the hillbilly sphinx, I have a lot less regret than I would have otherwise.
My mother and I clashed. Not all of the time, just occasionally. Something about me just drove her to frustration. It’s been speculated that it was because we were so much alike, but I’ve always wondered if it was because of the circumstances under which I came about. An unplanned pregnancy at 17 that robbed her of the chance to finish high school with her peers, go to college or have time with my father without me. I always wondered if I represented all of the youth she never got to experience. In any case, I know she loved me despite all of our little spats. Looking back, I probably wasn’t the easiest child to rear.
Mom showed love by teaching. It was like she wanted to equip me with every possible skill that she considered necessary to get ahead. We never had much money, but one thing I always had was books. I had the good ones. Mom did research to find out which ones had won awards and which had the most artistic illustrations. Mom always found money if meant learning. When I was in first grade she read The Hobbit to me out loud and then she started on the Lord of the Rings. As I got older she would request that I read certain classics and I was surprised that although she’d never attended college she had read quite a bit of literature.
Apart from books, mom believed that I should have knowledge of basic life skills. I was taught to can and preserve food, cook, sew, clean, iron, and just about anything else that’s considered woman’s work. My mother had patience when she was teaching that she didn’t seem to have at any other time. She would lie out the supplies, explain the steps, demonstrate and then let me try it under her watchful eye. While my sewing, cleaning, and ironing skills were a bit of a disappointment; I did show promise in cooking especially if it was dessert.
My mother thought that art and music were worthy ventures. I’m still not sure why, since neither amounts to a steady career. I think it more to do with the fact that if she had been able to attend college, she probably would have pursued the arts. She provided pencils, crayons, and even paint, although there were strict rules about when and where I could paint. The wonderful part was that she would do it with me. We would draw and paint together. If I got clay she would sit down with me and make clay figures for hours. As controlling as she was about so many other things, my work of art was always my own. I never remember her doing something for me, but I do remember asking all the time. I loved to watch her work because at those times she seemed peaceful. Once she bought clay and made the whole family sit at the table and make things, even my Dad. Those were the times when I loved being with my mom and when I truly knew that she loved me.
Whenever we visited Kentucky mom’s art skills were called upon to decorate something, offer advice on color choices, anything that required taste and an artistic eye. Mom had it and the family knew it. Since we had very little money, mom usually made Christmas and birthday gifts for the family. She painted shelves and stools. Sometimes she would take little sayings and paint them on plaques. She was family famous for her skills and growing up, I thought of her as the best artist I knew.
Once when we down to Aunt Jo’s, she had been commissioned by Aunt Jo to change her kitchen from burnt orange and brown to country blue, the hitch was that she wanted to most of the doo-dads and plaques that she already had in the kitchen. This was a major overtaking. My mother began to take charge inventorying and deciding what could be renovated and what would have to go. Everything slated for renovation had to be painted and reworked to fit into Aunt Jo’s new country blue kitchen. There was also a significant style change. The orange and brown had been a sort of late 60’s early 70’s western look, now the kitchen would be updated to a more contemporary cute country 80’s look. The wallpaper she had chosen had tiny white hearts all over it and an accent border the ducks. All of the Venuses agreed that it would be beautiful.
As she began to formulate her plan for renovation, each Venus was given an instruction. That is, with the exception of Granny. Granny’s job was to sit and comment on the jobs of others. Drill holes, spray paint frames, there was a lot to be done. I tried not to get in the way because this was the sort of thing where kids were not invited to participate. If anything you could get accused of being in the way. I tried to hang back, but it was hard not to be attracted to the circus.
“Lynn,” Honey said. “What do you want to do about these little pictures? Jo says she wants to keep them if she can. Sentimental, I guess.”
My mother was in her element at times like this. “Hmmm…well we could take them out of the frames and repaint the frames to match the room. Tonya, do you think you can take care of that?”
Now I know that painting a frame is not the Sistine chapel or anything, but for me it was a big deal. It was trust. It meant that I was entering the secret world of the Venus. I knew I wasn’t a full-fledged member or anything, but at that moment I felt that a ceremonial rite of passage was taking place. I painted that frame as if my life depended on it anguishing over whether or not my paint matched the ducks in the border.
According to the Kentucky Venuses, love means noticing the good things people do, it means giving gifts, and tolerance. Love means empathy, even for little ones. It means honesty even if it hurts to hear it. Love means allowing the ones you love to grow, even if it means they may grow away from you.
Most people understand Milo to refer to the Aegean island Milos. I, however, believe the arms of Venus reside, not in the Milo of Europe, but in a lesser-known Milo. A Milo with less distinction, but with colorful quirks aplenty: Milo, Kentucky. There it is still a man’s world, but the Venuses have arms.
I spent much of my time as a child deep in the hills of Kentucky. Driving through the hills, it was if each mile of twisting road took back a year that had passed. By the time my mother and I arrived we had slipped back 10 or 15 years from the world we left behind in Ohio.
As a child I found it to be a fantastical place. When you are there you hear bluegrass music even when no one is playing. It is a place personified by multi-colored trailer homes on stilts, toilet planters, firearms, Little Debbies, and RC cola. There was a man there who had tamed himself a pet possum. The possum wore a pair of tiny overalls with a small hole so that his pink tail might be liberated as he rode passenger on the man’s shoulder. At night people peed into coffee cans that they stashed under their beds. It was much easier to do that than to go outside to the outhouse. I couldn’t wait to get my own can. I had decided on Folgers rather than Maxwell House. I felt the red was more stylish. There were town characters with colorful names. Birdman walked back and forth the length of town, day after day, stopping intermittently to place important calls on an invisible switchboard. Shotgun was missing an eye, so I have always assumed that is somehow connected with his name. Applejack was a woman who knew how to handle an apple, and I’m still not sure how Soupman earned his name. Fatty and Tildy lived together, but Fatty was thin and Tildy was fat. I was constantly trying to work up something for myself by suggesting possibilities like “sassy” or “lightning”, but my granny said to forget it because you had to “earn ‘em.”
My mother loved the hills of Kentucky. It was where she had grown up, and even though she had never lived there as a grown woman, to her it was home. That being the case, I name her my first Venus. There are four. Of all of the Venuses I will mention, my mother was shaped most like the Venus of Willendorf. Constantly on a diet, she was big and round and soft everywhere with giant breasts. She had a big heart and a critical eye, especially when it came to her oldest child. Deemed the family artist, she was called upon for advice and assistance with anything from decorating to hair color.
The second is my grandmother, who is affectionately known as “Honey.” There has been wide family debate, most of it occurring behind the back of said grandmother, about the institution of that affectionate name that neatly replaced Grandma, MawMaw, Granny or any other title that sounded perhaps more matronly. Honey insisted that the grandchildren invented the name of their own accord, but it’s been whispered that she coached the babies to make it so. In her defense, she was only 33 when she was inaugurated a grandmother, and she did at that time maintain a 24-inch waist. Honey was strikingly beautiful as a young woman. As the years passed she did everything she could to hang on to that former splendor.
The third Venus is my Aunt Jo. As a young child I thought her name was Anna Jo because hillbilly drawl very seldom remembered to “t” the aunt. She was the sage spiritualist of the group. Always packing a bible, a load of prescription medication, and juicy fruit gum, it’s possible that she was my favorite. Aunt Jo maintained the same hairstyle from 1958 to her deathbed in 2009. This may sound trite, but it was no simple feat. It required perms, dyeing, pin curls, an odd green gel called “Dippity Do,” and copious amounts of teasing. I think of her as a hillbilly hybrid of a medicine woman and a sphinx. No matter what happened she did the right thing. If she ever spoke ill of anyone, which may have happened occasionally, it was always soberly balanced with a request that we “bless his (or her) heart.”
The fourth, and most commanding Venus is the matriarch: my Granny Grace. She was my great-grandmother, and the mother of Honey and Aunt Jo. Since she began her grandmother-hood at the tender age of 31, she had spent more of her life as a grandmother than anything else. While none of the Venuses believed in the consumption of alcohol, Gran kept a bottle of Listerine handy at all times. Her breath was exceptionally fresh, as she preferred swallowing to spitting. Granny was skinny and bent. Everyone knew that she had cash stashes surreptitiously placed about her property. I was privy to one particularly top-secret location. She would fold bills into her thigh high nylons that she would roll down into a neat milk chocolate donut right above her knee. If you looked closely, you could catch a hint of green.
I remember being small and looking up at these women as they paraded around together in girdles and hair rollers. They were so curvy and voluptuous; always applying lipstick and speaking sharply about men that I never remember once being present. The Venuses taught me about love, death, men, drugs, babies, and God. They taught me how to laugh at tragedy, tell if a storm’s coming, fix scuffs on my shoes with magic marker, and most important of all, to always pretend like everything is alright - especially if it’s not.
Chapter 1
Love
I was convinced as a child that the Venuses did not love me. I knew they had affection for me because they cared deeply about whether I’d had enough to eat and whether I had gotten the potatoes out of my ears after bathing. They just were not very liberal with the above-mentioned L-word. It was their practice to gather around the kitchen table and talk for hours about cousins, scandals, deaths, and especially the way things used to be. When a particularly beloved individual would come up in the discussion, the Venuses attempted to top one another with statements of admiration. It sounded something like this:
Aunt Jo might say, “I know, I know. I had Michelle go into town and check on Apple Jack. I worry about her stayin’ over there by herself, but she won’t hear a word about me hirin’ a girl to stay with her of the night.”
Then Granny would say, “Law, Jo. That Michelle is the best thing that ever was.”
Then Honey would say, “Jo, they’ll never be another one like her.”
Then my mother, who was still a bit of a Venus apprentice, would add something about how she’s growing into such a pretty young woman and that Michelle’s personality reminds her a little of Grandpa’s.
This sort of thing went on regularly. I began to worry on the account that they rarely said those sorts of kindnesses about me. As I began to more closely observe the behavior of the women, I noticed that often times the person that they lauded and showered with magnification had just left the room. Now I understood. These women were covertly dispensing their love gossip-style. If you really loved and admired somebody, you should talk sweet about them behind their back. I decided to test out my theory while simultaneously confirming that I was loved.
For this particular scenario the Venuses were gathered around the table in Aunt Jo’s burnt orange and brown kitchen chatting about a poor soul who had been stabbed to death two counties over.
“Jo, I’ll tell you one thing. After hearing a thing like that all I can think is that you need to get yourself some sorta extra security. Do you have a gun? You know I keep a little pistol by my bed just in case,” Honey says. “In fact I got one so tiny it fits right down in my purse. It’s got a little pearl handle,” she begins burrowing into her oversized designer leather bag to retrieve the evidence.
This suggestion is ironic to me as Aunt Jo has all manner of dead bolts, extra sliding chain locks and sliding bolt locks already installed on all of her doors. You would’ve thought she was living east New York rather than a tiny Kentucky town.
Granny interjects something about not being able to fire a pistol as well as a shotgun, and I decide that it’s time to make my move. I grease the wheels a little by heading to the coffee pot and silently refilling the lipstick-stained cups of Honey and Aunt Jo. Granny’s cup never had lipstick on it, but I knew that she didn’t drink coffee unless there was a near gallon of creamer in it. For some reason she preferred the powder sort of creamer to anything natural. I carefully spooned in a hardy amount of Cremora before pouring her coffee. The conversation never stopped.
“Dan doesn’t believe in owning a gun.” Said my mother. “He keeps a ball bat on his side of the bed.”
“Ever body should own a gun,” Gran declares and Honey ferociously shakes her head in agreement.
Here’s where I make my exit. I nonchalantly exit the room. As soon as I pass through Aunt Jo’s western style saloon doors, I circle around and creep as quiet as an old Indian guide and lay silently on the floor by the kitchen door to see if they will latch on to my bait. I listen so hard that I can hear the hairs in my ear twitching. I wait, and sure enough.
“You know, Lynn, that Tonya’s a good girl. She come in here an filled my cup up without me even askin’ her to.”
“I heared that kids today don’t respect their elders, but I believe your girl’s an exception.”
“She’s just exactly like her mother.”
“They’ll never be another one like her.”
I don’t hear my mother comment, but I know that it is customary to hold a humble silence if you are directly responsible for the individual receiving accolades. In the dark, tucked behind a dinning room chair, I am beaming.
The ways the Venuses showed their love varied. Honey, for example, displayed it by buying lavish gifts for us. When we left Ohio to visit the hills of Kentucky, she would have a trunk full of pristinely wrapped packages that came from fancy department stores. Aunt Jo once told me that Honey, from the time that she was very young, had been a little different than Granny’s other children. As a young girl, Honey had painstakingly cared for her clothes. They were always pressed, clean, and hanging even if a brother or sister’s clothing space had to be sacrificed to make it so. Honey wanted to leave the hills and do or be something important. She was tired of dusty outhouses and poverty, and longed for a shiny urban world of fashion and excitement.
Honey’s love for an individual was directly proportional to the amount of money spent on the gift. That being said, it is understandable why in most cases it was necessary for her to leave the price tags on her gifts. If she‘d gotten your gift on clearance with a red tag, then you would’ve known that her love for you was fifty percent off of what it could’ve been. Honey was always careful to make sure everyone had a gift, and that the total number of gifts she brought was equal for everyone. However, she was not always equitable about what was in each box. My poor brother would get four gift boxes, and so would I. In each of his boxes would be one item: a shirt, a pair of pants, a belt, a sweater. When I opened my boxes I would find a full outfit in three of my boxes and a pair of shoes in the last. It was no secret that Honey was partial to little girls. Fortunately, the sage Aunt Jo also picked up on this and balanced Honey’s bias with a few gifts of her own for my brother.
Honey’s love for her mother was immense, so it was no surprise to anyone when she showed up at Granny’s house with a brand new color TV. I was especially excited since our family was still watching TV in black and white. I wanted to see the color of Captain Kangaroo’s jacket. Honey finagled the antenna until we were able to see a channel, and we all gathered around to watch an episode of Hee-Haw. I wasn’t always sure why the adults were laughing, but I laughed whenever they did so as to appear mature.
Granny accepted the TV with both excitement and suspicion. “Joy, it was awful nice you of to bring us this here television, but you knowed that we was just as happy without it. You don’t have to buy me and Dad such expensive gifts.”
“You’ll love having this TV. You can watch Lucy. I know you love Lucy. She comes on every morning and don’t forget Hee Haw. You love Hee Haw.”
“Well, thank ya, Joy.”
I personally was thrilled about the TV, and soon had Gran on board. They broadcasted all the good reruns in the morning, so the two of us would sit and have our fill of The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and our favorite: Gilligan’s Island. I was partial to Mary Ann, but she thought the professor was “mighty handsome.”
Honey was pleased with this reception when we departed for home. It didn’t last though. She, my Mom, and I returned to Granny’s house for a visit a few months later. Once Honey had loaded in her luggage, which was quite substantial, she came out into the living room applying a quick two coats of coral frost lipstick. No mirror was needed for this well practiced maneuver.
“Mommy, what happened to the TV?”
“Nothing, Doll, it works jus fine. Daddy had to fix it up a little. That front part kept wanting to fall off. You know, they just don’t make things the way that they used to.”
“So, that’s why there’s a band-aid on the front of the television. I won’t even ask about the coat hanger.” She was not amused.
Granny nodded. Just as I thought the uncomfortable moment might be heading toward its conclusion, Gran said something that will forever live in my memory.
“Ya’ll ever watch that show with the little bitty nigger boy that lives with the rich white man? I think that little nigger is THE funniest…”
Now the reason this statement was so monumental to my ears was that only a few weeks prior I dropped a bad word bomb on my parents. At this time we just happened to live in government housing (a.k.a. HUD), so I learned a lot of really interesting things I might not otherwise know. My parents never cursed around me, and subsequently, I wasn’t always sure which words were on the official “bad word list.” On that particular day, I came in to the living room and announced the rumor that I had heard while playing: “Shelby and Curtis *#@!*-ed under the slide at the playground!” Without delay I was given a severe lecture and description of all words on the “bad word list, as well as grim consequences if one were ever to escape my lips within parental earshot. I knew that it was only because I had uttered the word in childish ignorance that my hind-end was still attached, and I wasn’t going to burn in the everlasting fires of hell. It turns out that there is a hierarchy to bad words. Some are bad, but do not make the “the worst words ever” cut. These are words like “sucks,” and “piss,” and “butt.” My parents explained to me why Granny’s bad word was so awful. My Dad was a minister and felt very strongly about racial equality, so Granny’s word classified in the top 2 “worst words ever “ category, I’ll bet you can probably guess the other.
Back in Granny’s living room, I glanced over at my mother and saw that we shared the same look of horror in response to Granny’s comment. Completely overcome with a burning need to right this wrong, I shouted with every bit of righteous steam my seven-year-old body could muster, “Gran! You just said an awful word! A terrible, terrible, awful word that you should never say! And you said it TWICE!”
My mother, who I think may have been hoping for the Lord’s return to break the tension, blinked in shock at my outburst. Even though it was understood in our household that the n-word was among the worst words one could say, my mother wasn’t sure where it ranked along side of respecting your elders - which she felt I had clearly breeched with my outburst. Since she had no control of Granny and absolute power over me, she decided to react to the situation she could control.
“Tonya, go get me the paddle.”
“But Mom, you heard what Gran said. She said n-n-n….” I tried, but I couldn’t even do it to tattle on Gran.
“You just yelled at your great grandmother. Someone else may do something wrong, that doesn’t give you the right to do something wrong too. If you do, then you’ve got two wrongs instead of just the one.”
As I went to our luggage to find the paddle I cried loudly, feeling this is a clear-cut martyr situation. The paddle traveled with us wherever we went. It was an old butter mold paddle. In the olden days when ladies used to churn their own butter, they would use molds and paddle to stamp decorations on their butter. Ours had a couple of flower patterns and a swan carved into it. If your punishment is severe, your welt might come up in a flower shape. I reached in the case and found it. Gripping the heavy handle in my hand I took it to my mother, fantasizing about first spanking Gran and then my mother.
I can see it like it happened this afternoon: As I approach Granny says, “Now Lynn, you don’t need to spank that child.”
I am confused, but unwilling to take sides with a user of the n-word.
“Gran,” my mother says, “You don’t need to be involved in this. This is between me and my daughter. Tonya let’s go into the bedroom.”
I turn pathetically around to follow my mother to what I deem to be the gallows. Just as I do Granny grabs the paddle from my mother’s hand and throws it in the little crack behind the couch.
“Whatcha gonna do now, Lynn? I knowed you are too fat to get back in there and get that paddle. No spankings at Granny’s house ya hear?”
Granny looks at me and I’m still not sure how I feel about her. She says, “Tawnie, listen, when we was little everybody used to call colored people that. If I had knowed it would make you feel bad, I wouldn’t have said it. Times used to be different than they are now.”
“That’s a bad word Gran,” I said. “To me it’s as bad as the s-word or the d-word or the other d-word or the f…”
“That’s enough, Tonya” my mother says. She and I are both aware that I have the freedom to go hog wild now that the paddle is safely lodged behind the couch, but I decide to listen to the tiny cartoon angel that I imagine on my right shoulder.
“It’s okay Granny,” I say finding new feelings of forgiveness as I realize there will be no flower shaped welts on my rear for the remainder of our stay. “I like Different Strokes, too. That Arnold is pretty funny. Do you think he’s as funny as Gilligan?”
She would say it again in years to come. Every time she did I’d feel sick to my stomach and remind her that I hated that word. Every time she did, she’d tell me about how she had grown up in a different world. I was grateful at least that she knew that the “different world” in which she had grown up was passing. She loved me, and even seemed pleased that I would be part of a different way of thinking.
Granny showed her love a little differently than Honey, it came in quarters and the simple act of listening. I can still feel the way she would press a cool quarter into the palm of my hand. While closing my fingers around it with hers she’d conspiratorially whisper that I should go buy myself some “blow-gum.”
While the quarters were great, there’s no greater gift you can give a kid than to listen. Kids are constantly being told to be quiet and to listen; it is rare that an adult is truly interested in what a child has to say. But this was true of Gran, who sometimes seemed to feel more at home among children than she did adults.
I specifically remember the day I sat on her porch crying. Granny had been silently rocking in her chair and I had forgotten she was even there.
“Child, why are you goin’ on like that?”
“Well, I have to play with these old Barbies of mom’s. Everybody I know has Sun Lovin’ Malibu Barbie with real tan lines. My Barbie’s are old, they have weird haircuts and their legs don’t even bend, see? Plus, mom won’t even buy them panties, so if Ken wants, he can look right up their dresses and see the promised land.”
“You’re right, you’ve got it pretty rough,” Granny said. “I might be able to help you with them Barbies’ under-drawer situation.”
Granny went in the house leaving me on the porch feeling justified and powerful for receiving empathy from an adult in the absence of broken bones or gushing blood. She returned a few minutes later with a little metal canister of Band-Aids. “Here we go,” she said picking up one of my Barbie’s (it was Midge, she had freckles and a flip like Jackie O). She took the tabs off of one of the Band-Aids and careful placed it so that the little absorbent white square went right over the supposed private parts of Midge and the sticky tape went up the front and back of her looking very much like a pair of Band-Aid colored underwear.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty smart.”
“They’re just like yours, with a cotton crotch and everything,” Gran added. “Your Barbies got any dishes?”
I shook my head.
“Better come on in the house and we’ll get ‘em set up. I got a bunch of pop bottle caps that will make a nice little set a dishes.”
Aunt Jo showed her love by always telling you the truth. I know that whole idea of truth is suspect. Truth is always subject to the human that perceives it. When I speak of Aunt Jo’s truth, I am talking about her perception of truth. She was willing to share it. It’s easy to think that we all do that, but we don’t. We hide what really think and speak what we believe someone else might want to hear. Sometimes, we fail to observe our lives so that we can live in sweet existential bliss and completely ignore even a perception of truth. Then there’s the worse offense where we lie to create a truth that we know to be false in order to keep from facing some blaring issue we’d prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. This sort of thing can happen when an abusive marriage doesn’t fit into our schedule, or when a sweet pigtailed little girl turns into a black-clad, chain-smoking rebellious teenager. When things don’t work out the way that we pictured them, we often pretend that they did. I guess what I’m talking about can be boiled down to integrity and character. Whatever it is, Aunt Jo had it in spades.
I came to appreciate Aunt Jo’s honesty especially as a teenager, but not always at the moment when she delivered it. My mother was exceedingly critical. I felt that no matter how hard I tried I would always fall just short of her expectation. If I cleaned the entire kitchen, doing all the little extra things like scouring the sink and cleaning under the stove burners, she seemed to only notice that I missed the top of the refrigerator. I love my mother. I know now that she plenty of her own demons with which to deal and that she was doing the best that she could. She was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 29, and was wheelchair bound sometime during my freshman year. As a teenager, I felt entirely frustrated about doing anything she asked because I knew that no matter what degree of effort I put into something, she would find the one minuet thing I missed. This resentment began to grow and eventually I found some new friends, some cool black duds, a nose ring (it was fake, a real piercing wasn’t worth the parental anguish), and a new attitude to go with my sophomore year of high school.
At 15, I was under the mistaken impression that going “down home” to Kentucky was much less important than my budding social calendar. Despite my efforts to talk her out of it, my mother decreed that we would be heading there and that I wouldn’t be taking any of my new “depression-wear” with me, especially those ridiculous Doc Marten’s shoes. She said that while that sort of thing may fly in Dayton, Ohio, it doesn’t down in the hills of Kentucky and that people would think that I was drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. She came into my room and chose clothes that she felt would be appropriate. My anger began to simmer. We met Honey and loaded all of our stuff into her Cadillac (she had recently given up sports cars for an ’85 Seville that looked like someone had smacked it in the back with a tennis racket).
As we traveled down the winding-road-time-machine that deposited us in Kentucky, I listened to the front seat chatter of my mom and Honey as they talked about what was going on in their respective lives. I was surprised to hear the way my mom talked because she sounded like everything was wonderful. What about chemo, and our money problems? What about that new spot of cancer that they found in her jaw? And where exactly did that positive person go when it came time for her to deal with me in private? I wondered what it was about me that put her on edge. The simmering anger was slowly reaching a boil.
When we reached Kentucky everyone had gathered at Aunt Jo’s for vegetable soup and fried Treet sandwiches (this is something like Spam if you’ve never had it). I loved eating at Aunt Jo’s house because the cabinets were always stocked with the world’s softest, most refined white bread, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms and a supply of pop as far as the eye could see. Besides that she always made up a few desserts that were usually cake mixes that had been altered to make them even more appealing. There was Snickers cake, Twinkie cake, and Jello cake. Some had added candy bars or whipped cream. After everyone had eaten and two or three had declared that Jo’s soup was “the best they’s ever eat,” I started to relax a little and enjoy being in this little alternate universe. My family had moved so much, this little piece of Kentucky was the closest thing to a home I’d known.
My mother instructed me to unload the car and carry the bags upstairs. I dug through Honey’s giant purse to find the keys and headed out to the car to get the bags. It was my practice to carry as may things as possible so as to minimize trips out to the car. I had so many bags and packages balanced in my arms that I had to open the screen door with a foot. I stumbled into the kitchen dropping a package as crossed the threshold.
Mom couldn’t let this pass. To me she said, “Tonya, you need to carry less.” To the rest of the room she explained, “It looks like hard work, but really it’s laziness. She doesn’t want to have to make too many trips.”
My mouth responded before my brain with, “At least I’m carrying the stuff in, I could just sit here at the table with you.” I picked up the stuff and headed upstairs to put it into the rooms where we stayed. I knew that if I had said that sort of thing at home, it would have resulted in punishment, but in Kentucky the paddle was still metaphorically behind Granny’s couch. My smart-alec comment may not sound like much to most. I had friends who cursed at their parents or called them names. That sort of thing did not happen in my family. Respecting your elders was on par with “Thou Shalt Not Murder.”
The visit continued on with the usual practice of retiring to Aunt Jo’s living room after the kitchen was clean to discuss various people in town and what had ever happened to ole fill-in-the-blank? Aunt Jo’s living room had no television. Instead it had a gold velveteen couch circa 1972, and two blue chairs that sat on plush gold carpet. An ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling. I lay on the luxurious carpet and stared up at the chandelier to be sure that there were enough seats for the older people. I closed my eyes and pretended to be nothing thinking that all of their voices were some sort of ancient female song that had been sung for ages without ever changing.
As was her custom, Aunt Jo rose very early to prepare a most exquisite breakfast. It was the only time you could catch her in a pair of pants, the rest of the time it was either skirts or coolots. There would be eggs, sausage or fried bologna, gravy, biscuits, and the most amazing homemade apples I have ever eaten. Since I was never one to sleep in, I usually joined her in the kitchen and under the guise of helping her prepare the meal. Mostly though, I just sat and talked. Sitting backwards in one of her kitchen chairs with my legs splayed and hanging most un-ladylike over each arm of the chair, I was telling her about our cockapoo being in heat as she stirred the reducing apples with her hair in rollers underneath a red chiffon scarf. She tapped the spoon twice on the side of the pan to knock off any clinging syrup and reduced the heat even more. Replacing the lid, she rounded on me and said, “You had better not talk to your mommy like I heard you do last night.”
“Anna Jo, Mom picks at me constantly. She never thinks I do anything right and she reminds me of it constantly. Sometimes I wonder if she even loves me. I feel like I just get on her nerves.”
“ You’re right. You mommy is overcritical of you and has been ever since I can remember. I have never liked it. The pressure she puts on you is more than most adults could handle.”
“Thank you!” I said raising both hands in the air toward heaven like a saint in a Renaissance painting. I finally felt understood and justified.
“Hold it right there.” She said shutting down my theatrical moment. “I’m not saying that what she does gives you the right to act the way that you did last night cuz you was out of order. You need to forgive your mom for the way she is. If you have a grievance with her, you voice it in a way that’s considerate. Being respectful doesn’t mean that you let her run over you.”
“Forgive her?! She doesn’t even think she does anything wrong.”
“Yes, forgive her. Your mother is going to die. I don’t know when, but sooner than she should. When she dies you will not be haunted by her actions as much as you will your own. If you start working on forgiving her now, you will be haunted less by both.”
I looked at her in her brown polyester pants and rollers. It was not customary for anyone to mention the elephant in the room. For us, the elephant is that my mother was going to die. We all tiptoed around that like a sleeping baby. She looked back at me. With her face void of make-up I could see wrinkles and tiny blue veins that I had never noticed. I looked into her pale blue eyes and saw tears.
Without once looking away she said, “Your mother loves you. You remind her of her and it’s all she can do not to jump in your shoes to protect you form every hard thing she’s had to face. It’s time for you to grow up and realize that parents don’t know what they’re doin.’ They’re fakin’ it just like you are when you pretend not to be scared by the fact that your mother is dying and you all don’t have two plug nickels to rub together. Stop lookin’ outside yourself for some sort of explanation for your actions. You own ‘em. If you do ‘em, you own ‘em. Nobody makes you do something. You choose. I suggest you choose to treat your mommy better, despite the fact that she stays on you like white on rice. I suggest that you forgive her for that so that you can have a little peace. I suggest that you take a minute to sit in her wheelchair. She’s 32 years old and she’s going to die before she had much of a chance to live. You represent a life that she won’t get to live and wants to protect. She wants it to be perfect because it’s her second chance. Too much pressure for you, but that’s what she’s a doin’. I want you to go in the living room and think about that for at least five minutes. Then go wash your face and come down here and set the table.”
Aunt Jo’s “tell it like it is” approach didn’t solve all of the problems between my mother and I, but it did prepare me for the day when the inevitable happened. Thanks to the words of the hillbilly sphinx, I have a lot less regret than I would have otherwise.
My mother and I clashed. Not all of the time, just occasionally. Something about me just drove her to frustration. It’s been speculated that it was because we were so much alike, but I’ve always wondered if it was because of the circumstances under which I came about. An unplanned pregnancy at 17 that robbed her of the chance to finish high school with her peers, go to college or have time with my father without me. I always wondered if I represented all of the youth she never got to experience. In any case, I know she loved me despite all of our little spats. Looking back, I probably wasn’t the easiest child to rear.
Mom showed love by teaching. It was like she wanted to equip me with every possible skill that she considered necessary to get ahead. We never had much money, but one thing I always had was books. I had the good ones. Mom did research to find out which ones had won awards and which had the most artistic illustrations. Mom always found money if meant learning. When I was in first grade she read The Hobbit to me out loud and then she started on the Lord of the Rings. As I got older she would request that I read certain classics and I was surprised that although she’d never attended college she had read quite a bit of literature.
Apart from books, mom believed that I should have knowledge of basic life skills. I was taught to can and preserve food, cook, sew, clean, iron, and just about anything else that’s considered woman’s work. My mother had patience when she was teaching that she didn’t seem to have at any other time. She would lie out the supplies, explain the steps, demonstrate and then let me try it under her watchful eye. While my sewing, cleaning, and ironing skills were a bit of a disappointment; I did show promise in cooking especially if it was dessert.
My mother thought that art and music were worthy ventures. I’m still not sure why, since neither amounts to a steady career. I think it more to do with the fact that if she had been able to attend college, she probably would have pursued the arts. She provided pencils, crayons, and even paint, although there were strict rules about when and where I could paint. The wonderful part was that she would do it with me. We would draw and paint together. If I got clay she would sit down with me and make clay figures for hours. As controlling as she was about so many other things, my work of art was always my own. I never remember her doing something for me, but I do remember asking all the time. I loved to watch her work because at those times she seemed peaceful. Once she bought clay and made the whole family sit at the table and make things, even my Dad. Those were the times when I loved being with my mom and when I truly knew that she loved me.
Whenever we visited Kentucky mom’s art skills were called upon to decorate something, offer advice on color choices, anything that required taste and an artistic eye. Mom had it and the family knew it. Since we had very little money, mom usually made Christmas and birthday gifts for the family. She painted shelves and stools. Sometimes she would take little sayings and paint them on plaques. She was family famous for her skills and growing up, I thought of her as the best artist I knew.
Once when we down to Aunt Jo’s, she had been commissioned by Aunt Jo to change her kitchen from burnt orange and brown to country blue, the hitch was that she wanted to most of the doo-dads and plaques that she already had in the kitchen. This was a major overtaking. My mother began to take charge inventorying and deciding what could be renovated and what would have to go. Everything slated for renovation had to be painted and reworked to fit into Aunt Jo’s new country blue kitchen. There was also a significant style change. The orange and brown had been a sort of late 60’s early 70’s western look, now the kitchen would be updated to a more contemporary cute country 80’s look. The wallpaper she had chosen had tiny white hearts all over it and an accent border the ducks. All of the Venuses agreed that it would be beautiful.
As she began to formulate her plan for renovation, each Venus was given an instruction. That is, with the exception of Granny. Granny’s job was to sit and comment on the jobs of others. Drill holes, spray paint frames, there was a lot to be done. I tried not to get in the way because this was the sort of thing where kids were not invited to participate. If anything you could get accused of being in the way. I tried to hang back, but it was hard not to be attracted to the circus.
“Lynn,” Honey said. “What do you want to do about these little pictures? Jo says she wants to keep them if she can. Sentimental, I guess.”
My mother was in her element at times like this. “Hmmm…well we could take them out of the frames and repaint the frames to match the room. Tonya, do you think you can take care of that?”
Now I know that painting a frame is not the Sistine chapel or anything, but for me it was a big deal. It was trust. It meant that I was entering the secret world of the Venus. I knew I wasn’t a full-fledged member or anything, but at that moment I felt that a ceremonial rite of passage was taking place. I painted that frame as if my life depended on it anguishing over whether or not my paint matched the ducks in the border.
According to the Kentucky Venuses, love means noticing the good things people do, it means giving gifts, and tolerance. Love means empathy, even for little ones. It means honesty even if it hurts to hear it. Love means allowing the ones you love to grow, even if it means they may grow away from you.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.