Riding Fury Home Read online

  I added more cold water. She finally plunked in, her body smacking the bottom of the tub as I lost my grip on her. I gradually added more and more warm water, as she could stand it, until it was a regular hot bath. After she seemed warmed enough, I leaned over and grabbed her under the armpits, helping her steady herself as she lurched out of the tub. I toweled her dry, helped her get on other pajamas, and put her in bed. She lay there, teeth still chattering. I got in next to her and lay spooned against her, willing her my warmth.

  THERE IS A PHRASE I clearly remember telling myself in my childhood, repeating it like a mantra, a vow, a motto: “ I am so strong, I can get through anything.” I had no idea of the cost of such survival, the suppressed longings, the anxiety that became like a second skin. The alternative, to not cope, to possibly let my mother die, was too terrifying.

  If there was rage, in the moment of crisis it was pushed so far down that I couldn’t even feel its simmer. It wasn’t until adulthood that the immensity of the desertion occurred to me. My mother had left me, a ten-year-old, alone in a house in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter and jumped into the icy Millstone River. She left no note, not even the barest goodbye. Did my mother even think of me as she plunged herself into a cold death, or was her despair so great it overshadowed all other thoughts?

  Chapter 15. Overdose

  I SAT, NOT MOVING, in the big overstuffed chair in the silent house. It felt like time had stopped, but the sky was darkening, the shadows of the open curtains deepened across the living room. There was a sound of the front door opening, and a woman’s voice called, “Karen . . . ? Hello . . . ? Are you there . . . ?” I recognized that voice: Mrs. Fredrickson, Barbie’s Mom.

  I sat mutely as seconds ticked. The whole sequence of the afternoon flashed through me.

  I had walked in our front door after school, as usual calling out, “Hi Mom! I’m home!” Dead silence. I called again. Nothing. I found Mom in the living room, lying on the couch on her side, her arms dangling off the edge. Something was wrong; she had never been a napper. I shook her. Her arms flopped heavily; her eyes fluttered open briefly. Drugged, watery eyes. I shook her shoulder harder, “Mom, how many pills did you take? How many?”

  She slurred the words. “Doooon . . . don’t let them take me. Not again!” Her eyelids closed.

  God, what do I do? If I don’t call, something terrible might happen. She could die.

  I moved the coffee table up against the couch and stacked pillows on it, in case Mom started to roll. Then I ran. Out our front door, up our driveway, next door to Mrs. Summers. She opened the front door, and I sputtered, “Mom on couch . . . sleeping pills . . . don’t know how many . . . ” She put her arms around me, pulled me into the hall. She patted my back as I kept talking.

  Then, from across the river, the town siren began to wail. Who could have called? Who could already know what happened to Mom? I tore myself from Mrs. Summers, ran out her door, and back down our driveway. The front door was ajar.

  In the dim hall, I encountered our other neighbor: small, blond Mrs. Jansen. Her sad eyes met mine. “I came by to see your mother, Karen, and found her on the couch. I’ve called the ambulance.”

  The crunching of wheels on the driveway gravel, the slamming of doors. Two men carrying a stretcher. I followed them as they carried my mother out the front door. I stepped outside. The light was very bright. Townspeople had gathered in the driveway and all over the front yard. No one spoke, but their eyes pierced me. My mother was loaded in the ambulance, and the red light on its roof started flashing.

  I started to run. Around the back of our house, down the path to the river. Running and running, the trees blurred by my tears, until I came to the river and leaned against an old sycamore, my breath heaving. The river ran dark and muddy. It was early March, two months after my mother had jumped in. I stared into the waters, my spine against the tree, until I was numb with cold. Then I made my way back to the empty house.

  MRS. FREDRICKSON called out again, “Karen, are you home?”

  “I’m here!” I yelled back.

  She came into the living room. “Dear, let’s go up to your room and get some of your things. Pajamas, underwear, clothes, school books. You can come stay with us.”

  Mrs. Fredrickson put me in Barbie’s room. Barbie shared the room with her little sister Cheryl Ann, so that meant Cheryl Ann got booted into Monica’s room.

  That night, after Barbie and I had settled into our twin beds, Mrs. Fredrickson came in to say goodnight. There were two windows, and she went over and opened each one halfway. Frigid air swirled through the room. “Could you close the windows?” I asked, “It’s really cold in here.”

  “Fresh air is good for you. It will make you strong,” she replied. She left the room, but returned with an extra blanket, which she laid on my bed. I felt embarrassed, needing more than the others, but I didn’t know how they stood such cold.

  This was a house of rules. Every day when Barbie and I got off the school bus, Mrs. Fredrickson made us a snack. As soon as we were done, she said, “You have to do your homework now.” Kids had a set bedtime; dishwashing duty was rotated among the girls. In a way, it was a relief to know just what I was supposed to do. Here, kids were kids and grownups were grownups. But I didn’t like being bossed around so much.

  Dinner was strange. Not what they ate, but how they did it. Mr. Fredrickson came home from his job as a big-shot executive at Johnson & Johnson and changed out of his business suit into slacks and a plaid flannel shirt. One of the girls set the table. Mrs. Fredrickson sat at the end nearest the kitchen, the father at the head, the kids along the sides. Mr. Fredrickson said a prayer, and I had to bow my head, too. Then Monica, because she was the oldest, was the first to hand her plate to her mother, who spooned vegetables and potatoes on the plate. Then the plate was passed down one side of the table from kid to kid until it reached Mr. Fredrickson, who put a piece of meat on the plate, which was passed back to Monica. There was no sound the whole time except for the chink of the serving spoon hitting the plate. The Fredricksons believed that children should not talk at the table unless spoken to, so no one said a word unless asked. I felt like I had landed on some icy planet, and my breath hung in the air, frozen.

  One night at dinner, Mrs. Fredrickson gave me a look and said, “Karen, if you’re too lazy to keep your elbows off the table, then you’re too lazy to eat. Lift up those elbows!” The roots of my hair were burning, and I could barely see my plate. I hated her, this house, this prison. I blushed with shame as I lifted my elbows. Mrs. Fredrickson told me she was teaching me manners and that it was for my own good. The Fredrickson kids were silent, but I could tell they were sniggering.

  One day after Barbie and I had finished our homework, Mrs. Fredrickson told Barbie to go outside to play. Once we were alone, she talked to me about my figure. My thighs were too fat and my tush too round. Only she didn’t say “tush”; she said “derriere.” All the Hendriksens were tall and square-jawed, with long narrow legs and flat rear ends, like models. Mrs. Fredrickson taught me an exercise to flatten my tush: I sat on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me and I moved forward by walking on my butt cheeks, one cheek and then the other. Mrs. Fredrickson walked behind me to make sure that I did it.

  I missed Happy. Because of the Fredrickson’s poodle, Happy had to be boarded with the vet out in Hillsborough. It was too far away for me to see him. He loved to run, and hated to be penned up, so I wondered how he was doing.

  In the two months I lived with her, Barbie never once asked me about my mother, about what happened. I think her mom must have told her not to talk about it. And I didn’t say anything, either.

  EVERY SATURDAY GRANDPA Isidor came to pick me up to drive me to Aunt Rita’s, where I spent the weekend. I listened for his knock on the Fredricksons’ back door, my overnight bag packed and ready. He always waited for me on the steps. Often, he would be holding a package of meat: steaks, a roast beef, or a chicken. I
would take the package from him and bring it inside to give Mrs. Fredrickson. She would come with me to the door, lean out, and say, “Thank you, Mr. Bachman.”

  Grandpa stood holding his hat in his big square hands, and he answered Mrs. Fredrickson, “You’re welcome. It’s the least we can do,” as he tipped his bald head to her and bowed.

  When she closed the door, Grandpa put on his hat, leaned over, and squeezed me in a big hug. Then he took my hand and we walked to his old van, which looked very big parked next to Mr. Fredrickson’s white sports car.

  Grandpa opened the side door for me, and I clambered into the back. There were no windows in the back, so it was dark and cool where I sat on the wooden floor. The passenger seat had been removed to give more room for storing goods. My body rocked in the swaying van. I inhaled aromas of produce and meat, remnant odors from market day when Grandpa went at 4:00 AM to pick out food for the store.

  During the forty-five-minute drive, Grandpa was always quiet. Sometimes I sang to myself or my eyes drooped and I curled up and napped. Or I would just sit and daydream, riding between my week of the Fredricksons’ rules and the coming weekend, where I never knew if my cousin Deborah would be in one of her mean moods. In the van, I had no rules to obey. Grandpa’s silence enveloped me as I rocked in the cool dark.

  UNCLE MONTE ALWAYS greeted me the same way: He smiled a broad grin, grabbed the soft flesh on the underside of my arm between his thumb and forefinger, and twisted hard. For a couple seconds, it hurt like hell, but I didn’t yelp. Uncle Monte was a children’s doctor and he thought he had a way with kids. “Howya doing, kiddo?” he asked. “Okay,” I always said.

  Aunt Rita called from the kitchen where she was making lunch, “Go find the girls.” I searched down the hall of the ranch-style house. Outside Deborah’s closed door, I heard muffled voices. I knocked. The door swung open, and Deborah stuck her head out. She was on the verge of thirteen, two years older than me, and the boss of Abbey, eight, and Ezra, three and a half. “Oh, you,” Deborah scowled. “We’re busy! Go play with the baby.” And she closed the door. It wasn’t so bad, because I liked playing with Ezra. He was sweet and agreeable.

  Aunt Rita crackled with anger. I didn’t know that she had a husband who constantly cheated on her, who had slept with her best friend while she was pregnant with Ezra, but her tight face, her clipped voice, made me stand back. She was always in a hurry. When driving, she screeched around corners. Cars had no seatbelts in 1962, so we kids lurched forward and back as she slammed on the brakes, then gunned it on the green light.

  Aunt Rita always had me take a bath. The smell of Dial soap permeated their bathroom. Once, Aunt Rita came in while I was washing and stood above me, looking down. She pointed at my crotch. “You have to wash it all, very well, with lots of soap on the washcloth. You have to do the outside and then go inside all the folds. You understand?” I nodded, hoping she would leave. But she stood there and watched, to make sure I did it right.

  At night, I slept in Uncle Monte’s office. It was in a separate building next to the house that was attached to the house by a long hall. Aunt Rita made the couch in the patients’waiting room into a bed for me. When she left, I lay on the couch, paging through the kids’ magazines my uncle had in his waiting room.

  The house seemed very far away from the office. I could hear the cars passing on the busy road outside the office, their rhythmic swiiish-swiiiish carrying them past the house. Their lights crept through the Venetian blinds, casting moving shadows. My throat and chest ached. I lay there wishing that I could jump into one of those cars and ride away.

  I SENT MY FATHER LETTERS once a week, the same superficial letters I had been writing, as if nothing had changed. One time, I wrote a different letter, though. I told the truth: Things are bad here; Mom tried to kill herself with pills; I miss Happy every day. Then I tore it up and threw it in the wastebasket.

  Later, I learned an odd thing. None of the adults ever called or wrote Dad to tell him Mom had attempted suicide and was in the hospital. I guess they figured he was gone and not coming back.

  For a while there was one bit of freedom that I had. After I did my homework, Mrs. Fredrickson let me to go over to my house. I was supposed to be practicing piano, only I didn’t practice.

  The house was quiet and dark when I first came in. Sometimes I went up to my bedroom and lay on my bed, reading one of Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion books, completely immersed. Sometimes I watched TV in my parents’ room. Sometimes I wandered down to the river, even though it was still cold out. Other times I simply sat in the brown nubby Saarinen chair named the Womb. It was the chair Mom always lounged in, her feet up on its hassock. It was only the first few times I came home that I sat in Mom’s chair and cried.

  My piano teacher told Mrs. Fredrickson that I was not practicing. After that, Mrs. Fredrickson made Monica come with me every day. She did her homework upstairs while I played piano. She didn’t know much about piano, so I played arpeggios, chords, and some old easy pieces I liked and she thought I was practicing.

  AFTER SCHOOL ONE DAY, I pulled down my underpants to pee in the Fredrickson’s bathroom and found a brownish red stain across the crotch. I knew what this was. Our fifth-grade girls’ health education class had been shown a film on menstruation. Mom had explained it, too. I had followed her into the bathroom, where she had opened the cabinet to show where sanitary pads were kept. I told Mrs. Fredrickson that I needed to go home to get something. At home, I found one of Mom’s old sanitary belts, gray with age. I threaded a pad through it, stashed some pads in a brown bag, and waddled back to the Fredrickson’s, my belly cramping. I kept my secret, waiting for my mother. Someday she would come home and I would tell her.

  One day, I was doing my homework on the Fredricksons’ back porch and I heard Mrs. Fredrickson talking on the phone in the kitchen. “I am trying to civilize her,” she said. “It’s my Christian duty.” I figured she was talking about me, but I wasn’t sure what she meant. Did she think my mother’s craziness had rubbed off on me, or was it that we were Jews?

  Then she said, “I have to do something about the dog. He’s been boarded for two months now, and who knows how long it will be. I am going to ask the vet to find a home for him.” The air grew thick around my head, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  “No!” I screamed from the porch, and then I was in the kitchen, running at Mrs. Fredrickson. I careened to a stop a few feet from her, “No, you can’t, don’t you dare, not Happy, I won’t let you, I’ll call my father in England . . . no . . . no . . . no!” I was sobbing.

  “I’ll call you back,” Mrs. Fredrickson spoke into the phone, and hung up.

  All the indignities of the past two months crowded up and down my spine. I stood wide-legged, feet planted. “You will not give Happy away!” I glared at her. “He’s my dog! You can’t! I won’t let you!”

  YEARS LATER, IN MY TWENTIES, my mother told me what her two-month stay in the county mental hospital had been like.

  After her stomach was pumped in the emergency room, Mom was transferred. At the county hospital, she was in a dormitory with forty women. Some were catatonic, lying in bed unmoving, others were belligerent, yelling and screaming and having fits, and some seemed regular, just like everybody on the outside.

  At first, she didn’t realize they’d taken her off all her medications, and the withdrawal was giving her the shakes. She was so jumpy she couldn’t sit still. Meals were at long metal tables, and whenever the nurse looked away, she’d quickly stand up and sit down. When the nurse caught her she’d yell down the table, “Gloria, sit still!”

  In the dayroom, she’d pace until someone would holler, “Stop blocking the TV!” Then she’d sit down for a few minutes, her hands trembling, until her nerves forced her to jump up.

  For three nights, she couldn’t sleep. Sweat soaked her nightgown and she’d lie there, twisting the sheet between her fists. On the fourth night, the woman in the cot next to hers slipped out o
f bed when the lights went out. She stood next to my mother’s bed. Mom pulled the sheet up around her neck, afraid. Her teeth were chattering as the woman leaned close and whispered gently, “With the help of Jesus, I’m going to help you sleep.” She began to stroke my mother’s forehead and damp hair. “Shhh . . . shhh . . . you can sleep now,” she crooned. “Jesus will help you sleep.” My mother drifted off.

  Once a week, they got to take a shower. All forty of the women would line up nude with a tiny towel over their shoulders to wait their turn. Mom said the hospital food was so awful that she had her parents bring her peanut butter, jelly, and bread. She kept her cache on her shelf and lived off that. But one day, a nurse took it away. Mom got really upset. During Grandpa’s next visit, he paid the nurse a bribe, and suddenly Mom could have her own food again.

  One time during a visit from her dad and sister, Mom tried to enlist them in getting her out. They were sitting in the visitors’ room at a table, drinking coffee. “This place is terrible! You have to do something. You have to get me out of here,” she pleaded.

  Grandpa just shrugged. Aunt Rita tried to calm her down. “You need to be here, Gloria.”

  As her father and sister stood to leave, Mom smashed her coffee cup against the table. It broke in three pieces. She grabbed one and bore down hard against her wrist. Mom told me, “Well, I’m sure that made them think I was really crazy, but I wanted to show them how desperately I hated this place.”

  Three orderlies grabbed her. As they dragged her away, Grandpa and Aunt Rita were staring at her with shocked looks. She was taken to solitary confinement, a room that was all mattresses wall to wall. She stayed in there several days.

  When Mom got out of solitary, she became determined to leave. She watched who got discharged, and it was obvious: You had to behave. She became a docile, complying, model patient. She volunteered to do chores. She scrubbed floors and washed bathroom walls. She made sure not to complain. She told me, “I said as little as possible, afraid of a slip. I kept my rage and my hatred of the place shielded behind my eyes. I acted grateful and obedient, and finally, they let me go.”