I turned nine-years-old amidst the filthy, chlorine flavored air of L.A. Because Mom had moved us quickly and without much money, we slept on plastic lawn chairs in an empty apartment and ate mostly pasta, potatoes and "cheese-food." Violence sent us spinning back to Illinois after only nine months.
I've tried not to hold onto the memories of that time, though it's the following year that is a true blank canvass. It's as though I skipped over age ten. I can't picture a day, an item of clothing, a teacher. An entire year of my life is just white noise. I think that my mind short circuited after California, providing a necessary respite and believing that if it blocked out everything, it could kill the memories left behind.
But I did keep an object from those Calamitous California months; a Pink Panther autograph doll.
For Christmas that year, my Aunt Eddie thought an autograph doll was the perfect gift for a little girl new to Los Angeles. California was supposed to be movie stars and endless sunny days. My aunt had the best intentions when she handed me the glossily wrapped gift. Inside, sewed to the stuffed Panther, was a black, felt pen for important signatures. Fearless, I uncapped the pen and inked my own name across Pinky's chest. Within a month, my nine-year-old bravado would be stamped out. But that Christmas, I still believed in the promise of oceans and starlets.
Fast forward thirty-four years and whatever autographs were scrawled across Pinky are long faded. The stuffing has condensed so tight that the doll is basically armless and neckless, flopped forward like a drunk insect.
Over the years, she (he?) has nestled in the toy-boxes of my children, burrowed into storage bins for years at a time and slept in the back of my closet. But recently, Pinky has made a comeback.
For the past few weeks, my husband and Pinky have conspired to expose his (her?) true daily activities. Pinky shaves his (her?) face. Pinky reads my Kindle. Pinky uses my back-scratcher to relieve an itch. Pinky locates the word "panther" in the dictionary. I am stunned by this duet between Pinky and my husband. Because, if you were to peel me open to locate my heart, you would instead find this doll. Pinky is the visual representation of every experience I've had since that terrible year. Pinky is a reminder, an honoring of who I am - all of the parts, from the wilted, damaged limbs to the chubby, stained paws.
So what my husband has done in these past few weeks, as he partners with Pinky to leave daily Valentines on my bed, is more meaningful than he could ever have guessed.
Welcome back, Pinky. And thank you, Kevin. After twenty-six years of Valentines, this one tops them all.
ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME
Our second assignment in my historical fiction writing class is to move the first assignment into the 1950's. I chose to compose it as a response to the first - to describe my bedroom at age ten. But I also post it here in honor of V-Day and the upcoming One Billion Rising event this Thursday. I tend to allude to the violence I experienced as a child rather than writing about it head on and that's true in these pieces too. I think, as women, we have all experienced some form of violence. There are the more subtle jeers and sexual innuendos from male strangers and co-workers to outright forms like rape, assault, molestation and murder. I'm not ready or I don't feel entitled to hang my own detailed experiences out like shingles as they are no more or less important than any other woman's. But I will honor them by acknowledging that I am one of one billion women rising above the violence and today, I intend to dance. Happy Valentine's Day.
To
imagine the room I slept in at age ten if it had been 1950, instead of 1970, I
would have to both resist and utilize the sepia toned images of my mother’s
childhood photographs. I’d have to fight
against them because the colors they conjure imply something less real than the
rainbow burst of my 1970’s bedroom. But
their content would be perfect as a primary source.
Instead of the
gingham bedspread across my twin mattress, I would have had a white terry loop
woven blanket with knotted fringe just like my mother and her five sisters had
on each of their small beds. The mattress and box spring I slept on, were
it twenty years earlier, might have included a wooden frame with thin spires on
all four sides. Or, during the baby boom
of the 1950’s, I might have had a room packed tight with the matching beds of
my siblings. My parents, both born in
the 1950’s, had five and twelve siblings respectively.
The
sky blue painted walls of my 1970’s room might have been pasted in pink damask
paper in 1950. And instead of that loud
shag carpeting, my floor would be bare except for an oval knotted rug. An article on carpeting in the 1950’s,
insists that post war families could rarely afford wall-to-wall carpeting, perhaps my family would be careful with their money.
But more than my
room might have been different. My
mother was seventeen when she discovered she was pregnant with me. Had
my parents met in the rigid 1950’s rather than the sexual revolution of the
1960’s, I might never have existed at all.
But I know from studying and teaching women’s history that had my mother
become pregnant just after World War Two, my parents would have been swayed by
a different set of social constructs. They
were more likely to have married before I was born and probably would have tried
harder to patch their opposite personalities together and assemble it into
something called “nuclear.”
Yes, it definitely would have
been nuclear.
But
maybe they had money. My father was a
veteran after all. He’d have
qualified for a GI loan, put a down payment on a small suburban home and took
on the upstart role so many men did when they filched the jobs from the Rosies
after the war. In that case, my room
might have had a vanity to sit in front of, the top littered with tiny bottles
of perfume and pale pink curlers. That
room would have smelled like talcum powder and a 1950’s mother might have swept
through it every week, cleaning it from tail to tip.
In
place of the sodden prom dresses in my closet, I’d have flouncy new dresses
that fit, and were fit to wear in public.
The stuffed animals would still line the shelves. But in the 1950’s, my collection might have
included a few porcelain dolls. And the
grimy fingers of other children might never have loved these toys. Their colors might be a host of pastels
rather than primary, and perhaps I wouldn’t have felt such a desperate need for
them to prove I was worthy of my peer’s approval.
But
most important, we would never have lived in California. (My father hated the sunshine and the pretense
he saw there.) So, in 1950, I might have made it home safely. And The Color Purple would have been someone
else’s story.
