Sunlight on My Shadow (13 page)

Dad said he hated to eat and run, but they had a long trip ahead of them. He thanked Helen and Ed for taking me in. Ed said, “Think nothing of it, John. It’s our pleasure.”

Then Ed turned to me and said, “We’ll have a lot of fun, won’t we, Judy?”

“Yep,” I said, like a parrot trained to speak.

When I hugged Mom good-bye, she told me to be sure to help Helen around the house and to pick up after myself.

Of course I would do that. I might not do it at home, but I knew enough to do it here. My breath shortened when I said goodbye. I could feel the tears welling up so I said it quick, before I started blubbering like a baby. I was a grown girl now, wasn’t I? I didn’t like being left with strangers, but they weren’t throwing off any disgusted glares at me or anything. They were nice and polite and pretended like they didn’t even see that I was a young kid with a telling protrusion. I heard the car pull out of the driveway. It was still raining outside.

Helen pushed the chairs around the table and said, “Let me show you to your room, Judy.”

We walked down the hallway lit by a light bulb hanging from a wire. I peeked in as we walked past their bedroom on the right. Under normal circumstances it would have inspired cheer, with the crocheted roses hanging from the yellow spread and the matching lace curtains. A photograph of their youthful days hung in the hallway. Ed looked even skinnier then, and Helen had a 1920s hairdo with spit curls pasted to her cheeks. They weren’t smiling; they looked like airbrushed statues, serious and alert. Then we passed the bathroom, decorated in a muddy pink. A family of porcelain ducks lined the back of the gray speckled counter. A mauve shag rug was strapped to the toilet seat and its twin was set in a horseshoe embrace around the base of the stool.

“You can use this bathroom, Judy.”

When we got to the end of the hall, Helen flipped the light on and extended her arm to point the way. “Just make yourself at home, and please help yourself to the refrigerator at any time. I emptied out the drawers and closet in here so you could have a place for your things. Go ahead and get settled in and let me know if you need anything, okay?”

I heard Helen’s footsteps go back down the hall. I sat on the bed. So this was it: my home away from home. It was strikingly quiet here. I heard the heat kick on but it didn’t seem to be blowing much warmth. The room wasn’t exactly girly. There was a bass mounted on a pine board, his tail swished in a stiff position, and it was too shiny for him to look real. Why did they put that red-fly-hook in his mouth? To make him look like he was caught this morning? I had little appreciation for taxidermy art. I just couldn’t look the fellow in the eye, afraid I might see the pain of him being ripped from the waters. The view out the window was more appealing. Jack pines and blue spruce as far as you could see; tufts of brown grass sprouted from the pine-needle floor. I thought I might see a deer if I stood still long enough.

The quiet felt good. I was relieved that I didn’t have to put my brain in a cramp, scrambling for the right words to say. I felt like an eyesore those days, an imposter in my own body. Helen was cordial but businesslike. I wondered what they thought of this pregnant teenager who had been deposited into their living space.

I settled back on the bed and recalled the life I left behind. I was a Regina girl, one of the crowd. When the bell rang to change classes, we hustled to our lockers and waved hello to friends in the hall with a “How’s it goin’?” This place was strikingly quiet: no hall chatter or hurry here, just the sound of the heat kicking on and an occasional scuttle from the woods. Squirrels maybe. I felt chilly and got up and wrapped Mom’s old sheared raccoon coat around my body. The silk lining felt smooth on my skin and the fur soft, supple, and warm. It smelled like Mom’s perfume, Channel Number 5. I inhaled to get her smell. The heat from my body swirled warmth within the fur. I moved my green school bag over by the desk and put the purple velvet case with my paints and projects on the floor by my bed.

The bifold closet doors squeaked, and a whiff of mothballs burned my nose. The smell reminded me of Nanny and Deds’s place. Deds was my ancient godmother, who lived in an attic apartment above Uncle Clare’s house. You got the fumes from the mothballs the moment they opened the door to let you in, and then you had to walk one foot in front of the other to weave around the chairs and tables so you could sit down. It was always very warm up there: comforting at first on winter days and then stifling as your body got used to it.

When I was little, Mom and Dad took me to visit. I would sit quietly on a tapestry footstool while they all talked, twitching with boredom because I had come to expect some kind of gift from Deds and hoped she would get to it. After I started sweating from the heat, Deds would get up and say, “Let me see what I can find here for you, my little Judy.” And she would search around in her dresser drawers until she came up with a miniature bottle of perfume or a ruby-studded pin. If she couldn’t find anything, she would give me a flowery greeting card with five bucks folded inside—a fortune!

I slid my brown leather suitcase over to the closet, opened it, and hung up my expectant clothes. The pregnant undies looked huge: no hip hugging briefs for me. I folded four pair and stashed them in a pile of strikingly clean whiteness inside the maple chest of drawers.

After the first week, I found a manila envelope on my bed from Regina Dominican, Wilmette, Illinois. I rubbed my hand over the return address, like I could be there for a minute. Just a few days ago this envelope was sitting on some teacher’s desk at my school. I smelled it, hoping for a whiff of the cafeteria or the newly waxed floors in the hallway, but there were no trailing smells, just the generic smell of office paper.

Right now my friends would be eating lunch, talking and acting things out, like how Sister used her pointer to tap the geometry theorem on the board, or gossiping about the crazy way Sally Short wore her hair. Like sap from a maple, pangs of longing dripped the life out of me. To be with a friend or two, how glorious! To laugh with them: food for my starving soul.

At Regina we were served cafeteria style, grabbing a tray and sliding it along the silver rails until we reached the main-course section. You told the cafeteria ladies what meal you wanted and they dished it out in uniform portions. You couldn’t mix and match. For instance, you couldn’t have lasagna with carrots, because carrots only came with the roast beef and mashed potatoes.

They only offered milk to drink, but you could buy a Coke in the vending machine in the hall. Before I got pregnant, the food tasted tinny; then, when I was nauseated, it tasted like cardboard. When I got over that, it tasted hearty, warm, and uncommonly delicious. Lunchtime was my favorite part of the school day. We all sat together, Annie, Jane, Carol, and I. On a good day, I cracked a joke that made everyone laugh. I suppose that was why I liked my friends: they laughed at my jokes.

I felt sorry for the girls who ate alone or changed seating locations with every meal: they were the unpopular ones. We called them queer, which just meant any kind of different. I was glad I had my spot and knew where I fit in. I hoped it would still be there when I returned in the fall. I had a lot ahead of me before I got back to the Black and White, aka Regina. Rah rah the Black and White! These were our school colors and heavily fortified because our nun teachers wore the Black and White on a daily basis.

After I had developed my “problem,” I had a hard time concentrating on schoolwork. My grades went from Bs to Cs. At test time, I couldn’t remember the lessons. School was just a foggy mess riddled with fear.

Even so, I took the ACT for college in March. I didn’t seem to have enough time to finish the reading portion, so I left a lot of it blank. On math I forgot some important formulas and blanked out in my panic of forgetfulness. Then I had to go pee in the middle of the test, but they wouldn’t let you escape. Not for a minute. Did they think you would find the answers in the privy?

I sat on the bed and opened the Regina envelope. “Well, kid, the fun is over,” I said to the corduroy spread, as I spilled the packet onto the bed. There were some algebra worksheets, a paper I had to write for civics, and some reading assignments in French. I wondered if the nuns really believed Dad as they gathered my assignments for the week. What if they knew the real story and were just playing along?

I couldn’t take it just now. I set the schoolwork aside, lay down on the bed, and closed my eyes. Sleep would let me escape the worry of whether I could figure out how to do my homework without being in class, and the worry of what they knew about me back at school.

I fell asleep and slipped into a familiar dream.

I was behind the wheel and following the road signs. It was urgent that I waste no time in getting there. Where? I don’t know. But the task was to be on time. Wind from the left side of the car buffeted the wheels, so I had to correct the steering to stay on track. I came to a T in the road. I tried to go left, but the wheel spun like toy and the car kept going straight. I pulled the wheel frantically right, then left, just trying to get it to go either way, until I glided off the road. I put the car in reverse to get back on the road, but my eyes saw black. I kept blinking to focus. I drove backward, looking into space like a blind person until I felt the gravel under the wheels and knew I was back on the road. I powered the car slowly forward, and came to a junction. I pressed the brakes to slow the car, but they were soupy mush. I pressed harder, pumping the brakes, but the car just kept on rolling ahead.

I woke up frazzled and tired. The sun was setting and an orange glow lit the pines in the yard. I rolled over in the bed. My back felt like knives were pinging across my backbone. The skin on my tummy was dry and itchy and stretching thin. Well, I supposed I would start the homework tomorrow. Then I heard Helen call out from the hallway, “Judy, dinner is ready.” It smelled like she had made fried chicken again.

Now I was going out, like people do. Helen’s blue Buick steered weird in reverse, so I got a little close to the edge of the gravel driveway as I backed it out. It was refreshing to be free. I had my purple velvet case with my paints and thought maybe I could find a lake scene to inspire a Renoir. If I could transfer the beauty of the sun glistening off the waves or the birds swooping onto my canvas, I could feel nature, be closer to it. I meandered past a farm. Mom would have loved it … cow poop galore. I turned down a gravel road that ended in an empty lot on the side of a lake. The wind was causing white caps on the lake and foam settled on the shore. I parked, propped the canvas on my belly, and gazed at the lake. I set the paints on the passenger seat and dabbled for a couple of hours. I was looking for that burnt sienna I saw in the crayon box, or that bright and vivid fuchsia, but my colors were muddy and drab and the lake looked like a cutout that I had pasted on the canvas. I gave up in disgust and headed home for dinner.

My painting was a perfect reflection of my mood and the mess I had made of my life. How could I project clarity and serenity when I was all jumbled up inside with shame, lack of confidence, and fear of what the next days would bring?

After dinner, I lay in bed and read my Sunday missal. I loved the feel of the soft leather cover and the gold glisten on the page edges. I read the Latin responses to the Mass and remembered how back home I usually couldn’t wait for the service to be over so I could get back home to call someone to do something. Even so, I missed going to Mass; I missed the sweet smell of incense and the people rustling in their seats. I turned the delicate pages of my missal softly and I found comfort as I mumbled the words. I didn’t know what they meant, but to me they meant familiarity and the things we said in God’s house.

I questioned my ability to maintain self-control and believed I was seriously lacking in that department. It started back in second grade when Sister gave me a black mark for “maintains self-control.” I guess I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. If this personality flaw reared its ugly head when I was seven, it was a six-headed monster by the time I turned sixteen and got myself pregnant. I busted right through the façade of self-control, leaving in my wake tiny pieces of rubble, strewn about like shrapnel.

For redemption, I decided to follow a scheduled regimen. This included a daily low-calorie menu, homework, and a nap, all to be followed at specific times of the day, just like class changes at school.

The Diet: Dr. Keller said I should be very careful about eating so that I didn’t gain too much weight. If I did, he said, I would never get it off again. I weighed 105 pounds until I was inflicted with the expanding belly. I knew if I came home fat, people would think that I looked too healthy and plump to have had a serious illness like nephritis. So I set myself on a diet. I had coffee and oatmeal for breakfast. From about 10:30 till noon, I looked at the clock every ten minutes to see if it was time for lunch yet. At 12:00 sharp, I put a pot of water on the stove and sat there watching, waiting for the bubbles to break loose from the bottom of the pot. Once they rose, I plopped one—oh, how I wanted two—measly hot dog in the water and let it roll for a drawn-out five minutes. I had my plate ready, loaded with a healthy squirt of ketchup. Once out of the pot and on my plate, I cut the dog into tiny pieces so I could get the maximum ketchup-dipping action. For an afternoon snack, I had a half cup of cottage cheese; for dinner, it was one tiny helping of each thing that Helen cooked. I’d refuse the offers for creamy Wisconsin ice cream. The only time during the day that I wasn’t ravenous was the hour that followed eating.

After a week of my gourmet hot dog lunches, Helen became alarmed.

“Judy, you need to eat something more. How about some potato soup or some mac and cheese?”

“No, thank you.”

The following day, Helen glanced at my empty plate with the left-over smear of ketchup and said, “How about some of these delicious, fresh cheese curds and some saltine crackers?”

“Thanks, but I already ate and I’m full.”

The next day, when she offered me her homemade chocolate-chip cookies, I had to halt the advances, so I said, “No, thanks. The doctor said I should watch it so I don’t gain too much weight.”

“Oh, I see,” said Helen.

The day after that Helen must have forgotten: she offered me some butter brickle ice cream after I had inhaled my hot dog. I didn’t have to answer this time: Ed came to my defense.

“Fergodsakes, Helen, leave her alone. She’s following the doctor’s orders.” Ed had a way with Helen. That put a stop to the offerings. I followed the starvation diet religiously. My secret depended on it.

The Homework: I always did that from 12:30 to 3:30. I read and reread the assigned chapter in Algebra II, but they always stuck some questions in from another part of the book and I couldn’t figure out how to do those. I knew I was winging it, but I sent my lessons back to Regina once a week and hoped they would have mercy on me. It took a couple weeks to get anything returned, and by then I had forgotten the lesson and didn’t feel like going over the red corrections.

The Naps: 3:30 was my favorite time of day. Once my head was on the pillow, I slipped into a free world: free of the nagging dread, no matter that I replayed trauma in my dreams. It still was a relief from having to engage socially with Helen and Ed and having to figure out my crappy homework. I didn’t feel guilty about napping. It was something Dad relished and did when he could. I took it that napping was not a sign of laziness, but rather a time to replenish the soul and a privilege. Later in life, spouses would coin the term “Afflicted with LSD,” Liautaud Sleep Disorder, because napping is a family tradition.

The days in the country whizzed by like time in a dentist’s chair. The purple pasque flowers came into bloom and now lined the backyard deck. My soul filled with that springtime longing for the lazy, hazy days of summer. I ached for the time when I could leave this prison my body had put me in. I flashed back to last summer: waking up drowsy and thinking I had to get up and get ready for school and then, like a warm liquid, the reality of the start of summer vacation erupted through my body and I knew I could lie there as long as my heart desired. I’d watch the wind blow on the trees outside my window and the puffy clouds drift by. How I loved summer! I felt the warm breeze on my face from the open window, smelled the newly mown grass. The curtain rings tinkled with the breeze like bell chimes.

Then I’d roll over and go back to sleep and dream about Jim Bowley or Mark Edwards or some other popular boy who didn’t notice me in my waking hours. When I awoke, I’d call Jane or Annie and find out what’s up. Sometimes we would take a trip to Old Orchard Mall or just hang out at McDonald’s or drive over to the Valley Lo Country Club and go swimming. I was usually only home a week or so before we would all head up to spend the rest of the summer at Bond Lake, but those few days at home with my friends were golden.

One day I was lying on my bed getting ready to take a nap when I overheard Helen talking on the phone. “Judy is a sweet girl, but she hardly ever says a word, unless you ask her a question. I hope she isn’t too lonely. I suppose she misses her friends. She just doesn’t eat enough. One hot dog is not enough to support a growing baby. I worry about her.” I was mortified that Helen thought I was too quiet. I was hoping she didn’t notice, but the shame of my condition paralyzed me and I knew that anything I had to say was irrelevant.

I’ve never been in jail, but I can imagine the similarities. Unlike jail, the conditions here were comfortable. I had a nice room, a clean bathroom, and fresh air at my disposal. But similar to jail, I was on a schedule and I couldn’t be with my friends. I wanted to know who was going out with whom and what events were going on at Regina. I didn’t have anyone my age to talk to, and it seemed that these were the only people who brought out my real self. These days I was just a shell of a girl trying to pass the time without death by boredom.