Wallflower
an excerpt

My parents were an unlikely couple. He was of cultured stock. She was Boston Irish German Jew Catholic. His parents were educated. Hers were a cabby and a seamstress. He ran away with his best friend from a private college in Indiana to be a beat poet in Boston. She found her way to Beacon Hill by going her own way. She was an 18 year old knock-out beauty. He was a funny looking, balding, pot-bellied 19 year old.

Knowing what I know of them, I am shocked and amazed that these two people ever even spoke to each other, nevermind married and made babies together.

But talk they did, and at some point Dad got Ma up onto a Fenway area rooftop and my sister sparked into being. They married, of course, single parenthood being a sure pathway to pariah-hood in 1961.

The priest refused to marry the young sinners in the sanctuary, so vows were exchanged at the now defunct altar rail instead. A sign of things to come, perhaps. Pictures show my mother's six months pregnant belly proudly poking out, her satin dress smooth and snug over the future daughter, and my father looking like the prize dork of the decade with that shit-eating grin, the black horn rimmed glasses, and his shiny $20 suit.

The honeymoon is shrouded in mystery. I was always afraid to ask.

A few years later, I am born in Chicago, we return to Boston, and within a year the marriage is over. I've always joked that while Bron got them together, I got them away from each other.

***

It's Christmas and I am still a year old. There aren't many gifts, but they are marvelous. My sister points me to the small canister of brightly colored blocks and tells me that these are mine, little blocks for the little girl. She points at the big box of big wooden blocks and claims them as hers, with typical older sibling greed. Both sets are actually for both of us. Forty years later, we remember The Blocks with great fondness and sometimes talk about the Christmas that we got them.

***

A year has passed. We live somewhere else now - a foster home. The land of Jungle Jim. He reeks of beer. He is cruel to my beloved Bron, sitting her down in his nasty smelling chair and screaming at her for things she didn't do. I want to protect her, keep her safe, kick him, stop him, kill him, but if I move he will turn on me, instead. I am silent, terrified, upset, and helpless.

In the kitchen he feeds me sips of beer from a spoon, laughing when I get drunk and fall down.

It's night, and I wake up, wet. I know that my sippy cup of water has popped open, but Jungle Jim will think that I peed my bed and it will be my turn in the chair. I sob silently, but not all that silently, as Peggy wakes up, holds me until I am calm, then changes me and my crib. Back to sleep I go.

I wake up in the morning, wet. I peed.

***

I'm older. We're back with our Daddy now, and Mama Jeanne and our new sisters, Janine and Jane. Andi is a year older than me, Alice a year younger. Mama Jeanne and Daddy love their four girls.

There's a fight in the kitchen. Which of the four of us gets that last bowl of Captain Crunch? Our yelling wakes up Daddy and he solves the crisis - he eats it. A memory all four of us still have. The injustice of it all! It was mine! No, mine! Mine! MINE!

It's bedtime and Daddy has me on his hip, carrying me to bed.

"Carry me like a baby, Daddy!"
"Okay, Schmoo."

And I float to bed wrapped in the magic carpet that is my Daddy's arms.

My birthday, I am four years old. We all watch as Daddy assembles a dollhouse for me. It has five rooms, two stories, and a red door, and I love it so very much.

Summer, and we are playing "store" with Tara. Tara runs the show, not allowing "the babies" (Jane and I) to do much of anything. I yell and kick and cry, then turn away to sit by the wall and play in the dirt, a little wallflower.

Autumn and Daddy and Mama Jeanne are walking down Beacon Hill with us. Jane and I swing on an iron gate, laughing. It's all fun and games until somebody loses a thumb tip. Jane screams, bleeding, and I know that this is my fault, I hurt my AJane. I will carry this sad feeling of guilt and remorse for my whole life, even though nobody blamed me. I blamed myself.

We've moved. Our new house is huge and beautiful, an old Victorian manse in Newton, at 49 Carlton Street. I know the address because I watch as Daddy screws new number plates to the porch. Life is full of golden days.

***

Mama Jeanne, Jane, and Janine are gone. I don't understand why they left me. It must be my fault, something I did. I forget my toilet training and wear diapers again, even though I'm a big girl of four. My bed is wet each morning. I guess I'm just a pissed off little girl.

Whenever I meet a new woman, I ask her

"Are you my Mommy?"
"No, honey."

Mother hunger is something I will always feel on some level, and always understand in others. Later in life this empathy will bring me great happiness, but right now, at four years old, it only hurts and confuses. I want my Mommy. I want Mama Jeanne. I love them, and I miss them.