Where’s all this coming from?
I told her everything, about Jennifer and the sixty acres, about her richie rich parents from down on the coast. The whole time Dawn kept nodding and listening calmly even as I worked myself into a bigger and bigger stink. By the time I’d told her all there was to tell, I wasn’t sure if I was more likely to punch something or break down and sob.
I know you have a lot of hate in your heart right now, she said. You’ve got as much right to it as anyone ever did. But my hope is that eventually you’ll learn to let go of the anger. Nothing good’ll come of it. That’s what I believe, anyway. All the rage I had inside of me, I’ve tried to give it up.
How could you? After everything he did?
He’s gone now, Ellie. Hating him would only mean giving him more time and energy than he already took from me while he was alive.
You don’t still love him, do you?
Dawn laughed and stretched her legs out over the grass. Honestly, Ellie, I’m not sure I ever loved him.
Then why did you marry him?
Lord, she said. I don’t know if I should be talking with you about this. You’re still young. I wouldn’t feel right if I made you cynical about romance all together.
My father had five wives, I said. You think I’m not already soured on Prince Charming?
Fair enough, girl. Fair enough.
Just tell me the truth. Was it like Katie said? Was his money the only draw?
No, Ellie. Money helped, but it wasn’t the only thing. If money was all I was after, I could’ve made it a lot easier as a sex worker.
You mean a whore?
I don’t like that word, but yeah. If I’d played it smart, I could’ve had a lot more fun than I did being married to your dad, and I’d have had control over my own income.
They why didn’t you? Be a sex worker, I mean.
Dawn sighed. Like I said, money wasn’t the only thing your dad had to offer. Sex worker or not, there was still a chance I’d have wound up raped if I’d kept on living like I was.
My mouth fell open before I knew what it was doing. Couldn’t be helped. Rape wasn’t a word that Mama used herself, and she wouldn’t have tolerated hearing it used inside the house. On the TV news, they used violated instead. As in, Unidentified woman found violated and murdered in tavern restroom outside of Clovis. All over the valley, in the country dives and back roads between towns, there was always some fresh violation going on.
You were homeless, weren’t you? Before you met him?
I wandered for a long time, she said. These days lots of people have to wander to find work. The single men have it easier than the women. They can land jobs as pickers or fruit packers on farms like this. But for a young girl without a family, and without any money, there’s not much this valley has to offer. Besides the hope of finding a man and settling down.
I know what you mean, I said. Before Mama was married, she wandered for two whole years starting when she was seventeen. She met Elliot at a state-run gas station near Willows. She was hitchhiking south and he was the first person to offer her a ride.
That sounds like him.
She wasn’t always homeless, though. My grampa was in the American Army before disbandment. I never got to meet him, but Mama says he was an important officer who was stationed in Alaska and Poland. She used to travel around with him when she was little, before my grandma died. Then they moved back to Chico, and grampa got cancer too. I don’t think Mama knew what to do after they were both gone, when she was all alone for the first time.
Being orphaned when you’re young is never easy, Dawn said. Now imagine it happening at the same time your country is coming apart, when there are no jobs to speak of and everyone you know is going bankrupt.
I know it was hard, I said. I can see the toll it took on her all these years later. Still, it just seems like a bad reason to marry somebody.
It is. As bad as any. But until you’ve walked these dusty roads for miles at a time, and fallen asleep clutching the knife in your pocket, there’s no way you can know what you’d do if you found yourself in the same spot.
I get it. She did what she had to to survive. But what about after that? She was married to him eighteen years. Eighteen years and all she could think to do was hide away in bed with her sadness. Never once tried to leave him, never told him to stay away. She even stood up for him against us girls, any time we got upset that he was gone. Your daddy has to travel to make money for us, she’d say. Right up until the day she found out about his other wives.
You talk like she had so many other choices, like she’s weak for not leaving him a long time ago.
She’s my mama, I said. I know she’s weak.
I think I surprised her with that. Dawn opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but instead closed it again and looked down at the grass. It’s easy for me to forget you’re still a child, she said finally. Until you go and say something like that.
It’s not childish to call it like I see it. If it’s not weakness that’s kept her here all this time, then what is it?
Love. Love for her babies. Fear, of what would happen if she had to try to support you all on her own, knowing how she gets when the depression takes over.
Love and fear. Is that all I have to look forward to when I get older?
I wish I could tell you it’s easy to pick up and leave when the situation turns ugly. But there’s a whole lot of people in this state who’d try to make things difficult for a single mother and her children. You and your sisters might never fully appreciate just how much worse women have it nowadays than in my mother’s day, or in my grandmother’s, even. We’re well into the twenty-first century now, but for the women of San Joaquin it might as well be the 1950s. My mom used to talk about birth control like it was a carton of milk, like when the time came she could walk into any drugstore and get whatever she needed to protect herself. These days you could probably find it on the coast easy enough, but here in the valley you’d be more likely to get arrested than to find a pharmacist who’d be willing to help you out.
In that instant it was too much to feel Dawn’s eyes on me, scolding me silently for making judgments about things I could only grasp secondhand. I started thinking about the pills Mama used to take to even out her moods, and how it became harder and harder for her to find them until finally she was forced to do without. And all the while the women at church said it was lack of faith that made her sad all the time. They laid hands on her and prayed that she’d take Jesus into her heart, as if that organ hadn’t been hurt enough by the other man in her life.
I’m never getting married or having kids, I said. Not even if I fall in love.
Dawn nodded slowly. That’s your right, she said. But folks’ll make you pay a price for it all the same. They’ll call you a spinster and a dyke.
I don’t care. People can say what they want.
They will. And if you’re half as strong as you think you are, you’ll have to build up a wall against their b.s.
I know. I’ve already started.
I figured as much. Just be careful. Walls keep out more than just the bad. Day might come when you wish you’d let in more of the good.
We’ll see.
That’s right we will. In the meantime, don’t fault your mama for what she didn’t do. She’s lost so much already, she doesn’t deserve to lose your respect as well. Besides, she might surprise you one of these days.