Hurricane Betsy
Your father gets offered a teaching job in Baton Rouge, nine hundred miles south, and takes it.
Hurricane Betsy arrives when you’re about four. The worst hurricane in forty years, say the news reports. Fred and I find this real funny, since it hits us in Louisiana not long after your lengthy tantrum period has finally come to an end. We lose power for several days, a couple of small trees, but we’re lucky overall. You imagine, based on your knowledge of The Wizard of Oz, that your house could up and fly away with you in it and land somewhere else, that this might be exciting, like, what if it landed in New York City, where Mommy keeps going? You don’t have any clear picture of New York at this point, though I’ve sent you a copy of Eloise, so you more or less imagine your house blowing onto the top of the Plaza Hotel, and you and Mommy and Daddy together again, everything pink and stripey and happy and togethery. Your father explains to you the difference between a hurricane and a tornado, what the winds and rains are capable of doing. A flat, wet house does not sound so great.
I’m going back and forth between there and New York often during this time, but your dad takes good care of you while I’m away. When you’re not at school, he’s on the floor of your bedroom pretending to be the mommy in the kitchen with no complaint, and knowing him, no concern at all about the irony of that; he’s at the edge of your bed reading you books, there are never enough books, he reads you the same books over and over, The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, Hop on Pop, gets you new books from the library every week. You ask for one more book every night and he reads one more and you ask for one more again and he reads one more again and if you wake up from a bad dream, which happens often, because sometimes he lets you watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (just because the sounds of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin’s names please you), even though you don’t understand most of what the show is about and the overall tension level makes you dream that you’re being chased through your kindergarten by Soviet spies, he comes and sits with you in the dark and tells you that all Soviet kindergarten spies have been apprehended by Solo and Kuryakin, not to worry. He takes you to the zoo, he brushes your hair, he makes sure you brush your teeth; he’s not so good at doling out punishment, but generally you don’t need too much of that. He writes me to say that you’re the best, brightest daughter ever, and that you learn to read when you’re three, can’t get enough of it. You write me letters like this (transcribed by your father, of course):
Dear Mommy,
I can only write the alphabet letters now but I can read! I sound out the words and Daddy is happy. We read all day. I am a big girl now. Daddy says so. Daddy plays kitchen with me and puts my bathing suit on me and turns on the sprinkler outside and I run in it. I hope New York is fine.
Love,
Betsy
That Ain’t Right
One afternoon when you’re about five, you’re next door at your friend Linda’s house making a fort out of blankets and sofa cushions that is intended to be a home in which you are the dad. You have volunteered to be the dad, even though Linda says she was going to make you be the dad anyway because House decides, Betsy. You start to say why you actually want to be the dad; Linda almost asks why any girl would want to be the dad and not the mom, which is obvious to you but not to her, but she stops herself because she doesn’t want to risk you changing your mind and then having to explain to you what House decides means. Linda is a nice Southern girl, and you are also a Southern girl now, technically, though you were born a Yankee; maybe that’s a mixed blessing, but of the two I think it’s the better. You make pretend dinner in the kitchen, pretend pork chops and pretend frozen peas from the pretend refrigerator (a scratchy sofa cushion, set on end) while Linda pretend vacuums the floor. What would you like for dinner, dear? Linda asks, and you put on a deep voice and say I’m making pork chops and peas, and Linda says What, no, the daddy doesn’t make the dinner, and you say in your own voice Sure he does, and Linda is now wondering if you live in Backwards World, says No, the daddy goes to his work and then when he gets home he sits down at the table and asks where dinner is. This is the first you’ve heard of this; there may have been a moment when some version of this happened back in Binghamton, but you have no recollection of it. Your dad teaches music at college, which to you means he does this by some kind of telepathic singing magic, because he is almost always home when you’re home. Yes, you do go to kindergarten, so you don’t know that he is gone for some of those hours, but he is there to make oatmeal or eggs and toast in the morning, and he is there to take you to school, and he is there to pick you up from school, and he is there to play with you after school, and he is there to make dinner, give you a bath, read you books at bedtime, tuck you in, come back in when you have nightmares, and he’s there for more of the same every other day of the week. What? You look at Linda like she’s crazy. Nuh-uh, you say, Yuh-huh, she says Ask anyone, and you say I don’t have to ask anyone, I know what’s true, and she says You don’t! and you say I do too! My daddy makes the dinner! and Linda says No he does not, and you say He does too! and Linda asks Well why doesn’t your momma make dinner? That’s the right way, and you tell her your mommy goes away to work, and Linda shakes her head and says Oooh, like this is just terrible, says That ain’t right. You say Don’t say that! She says Well it ain’t. The momma takes care of the babies and the daddy goes to work. You say Shut up! kicking down the cushion that’s holding the whole structure in place. Linda says Oooh, that’s not nice, I’m telling. You stop yourself from saying she’s lucky you didn’t kick her. You say Well, I’m telling, too, even though as soon as you say it you’re not quite sure what it is you might be telling.