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by N. M. Campbell
When my father came home with the news of where he had been stationed next, my mother was distraught. Flailing around the house, she tore at her clothing as if she had been paid to mourn at a funeral. She grasped at any excuse she could to stay behind in Virginia. She felt like she had blossomed into a magnolia.
She had survived too many moves already. Even though she was powerless to tell Uncle Sam no, she still stomped her feet. First, she used her favorite scapegoat. My beleaguered brother rolled his eyes from his corner of the couch.
“He’s graduated high school,” my father responded. “He’ll stay behind with friends and work a job at the beach. Then he’s going to school in Florida, whether you like it or not.”
Appealing to my father’s bottom line, my mother persisted. “We could have maintained an address here for him and gotten separation allowance if I stayed behind, too,” she said. “He could get a better education for less at Tech or Chaar-lottesville. But noooo! You keep putting into his head this bullshit of ‘going away and being a man’ and ‘I joined up when I was your age.’” She code switched regularly between her affectation and her real voice.
My father implored, “Can we focus on our daughter?”
“You adopted the fucker, remember? And you can get a bit more money off of him this summer. You’re welcome, by the way…” My brother had a nickel lining to the dark cloud he always was.
Then she tried to use me. “You know, the further South you go, the dumber they get. You really want your daughter in a school full of idiots?”
“Maybe she’ll skip ahead and be like that kid Webster…” My father leaned over from his perch on the couch, snapping his fingers in my face to distract me from my coloring. “Hey, baby, you know that little Black kid on TV? He’s smart! He wrote the dictionary.”
My mother did not correct him. She was likely too distracted that he had used the proper 1980s word rather than the slur he preferred. He often responded with such absurdism to frazzle her into silence. It was not until another duty station when touring Noah Webster’s home on a field trip that I realized I was duped.
To make the cross-country move, my father traded in her old sedan for a Dodge Caravan. Even trying to name the new minivan the Westward Wagon did little to fix his mistake. It had not been in my father’s purview to pick out a car—on account of his previous exercise in poor judgement.
To fit in with the boys on base in Virginia, he wanted a pickup truck. He had weighed the ramifications and chose, albeit unwisely: He did not know how to drive a manual. My mother, unfortunately, did.
By the time she got that import home in rush hour traffic, the stench of clutch was more acidic than the mechanic’s bill. A grand and a week later, she subjected my father to stick lessons. He was only permitted to learn from her, given that he had purchased a completely impractical car.
The only valuable upgrade in the minivan—dubbed the Shit-ward Wagon—was the stereo. The decrepit sedan had an 8-track player and the electric system was temperamental, so my mother slammed on the dashboard to compel the music to work. It was how she often managed things that did not behave. Therefore, to make this illicit new purchase more tolerable, my father took my mother to the Navy Exchange and bought her all the cassette tapes she wanted.
Moving day arrived. It was an especially dramatic parting from her new minions in Virginia. In her public voice, the imported magnolia dripped sweet nothings with every vowel and consonant extended as long as that hot summer’s day. Their chirping was punctuated with y’all’s and additional syllables never-a-seen in a word’s proper written form. After this extended farewell of far-too-forced sorrow, we started our four-day trek westward—in the Shit-ward Wagon.
My mother spent her time as she did on most road trips with my father at the wheel.
“Goddammit, get a license and then you can tell me how to fucking drive,” my father fired. My mother had not updated her license in decades, citing her newfound fear of photography. She had read somewhere that the flash steals your soul. The way she drove, however, made it suspect that she had ever had one at all.
“Go scratch, asshole!” My mother volleyed, “You’re being a left lane road hog. Who the hell are you to block traffic?” It had been a long match already. A young child, I had no choice. My brother, however, was almost a man. But an overly moody teenager, he was both friendless and unemployed, much to my father’s chagrin and my mother’s joy. These usual road trip antics lifted his spirits, at least.
We siblings watched as intently as if we were glued to a match at Wimbledon. From each our own bench seat, on the tube was a pair of dueling John McEnroes. Unlike the stiff upper lips that waggled in 1981, however, we had become accustomed to it for longer. This was our rhythm of the road. The cocker spaniel, perhaps the most logical of us all, leapt back and forth between rows seeking comfort. He was scared of all varieties of thunder.
“Go scratch your own ass,” my father lobbed, “If I want to block in this dipshit for cutting me off, I’ll do what I goddamn please. You’re not my fucking mother!”
“Good thing I’m not your mother. The woman looks like a horse.”
He could not retort. Her dead mother was a saint. Love game, Father Dearest. My mother lit another cigarette as he merged back into the right lane, giving a Bronx cheer to the car furiously speeding past.
But mostly, my mother sobbed. She wailed that we were going to the ends of the Earth because Uncle Sam said so again. I was angry at this uncle whom I had never met that took me away from all of my friends and into the Shit-ward Wagon. She lamented that we were going into a barren wilderness filled with guns and cockroaches. She also had a few inappropriate words for the native population—unfit to type.
“During the Depression, the whole state was a goddamn dustbowl and there was nothing but tumbleweed. It piled up so much it was like that time the snow was up to the windows in Little House on the Prairie. Oh my Gaaaaawd! We’re moving to the prairie with the cowboys and the Indians and the blood… Why the hell do we have to move here?!” During these conflated history lessons, her histrionic heart thudded against her chest.
Deep in the heart of Texas, however, it was mid-summer. With the hot, dry air, there were actual tumbleweeds rolling across the highways. At seven, I had imagined that they were monsters that could bust through your windows at night to smother you. Texans see them more as witches, but I am not from anywhere in particular.
If it were not the wind witches though, it might just be Son of Sam around the corner. My mother credited her long, wavy hair as why she had left Flushing, Queens in 1976. Her private voice never did.
Our first impression of our new hometown in Texas was on the Fourth of July. It was seemingly deserted save wind witches, though not the same accumulation as a winter in the Dakotas. My father pulled the minivan into a local grocery store parking lot to load up on provisions. As he often did, he chose wrong. This time, he picked the “ethnic” supermarket.
As my mother pushed the cart into the freezer section, before her sat frozen steer heads. It was a horrific sight for me, too. I remember their blue-white eyes and the little tufts of fur poking through the frost covered cellophane. Mostly, though, I felt smothered in the back of the minivan as she rocked and screamed, smushing my face into her thudding chest.
After being steered to the wrong store, my mother cried non-stop. Upon checking into the base motor lodge, her first action was to turn on the air conditioning. It was icy cold while she had what ranged from fits of rage to light whimpering. She watched cable news and rocked, her fat tears graying as she chain-smoked.
There were no straightjackets available on base. The morale of the troops started with a seemingly calm home front. Thus, my mother sat either inconsolably catatonic or explosive for weeks.
Before too long, we found a hacienda style house replete with tarantulas attracted to the ammonia on the constantly cleaned glass doors. Leaving my mother crying about the hairy beasts every morning, my father found friends on base to distract him. With his small pickup—for Texas, he went on long drives. He sputtered out of the driveway early for work every morning and he told most of the truth when he said he was jogging. If his home base was not fit, at least he would be ready to fight.
One morning, the other half of the truth sat next to him in the Datsun King Cab—his best friend and early morning exercise partner. For many months she had listened to his disgust. His world seemed to be going down the drain and pulling him down into the sewer was this sea witch affecting the morale of at least two troops.
As forecasted, the tide lapping on my father’s pier became choppy. One winter night, my mother turned on the air conditioner of the isolated rancher. This new house was tacky compared to the old, better house, I was told.
She plugged the drain and turned the cold-water faucet. As it dripped, she transferred batches of ice she had long since prepared from the garage freezer. One at a time, she carried her entire colorful set of Tupperware Astro Bowls. With one practically silent touch, she opened them and dipped their contents into the chilly water. She sat on the edge, gazing at her creation. Half filled with ice, she swirled her hand through the slowly filling waters. In her Arctic dreams, her icebergs crashed together and fell into whirlpools.
Her musings while watching the violent storm she was only just beginning were interrupted. “What in God’s name are you doing? Not again?”
Quick to her feet, she barreled through my father. Well-practiced, he extended his running-toned leg to trip her as she clambered through the hallway. Successfully hooked, my mother crashed into my door. It sprang open and cracked in two.
My room was drenched with light from the intrusion. Already awake, I had surrounded myself with a fortress of stuffed animals. I had sat waiting with my blanket over my head, hoping for a few more minutes of hot to make the future cold easier.
My velour hut did little to drown out the noise of a little piece of cellophane dancing from the air conditioning vent above my head. When she had turned it on, the flickering in the cold blast alerted me before my body started to shiver. I had known to expect it. Over breakfast that morning, they fought.
“You’re damn right I need a fucking shower. I just ran ten miles. What did you do today? Can’t I have one minute alone?”
“I took care of your fucking daughter. I didn’t have a minute alone all day yesterday either. You had duty, supposedly. Ten miles? Then what? ‘Stretching?’” Her cigarette ash fell into the Brunswick Stew.
“Hello, dingbat… She’s seven and she’s in school all day. Did you sit in class and take her notes for her? Then go wipe her ass for her when she needed to go potty?”
Interjecting with naivety, I yelled, “I can wipe my own ass, Daddy! Stop being mean!”
“This has nothing to do with you, young lady! Go to your room,” my mother snarled. Fleeing to her own room, she shoved me down the hallway and slammed her door behind her.
As I peeled myself up from the evenly vacuumed carpet, I noticed her secretaire rarely unlocked at the end of the hallway. I knew I had just enough time to steal one little piece of tape and install it undetected while they screamed behind closed doors.
That night, the next thing I remembered was sitting in some woman’s car, wet and cold. In my hand was my least favorite stuffed animal and my blanket was crumpled at my feet. Knowing at least one familiar thing around me, I unlatched my seatbelt and crawled into the floorboard. The woman reached over and switched the direction of the vents. It was the first time I had been driven in silence without trembling. As dawn loomed, I still felt cold.
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N. M. Campbell is an expatriated antiquarian bookseller living in the Netherlands in an old house filled with antiques and a library of books wafting vanilla and lignin. A fellow world-traveler, a rescued Maine Coon cat, permits people to live there. To read more, visit www.nm-campbell.com.
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