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TALKING GETS YOU NOWHERE by Deborah Batterman For the first two years of her life my daughter thought her name was Hep-me-rhonda. We were living in LA and I must confess I did listen to the Beach Boys a lot at that time. Kind of goes with the terrain, if you know what I mean. And there's something infectious about their music. It makes melancholy manageable. Their harmonies cut straight to the heart. Anyway, I like to cook and bake to music, and because her name is Rhonda, I'd find myself singing along when were in the kitchen together and her namesake song came on. Help me, Rhonda. Help help, Rhonda. She loved thinking she was helpful - mixing cookie batter, drumming on pots - which is obviously why she thought that was her name. Hep-me-rhonda, she'd say if you asked her name. I was so charmed, so in love, it never dawned on me to correct her. Until my mother came out for a visit. Rhonda was about to turn two. She was still calling herself Hep-me-rhonda. My mother asked me if I was raising a parrot, at which point we got into an argument. She was angry with me, a single mother, for not moving back to New York. She wanted to see her granddaughter more. She wanted - needed - to be helpful. Her help was the last thing I wanted. While we argued in the kitchen, Rhonda settled herself in the living room with her new teddy bear from FAO Schwartz. It was almost as big as her, and she began rolling around on the rug with it. Suddenly she comes running into the kitchen, dragging the bear. She points to a heart-shaped tag around the bear's neck. Rhonda, she says. Beaming. Bear name Rhonda. My mother's mouth dropped. She swore she did not know she had bought a bear named Rhonda. I think you have a genius - not a parrot - here, she said, kissing her granddaughter on the cheek. From that moment on Rhonda cut the Hep-me from her name, just kept repeating, Rhonda. Rhonda Rhonda. The more she said it, the more she did help me get him out of my heart. Him - who is this him that I helped get out of her heart? I have spent fourteen years - no, let me get this right - fourteen years, three months, and five days - of my life believing that there was no him - in her heart or anywhere. The him who would have been my father disappeared, so I was told, in the highlands of Costa Rica when she was three months into her pregnancy with me. He was a painter and a dreamer and had got it into his head that teaching illiterate children to draw would help them learn to read and write. He had a bit of the outlaw in him, too, I was told, and he took advantage of an illegal cash crop to fund his plan. The more I understood, the better I liked him. The first time I smoked pot (I took some buds from her private stash), it was his face I saw - an imagined face, since my mother said she had no photos of him. I saw eyes like a bear's, and a thick moustache I wanted to touch. His absence from my life became a presence of its own, a presence, I might add, that gave me a strong affinity for the renegade. I'm also told I have a talent for drawing.  It was the only way I could deal with it - his running out on me. I was angry, maybe even still reeling from the death of my best friend. There's probably a psychological term for what I did, a coping mechanism of sorts that allowed me to infuse love into the picture now taking shape. I want you to see this picture - really see it. Tell me if what I did was so wrong. Tell me if what I did was no different from what anyone else does. Stories are what we live by - isn't that right? How many of the stories we convey over coffee, or shots of tequila in the dim light of a bar are not colored by after-the-fact denouement? The story, in this particular case, was colored by my pregnancy, which I had not yet revealed to Jeremy, and was certainly not about to when he came home that day and said he wanted out. Here are the facts: I had stumbled into Los Angeles after spending six months in Costa Rica with my best friend Vicky. She had been there for several months before summoning me to join her. A painter, and a dreamer, she liked living out of the mainstream of what we call civilization. Those six months with her were the most carefree of my life, in some ways the happiest, and they came to a very abrupt end. The day I bumped into Jeremy at a café on Sunset Boulevard it was like coming home after a good acid trip gone bad. You can make all the jokes you want about displaced New Yorkers in LA, but this displaced New Yorker happened to be the very man I left behind when I headed for points south to hook up with Vicky. Seeing him, out of context like this and so out of the blue, was the kind of coincidence that really makes you think about destiny. I thought it must be a sign. Signs - I'll tell you what signs are. They're the things you see on the road - something I know a lot about. It was how I learned to spell. Stop. Yield. Caution. My favorite was Deer Xing - I'd poke my head out the window, imagining a deer leaping over the car the way cows jump over moons in nursery rhymes. My least favorite was Slow Children, and I have been personally responsible for decorating that sign to the point of making it unreadable in more than one locale. Monterey, Sacramento, Seattle - if there was a Slow Children sign within a block of where we lived, day by day, week by week, I turned letters into stick figures and flowers, abstract swirls and faces. It was outside of Chicago that I got caught red-handed. I was nine years old and we were living on a quiet street about forty-five minutes from the center of the city. I thought no one was watching. Out of the blue a man comes over to me, asks what I'm doing. The question was pretty stupid - it was obvious what I was doing - and I started to panic. Not so much about getting caught as about being approached by a strange man. Scream was what my mother told me to do if a strange man - or a woman - ever approached me. And run. Both of which I would have done, except that this man seemed to know where I lived. He seemed to know who my mother was. And he asked, Did you know you could get arrested for defacing public property? Next thing I know he's following me home. Next next thing I know he's living with us. Richie was his name. He bought me a baseball glove, taught me how to throw a ball - and catch one. He showed me how to make s'mores. He also played acoustic guitar. She loved the blues. He worshiped Bob Dylan. It did not take a lot for us to laugh. It did not take a train for me to cry, when she said we were moving. Again. A better climate in which to live - that's what she always said she was looking for. Free of ties and associations. I'm assuming you're smart and you have some insight into the human psyche. What is that supposed to mean - a better climate in which to live? Just what the fuck is she talking about? I could not stay in any one place for very long. Go ahead, tell me I was running - from something, from myself. LA, Monterey, Sacramento, Seattle, Chicago, all in the space of seven years. Tell me I was suffering from some acute form of anxiety manifesting itself as restlessness or the fear of getting too close to any man, again. To me it was more akin to that feeling of walking into a large, open room, and trying to find the right spot in which to settle myself. Some people like corners - right? Others prefer to be smack in the center of things - am I right? I could not figure out where I belonged anymore, and no place so far - Monterey, Seattle, Chicago, certainly not LA - felt right. I had been thrust into some kind of orbit the day I left New York, and I was still looking for a place to land. Alienated - isn't that the word you used to characterize my behavior when we started seeing you? Well now it should be obvious why I feel that way. I am the daughter of alien - right? I mean she did just say it - that she was looking for a place to land. The day we crossed the state line into Florida, I knew the spaceship - to my thinking at least - was about to come to a crashing halt. All I needed was a plan. The day we rolled into Orlando, I knew there was not much of a better climate in which to live. For me, at least. These were desperate times for me, and they required desperate measures. I was tired of reading road signs. Over and over again. Ever notice how cautionary they are? Or the primitive sign language they encompass? You could spend your life never talking to another person, if you wanted, just take the symbols and words of road signs as your means of communication. Anyone would understand. Rocky Road. Men at Work. Sharp Curve. Proceed with Caution. Railroad Xing. Do Not Stop on Tracks (duh!). Limited Sight Distance. Falling Rocks. Hidden Drive. The plan came to me while we were having dinner in the Sci-Fi Diner. Ever been there? They have it set up to look like a drive-in movie. It's one big room - dark, with a ceiling filled with stars and you eat inside these open-air cars that have built-in tables in the front and back seats. And you watch old Tom and Jerry cartoons along with these trailers to black and white fifties-type movies. Colossal Man. Horror at Party Beach. I think you get the picture. They all seemed pretty stupid to me. Anyway, we're sitting in a car, eating burgers, our eyes glued to the big screen at the front of the room. And she's just laughing her head off. They keep showing you the same trailers over and over again, so by the third time, she's sounding just like the man whose voice you hear directing your attention to "a normal, voluptuously beautiful woman who becomes a monster" in Attack of the 50-foot Woman and she's telling me how lucky those Cat Women of the Moon are, the ones who have never seen men. She's so engrossed, and I realize how easy my plan will be. First I move into the back seat of the car, so I'm not next to her. Then, while she's hee-hawing her head off, I slip away. I need to scare her by disappearing, for a short time. I need her to know I mean business. I have never, in my entire life, had a more frightening moment. I'm looking straight ahead at News of the Future, where they're showing this segment on "Bringing Up Baby." There's a nurse in a maternity ward in Budapest - why, Budapest, I have no idea - and she pushes a button, at which point you see a half-dozen babies lifted from their cribs on mats. It's feeding time, and these babies are fed from bottles kind of floating on strings. I turn to Rhonda, to see if she's amused by this at all. She's not there. I jump out of the car, run to the bathroom. She's not there. I ask the waitress - all the waiters and waitresses - if they saw a little girl leave. If they saw someone walk out with a little girl fitting her description. There is no way to keep me from panicking. The manager of the restaurant immediately gets on the phone. They have a policy at all these theme parks where they close the gates if a child is missing. I find that very small reassurance. They insist it really works. Assuming the child has not already been spirited out of the park. I scooted over to the Muppet 3-D Show. Nobody asks for tickets. Nobody asks for parents accompanying children when you're waiting in line. They just kind of push you along, till you're in the theater. If anybody even noticed that I was a nine-year-old by myself, nobody said a word. I made myself inconspicuous, maneuvered my way all the way to the front of the theater - it's assumed that kids can sit there safely without parents. And I rested my head on the seat back, enjoying immensely the sensation I was feeling. I told you - didn't I? - that I had a touch of the renegade in me. There's a point in the show when you're supposed to put on 3-D glasses they give you. If you do it before, everything just looks weird and blurry. But if you wait, like you're supposed to, you get cartoon birds flying right up to your nose and water is sprinkled on you from seemingly out of nowhere. Being fooled is a big part of the fun. I didn't know what I would do after the show, figured I'd just wander until I was ready to find her again, or let her find me. What I had not factored in was how quickly the Disney-MGM security machine is put into action. I can tell you this - that was the slowest exit from a show I have ever experienced. When a child is reported missing, everyone leaves the attractions single file. All children must be accounted for. I was an easy mark. I did not know whether to slap her or hug her when I saw her being accompanied by a security officer out of the Muppet 3D Theater. It was the place I waited, the place I believed she would be, assuming she hadn't been kidnapped. We drove home, not saying a word to each other, until she broke the silence. An apology was what I was expecting. Instead, I - the mother, mind you - got a lecture. About how she'd lived in seven different places (the first three a blur at this point) in the nine years of her life. About how she can never make any friends - real friends. About how she wanted a commitment - that was the exact word she used - to stay here in Orlando at least through middle school. That meant four years, at which point we could reevaluate the agreement. I had to laugh. I was essentially being blackmailed by my nine-year-old daughter: give me what I want, or I keep doing these disappearing acts. I tried to talk her into someplace less landlocked, but she was adamant. I could hardly blame her. What kid wouldn't want to live with theme parks right in her backyard? It was, I think, the happiest time of my life. My idea of a playground was not a sandbox with slides and monkey bars. No way. You wanna talk about perspective? You wanna know what trust is? Trust is that gut-sinking feeling you get when you're uphill on a roller coaster. The steeper the climb, the more time you have to think - to anticipate - even though you know that all the thinking, all the anticipating, is no hedge against the pure force of gravity. Believe me, I know. Splash Mountain. Thunder Mountain. Space Mountain, by far the best of the lot. It's the darkness that adds to the excitement. You know what's coming. And still, you're always sucked into that sensation of being on the edge of space and time. Some of my friends like the fancier roller coasters, the ones that turn you upside down. For my money, none of them holds a candle to Space Mountain. Having a mother who worked for Disney gave me a rare opportunity to take that ride as much as I wanted. I always brought along a friend. You could do a lot worse for a job than spend your days being Minnie Mouse, although I must confess there can be a burnout factor. It happened to one Goofy I knew. It was summertime, and those costumes can get pretty warm. A little girl comes over to take a picture with him. I think he'd posed for too many pictures that afternoon, and he hadn't taken enough of a break, for water at least. So the girl comes over, all giggly in a shy kind of way. Suddenly this Goofy just rips off his mask, starts running around in a circle - like a real dog - until he simply collapses on the pavement. The incident, as it really happened, never even made it to the local papers, that's how much control Disney has over Orlando. In any case, I hope the girl did not need too much therapy as a result of the incident. I think I was the best Minnie they ever had - I certainly lasted the longest - and I'll tell you why. Between shifts I practiced the art of dissociation. It's something I kind of grew into, not realizing it was a form of meditation. I'd go off, by myself, find a quiet place - yes, even in Disney World I could find a quiet place - and let everything around me become a soft haze of observation. It had the feel of a drug-induced experience, without the drugs. Nothing escaped my notice. It is so easy to be cynical - and believe me, I had those moments - when you're surrounded by throngs of people in Mickey Ears, holding Minnie dolls, wearing Goofy shirts, and all you can wish for, if you have any sense of social conscience, is death to the manipulative Disney machine. Until you see a fifty-five-year-old man whose body is a tattoo shrine to Mickey and friends. Your first impulse is to think he needs a lifetime of psychoanalysis, and there probably is some truth to that. But then you look at the only exposed part of his body not tattooed - his face - and judgment diverts itself, like light turning a corner. Do you know what I mean? What you thought you saw is not in fact what you see. Or, more accurately, that first impression of a hopelessly trapped boy gives way to the lasting image of a man who has worked hard at learning how to be free. All you have to do is look at his smile, watch how the tight corners of his mouth loosen when he comes face-to-face with his best childhood friend. Wanna see my tattoo? I used a friend's ID so I could get it. See the way the musical notes look like they're coming out of the mouth of the turtle? I was going to get a scorpion - my astrological sign - but the turtle looked better on my shoulder. It was the least I could do to annoy her for the way she fucked up my life. I knew she'd hate the idea of any needles being poked in me, but who cares? It's my body. It's my life - so twisted since Floyd sent us packing - to New York. You're probably thinking, like, what am I complaining about ? I mean we are back, aren't we? We lost what little we had because of Floyd. Ironic - don't you think? - that the one time I left a city not consciously leaving behind a man, it was a hurricane with a man's name that sent me packing. We could have stayed, found someplace else to live. But I saw this as a sign - - There she goes with her signs again - - One-hundred-and -fifty-mile-an-hour winds have a way of rattling you. Once the pounding and shaking are over, you see things more clearly than ever. It was time to go home. The tenant who had been living downstairs from my mother in the two-family house she owned in Brooklyn was leaving - - You see those ruby red slippers - don't you? You see her trapped inside a dream - don't you? - eyes closed, heels clicking three times - Only I didn't factor in how wrong Dorothy had gotten it - you know, about no place being like home. Thirteen years away will alter your perception of home. I'd been back for visits over the years, but mostly too preoccupied with my next destination to notice the changes. The neighborhood had changed - a euphemism for getting a little rundown - and that, in and of itself, saddened me, almost to the point of depression. Do you know what I mean, when that thing you called home, that safe haven, does not make you feel secure? Then there was the house itself, the house in which I had grown up. Is it possible that houses, like the widows who inhabit them, shrink in size? I started having nightmares. Mostly about Vicky. Vicky carried herself with a certain sparkle - a tilt to the eyebrow, a way of moving that pulls you into her, like a wave. There was a man, Carlos, who owned a banana plantation. A wife and three children were not enough to satisfy his needs. He wanted a mistress. Vicky. He thought her no really meant yes. It was an accident, her death, that's what they told me. It was best that I leave, as quickly as possible. I just could not sleep, haunted by what I did not do, the answers I was too afraid to seek after I was kept from identifying her body, just given the necklace she was wearing when they pulled her from the car wreck. I was edgy, too, and began spending nights out, going to the clubs Jeremy and I used to go to. Sometimes I thought I could feel his presence. This made me even more edgy. And hypersensitive. Was it possible that he, like me, had found his way back to New York? There is nothing better than a night job for an insomniac. You do see what's wrong with this picture - don't you? I mean, isn't it the teenager who's supposed to be going out clubbing while the mother sits home watching TV. I mean, hel- loh-o-, do we need a reality check, or what? It was a painful - embarrassingly painful - time. And that's putting it mildly. Our house began to smell like an ashram. Day and night she'd burn incense and candles. Sage, to clear out old spirits. Lavender and citrus to freshen the air. Suited me just fine. It masked the smell of pot, which I had begun to smoke with a little more regularity. Not that she even noticed. I mean, she was out all night, barely awake when I was getting ready for school. I think I might have starved if it weren't for my grandmother. She yelled at my mother a lot, told her she should have packed away her teen years by now. You'd think she was talking to a deaf person. Come to think of it, maybe she was in the beginning stages of hearing loss brought on by very loud music. I'd put on RadioHead, she'd put on Jimi Hendrix. I'd play Jane's Addiction or Staind, she'd put on Pink Floyd or U2. It was becoming like the Battle of the Bands. I began counting the days to summer, when I'd be off to camp. It was supposed to be my chance to get away - courtesy of my grandmother. It was supposed to be my chance to chill, hang out with friends from Florida who went to this camp in Maine. Then parents' visiting weekend came around, and nothing has been the same since. I want you to see this the way it happened, not the way she'll tell it. Can you do this for me - see it the way it happened? Not colored by perception, hers or mine. Or is that an impossibility? "Hello, Jessica." "Hello, Jeremy." She feels as if her knees are going to buckle. Breathe deeply, she tells herself. Slowly and deeply. Inevitability has a way of staking its claims, and maybe she should have know this moment was inevitable. Or was it? The teenager is puzzled. There is something familiar about the face of this man she has never met. She pulls at her mother's arm. It is visiting weekend at camp and there's so much she wants to show her. A climbing wall. And a zip line. And how she now can water ski. The mother turns to her daughter. "Meet your father," she says. "His name is Jeremy." The man blanches. The girl feels faint. Another girl, Diedre, comes running over. Right into the arms of this man. Rhonda's lightheadedness is rapidly turning to nausea. "Father?" she repeats the words, looks straight into her mother's eyes. Help me, she pleads, with that look. No, pinch me. Tell me this is a dream. A stupid dream, my worst nightmare. "Yes," says the mother. "This is your father." They head over to the climbing wall, the girl so proud to show her mother how high she can go. The other girl, Diedre, has also been scheduled for this particular activity. This could only be a very bad dream. Diedre goes first. Jeremy knows he's supposed to focus on his . . . his what? Diedre makes her way up the wall like a squirrel. She is nimble, has long strong legs. Rhonda, in contrast, struggles every step of the way. "Why didn't you tell me . . . before, I mean?" asks Jeremy. This is a scenario the woman has been avoiding. The anger rises in her, the anger she thought that many years on the road and much loud music had managed to squelch. Her stomach, churning, is in a knot, and she tells him the only thing she can. "You did not deserve to know." Then she runs over to her daughter, who looks like she's about to collapse. The daughter who pushes her away. "I hate you," she hisses. The rest of the day is not at all what it should be, mother and daughter traipsing over pine cones, tripping over roots, arm in arm. Rhonda, bristling, runs ahead of her mother now, trips and falls down. Gets up and keeps running. During lunch, they sit back-to-back on picnic blankets, Rhonda's eyes flitting to this man who she has been told is her father. This man who happens to be the father of the girl her bunk voted most likely to stab a friend in the back. This man who seems in quiet pursuit of her mother. There is so much he needs and wants to know. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks again. "I tried to find you. I wanted to come back. But things happened." In the brief moments Jessica allows herself to have with him, she knows he is telling the truth when he says he left one woman whom he loved (not knowing she was pregnant), only to marry another woman he did not really love (because she was pregnant). They remained married for six years. She kept the house in Los Angeles, he moved back to New York. Diedre, his daughter, spends summers and some holidays with him. These days their time together has dwindled to one month of the summer. "Maybe we can . . ." he starts to say. Jessica cuts him off. It is almost time to say good-bye to her daughter, and this day that has been ruined, a day she knows she has to salvage in whatever way she can. As the campers and parents hug and kiss in (sometimes tearful) farewells, Jessica looks around for her daughter, who has managed to disappear. This is no easy-to-find-her Muppet 3D getaway. There are no breadcrumbs dropped as she makes her way into the now dark woods. She walks and walks, until she reaches a road. She looks at the signs, trying to decide a direction, none of which seems to point her toward anything that feels like home. She keeps walking. Hours pass, turning the steel blue sky to a muted orange. She walks and walks, her legs beginning to feel like rubber. Where should she go? Where could she go? The sun is disappearing behind a thicket of trees. She puts on her sweatshirt, thankful to have grabbed it at the last minute. Before running off. To where? she asks herself. She thinks she understands what it feels like to live through an earthquake, rubble and smoke all around, the foundation of what was once your house ripped from beneath you. How could the sensation she is experiencing now be any different? A car pulls up alongside her. A man offers her a ride. The face is too familiar now. She gets in the car, crosses her arms, and stares straight ahead through the windshield. The man asks her if she wants to talk. He tells her this is all as much of a surprise to him as it is to her. She stares at him, sees only the father of a girl she cannot stomach. It makes her wonder if there is a genetic component to sibling rivalry. He would like to get to know her, he says, if it's not too late. He would like her to come to his home, spend some time with Diedre and him once camp is over. She tells him to fuck off. She reminds him that you cannot find a person who does not want to be found. She tells him there is only once place she wants to go, the only place that has ever felt like home. Would he like to buy her an airplane ticket? she asks. Which is why we're here, I guess. I had raised the stakes in my disappearing game. New York City is dense with places for a teenager to hide, steal away for a night or two. Get a tattoo. I did it once, to test my own resolve, show her I was not kidding. Orlando, I said when I came home after an unauthorized all nighter clubbing downtown. Take me back to Orlando. As luck would have it, my grandmother was now very serious about throwing us out. I'm putting the house up for sale, she tells us. Having her daughter - finally! - back in the fold had given her the strength to do what she should have done years ago, brought the closure she needed to her lifetime in Brooklyn. The condo next to her cousin's in Boca was up for sale. She was moving to God's little waiting room, that's what she called it. I figured I owed it to her, moving back to Orlando. But first I had my own little blackmail hand to play. Therapy, I said, for a short time at least. Talk things out, get them off your chest - - Blah-blah-blah - all this talking - it's just bullshit. I might as well be pouring out my heart to a dead squirrel on the road, for all the good it's doing me. Talking - all it gets you is a headache. I mean, here I am - here we are - coughing up drivel to help us understand . . . what? That my life, to this point, has been premised on a myth - no, a lie - perpetrated by this woman who calls herself my mother? Talking gets you nowhere, if you ask me. All you do is run in circles, like a hamster on a treadmill. Aha! you're probably thinking - now we're getting someplace. The girl has made two references to rodents, practically in the same breath. And what are rodents, if not survivors? Forget this alienation crap. The girl is a survivor - she wants - craves - survivorship. And would you like to see her lifeline? Well here it is, courtesy of that man who refrains from calling himself my father. My very own cell phone. A present, he said. No strings attached - I never even see the monthly bill. How's that for making amends? How's that for reclaiming a lifetime lost? He doesn't ask for much - just a call once a week or so, from me. What do we talk about? I don't know - stuff. Nothing I can really explain. The same things any two people talk about, when they talk about nothing. END
© Deborah Batterman « Home | Contributor Notes » |
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