Process of Disappearing

     I'm back in Melbourne, Florida, running through the halls of the nursing home looking for my mother. I've been in Ohio for four years, since 2004, taking care of another side of my extended family, but for three of those years, I flew back to see my 86-89-year-old mother in the nursing home every three or four months, to fight the nursing home people who weren't taking care of her. But after three years of visits, with my Ohio family well-situated and no longer needing my help, I was stuck in Ohio, bankrupt, living in a house with an upside-down mortgage that had been on the market for two years without a single visit from a buyer. I couldn't afford the plane tickets to fly back to Florida to see my mother in that fourth year.
     In the spring of 2008, before my sorry financial catastrophe showed up on papers, I sold my paid-off Ford Focus, rented a new Honda FIT, loaded up my Rottweiler and two parrots, plus enough of my stuff to keep me alive for the two months it would take for movers to deliver the rest of the few things I still owned, and drove back to Melbourne where I'd arranged with an owner to let me live in his slum strip-motel apartment with my Rottweiler, a dog breed declared by insurance companies to be dangerous and uninsurable for property owners.
     I drove into Melbourne late last night and now it's mid-morning, a year since I've seen my mother. Even before I left Melbourne in 2004, dementia had stolen her memory of my existence, but I sent her cards throughout the years to let her know I loved her and was thinking about her. And now I'm nearly in a panic. She isn't one of the withered vacant-staring sub-humans in the wheelchairs lining both sides of the hallways. Both beds in her room are made, and no one is in the bathroom. At least her clothes are still on her side of the closet, so I know she's alive, somewhere.
    Something tells me to look in the corner room next to her room. It's only large enough for two long tables where wheelchairs are rolled in through the door for meals and back out into the hallway at the end of feeding, leaving the tables in place like flattened-out food troughs for hogs. It's been hours after feeding, but there's still a person sitting all alone in a wheelchair in the back, facing that cinder block wall opposite the door, where sunlight shines through a long, high window, too high for even someone standing to see anything but the sky.
     I run to the wheelchair and peer around to the front of it to see my mother, half-asleep, her face around her nose and mouth crusty and colorful with dried food. How long has it been since anyone even bothered to wash her face? And did they forget her after breakfast and leave her sitting in here all by herself? I'm angry and feeling the tears coming. I want to blame the nursing home. No, I have to blame her husband for not advocating for her and for not giving her to my sister and me after we begged him, and for not letting us move her somewhere else, because he lives a mile away from this place. No, I have to blame my mother for signing her healthcare documents and her life away to him, instead of to either of her daughters for her care. Or maybe I could just be furious at Life itself.
     When I left Melbourne four years ago, I wanted to mothernap her, take her with me back to her hometown in Ohio, where I could take care of her. "Don't you dare," my sister said. She was right, for my safety. Knowing her hateful, wealthy husband, I could have ended up in prison.
     "Mother," I say to her, trying hard not to sob. "I'm your oldest daughter. How are you?"
      She looks at the wall, not at me. "I'm in the process of disappearing," she says, her voice loud in distress and despair. A few more of her front teeth are missing, maybe yanked out, from rotting, from not being brushed. She had all her own teeth when she came here five years ago.
     "No, you're not going to disappear. I'm here with you," I say, grabbing the handles of her wheelchair and whirling her around and out of the room, back into her room, where I position her wheelchair facing her bed, facing me sitting on her bed. It's then that I find handfuls of sealed envelopes, all the cards my sister and I and other relatives and friends have sent her over the last year, or maybe longer--never opened, just stuffed in bunches around the sides of the wheelchair seat. I start opening them one by one and reading them to her. She doesn't react. She doesn't know who they are, or what the messages mean to her.
     Now it's five years later. My mother died eight months after I returned to Melbourne. My Rottweiler died two years ago. I'm heartbroken but safe in an independent-living subsidized apartment with hundreds of other seniors for neighbors. I just turned 69 and have friends my age and older. I not only know them for who they are now, but for who they were, just like I knew my mother for who she was, like I know myself for who I was; oh not after we all have reinvented ourselves over and over all these years as age and life circumstances demanded, but for who we were when we were at our peak in our skills, paid or cared for as we journeyed through those productive years.
     Who would ever have guessed as they looked at my food-encrusted, disappearing mother that she was once the supervisor and head of word processing in the admissions office of Florida Institute of Technology? FIT's first computer, the OS6 was sold to her through the admissions office, with her in charge, and she was sent to Atlanta for training on it. And when she returned from that training, she discovered for herself how to make it do two more tasks that the trainers in Atlanta told her couldn't be done on it! When I got my first computer, with the old DOS system in the 1980's, my mother taught me how to use it. She was one smart cookie, and I used to tell her that! Hundreds of people came to her evening retirement party, held in the ritzy penthouse conference room. I've never seen a retirement party as elegant and respectful of her as that one!
     My friend battling breast cancer in Ohio was a loving elementary school teacher who knew how to teach and nurture children. She also earned graduate degrees, taught college classes, and established a university childcare center. Another friend was a highly respected major professor in a university. A neighbor in this tower where I live was a photographer for the New York Daily News in New York City. Another neighbor was a creative flower arranger whose beautiful arrangements were copied by florists and sold across the country and overseas. Another neighbor was a New York music promoter who worked for the major recording labels and from his talent for making friends with others, put one of Melanie's songs that he says everyone in his company hated, into the air waves and human brains' memories of unforgettable songs. Another good friend was the manager of a school cafeteria and also a food manager in a posh Chicago country club for many years. Most of my friends have reared children who grew up to be successful, productive adults. Another friend with an earned Ph.D. was a superintendent of human relations in a large school system.
     Who we all were--I could go on and on, but what I really want to do is describe how it feels to me to be in the process of disappearing. I don't think I'm the only one who has always derived my self-worth from the combination of my accomplishments and my ability to be compensated for my skills; compensated well enough to be able to buy groceries and pay Internet and TV charges, along with rent, or make mortgage payments; well enough to be financially independent with some of life's comforts.
     Today my food manager friend, with all of her organizational skills and expertise in preparing food, along with her abilities to get along with and motivate others, is now, seemingly effortlessly pulling off dinners and other major events for up to a hundred people, sometimes more, in a retirement community, without any monetary compensation. No one in that community could do what she does, and the organizations within that community are wealthy enough to pay her for her services, but they won't and don't.
     Maybe if I were a female politician, or in some other career, I could still be compensated for continuing to function in that career at my age, but as a female vocalist/keyboard player, singer-songwriter, who fronted a showband on the road; who used to have steady work in nightclubs and lounges and was invited to be the opening act at a major Melbourne hotel where hundreds came to hear me; who performed for months at a piano bar on Hilton Head Island; who put together and fronted a country band that I named "Colorado Gold" that opened a new nightclub in Colorado Springs, with a grand opening that was broadcast on the radio that night; who made at least $500 for a birthday or retirement party, and twice as much for New Year's Eve; who wrote and sold jingles for products, and in some cases, sang them on TV commercials; who's written and recorded songs and has five albums out--I'm the same performer, just older.
     The last nightclub performer job I was able to get was for one night a week, for six months in 2001. I was 57 years old, and my career ended there. My albums of music are out on the Internet. When someone buys a track, I'm paid $.001, and often nothing at all.
     Last week, the activities coordinator at the tower next to mine, owned by the same company, called me up on the afternoon of a birthday party being held in her building, to play the piano and sing as the entertainer for that party. Assuming it was being sponsored by the tower, which is all subsidized living, I didn't ask for compensation. It turned out, the woman's outside family gave her the party, attended by more than 70 people from all over town. I played for 1-1/2 hours, and as I was packing up my sound system, the daughter of the 90-year-old birthday girl offered me a little paperback book titled "God's Promises for Women," and on the back inside cover was lettered with a red stamp: "Prison Book Project, Sharpes, FL." I wanted to ask her if one of God's promises for women had anything to do with reaping what you sow--maybe that's only God's promise to men.
     A week later the book is still sitting in the donation place in the laundry room. I doubt that "God's Promises" matter to many of us living here. We already know them all anyway--we've chewed, swallowed and digested religion, and in my case, eliminated it. The only promise that counts anymore is that we're in the act of disappearing, and one day we'll disappear altogether.
     So how do I manage this time of my life? My doctor told me it's normal for anxiety to increase as we age and feel more out of control of our health and our lives. He prescribed Xanax for me. A small dosage of that and black tea, with its caffeine and aspirin properties, help me keep away the Boogie Man, my term for sadness and anxiety. I don't believe the terms "sadness" and "depression" are the same. By this age, we have enough grief to carry us through two more lifetimes.
     I'll never be able to convince myself of what is probably the truth, that even though the world doesn't deem my contributions as worthy of financial compensation, I'm still of value, not only as a human being, but for the skills and talents I can still give. Inside me, that belief feels like a lie. My value is only as high as other people deem it to be. And these days: well, I have to admit, it depends on who you ask.  
     I used to be an expert at reinventing myself. That's why I have more than 10,000 hours in each of three different financially-supporting careers. I've run out of the financially-supporting reinventions. With a Social Security check and subsidized housing, I don't need to make a living to support myself anymore, unless my teeth start rotting. Then I'll have to tie one end of a string to the tooth and the other end of the string to the doorknob, and slam the door shut to yank them out one by one. I won't be able to pay a dentist.
     What's left is finding comfort in doing what I love to do, simply because I love doing it, and that includes writing stories; playing music downstairs once a week free of charge for my neighbors; living in the moment; looking for times to listen to others and offer love and comfort; reawakening my outrageous adolescent sense of humor and my love for irony; and laughing.
     Management also requires doing things I don't like to do: taking the six flights of stairs to my apartment instead of the elevator several times a day and eating.
     Still, the scales continue tipping. Health problems are taking over, leaving me less time and energy to do what I love to do. It's also possible that I'm already dealing with dementia. I likely carry my parents' and grandparents' genes for several different forms of slowly losing your mind, in case you had one to begin with.
     Author Stephen King told the Vassar College graduates in his 2001 Commencement Address to make their lives "one long gift to others," because worldly goods are "smoke and mirrors" and "all that lasts is what you pass on." That idea would be real to me if I'd given birth to one or more children who had children, and generations would carry my genes, but I didn't. It's unlikely that I'll leave anything behind of any value for anyone.
     My friend in Ohio, Marilyn Tullys, the elementary teacher I mentioned earlier, is still an award-winning poet. She wrote this, which I believe is the truth about the entire process of aging and dying, in all of its forms.

Alzheimer's

His is a disappearing act,
dark cape flourishing
unexpectedly
the way a gypsy woman
softly flies her silk scarf
as quick fingers
grab your wallet.

Most valuable
of all your possessions,
your very identity
is lifted by stealth;
not even a fraction
of second
to sound alarm.

Observers gaping in dismay
and bafflement
gasp at the horrible
magic which
takes away
and draws nothing
from the hat.
  
You might think this is a dark, pessimistic piece, but I believe we old people need to remind you who are still young to make quality life choices for giving the world the most loving, most compassionate, most beautiful gifts you have to give, because--and if this isn't listed in the "God's Promises" book, it should be: life goes by really fast, and the process of disappearing is a forced march that will require every life skill you've ever learned.
     
    

You Served Me Well

     In the warm dark of the early Florida morning, I slip out from under the sheets and lower myself onto the little stool, and then onto the floor from my 4-foot-high bed. When I next see this bed, I might not be able to climb up into it. The futon nestled underneath where my long, black rottweiler, Savannah, is still sleeping might have to become my bed when I return.
     This is one of those dark days when the worst thing in my life is about to happen, when living alone is best, when there’s nothing to say, and no one to say it. Even my thoughts are speechless, hanging back in the shadows wringing their hands, unable to comfort me. With the dog warm and curled up on her futon and the parrots’ heads still tucked beneath their wings, the house is quiet. At least nothing bad will happen to them. Friends they already know will be coming in to feed them all for the next day or two.
     A little twister stretches from my stomach up into my throat and stays there, whirling, causing my breathing to be shallow. Asthma. My enemy is back. I’ll have to tell the anesthesiologist. I take my shower and get dressed anyway. Why am I afraid? Of waking, looking like a freak and being in pain! I wonder how bad the pain will be. I wonder how I will really feel when I wake up hours from now without breasts.
     At dozens of plastic surgery sites on the Internet I’d scrutinized the pictures of naked women without breasts, and the follow-up pictures of them in phases of reconstruction. How painful is it going to be?” I’d asked the doctor. “Not as painful if you don’t get reconstruction,” he’d said. That settled it. He wanted me to consult with a plastic surgeon anyway. I’d refused. The breastless women in the pictures didn’t look too bad. I could live that way. But could I? What if I wanted a boyfriend again someday? What if the surgeon cuts them off and the lab doesn’t find anything wrong with them? It would all be for nothing, except my peace of mind.
     It wouldn’t be too late to cancel this operation, up to the minute they put me to sleep. I could make the phone call right now. After all, this is only a prophylactic mastectomy. They don’t know what’s in there. They can’t see behind all the water cysts anymore. A biopsy isn’t possible, because they don’t know where to cut. They just think something is wrong. I just know my mother lost both breasts to cancer, and her mother lost one. And the surgeon was stern, intense, quiet, not winning any awards for making everything all right.
     “For women in your situation, I'd. . . .” he began. . .” Cut them off,” I said, finishing his sentence. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about it, for a lot of reasons. And if I don’t go through with this, how do I go on living every day waiting for cancer? I can’t afford cancer. I’m bipolar, living on Social Security disability, barely getting by. My house is going into disrepair. I’ve had to take in two college student roommates to meet expenses. My Cobra insurance from the company that fired me runs out in one month, and I won’t be eligible for Medicare for eight more months. I have to do this now, while my insurance is still in place. I’m not waiting for cancer.
      Nothing to eat or drink since last night, but I’m not hungry. Nothing to do but walk outside into the warm Florida darkness as my neighbor’s car turns silently into the driveway. It’s September 7, 2002, not yet 6 a.m., and Heika is on time. I’m really glad she asked two days ago if I had someone to take me to the hospital. I had a lot of offers, but hadn’t said yes to any of them. Dying people often choose the special ones who will witness their death, and I chose her, nearly a stranger to spend these last few minutes with me. I knew she would be appropriately gentle and quiet, respectful of that distance between us, a reflection of my relationship to myself in these moments.
     On the way, I tell her I’m feeling afraid. She honors that, without trying to make me different. In a fast 10 minutes, we turn into the parking lot of the new, modern hospital with bright lights shining through tall lobby windows lighting up the darkness like an airport. Heika asks me if I want her to come in and stay with me while I’m waiting for surgery, but I tell her no. There isn’t room for me in my own space this morning, and two would be a crowd. She isn’t insisting or demanding, and I’m grateful. I thank her for the ride, get out and start walking towards the bright lights shining through the tall windows of the hospital lobby.
     “Are you sure?” Heika calls after me. “I’m sure,” I tell her. I’ve felt alone like this thousands of times in my life. Self reliance has always been a big part of my life’s journey, and usually I’m at least on speaking terms with myself. But not now. There’s no comfort here from any place inside me. I’m about to allow something unspeakable to happen to me.
     In the large, brightly-lit pre-op room, I’m in a hospital nightgown with an IV in my arm. My clothes are in a plastic bag beside the bed. A half-dozen other people lie on carriers awaiting surgery, each area surrounded by a curtain. I’m on the end next to the door. On the other side of my carrier, behind the curtain, a little 10-year-old boy is getting ready for his tonsillectomy. He starts to cry, then to scream. His parents try to calm him. He is so scared, and suddenly I’m shaking inside and so scared. The nurse explains everything to him and he calms down, but I don’t. I wish I were a child. I feel like screaming and sobbing, but here in this place, I can’t lose it. That would scare the little boy all over again. And besides, I asked for this. I made the decision. If I want to change my mind, all I have to do is make the announcement, put on my clothes, and walk out of the hospital. I have no right to be shaking inside like this.
     The anesthesiologists are making their rounds. I ask the nurse if she could get them over to start me on a sedative right away. “Are you about to lose it, honey?” she asks. I wonder if she knows what’s going to happen to me. “We’ll get you on something.”
     Two anesthesiologists stand at the foot of my carrier. “Can you put me to sleep now?” I ask them. Instead, they ask me questions.
     “I’m 58. No, no one is here with me. No, I don’t have any allergies, but I have asthma, and right now I’m having trouble breathing.” One doctor goes off to find me an inhaler. The other keeps reading the questions on his clipboard list. “I last ate at nine last night—nine hours ago. No nothing on my stomach since then. No, not even water. Let’s see. In the last 24 hours—you really want to know everything I’ve taken in the past two weeks? You might want to sit down. This is going to take awhile. I take daily dosages of Wellbutrin, the antidepressant; Xanax for my social anxiety disorder; synthroid – yes, I have thyroid disease from taking lithium; Gabitril for bipolar disorder. I took Vioxx for arthritis pain and Zyrtec for allergies. No. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I have asthma, arthritis, and abdominal pain from my hysterectomy 9 months ago. Are you giving me something now? Through my IV? Will I feel better soon? Good.”
     When I open my eyes again, my surgeon has joined the anesthesiologists. My doctor speaks a few words quietly to me, without smiling, but I’m starting to feel more relaxed and chatty.
     “I’ve changed my mind,” I tell them. “I don’t want the surgery (pause) but I don’t have a ride home and I’m too groggy to walk, and I can’t live anymore in the fear of getting cancer, and I never wanted breasts anyway. So . . . you can have ‘em. What are you going to do with them? The lab. Oh yeh, and they’ll end up in the wastebasket. No. They have to be recycled! It’ll take a little imagination, but I’ve got some good ideas.
     You could: Roll ‘em in flour, fry ‘em, and serve ‘em for dinner as chicken.
     Pickle them in a jar and donate them to a 10th grade science class.
     Send them to a taxidermist for stuffing and framing, and hang them in a public ladies’ bathroom  with a sign under them that says, "You're next!"
     Sew strings on them and attach them to the inside of a car trunk so they're hanging outside the closed trunk—you know--like some woman is in the trunk with the lid closed down on her breasts?”
     The doctors are all watching me, half-smiling, chiding, shaking their heads. They don’t know what to say. 
     That surgeon has no sense of humor, no compassion, no nothing, I think to myself. He has to be that way. He’s the butcher. I’m going to the slaughterhouse and he’s the butcher. Or maybe he intuitively knows that anything he’d say would be the wrong thing. Maybe he knows something about me—that this is serious and totally not funny. 
     I remember my mother talking about her doctor—how sweet and warm and sincere he was; how he told her that her breasts were beautiful. That meant a lot to her. I’m not my mother. This doctor is perfect for me. I don’t want to be told anything like that. He says he’ll see me on the surgery table in a few minutes and walks away with the anesthesiologists.
     We’re in the final minutes. I have to say something to myself. I decide it’s time for a silent speech that I haven’t prepared for, but I begin anyway.

So it’s just me and you for a few more minutes, soft baby pillows, not so firm anymore, trying to hide under my arms. My breath carries you up and down. My thoughts still try to hide as we lie here breathing together. I don’t know how to say good-bye, because I’ve never been without you. I can’t say good-bye, because I might have some terrible realization that would make me decide to go home right now. I don’t know how waking up without you is going to feel, but I do know what I’ll look like without you—not too bad.
     My thoughts are so quiet. Maybe I know I’ll wake up and you’ll still be there. That can’t happen. I can’t live in this fear anymore. But I can say that I hated you and loved you. I hated you because you grew out of me like horns and stayed swollen and painful for most of our 42 years together. I was always afraid you’d get cancer and take my life.
     You never gave me cleavage like other women had. Sometimes when looking at you in the mirror, I was sure you were God’s after-thought. “Whoops! I forgot to give her breasts!” And He slung you at me like mud patties and there you stuck, sporting insolent nipples, hard cylinders like cigarette filters, staring out in opposite directions. Bras couldn’t hide those nipples. Men often asked me if I was cold. For years I didn’t try to hide them, but by the time I reached my 50’s, I’d been so deeply wounded by men, I didn’t want anyone to see you, ever again, and so I always wore a bra, and a sweater, or shirts in layers. It’s been more than two years since anyone besides me has seen you.
      Oh, I know, I didn’t have babies for you to nurse, but you gave my body a shape when I needed it to attract men, and you had the magic to transform sex into pleasure. You were the difference between “Ah-ah-AHHH!” and “Would you hurry up?”
     After this day, no man can ever sneak a fondle again, or enjoy an intimate moment with my private parts in the midst of an innocent hug. I can mow the lawn without a shirt on, just like a man. And whatever grief and physical pain this act causes, I won’t ever share, because women have to be willing to let theirs go, too, if it comes down to avoiding cancer and saving their lives. Whether you are diseased, or not, I’m looking forward to peace of mind, knowing that I sacrificed a part of me for the good of the rest of me.
     They’ve come to get us, to take you away from me forever. Good-bye, my friends and enemies. You served me well.

Peanut

     There’s no cause for panic, my head tried to reason with some terrified part of me that wasn’t connected to my thinking. Another part of me was dragging me along the sidewalk by my collar. My hair was mashed under a blue and gold freshman beanie. A large dictionary, a high school graduation present from my mother, leaned in precarious balance atop a stack of textbooks rising to inches beneath my chin.

    It was 1962. I was a freshman at Pikeville College, a small Presbyterian school high above the town on the side of a mountain in Eastern Kentucky. Eighty-six crumbling cement steps led from the road that went along the sidewalk in front of the college buildings, down into the tiny town of Pikeville situated in a long narrow valley. A railroad track ran along the foot of the college’s mountain, as did the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River that floated away whole houses in the floods of the spring thaws. Rising up from the other side of the valley, facing the college’s mountain was another, taller tree-covered mountain, distinguished by an enormous rock formation near the top known as Lover’s Leap.

     On this first day of fall classes, unfamiliar faces of men and women, some in blue and gold beanies like mine, passed by me in all directions. If I could just walk faster, I could make it to the safety of my classroom unnoticed. Off to the left on the wide steps of the administration building, a group of men were standing around my pretty roommate, blue-and-gold-beanied Betty. My skinny legs propelled me in a wave of people up those same steps towards the giant entrance doors, one of which Betty was now opening for all to walk through, under the learing supervision of the men who had stopped her. I slipped in without being noticed. A few yards down the hall, I could see the classroom where I was heading. Large drops of sweat dripped single file down the insides of my arms, and my stomach felt like it was inches from my throat. How would I ever get through three days of this, I wondered.

      My books and I collapsed with a loud crash, the former onto the floor and the latter into a desk near the door. My dictionary chose to divide itself in half, face down over the narrow part of the armrest, an unholy treatment of a sacred book, to be sure. And, yes, I was splayed out from the small desk in all directions in a most unfeminine manner, but you know—I hadn’t yet passed through the adolescent all-arms-and-legs stage yet. So why were all the other beanied beasties in the room staring at me? Or were they?

      During the hour of safety in the class, all I could anticipate was the loud clanging of the bell that would ultimately discharge me back into the student stampede, a world of strange rules and frightening people. Where was the confident high school senior I’d been three short months ago? I couldn’t focus on the class proceedings, so decided to try to dissolve my fears with the problem-solving approach. I would list exactly what I was afraid of, then the reasons why I shouldn’t be afraid.

What I’m afraid of:

(1)   MEN!—fat, thin, ugly, smart, stupid, clean, smelly—it didn’t matter. They were still men, and I was a kid. My life experiences had been with boys, and here I was, making that leap alone, into the Big Leagues. What if they didn’t like me? I’d be nothing.

(2)   Public Humiliation—for these first three days of fall term classes, beanied freshmen carrying dictionaries would be the dartboards of the upperclassmen—specifically older students who wanted to flirt with freshmen of the opposite sex. We were to do anything upperclassmen told us to do—look up a word in our dictionary, open doors, carry their books, pick up whatever they dropped, and any other demeaning thing they could think to make us do. Freshmen who disobeyed orders would be sentenced in an evening session of a “kangaroo court.” Being publicly embarrassed in the guise of being a “good sport” would be an intolerable occurrence to me.

Why I shouldn’t be afraid:

(1)   All summer I’ve been working in the Dean’s Office as a workship student at this college and living in the dorm with the summer school students. I’m already settled in!

(2)   I already know at least a third of the upperclassmen, including the student council president, and they seem to accept me. (But this was part of the problem. They knew I was a freshman. If I were caught without my beanie and dictionary, I would certainly be tossed into the public humiliation arena.)

(3)   My own grandmother is the secretary to the president of this college and lives in a small apartment in the faculty building. The students all know and love her. Her reputation alone could keep them from humiliating me.

(4)   Most of the faculty and administration have known me since I was born. I’m safe.

(5)   I came to this small town from after graduating from a modern high school in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA, and should have confidence in myself.

     The list didn’t help. My stomach was in a death struggle with my intestines. If I could make it back to the dorm, I could go to bed for three days, but I’d get behind in my classes, and if the administrators found out I wasn’t really sick, they could take away my workship, and I wouldn’t have the money to pay my tuition.

     The bell rang suddenly and too soon. The rushing students swept me out of the classroom, down the hall, through the giant doors to the top of the front steps. Now it was only a matter of hiding among the descending crowds and making it to the safety of the dormitory, which was a lawn away from the administration building.

     Halfway down the steps a hand gripped my shoulder. I turned to face the student council president David Stacey, and a small sinister army of male strangers.

    “Where are you going in such a hurry?” David asked in an Eastern Kentucky twang that I had to work very hard to understand. “Didn’t you want to open that door back there for us?”

      I tried to stretch a good-sport smile, but it started twitching downwards. Actually, nothing was very funny.

     “I want you to look up a word in your dictionary, so you’d better put down those other books,” David said.

      I dropped the pile onto the cement step and opened the dictionary. Dave told me to look up and read aloud the meaning of a word that he’d made up. When I couldn’t find it, the men all looked displeased, and I was ordered to appear that evening, promptly at 7 p.m. in room 17 for sentencing in the kangaroo court. David gave me a printed ticket and added my name to a list in his notebook. I slowly lifted my stack of books from the cement step and walked down the remaining flight. Now what?

     Afternoon classes and my scheduled work in the Dean’s Office passed too quickly. Before the evening meal, my roommate Betty and I had a few minutes together to share our experiences. Stopped by numerous men and summonsed to kangaroo court, she’d had a wonderful day in the spotlight of male admiration. I tried to share her merriment, but my laughter, joined with hers, didn’t sound the same.

      At dinner, Jim and I sat by ourselves in the cafeteria while I poured out the day’s woes. Both workship students, we had become friends during the summer. As a college junior and a veteran of freshman hazings, he would have been a comfort had my conscious reasoning been available. He related stories of innocent, fun penalties imposed on freshmen in other years of kangaroo courts and kindly laughed off my fears, reminding me that I could only be called to court once, so this would be my one and only sentencing.

     Inside the door of room 17, I suddenly knew how a diver would feel when, after springing headfirst from the high diving board, he discovered there was no water in the swimming pool. Fifteen freshmen received cute little sentences that evening from Judge David Stacey. Betty’s was the first. She was to carry Sonny Dotson’s books for the next two days. Mine was the sixteenth and the last. I was sentenced to push a peanut with my nose along the sidewalk from the front of the girl’s dorm, past a spacious lawn of grass and benches, past the administration building, and all the way to the walkway leading to the men’s dorm. This event was to take place the following evening just before dinner, at a time when students would be crowding the sidewalk enroute to the cafeteria. If I were to estimate this distance, I’d say it was at least a mile, but of course, that would be an exaggeration. However, the administration building itself was a wide, four-story school building structure, full of classrooms and administrative offices.

     All night while my roommate slept, I lay awake in the dark pushing that peanut with my nose and breathing in ants on every inch of that sidewalk. I heard the hushed whispers and saw the ankles and shoes of hundreds of legs walking along on all sides of me while I endured this butt-in-the-air, head-down, knee-forearms fiasco alone. I wondered if David Stacey really intended for me to carry it through. Was that awful moment already planned and scheduled? Or would my appearance at dinner suddenly remind them of the forgotten sentence? Then would they kid me about it in good humor, or would someone produce a peanut and challenge me to good sportsmanship? I asked myself hundreds of other similar questions with no answers as the dormitory room temperature fluctuated from too hot to too cold, and the blackness behind the closed curtains turned to light blue, then orange.

     My first class was at 8 a.m., but I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere that day. Before 7 I was already dressed, slipping quickly across the narrow street and dropping out of sight onto the steps on the side of the mountain. A gravelly pathway, with a dozen large flat stones for steps, led in a gentle slope down and across the side of the forested mountain. Once on the path, I could see my grandmother’s modernish 2-story brick apartment building sticking up out of the trees in the distance. This was the same path she walked each day to and from her office next to the college president’s in the administration building.

     My grandmother accepted my early morning appearance as a normal occurrence. She’d already survived three months of my unpredictable behavior, and she’d already proven she could intuitively guide me through the underbrush of my frequent confusion and fear with a calm, non-reactive approach. On this morning, she was preparing to leave for work as she did every morning, five days a week, in time to be at her desk promptly at 8 a.m. Looking back on that day, I wonder how this kind, intelligent, realistic person was able to behave as though my plan was perfectly acceptable and logical when I told her I would be hiding behind her couch all that day and into the evening.

     Behind the couch seemed to be the best location. Her second floor apartment opened onto a wide porch that faced Lover’s Leap on the opposite mountain across the valley. Her large living room picture window stood beside her smaller bedroom window, both starting at waist-level. Besides the bathroom, the combination living room/dining room/kitchen and the bedroom were the only two rooms in the apartment. The drapes on the windows weren’t closable, so from the porch, the rooms were entirely visible through the windows. A small folding screen behind the couch partially separated the living area from the dining area and adjacent kitchen.

     I’d figured out that everyone at the college knew I was Mrs. Beem’s granddaughter, and they knew where she lived. If Stacey or his cronies came looking for me, they could see into her apartment and see me! My weary depression dictated that I would be sleeping, so I opted for the carpeted living room floor between the back of the couch and the folding screen, instead of the cold floor in the bathroom or kitchen. I also ruled out the small dining area just behind the couch. Grandmother wasn’t the most meticulous of housekeepers, and I didn’t want to share my sleeping space with critters munching on crumbs.

     I was already stretched out behind the couch, when my grandmother said a cheery good bye and locked the door behind her. From the sound of the soft rustle of crinolines beneath her skirt I knew what she was wearing. Every day, even on Saturdays and Sundays, she wore the same style of dress of soft rayon material in tiny pastel flower patterns. They only differed in colors and flowers. On the nights when she wasn’t photographing student activities for the yearbook and developing the negatives in her downstairs darkroom, she hand-sewed her dresses while she watched television. Already in her mid-70’s, my grandmother wasn’t glamorous, yet her flowing skirts and low, graceful necklines falling in soft folds, draped low across her chest and up onto her shoulders, seemed to forgive her misshapen body with the pronounced hump in her back and her one remaining breast, the unbound curve of it showing just inside the top of her dress. She stood barely 5′ tall and wore her white hair neck-length in soft fluffy curls.

     Throughout the long morning, I slept cramped behind the couch, waking up periodically from scary dreams to listen for anyone who might be coming up the steps onto the porch. Finally I did hear quick, light footsteps and the clicking of the front door lock. My grandmother was home for lunch. From behind the couch, I asked about her morning at work and if anyone had asked about me. She assured me that no one had said a word. Of course, as I’d asked her to do, she’d given messages of my illness to the dean for whom I worked and to my instructors, so I was properly excused for the day. My quiet grandmother never shared her thoughts or details of her life with any outsiders, so I absolutely knew that she would never tell a soul where I was or why. In fact, I believe she still holds this secret in heaven.

     At the end of the day she returned from work to begin her evening routine. As it was the time when I was supposed to push the peanut, I was still in grave danger and couldn’t come out to join her for dinner, so we had a short, perfectly normal conversation while she ate her fruit salad and cottage cheese by herself at the small dining table a few feet from the folding screen.

     I was still in and out of sleep, which seemed to be a comforting relief from my anxious state. The crackle of something frying and the smell of something wonderful woke me up. From the glow of electric lights on the ceiling, I knew it was after dark. Grandmother’s crinolines were rustling in the kitchen.

     “Your dinner’s ready,” she said in her sweet, soft voice. The danger seemed to be over. I crawled out and stiffly stood up. There on the table was a steaming plate of my favorite food: fried green tomatoes. It had been a long, difficult day, and I was very hungry. I sat down and ate with a grateful heart to have such a loving, understanding person in my life.

  

Epilogue

      Not a word was ever spoken on campus of that sentence or of my disappearance. By the end of the third and final day of freshman hazing, my mind had finished digesting the last detail of that memory (an inadvertent technique I use to this day for coping with painful events).

     Two years later a new president took control of the college. His first action was to outlaw freshman hazing. His speech to the student body was powerful and emotional, during which he recalled first-hand accounts of injuries and humiliations during freshman hazings in other schools. At the close of his speech he opened the floor for comments. Angry students argued that the hazing at this college had never taken any of those forms. It was clean fun, they said, meant only to acquaint the students with each other and make them feel at home.

     I listened with detached interest. I could see why the president’s past experiences had led him to take that action, and I sympathized with the students for their expressed point of view. My own hazing trauma remained submerged in a world that didn’t exist.

    In 1977, eleven years after my college graduation, a newspaper report of a college hazing incident unlatched the door of this hidden memory. Now in fearful moments when I need my grandmother’s couch to hide behind, I can see her calmly standing by me in another form, and I feel very loved and very safe.

Renelle West

Somewhere on the road

1978