Day 10

I think I might have been feeling somewhat grim today. I bring you a longer story, one that details the life of a woman, a woman who was given messages all her life that she wasn’t enough. This story is based on a woman I know, a woman I know very well, but the ending is changed. The actual ending hasn’t happened yet, but this story deviates in a key way toward the end to go in a direction that is much different. The actual woman made a different decision, and you will be pleased to hear that she has been happy. So why did I choose to change the ending? I guess maybe to bring the story full circle, to come back to the main point I started out to make before I found myself wandering through an entire life - the idea that a woman must be pretty, and the idea that a beautiful woman was told she was ugly - and believed it for her entire life (or as much of it as has happened so far). Why is it always about looks?

The names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, and those in between.

NOT PRETTY ENOUGH

 Alameda sorted out the books, carefully arranging them in alphabetical order. Tomorrow she would need to take them back to the library. She needed more; she had read all of these. She fingered the title of each book, wanting to commit it to memory, wanting to never forget anything she read. Someday it might be useful. Someday she might need this knowledge. At nine, Alameda was already committed to a life of learning. She had selected three colleges that she was interested in attending, and was doing her best to keep her grades high enough to get accepted. It wasn’t easy, especially sharing her room with two sisters who tended toward noise, and the long list of chores each of them completed every night. It could be hard keeping up with her homework with a nine o’clock curfew, but somehow she always got it done.

Albuquerque bellowed from downstairs. At seven, she already had a powerful voice, one loud enough to carry from the kitchen to the bedroom. “Mom wants you!” She didn’t need to specify by name; Alameda knew who she meant.

Mom was on her knees in front of the refrigerator, only her butt showing. Alameda clasped her hands behind her back and waited. When Mom wanted something, you came quickly. Or else. Her hands flew to her head as if to hold her hair in place; Mom was fond of threatening to “snatch you bald”. Alameda wasn’t sure she couldn’t do it. Mom backed out of the refrigerator and handed Albuquerque a pound of hamburger. Dinner would be sparse tonight. One pound of hamburger fried to a state of overdoneness would be the only food for the large family…the growing family, Alameda thought, staring at Mom’s swollen belly. What’ll we do when Brunswick goes off baby food? And the new baby?

“Get some dishes done.” Mom insisted her children always say please, but rarely said please herself. “It’s almost dinner time, what are you doing hiding in your room?”

“I wasn’t hiding, I was studying.” Alameda controlled her voice carefully; it wouldn’t do for Mom to think she was sassing.

“I don’t know why you study so much. Passing school should be enough; it’s not like you’re going to need all that education for getting married and having babies.’

“But I’m going to college.” Alameda kept her back to Mom, washing dishes and handing them to Albuquerque to wipe.

“College. Well, yes, I suppose you could get your MRS degree there.” Mom chucked at her own joke, then stared at Alameda, holding her face long enough to memorize it. “Or maybe not. I mean, face it, you’re ugly. You’re so ugly no man will want you. Yeah, maybe you’d better go to college. They can teach you typing there; you’ll probably need to support yourself.”

Mom turned to the stove and began to fry the meat, as always with the flamed turned up to high. Mom lacked the patience to be a good cook, and tonight their plates would each contain only a small pile of overcooked hamburger meat. Well, it was better than usual. The macaroni she covered with stewed tomatoes which was the norm was often difficult to choke down, no matter how hungry Alameda got. She was rarely hungry anymore, though. For some reason, food just didn’t interest her.

Alameda stayed at the sink after the dishes were washed, pretending there was more to do. Albuquerque had already taken the dinner dishes to the table, where she would clear off enough space to set a plate for each of them. Alameda hoped the dishwater would absorb her tears so Mom wouldn’t know she’d been crying.

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It was a beautiful spring morning, and Alameda was enjoying the breeze in her hair. She stretched on the sofa, letting her feet dangle over the ends. She was tall, much too tall to lie on the sofa anymore, but she had a rare chance to settle in with her book and enjoy a couple of hours reading. All her chores were done, and Mom was in the dining room with Edmond painting ceramics. Things were nice and calm. And she was reading a book today that she could read openly. No hiding behind the bed today to read forbidden literature. Science. History. Literature. Most of these needed to be hidden. Today she was reading Agatha Christie, an acceptable literary genre, and she could read in peace.

The phone rang. Alameda ignored it. The phone never rang for her. She had no friends, and no young men ever called to ask her out. She was the least popular girl in her high school, not because she wasn’t nice, but because she was seen as weird. And probably, Alameda thought, because I am not pretty. Most of the popular girls were pretty; the ugly ones got shunted to the side. Alameda was used to it, and had learned years ago to deal with her looks.

Edmond shouted, but Alameda ignored her. That was risky. Edmond had a terrible temper, and didn’t hesitate to torment and even physically beat her younger sister, but today was too beautiful to listen to the boring conversation Edmond and her mother always had, always about babies and men. Edmond didn’t have any babies of her own yet; she had been married about two years, but for some reason had not been able to get pregnant, and that was all she wanted to talk about. Alameda was sorry for her, but didn’t want to spend her entire life talking about that.

“Alameda! It’s for you!” Edmond shouted louder. “Get your butt in here!”

“Language!” Alameda heard Mom admonish her older daughter. The word butt was on the forbidden list in the house.

Alameda dragged herself away from the story and slogged to the phone. No one ever called her except Grandma. She liked hearing from Grandma, who seemed to be the only member of the family who liked her, but she really wasn’t feeling like talking today. She could scarcely contain her surprise when a male voice spoke.

“Alameda?”

She affirmed that it was her.

“This is Kelvin…you remember me, Kelvin Upton? From school?”

Alameda agreed that she knew who he was.

“Well, a few of the guys are getting together for a party next Saturday. I was wondering if maybe you’d…be my…date?”

Alameda didn’t say anything. This had caught her so by surprise that she couldn’t speak. Finally she croaked out “What?”

“You know, just…it’s a smallish group, just a little birthday party for a friend. There won’t be any drinking or anything, so you can tell your mom you don’t have to worry about that.”

Alameda stammered something, she wasn’t sure what, her face red with embarrassment. She held the phone toward Edmond, pleading with her sister to help her know what to say. “He wants to go out with me.”

Edmond snatched the phone and snapped at the young man on the other end. “She can’t go out with you.” She slammed the phone on the hook.

Mom and Edmond gathered Alameda in their arms. She stood passive, not sure how to deal with this unexpected affection. Mom stroked her hair. “My poor baby, my poor baby” was all she said. Alameda wasn’t sure why it would be seen as unfortunate to be asked out; she just didn’t know what to say.

“He’s only asking you to laugh at you, you know.” Edmond nodded, agreeing with Mom’s assessment. “He wants to make fun of you with all his friends.”

Alameda sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. The floor was filthy, but she didn’t care. She felt dirty. She was humiliated. How could someone, even someone from that snobbish school, do that to someone? She barely heard when the phone rang and Edmond answered. Edmond yelled at the young man who had called back and told him that Alameda wasn’t going to go out with him, now or ever, so quit calling.

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 Alameda stared at the single carnation on her desk. The pep club always sold carnations for Valentine’s Day, and boys bought them for their best girls. Kelvin had darted into the room, even into the Home Ec class, and delivered the carnation to her in person. Then he left without saying anything. She was so humiliated she didn’t know what to say. Mom and Edmond had been very blunt with her last week when he called. Boys like that don’t go out with girls like Alameda. They ask them out, and then stand them up. The girls get all excited, and tell all their friends they have a date. Fat chance, Alameda thought. I don’t have any friends. Mom scared them all away. But she realized Mom was right. This boy would stand her up, and then laugh about how the poor little ugly geek thought he would actually go out with her.

She held the carnation to her nose and smelled the sweetness. It could be tempting to get lost in such a scent. She left it on her desk as she moved through the motions of learning to cook – something she mastered years ago, in part so she wouldn’t have to eat Mom’s cooking anymore. The bell rang, dismissing class. She dropped the carnation in the trash can on her way out the door.

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 Alameda stood at the altar, her white dress trailing behind, beside Moore. This was her day. Finally she would be happy. She remembered last night, and the night before, when fear filled her so completely that she made plans for escape. It didn’t feel like she could just call off the marriage; she planned where she would go and how she would get there. It would be difficult, since she would have to leave her job if she left the state, and she wasn’t sure how long it would take her to get another. But going through with this seemed wrong somehow. She heard Moore speak the words of the wedding vow; he sounded serious, like he meant it. He smiled at her. It was her turn. She said what she had to say in a daze. He took her in his arms for their first kiss as a married couple. It was…well, blah. He just brushed his lips against hers, then they turned and left the room, walking arm in arm through the crowd of well-wishers. Her family was all there, loud and obnoxious as usual. His family was there, quiet and supportive. She had decided to take his last name, join his family that seemed to want her much more than her family ever did.

The reception was short, which is what they had planned. Getting these two families together was always difficult, because Alameda knew her family would find some way to insult Moore and his family, not intentionally, but just because they didn’t know any better. She wrapped her arms around Moore, and he held her in a protective embrace, protected her against the family that had tried to keep them apart, and then had tried to bring them together, sure that he was foolish enough to actually marry this undesirable sister/daughter and take her off their hands. They walked into the cold night, a new life beginning, the old one finally left behind.

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 Alameda pulled, but her hands wouldn’t come to her face. She wanted to feel her face, be sure that she was still real…or maybe, hope that she wasn’t. She struggled to free herself, but she was strapped down. Where was she? It was dark. She screamed.

The door opened, and a nurse appeared in a wedge of light. “You need something?”

“Where am I?” Alameda was in tears.

“You’re in ICU. How do you feel?”

“Can I…have a light on? I want to see.” Alameda had never been scared of the dark, but tonight it felt threatening.

The nurse flipped on the light and bustled around the room taking vital signs, checking her IV, making sure her pillow was just right, adjusting the covers. Alameda wanted her to leave; she wanted to be alone.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Alameda nodded. She didn’t want to talk. She remembered the bottle, the pills, the blood on her wrists…she tried to ensure success, but still she failed. She knew why she was here, but she didn’t know how. She knew she had not driven herself, and there was no one else to care enough to bring her here.

“Your husband…”

“My ex-husband…”

“Your ex-husband…he tried to call. Your son wanted to talk. When you didn’t answer, he got worried. He stopped by, and…well, he called an ambulance. He waited until we got you admitted.”

Alameda turned her head away from the nurse. She didn’t want the nurse to see her tears. She didn’t want anyone to see her tears. She had learned a long time ago that tears gave people power over you. Tears were the enemy.

“You sleep. It’ll help you more than anything else.” The nurse flipped off the light and left.

Alameda tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. Her mind was consumed with the memories. The day he walked out. Moore left, insisting that she wasn’t the woman he married. She was…“well, look at yourself”, he said right before he left. “What sort of a woman lets herself lose 40 pounds…no, makes herself lose 40 pounds…when she is a perfect weight? Why do you do that to you…to me?”

She tried to explain. The long nights alone, even as he lay in the bed beside her, not seeming to notice her presence. The long silences, the quiet dinners, the constant criticisms. She was too fat…she was too thin…she needed to wear higher heels…she needed to wear lower heels…she shouldn’t wear that color…she needed to be more outgoing…nothing she did was ever right. He wanted her thin? She could be thin. Now he didn’t want her thin. No matter what she did, all she could ever be was ugly.

The court hearing. His descriptions of her therapy, his depictions of her as crazy. She hadn’t been crazy. She had never behaved in a crazy manner. She was only depressed. But the judge believed him. The judge took her son and gave him to his father. She would see him only every other weekend. Her boy, the only one in her life who loved her as she was, without conditions. The pills…antidepressants…anti-anxiety drugs…sleeping pills…take them…all of them. No, the knife. There was a knife in the drainer. Her wrists…running red as the pills took hold and put her to sleep. She never felt the pain, until she woke strapped to the bed with bandages on her wrist and a horrifying headache.

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Alameda leaned against the door. Finally at home. She was glad she had discovered you could shop at midnight, that there was a grocery store open all night. Now she could shop without the crowds, without all the people. She could get out of the house and get her shopping done. Now she wouldn’t have to leave the house for another week. She was safe. Her son would be here in two days, and they would have fun. It would be like a slumber party. And she had managed to get to the store, so she could feed him.

She changed into her nightgown and crawled into bed. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered. She wouldn’t sleep any more than she slept any other night. Sleep would not come. She would hear every time the clock chimed. But at least she was lying down. She could pretend to sleep, and maybe one day that would be enough and she could wake up feeling all right. Surely you weren’t supposed to be so tired when you were thirty.

Maybe tomorrow she’d try to look for work. No, why bother? Once she lost her job because of her illness, she mostly stayed home. Who would hire her? She was ugly, and in spite of all the hype about her being smart, it seemed to her like everyone else was smarter. She’d stay home, work on her positive affirmations and throw them in the trash like she did every day. Positive affirmations were stupid.

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Alameda raced to class, her coat flapping behind her. It was a chilly day, but she didn’t notice. She was excited to be back in school. Okay, at 35 she was older than most of the other students, but she didn’t mind. She was feeling the best she’d ever felt. She was doing something she really wanted to do. And she was succeeding. She did have that downturn with Genetics, but that can happen to anyone. And she understood the work, it was just…she hadn’t been ready for that class yet. She had done much better since then, and today she got the letter that she was accepted into the master’s program. She was happy. She almost sang as she headed toward the final class that would give her the undergraduate degree and allow her to move forward toward a career. She didn’t need a man, she didn’t need anyone, and she didn’t have to lock herself away anymore. She caught sight of the scars on her wrists, and pulled her sleeves down. This was no time to think about that.

She would go to the library after class; she had that assignment she needed to complete. It seemed silly, having an assignment to learn about the library. She’d spent most of her life in libraries; what could she possibly need to know that she didn’t already know? Still, the assignment had some things on it…map room? She didn’t even know the library had a map room.

The library was busy this time of day. She asked at the desk, and was directed to the fourth floor. The map room. She bumped into one of her classmates, and they wandered through the rows of mysterious looking drawers. She had no idea how to find the one map they were looking for in all of these drawers. Her friend was as clueless as she was, and they laughed a bit as they stumbled around in an effort to finish the assignment that was due tomorrow.

A tall man stepped out of the shadows. “May I help you?”

The women explained the problem. This was the map librarian, the perfect person to help them. He showed them how to read the diagrams that showed what the maps were, and where. He helped them find the correct drawer, and soon Alameda was holding that precious commodity that would help her finish her assignment. This map held the key to her future.

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 Carroll cooked dinner for her that night. He made his famous spaghetti sauce. She hadn’t told him she didn’t like spaghetti much. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She smiled at him across the table as he dipped spaghetti onto her plate. It did look much different than her mother’s spaghetti. It actually looked edible. Alameda smiled and thanked him. She dug in her fork. To her surprise, it was delicious.

She thought about that day in the map room, when he helped her find the map. She was on her way to finishing her degree now, and would soon have that elusive M.S. after her name, just as she had imagined it all those years ago, when she was nine, before her world got blown off course by a marriage that ended so brutally, so horribly. She could almost forget, and maybe even someday forgive, Moore. But not yet. It was too soon. And she still had to navigate the mine field of a new relationship, though Carroll seemed to be different than Moore. He seemed to actually like being with her, talking to her, and holding her. Moore had hardly ever hugged her; Carroll hugged her all the time.

Carroll insisted she was pretty. He didn’t understand why she thought she was ugly. She was starting to learn that other people thought she was pretty, but with that had come the realization that her first marriage had been a sham. Her therapist had helped her deal with the shock of realizing that she had been a trophy wife, something she had always thought was for models and poster girls, not for educated professional women. She had dealt for years with men at work groping her, grabbing at her, making lewd comments about her even in front of other people. She had managed to deal with being told by her boss that she should be flattered. She had taken much longer to deal with the knowledge of her trophy wife status. Now, with Carroll, it seemed he was interested in more than how she looked on his arm. She smiled and relaxed. They talked about getting married, and maybe she could finally be happy.

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 Alameda woke with a shock. The dream was horrifying, but the waking was even worse. She wanted to reach for Carroll, but she knew he wasn’t there. He was at his own home miles away. She thought about calling but decided against it. She had always been opposed to calling anyone at two in the morning unless it was an emergency.

Her thoughts had been difficult lately, and that was what led to this dream she was sure. She and Carroll had established a code word, their own word, that they would say to each other when they had a fight, a code word to remind them how much they loved each other and help them reconcile. They hadn’t had any fights; they got along well, but when two people live together, some tension is inevitable. So they set up their code.

She remembered the horrible days when Moore walked out. He told her she was impossible to live with, that no man could live with her. She knew that wasn’t true; she was much easier to live with than any other woman she knew. She knew she had been a good wife. She learned years ago that Moore walked out because he preferred men, and because she had lost so much weight that she was no longer a trophy. Still, it stuck. What if he was right? What if she was impossible? What if…the thoughts went on and on and would not let her sleep. She was in danger of slipping back into her old patterns.

The dream was vivid. She was married to Carroll. They had a fight, a bad one. She used their code word, said it over and over. He just turned his back. He’d had enough of an impossible woman, and wasn’t going to listen anymore. She killed his love, killed all their happiness, because she was not lovable. She cried, but it meant nothing. The love was gone. Their life was gone. He walked out, leaving her crying on the floor, leaving her to struggle again with her pain.

The dream remained in her head as she packed her suitcase. She checked on her son; he was asleep. He was eighteen now and would manage to figure out how to survive. She left him a note, told him she was going to put the house in his name. She told him how much she loved him, and that she would let him know where she was once she got herself together. She closed the door, slipping the key underneath the mat where he could find it. She left her car, her home, her life behind, taking only her credit card and a few items of clothing.

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 Alameda died alone, a successful career woman who none of her colleagues knew. She was private, stayed to herself, and never caused trouble. The men in her office tried to get her to go out…even in her forties, she was still an attractive woman. She always turned them down. She was polite about it, but she never accepted a single invitation. The bolder among them grabbed her from time to time, but she never responded, never even filed a complaint. She rose only slowly through the ranks, though her credentials were as good as any of the men’s, better than most, and her work was exemplary. No one ever asked her why. They all knew. Women never managed to break the ceiling in this world…unless they were prepared to play the game. Were they flirts? Did they follow through? Not Alameda. She stayed to herself much of the time, preferring the lonely comfort of her office to the noisy companionship of her colleagues.

Everyone went to her funeral. In spite of her introversion, they liked her. Her family showed up – Edmond. Albuquerque. Brunswick. Even Orleans, who never admitted to the horrible things he did to his sisters, and was forgiven by parents who never believed their oldest son would do such terrible things. Orleans was asked to give the eulogy, because he was understood to be the orator of the family.

Moore was there, along with the son they had shared. Her son was the only person who had known where she was. They remained in constant contact over the years, and when she died, he revealed her death to all the other people that had mattered in her life. He never expected any of them to go halfway across the continent to be there. He sort of suspected her family just wanted to verify she was really dead, and try to claim some of the property she left behind, a successful businesswoman living alone with a cat.

Carroll was there. He came to find out what happened all those years ago, hoping there would be some indication of why she left, but she had left no note behind and her son only shrugged. She never told him. Carroll would go to his own grave wondering about the secrets that so tormented this beautiful woman, this woman who made him feel so good and then left. He never figured out why she thought she wasn’t pretty enough. She had a mirror, but he realized she almost never looked in it…she turned her head away as she passed mirrors in his house.

Her brother delivered the eulogy as requested. It was the strangest eulogy anyone there ever heard. It proposed to encapsulate the life of a woman they all knew, but the eulogy didn’t fit that woman. The colleagues, the former lovers, and the former husbands were all thrown off balance when the brother summed up the life of this intelligent, hard-working, accomplished, and attractive woman in one phrase: “She just wasn’t pretty enough.”