Directly across from the pool, on a lawn to the side of the house, Jocko had erected a square made of iron pipes, standing about eight or nine feet above the ground—a minimalist version of monkey bars. In those days, women with muscles were not considered attractive, so I was rarely expected to perform on this bastardized version of gymnastic equipment. No, the bars belonged to Ricky, and when Jocko started demanding feats of strength that the chubby eleven-year-old wasn’t capable of achieving, no matter how hard he tried, it was not an ownership my brother wanted. With each clumsy attempt, it seemed that Jocko’s need to disgrace my brother, to reveal him as unmanly and incapable, increased. And to top it off, at the end of every demoralizing session, Jocko would push Ricky to the side, then hop up himself, looping around and around on the bar like a toy you get at the five and dime, ending each performance with a dozen effortless chin-ups. Even though he avoided my eyes, I knew my big brother felt just as he was being taught to feel: ashamed.
In the center of the yard was an unfenced, unused paddle tennis court with its shaggy net lying in a neglected heap to one side. A big trampoline now stood between the two metal poles where the net would have been strung. The trampoline—ah, yes. I could bounce—we could all bounce—and I could definitely point my toes. I could land on my knees and then bounce back up. I could land on my butt and bounce back up. I could even land on my butt, bounce, change direction in midair, then land on my butt again, facing the opposite way. But I could not, under any circumstances, do what Jocko demanded: flip. I couldn’t do a flip of any kind, no matter how much he pushed. I wouldn’t even try. So out came the pool pole again, as if this aluminum stick were somehow the answer, the surefire way to address my incompetence. If I could dive over the pole, curling into a somersault before I landed, I could eventually translate that well-executed move into the same kind of smooth aerial display that Jocko so gracefully demonstrated. But I never could because some part of me wondered if his reasons for pushing us were not about our successes, but about our failures. A tiny cell in my head began to distrust.
On the right side of the yard lived the tree: a sycamore so huge that when I put one hand on its mottled torso, balanced on the low brick wall that encased the roots, and slowly walked around the massive trunk, I counted out thirty little-girl steps. If you stood back and looked at it through squinted eyes, the tree became a monstrous giant with two large branches dipped down, one slightly lower than the other, as if they were arms waiting to catch something in flight.
And that’s exactly what we were expected to do: fly. Jocko had somehow attached a long thick rope to each of the sycamore’s arms. Ropes so thick they were impossible to grip and so coarse they tore up your hands, ropes you’d imagine being used to tie the Queen Mary to its moorings. A flier might take off using one of two methods: As you held one of the ropes, Jocko would grab you around the waist, then walk backward until he stood in the camellia bushes, under the kitchen window, as far as he could go. He’d then launch you into the wild blue with an enormous push and if the initial heave didn’t knock you off, the momentum at the top most likely would. Therefore, the method of launch I preferred was the entanglement approach. I’d stand on the low picket fence that edged the pink flagstone walkway surrounding the tree, lace my hands around the rope hanging from the lower branch, then jump backward into the air. While using the rope connected to the taller branch (which was therefore longer) and standing on a much higher launching point (sometimes from the balcony above), the opposing flier, who was often Jocko, would time it just right and take off, gathering more speed than me with my tiny jump back. The performer on the longer rope would then swing out and around my shorter one and when the ropes engaged, it would whip me with a snap of centrifugal force that was both thrilling and horrifying. We’d twirl round and round each other, caught in “the dance of the ropes,” ending when the two partners finally collided. I learned to loop the rope around one foot when I was dizzy and slipping, then I could use my legs plus my not-quite-big-enough hands and have a prayer of staying on. If not, I’d be flung to the walkway below.
The yard echoed with screams and shrieks, the kind of laughter that comes from riding the Intimidator or from being tickled to the point of peeing in your pants. I desperately hated the diving platforms, felt a failure on the trampoline, but the ropes I could do. I could cling to that knot of hemp and live.
The inside of the house kept changing too, as Jocko began accumulating bigger and better things. Furniture, television consoles, and in the living room, a new stereo was set up, allowing the music of Dean Martin and Peggy Lee and Martin Denny to rumble through the house constantly. I remember watching them dance: two people, four feet, my mother on tiptoe while Jocko’s big hand lightly gripped her waist, guiding her to move with him, pushing her back, drawing her in. I watched, fixated, as they danced the cha-cha, that one, two, one-two-three pulse vibrating the floor where I sat with the roaring fireplace hot on my back. When the music stopped, they continued to embrace, Jocko running his hand down her back, cupping her butt, then pulling her toward him. I watched as my mother pushed him away, then headed toward the den to refill their drinks, making a distinct “tsk-tsk” sound with her tongue, the same sound my grandmother would make—a “naughty” reprimand. Was that because of me? Because she suddenly saw me sitting there with my chin resting on top of my bent knees?
Jocko always described Baa as a prude, overly uptight about most things, especially sex. If a crude or suggestive word was uttered in her presence, she’d blush, putting her hand to her face—just as Joy would—and I could feel her embarrassment radiate across the dinner table. It was no secret that Jocko thought my mother was loving but limited and while she could kiss our boo-boos, it was his job to bring us fully alive, to unleash in us all the important primary colors of being human; colors my mother felt uncomfortable or incapable of revealing and he did not. We were her children, for goodness sake, so perhaps she felt it was inappropriate to behave in an openly sensual way in our presence. That’s true, I’m sure, but it was more than that. Joy had raised her, and my grandmother’s troubled childhood, complete with daily lectures on the sin of sex, clung to Baa. It was like a cloud that floated through my mother’s life, dimming her brightness, sometimes making it difficult to see her clearly.
When my mother had left the room, her “tsk-tsk,” floating away, Jocko turned to me. “Come on, Doodle, let’s dance.” I jumped to my feet, having recently attended the Tap, Ballet, and Acrobat class at the dance studio down the street, which oddly enough had included the cha-cha. But Jocko didn’t put one hand on my waist and hold the other out straight, like he had with my mother. He put both his big familiar hands on my hips while he stepped with me—one, two, an’ cha-cha-cha—all the time instructing, “Move your hips. Move your hips,” pushing them this way and that. “That’s my girl.”
They both looked impossibly perfect: he in his dark suit with just a hint of cowboy, she with the black lace bodice of her dress cinched at the waist above layers and layers of a black tulle skirt that whispered when she walked. After a fleeting good-night kiss, followed by the tip-tap of her heels and the thud of his boots, they floated off together on a cloud of glamour, the white Cadillac carrying them away for the evening. As soon as the door was closed, Mrs. Roberts, the new live-in housekeeper, went to her room above the garage—assured that the kids were safely tucked in front of the television—and I drifted up to my mother’s big walk-in closet.
Hiding behind the forest of Baa’s clothes—hers on one side, his on the other—I sat against the wall looking up at the hanging garments, hypnotized by the lingering smell of my mother’s Femme perfume, then chose one beautiful dress, stepped out of my nightgown and into the silk and satin. When it wouldn’t stay on my body, I got a handful of big safety pins from the sewing basket on a shelf in the back, pinned the dress everywhere in a suggestion of a fit, and moved out into their bedroom. Lost in a world of pretend, I danced around the room, remembering Jocko’s hands directing me to move this way and that, the whole time trying to keep the gown from falling off my child’s body. When I finally tripped on the hem—breaking the illusion—I took Baa’s sewing scissors and cut the bottom of the beautiful dress… off. Maybe I just needed to make it work. Or maybe destroying the dress was a message, trimmed in lace.
The Libbit house, the new white Cadillac, and the perfect couple.