A Fighting Chance

I kept pushing. My mother was staring straight ahead, fingers tight on the steering wheel.

After one more “Where?” she answered in a low voice, “We couldn’t pay. They took it.”

I never should have asked.

Eventually, Daddy’s doctor said he could go back to work, but somehow his old job—selling carpeting at Montgomery Ward—was gone. The store gave him a different job selling lawn mowers and fences, only he didn’t get a regular paycheck anymore. Now he depended on commissions. Daddy was naturally quiet, not the kind who usually thrives in sales.

One night at dinner, I asked him why he didn’t work in the carpet department anymore. My mother cut in with something about his hours and his insurance. I didn’t understand it, but I understood the bitter tone. In her view, his company had robbed him of something he’d worked for. And now, she said, “They think he’s going to die.”

I needed to stop asking questions.

After school one day, I went with Mother and Aunt Bee to look at a little house with a FOR RENT sign in the front yard. It was small, white, and up on blocks, which meant dogs or raccoons could hide under it. I still remember that it smelled funny, like dust and old cooking.

I didn’t ask why we had to move.

Sometimes that spring I would overhear my parents arguing. I guess I shouldn’t describe it as arguing; my father never said much of anything, while my mother yelled louder. They drank more, a lot more. No one told me, but I knew, the way kids always know. I knew we were about to lose our house, pretty much the same way we lost the car. I knew that my mother blamed my daddy for not doing “what a man is supposed to do” and taking care of us.

A few days later I was upstairs, standing in my mother’s bedroom. Mother’s face was puffy, and she had rubbed her eyes to a fierce red color. About a dozen wadded-up tissues were on the bedspread next to the black dress.

I remembered the dress from years earlier, when we still lived in Norman. It was the dress she wore to funerals and graduations. It was a stiff black fabric, with short sleeves and an insert panel in the front, and it had a short black tie at the neck. The dress zipped on the side.

At first I was confused. I wondered if someone had died. But then I understood that she had an important appointment. She had heard that they were hiring at the Sears, Roebuck near our house, and she was interviewing for a job. She was fifty.

Mother barely acknowledged my presence. But as she wrestled her way into her girdle and fastened her hose, she began talking. She wasn’t going to lose this house. She would walk to Sears. She would make only minimum wage, but that was a whole lot better than commission. Betsy could take care of herself. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or just to herself, so I didn’t say anything.

She tugged the dress over her head, struggling to get it over her shoulders, across her belly, and pulled down over her hips. Sometime during her forties, after giving birth to four children, the slim beauty my daddy married had given way to a thicker version of herself.

I stood looking at her while she tugged on the zipper. She held her breath. She worked the zipper. The tears dropped off her chin and onto the floor. At last, she got the zipper all the way to the top. She rubbed her eyes with another Kleenex and blew her nose. She stood still for a while.

Finally, she lifted her head and looked straight at me. “How do I look? Is it too tight?”

The dress was too tight—way too tight. It pulled and puckered. I thought it might explode if she moved. But I knew there wasn’t another nice dress in the closet.

And that was the moment I crossed the threshold. I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

I stood there, as tall as she was. I looked her right in the eye and said: “You look great. Really.”

I stood on the front porch and watched her walk down the street. It was quiet at that time of day. The sun was hot, and she was wobbly in her high heels, but she walked straight ahead.

She got the job answering phones at Sears. Later, Daddy left his job as a salesman at Montgomery Ward—or maybe he was let go, I don’t really know. He got work as a maintenance man cleaning up around an apartment building. My parents held on to the house until after I graduated from high school, and then they gave it up and moved to an apartment.

My mother never had it easy. She fought for everything she and my daddy ever had. And when things got really tough, she did what needed to be done.





Dreams of Flying

My family stories set the direction of my life long before I was born.