PART ONE

Nothing is Free Summer 1975

On a hot sunny afternoon in 1975, I sat cross-legged next to my younger sister Kathleen in our backyard, listening to the transistor radio. We sang along to Lighthouse’s “Sunny Days”, even though I didn’t agree with nothin’ better than lyin’ in the sun listenin’ to rock ‘n roll. The listening to the music part was okay, but not the hot sun. Kathleen stretched out flat on a towel, her body covered with baby oil. She wanted her skin golden brown like the movie stars in magazines. I didn’t care about darkening my skin, especially since it meant being greased up like a turkey ready for the oven. “I’m so bored. There’s nothing to do,” I said, after the song ended and I waited for the DJ to stop talking and play more music. At the time, I had no idea how much that restlessness and the need for excitement would not only impact that summer but would follow me the rest of my life. I needed escape. Something more. Something to keep me from thinking about my boyfriend Will and the summers gone by, when we’d been together, and how I would probably never see him again. “What are we going to do all summer?” I asked. “Don’t know.” Kathleen rolled over, untying her bikini top. “This, I guess.” “Don’t think so,” I said, standing to leave. “There’s gotta be something better.” School had only been out for a few days and already I missed my friends. Friends were the best part of school; that, and the part about getting away from our mother. She would not let us come and go as we pleased, not like our friends could. Our mother expected us to be happy staying at home forever, like her. This lack of freedom pissed me off. I was sixteen, but my parents still treated me like a baby. I was of age to drop out of school, old enough to drive a car—not like my parents would let me do either. I could hardly wait to get older. Maybe I’d be free at eighteen when able to vote, or possibly nineteen, of legal age to drink, and surely by the time I turned twenty-one and became a legal adult, I’d be free to do whatever I wanted. God! I just hoped not to suffer that long! Twenty-one seemed like forever away. And then I thought of Dorothy, who lived with us and still, at the age of twenty-nine could not go out on her own or do anything she wanted. Determined not to have the same happen to me, I searched for a way out.

Kathleen got out of the house more than I did. Her way out was church activities. She didn’t seem to mind that stuff, but I thought it all bullshit and boring. My sister and I didn’t share a lot in common other than our hard-to-deal-with mother. Kathleen loved wearing make-up. I preferred the natural look. She put peroxide in her light brown hair to turn it blonde. After a period of dying my hair, the novelty soon wore off and I went back to keeping it my dark natural brown. I had womanly curves, with full, bouncing breasts. Kathleen remained skinny and flat-chested. Every Saturday afternoon she attended confirmation classes at St John’s Lutheran church in Mahone Bay. Through the summer months, the minister took them to activities such as bowling, movies, and camping trips. Our mother had no problem letting Kathleen go because it involved the church, and anything to do with the church couldn’t be wrong or harmful in any way, as Mother often reminded us. I resented my sister getting out and having a good time while I sat home and brooded, receiving no sympathy from my mother. “You’d be going out and having fun too if you hadn’t quit confirmation classes.” In our church it took three years of study before being confirmed, from the age of thirteen to sixteen. I’d quit at the end of my second year so I wouldn’t become a member of our church—a decision my mother didn’t like. But I wanted no part of a group of people I thought of as nothing more than self-righteous hypocrites. If they were so accepting, then why complain about my wearing blue jeans to church, and act shocked when I permed my hair and dyed it red? My mother and I had battled about my dropping out of confirmation classes. She told me I’d end up in hell. I told her I didn’t care, that it couldn’t be any worse than living at home with her. No matter how many times she called the minister or tried to convince or scare me into going, I held firm and refused to go. I loved that she couldn’t physically drag me there, like when I had first started school, terrified to leave home. Back then, she dragged me down the road and shoved me up the bus steps. But as soon as the bus made its next stop and the door folded open, I’d run off and go back home. I did this until she threatened me with something even worse than going to school. She terrified me with the belief that if I didn’t go to school someone would come and take me away. I had no idea who that someone might be, but the possibility of being taken from my family scared me into going to school. In the end, I learned how to cope and survive my fear and how to force myself to sit in school all day. But as a teen, my mother was losing more and more control and could no longer make me do all she wanted me to do. Yet, for whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to entirely disobey her; I did my breaking away in baby steps. Maybe deep inside I still held some fear that I’d be taken away, and I would no longer have a family. The unknown was so much scarier than my reality. Though I did enjoy how my quitting confirmation class infuriated my mother. She screamed at me, “How can you do such a thing? I’ve tried to raise you right. God knows, I’ve tried. Your turning out this way isn’t from my lack of trying. I just don’t know what gets into that crazy head of yours.” Blah, blah, blah… her screaming had little effect on me. She stomped and raved on, and sometimes I yelled and fought back, but most times I just walked away. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, she just didn’t understand me at all.