No U-Turns

Charlotte Wilkins

Devon Mckay

Word Count 1532

One way street. 1951

At first, all I see are scuffed whitewalls as the rusted-out Plymouth comes to a screechy stop. An old lady, her face framed by scraggly red hair, cranks her head out the passenger window, her grin twisted in an effort to look at us. It’s Saturday morning, my older sister Bonnie and I are playing with our dolls under the maple tree growing between curb and sidewalk on our Midwestern street. Even at five, I knew no one ever comes to visit unless they’ve been invited, and that’s rare. Somewhere between frightened and excited, I rock my doll, “Tiny Tears,” hard, eyes locked on the lady. My sister jumps up, her doll flopping off her lap into the dirt, and runs up the porch steps yelling, “Mom, a car just pulled up, and a lady’s getting out.”

Whack!

I cringe as the screen door is flung against the porch wall. Mother runs down the stairs, across the sidewalk, directly at the opening car door as though she will body-slam it shut.

“Get in the house!” she hisses as she flies by.

I clutch my doll to my chest and scramble up the steps. My sister cowers behind the living room drapes, one eye peering outside. Panting, I stand on tippy toes next to her and inch my nose up to the windowsill. I can’t make out the words but see Mother’s hardened back pushing the car door shut on the woman. As she returns to the house, we can see the angry set of her mouth, so we run upstairs to our room like that’s where we’ve been all the time.

She slams the front door and locks it.

Explanation?

Never.

Dangerous curve ahead. 1957

Six Christmases later, I wait as Bonnie opens her first present and neatly folds the wrapping paper, then I reach for a square package with my name on it. The shape doesn’t match anything I asked for, so I’m worried. The scary unknown is my constant companion. I sneak a look at Mother. All the tags on all our presents say from Mom and Dad, but by the way she’s smiling and watching me, I’m sure this one is just from her. I tug the curling ribbon on my package, then peel the scotch tape off so the paper can be used again next year. A small, blue diary with a tiny key and lock. My Diary scrolls across the puffy cover in swirly gold cursive.

“Ooooo. . .” A private place for unspoken dreams and secret thoughts.

I climb in bed early, eager to write on the first tissue page, but the little matching blue pen freezes in my hand. In this house, you’re not allowed to have secrets from Mother. But she keeps secrets. I can tell because she gets angry and clams up if you ask a wrong question, like who was that lady in the car? Ears on guard for footsteps in the hall, I think what would be OK to write. Mother goes through our drawers, picks through our pockets and souls, throwing confiscated things back at us when it hurts the most. I decide to write only nice things on the pages, like how much fun Christmas was, what a good cook Mother is, and what I learned in school.

For weeks I hide the diary with its key in different places in the bedroom. Is she searching for it? Maybe she doesn’t care what I write because she says she knows what I’m thinking just by looking at me. But I’m afraid she’s trying to read what I’ve written, and it makes me so angry I write, “I hate you and I’m going to run away.” I can’t believe I’ve written that, but the blue words stare brashly back. Ink can’t be erased. If I rip the pages out, she’ll make me tell her what was on them or slap my face so hard I’m sure my neck will break. I start taking the diary to school. At night I hide it in a different game, piece of clothing, or shoe box in the closet. I check and re-check, assuring myself it’s still there. I have a secret to keep.

Then, one day, the little blue diary and key disappear.

I wait.

And watch.

And wait.

But she never says.

Ever.

Dead End. 1978

My sister Bonnie calls me. Thirty-six and married, she’s just been to a nearby nursing home to visit Mother’s sister, Aunt Joy—someone whose name is rarely mentioned and who I can’t remember meeting. Bonnie is the duty-bound niece, a moral standard I failed to inherit. I feel no such genealogical compunction for people rarely mentioned or seen, even in photographs. I am single, 32, estranged from my mother.

The first thing Bonnie says is, “I don’t want to bother you. I can call back at a better time.” We are not “drop in anytime” people. Even phone calls must be planned.

In an unusually measured voice, my sister begins. “I called cousin Louise. I thought she’d want to know Joy isn’t doing well and that the nurse thinks she’ll die soon.”

“Uh-hum.” I hesitate. Why would Louise care? She was just another distant cousin. I wasn’t even sure what her last name was. Occasionally there was a reference to other aunts or uncles on my mother’s side, but so few materialized in our house I couldn’t have named them in a family scrapbook if there’d been one.

“Was Louise close to Aunt Joy?” I struggle to recollect Aunt Joy. When had I last seen her, or a picture of her? Had I ever seen a photograph of her?

“Well, Louise didn’t answer right away. There was this long pause, and I wondered if we’d been disconnected, and then she said, ‘Bonnie, you mean Grandma Joy.’”

“Huh? What?” I joggle my head to clear my ears. “Are you sure you heard right?”

“Well, I did think maybe I didn’t hear correctly, or she misunderstood me or was talking about someone else,” my sister says. “I felt confused, so I just repeated ‘Aunt Joy.’”

“Right. So what did she say?”

“She very slowly and firmly said, ‘Joy is not your mother’s sister. She’s your mother’s mother. Joy is your grandmother.’” I hear my sister sniffling back tears. “I just couldn’t take in what Louise was telling me.”

“Joy is Mother’s mother?” I sputter, this betrayal—not the first but maybe the crown jewel—coloring my voice hard. “Wait a minute, you mean all these years—thirty-some years—Mother’s lied to us? Joy is our grandmother?” I’m loud, too loud, my free hand fisting the wall.

“Yes. Joy is Mom’s mother. . . . our grandmother.” Bonnie says it slowly because we’ve had so little connection with relatives, I don’t know who’s who or what to call them. And who is this woman I called “Mom?”

Who am I?

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I’m watching my life recede like through the back window of a speeding car. Passing directional signs only the backs of which I can see. “How’s it even possible for Mother to keep a lie like that while the person—her mother—is still alive?” I can’t see the walls or the floor or a way out. Maybe there’s a living grandfather, too?

Why? Why would she do this? And how do you unblinkingly keep a lie that big going for decades? Or should I call it a secret, which sounds nicer but doesn’t feel any better. What must be omitted to maintain such a lie?

You start by never speaking of your mother to your children.

You burn or hide photos of her.

You make no mention of our grandfather, if you ever knew him.

You refuse to talk about your childhood.

You deny your mother access to her grandchildren.

You stop relatives from visiting, afraid someone might ask how Grandma Joy is.

Questions had always been met with anger or silence; I learned early not to ask. Now missing pieces slink into those unanswered and later abandoned vacuities within me. Twenty-seven years ago, that jowly woman, red-headed like my mother, who was trying to reach her grandchildren, was my grandmother. What if I’d known my grandmother all these years? Perhaps I’d understand my mother better. Maybe I wouldn’t judge her so harshly, not made some of the mistakes I made. Maybe I’d have had a grandmother to confide in. Had a family map of sorts. Felt like I belonged. Felt connected.

Aren’t secrets really lies? The ones where something is left out. Those vague sentences and pauses that hold hostage the truth. The precarious and corrosive sway of knowing and not telling. As Amy Tan writes of her mother in Where the Past Begins, “Keeping her past a secret was the same as telling a lie, the sin of omission.” I’ll never know how many lies my mother told, secrets she kept. Call them what you wish, I only know the feel of that sin. The spiney aftertaste, the funereal silence which excluded all possibility of intimate connection and promised a lineage of confoundment.

Forever.

Charlotte is a longtime meditator and retired psychotherapist, currently working on her memoir. Her writing has appeared in Memoir Magazine, Brevity Magazine, and Social Work Today. She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two ridiculously precious cats who do nothing to earn their keep.