Home
“We’re home!” I shout, as I slam the door behind us. Gus and I quickly throw the incriminating evidence of our D.Q. run into the kitchen garbage and I cover it with junk mail.
Our suburban house sports African tribal masks hanging on the living room walls; an Aboriginal hollowed log coffin rests in the corner by the fireplace and an 18th century Kula prayer rug is suspended from the wall in my mom’s study. A silver Menorah and an antique Siddur, a Hebrew prayer book, reside in our dining room china cabinet; alongside the Kinara we placed our Kwanzaa candles in during last year’s observation of that holiday.
Someone coming into our house for the first time might think that we are world travelers, or seriously confused as to our belief system; but no, my mom has gotten all these items, and more, from various flea markets and EBay over the years. We are not African or Muslim; nor are we Jewish, Australian Aborigines or African Americans.
My mom graduated with an undergraduate degree in anthropology 14 years ago, and had every intention of going on for her Ph.D, when she met my father at the annual Earth Day celebration at Eastern Illinois University, where they were both seniors. My dad was going for his undergraduate degree in Political Science, and planned on going for his Ph.D in Medieval Studies following graduation; he had already been accepted at The University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Instead, my mom got pregnant with me, they got married and my mom gave up her dream of becoming a world renowned anthropologist to move to Indiana with my father, who continued his studies and graduated five years later. He got a job teaching at the local university and she stayed home to take care of us.
Mom still talks about going back to school, when Gus gets a little older. In the meantime she makes up for her lack of a doctorate by forcing her family to take part in various rituals that she either reads about or comes across on the internet.
For instance, just before my eighth birthday I asked for a Malibu Beach Barbie, along with her pink Corvette. I bugged my parents incessantly about it, and I very carefully described for my mother the particular Barbie I wanted, making sure I pointed out the pink Corvette every time we were at the local department store. The night before my birthday, I wriggled in my bed in anticipation; I couldn’t wait to put Barbie in her pink car and drive her down to the beach for her swim date with Ken. I fell asleep that night with visions of Barbie dancing in my head.
Sure enough, the next morning when I woke up, at my place setting was a large wrapped box, topped with a red bow, just the right size for a Barbie doll. My mother stood by the table, beaming at me as I squealed in delight and began ripping the paper off; I recall wondering somewhere in the back of my mind where the package for the Corvette was. I finished tearing off the paper and stared blankly at what was inside.
Instead of the generically beautiful, blond and outrageously proportioned Malibu Barbie I had requested, I found myself staring at a blue masked Native American carved cottonwood doll about 8 inches high with an enormous eagle’s beak where Barbie’s pert little nose should have been. It was wearing a beaded red suede skirt and knee high brown suede boots, and its entire torso was covered in bird feathers. Instead of arms, it had wings; so I guessed it wouldn’t need the Corvette. I stared at the monstrosity without speaking.
My mother had gone online earlier in the week with the sole purpose of purchasing Barbie and the matching Corvette for her beloved almost-but-not-quite eight year old daughter; however, she became distracted by a report on MSNBC that stated instances of American girls suffering from body dysmorphia were on the rise. She concluded that Barbie had impossible measurements and could possibly lead me to future depression, eating disorders and a likely addiction to plastic surgery; so, she did further research and decided on the handmade Hopi Kachina doll instead.
Mom assured me that this doll would be better for my sense of self-esteem, and she showed me a pamphlet included with the doll that gave the history of the Hopi tribe, who descended from the Anasazi, a people who had lived and populated the American Southwest one thousand years ago. I am sure she sincerely hoped I would understand her concerns and gratefully accept the Kachina doll, along with her best intentions.
Instead, I pouted. I threw myself on the floor. I cried. I screamed. I kicked. I tried to shove the horrible thing into the garbage disposal. Finally, my parents rescued the obnoxiously expensive doll from my furious clutches, and it has resided in the china cabinet from that day on. Later that day my father drove me to the mall and bought me both the Barbie and her Corvette. As my dad and I walked through the front door with my belated birthday gifts, laughing and holding hands, my mother appeared from the laundry room and shot my dad a look that implied some sort of treachery on his part. My dad had the good grace to look embarrassed, and refused to make eye contact with her. As for me, I fell asleep with Barbie that night, secure in the knowledge that my father understood me and loved me.
I think my mom still holds some resentment toward my father for the direction her life has taken, because every once in a while she finds a way to make his life a little hellish, all in the name of world trade. For instance, my father loves his coffee, so my mother got into the habit of ordering all types of brew from around the world. One morning, after they’d had a particularly nasty go-round about my father’s late hours the night before; my mother served my dad a new coffee. It was called Kopi Luwak.
“Mmmm. Great coffee, hon. Where is this one from?” my dad asked absently, as he perused the morning papers.
“It’s a new one from Indonesia. I got it online from a specialty website,” my mom replied frostily, as she cooked our eggs.
“Hmm. Well, it tastes fantastic. Did you buy a pound?”
“Yes, I got it especially for you. I’ll just drink the Folgers.” She kept her back turned to him.
“Well...thanks. I’ll see you after classes, and don’t forget...the Carsons are coming for dinner tonight.” He pecked my mother on the cheek and sailed out the front door, off to the University where he had recently obtained tenure.
My mother stiffened as he kissed her; after he left she let out a ragged breath, before turning a smiling face to us, “Over easy or sunny side up?”
That evening, my father burst through the front door, dropping his briefcase at the door as he made a beeline toward the kitchen.
“Sonya! Dammit, where are you!” he roared.
My mother calmly walked through the doorway of her study, her face a study in purposeful obtuseness.
“Yes?” she questioned evenly.
“I mentioned that coffee to a colleague of mine, by the name of Basuki Pasaribu, this morning. In all your internet research, did you happen to come across the fact that Kopi Luwak is Indonesian for WEASEL SHIT COFFEE?”
I swear I saw her stifle a small smile before she lifted her face to his.
“Really, Jeffrey? How interesting. I don’t believe the website mentioned that; what exactly is weasel shit coffee?” my mother asked, forcing her expression into the mold of a concerned wife.
“Well, as it turns out, the Vietnamese civet eats ripe coffee cherries, and then shits them out along their merry way. Coffee growers follow along, pick up the cherries, wash them off, roast them and then sell them to Americans who have more money than brains,” he fumed.
“My goodness! Well, I’ll certainly be contacting that website about this. Do you think I can get a refund?” my mother asked artlessly.
“Do you mean you really didn’t know about this?” my father asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing.
Widening her blue eyes innocently, my mom protested, “Honey! Do you seriously think I would feed you coffee that a weasel had pooped out of its butt? Can you imagine how angry I would have to be at you to do that?” Then, giving a tinkling little laugh, she turned her back on my father and swept past him to take the roast out of the oven.
My father stood silently in the middle of the kitchen, his arms crossed across his chest, staring at her back for what seemed like an eternity. When Mom didn’t offer up any further explanations, he stalked up to their bedroom to get himself ready for the Carsons’ arrival. To this day he buys his own coffee.
Fast forward to the present.
“How was school?” my mom asks absently, as she rounds the corner from the living room to the kitchen, never looking up from her book as she nears us. Gus and I nervously glance at the title of the book she appears so engrossed in; Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals, and Festivals by Frank Salamone. My stomach does a flip as I recall the past ceremonies in which she’s forced us to take part.
Case in point. I developed slower than some of my friends, so I didn’t get my first period until last summer, when I was nearly 13. I had run upstairs to change before going to swim with a friend, and thought I’d better go to the bathroom before we left. I clearly recall sitting on the upstairs toilet, staring blankly at the smear of blood on my underpants, not realizing for a minute what it meant. I remember my heart skipping a beat and feeling excited, nervous and slightly ashamed, all at the same time. “This changes everything,” I remember thinking.
I gave a yell for my mom, and she came running into the bathroom, her face lighting up with joy when I showed her my underwear. She gave me a big hug, telling me how I was a woman now, and wouldn’t it be nice when we both had our periods at the same time, we’d share the same link with the moon, blah, blah, blah. That was bad enough, but then she realized I had planned on going swimming, and I obviously couldn’t do that in a pad.
That was when my mom got the brilliant idea to show me how to insert a tampon. That’s right, my mom didn’t just hand me a tampon along with the illustrated directions, leaving me to bumble my own way through it, like most moms would be content to do. Thirty minutes later, I left the house with a mental picture of my mother I have not been able to shake, to this day.
That should have been the beginning, and the end, of it. I mean, I suffered enough, right? But no, my mom decided to hold a Menarche Ritual for me, inviting all the women we know, including Nana Jane, my Aunt Marcia and several of the ladies from her book club, including Jason Lee’s mother. She got the idea from one of her anthropological books, which have been the bane of my existence since I can remember.
A Menarche Ritual is when women get together to celebrate a girl’s first period, like a party. From what I can gather, it’s something some mothers do for their daughters because their own initial experience with menstruation was so unsatisfying that they decide they want a do-over, at their daughter’s expense.
It never occurred to me to refuse when my mother explained her notion to me. Invitations were sent out, requesting that all attendees be dressed in red. On a Friday evening in late June, our home was filled with uncomfortable looking middle aged Southern women bearing gifts for me, as my skin crawled with humiliation at the attention being drawn to me and my new status.
My brother and father were sent out for the evening, since men were apparently forbidden to attend this sort of gathering. They got to enjoy an evening of putt-putt golf and Mexican food while I was forced to sit in front of a makeshift alter adorned with a fringed red tablecloth runner and covered with an assortment of red items; red candles, pomegranates, poppies, lengths of red wool yarn, and a copy of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The bitterly pungent odor of Ethiopian myrrh incense resin wafted from a charcoal disc incense burner several feet to my right, causing several of the ladies to wrinkle up their noses and cough delicately.
My mom began the ceremony by seating me cross-legged in a circle of her lady friends, on the floor; her friends arranged themselves uncomfortably around me, refusing to make eye contact with each other. My cheeks burned in embarrassment as my mom lit a braided sweetgrass smudge stick and first smudged me, and then smudged the other guests. She explained the ritual of smudging to my guests as purification and protective ritual that was akin to “spiritual housekeeping.” Gauging from the looks on their faces, ranging from appalled to blankly stupefied, I didn’t believe any of the genteel Southern belles in that room had ever been subjected to anything like this ceremony in their sheltered lives. To my intense horror, my mother then asked the guests to share stories of their own first “Moon Time”.
Old Mrs. McConaughey, who had been going deaf for years, leaned forward in her chair (given her advanced age of 83, she had been allowed to sit in the easy chair) and loudly asked, “What? What is it she wants us to talk about?”
Her middle-aged granddaughter, Mrs. Grover Crawford, shouted, “Grandmother! Sonya wants us to tell a story about our first menstrual period!”
I should mention that, it being early summer, our windows were wide open to allow the evening breeze to cool the house. This is how my brother’s friends, Chase and Channing Roberts, were also able to take part in my Moon Festival, and relay the humiliating details about it to the entire school the following day.
Mrs. McConaughey nodded sagely, “Oh! Well, when I started to bleed my mother handed me an old washrag and told me to put it in my underpants. That’s what we used back then, an old rag. You young girls don’t know how lucky you are, what with your tampons and your self-adhesive maxi pads and such. Why, do you know I had to use that same rag for two days?” Sitting back, Mrs. McConaughey appeared satisfied that she had done her part to ensure that my Menarche Ritual was unforgettable; she then immediately closed her eyes and began to snore.
Mrs. Cohan raised her hand timidly and spoke up, “well, when I got my first period, my mother slapped me across the face.”
Dead silence. Mrs. Cohan blushed and rushed to explain, “It’s an old Jewish custom, nothing personal. My mother told me it was so that I would always remember the pain that goes along with being a woman.”
I recalled thinking that I could relate to Mrs. Cohan, becoming a woman was painful - regardless of the customs our mothers forced on us.
My mother’s sing-song voice pulls me out of the hellish memory of my 12th summer.
“...Ginny? Hellooo? I asked you how school was,” my mother questions, waving a hand in my face to bring me back to the present.
“Oh, um, it was ok; I got an A on my English paper and....” That was as far as I got.
Gus interrupts, “Mom! Today, Andy Berg went retarded! No, wait, he was tardy, and me and Ginny went to the D.Q., and there was a poop on the floor, and we went by Mr. Vanputten’s house and he flipped us the bird!” he finishes breathlessly.
My mother and I both stare at Gus, our mouths open in shock. He smiles back at us innocently, completely unaware of how many social mores he had just violated.
Mom looks at me and narrows her eyes. “You took him to the D.Q.?”
