Temporary Address

Temporary Address

Monday, November 21, 2011

Meg's Tale

Meg's Tale


The phone rang, and it was Mom’s caregiver, Stephanie. “You need to come now, Jenny. She’s asking for you and she’s looking fragile. I don’t think she’ll last the night.” Of course I’d been expecting this phone call for some time, and I thought I was ready for it, but apparently, you’re never ready for it.



Mom had been fragile for some time now. And I was used to it. I was used to her rambling conversations, and her hands shaking, and the times she couldn’t make it to the bathroom, and all the other losses one after another - the indignities that came as her body shut down, one function after the other.



When I got to her room, her hands were drumming on the coverlet, marching to a beat that only she could hear. And she shook her head hard against the pillows until she’d mashed her hair into a rat’s nest. And all the while, her eyes darted back and forth, glassy with panic. She was agitated, really agitated. I hadn’t seen her that bad in a long time.



“It’s okay, Meg,” Stephanie said, her voice steady and soothing. “I’ll get something to help you relax.” She prepared a syringe with morphine while I held Mom’s hand. “No morphine,” she said. “Not yet. I have to. See… they’ve been here and I must.. .oh, whatever it is. Where did I put it?”



I had gotten used to those words. She had to catch a bus or meet Pa – now dead for seven years, or return a library book or buy ice cream, or a hundred other things. I usually couldn’t tell what it was that she had to do. So I’d just nod and smile and say okay until it passed and there was something else she had to do.

“Bottom drawer. On the left. Important, see it’s the bottom. I left it there.”

“Okay Mom, I’ll get to it.”

“Right now. Get it.”

“Okay, just let me sit a minute.”

“No! Now!” She would have screamed, if she’d had the strength. Instead, she whispered a raspy, gurgling sound, and her eyes bulged like a Boston terrier’s.

“Okay, Mom. Please take it easy.”

I got up, hoping to find something in the drawer to stop her restlessness. Meanwhile Stephanie tried to ease the needle’s point under Mom’s skin. Mom screamed and threw her arms rigidly into the air, and I had to hold her as gently as I could, willing her struggling to subside, while Stephanie gave her the morphine.

“Get it now. And check for ants,” Mom said. After a few moments, she softened in my arms like a rag doll.

“I love you Mom.”



“You were only three years old.” Those were the last words she ever said. About an hour later, she died. And I cried. Like a baby, like someone who lost everything important. Because she was my life, my best friend, and my comforter.

And my brain wrapped itself in fog as I called the coroner, and then waited, and answered questions, and signed papers, and saw my mother’s body taken away. And finally, numb and trembling, I drove back to my house. I showered and climbed into bed, and stared at nothing, wishing Mom were back, and wishing I were asleep.



The next day, still in shock and very shaky, I did those things you have to do when your mother dies – call a priest, arrange for a funeral, write an obituary. I began the phone calls to friends and family. Mom had had lots of friends but she was ninety-two when she died, and most of her friends had gone before her, so the phone call list was pretty short. And then there was nothing to do. The air was thick, the walls seemed to close in, and there was just nothing to do.



For distraction, I turned on the TV, and got flooded with advertisements. My Mom had died, and all the TV could talk about was eyeliner, hamburgers, and designer fashions for cheap. And then, Meg Whitman ads hit the screen - three of them in the space of ten minutes. I bristled. She had my mother’s name, but nothing else about her was like my mother. She’d paid herself a hundred million dollars. Mom and Pa had struggled their whole lives.



She had my mother’s name. Meg. That was the name my grandmother used to call Mom when I was a little girl. And I loved it. Because the name spoke of home and of hearts as warm as the arms that hugged me tight.



Another ad. Can you buy a state with enough money? Meg Whitman blamed the unions and the little old guys drawing pensions, and the undocumented aliens for California’s woes. She stood for big business - rich, clever and good.



Mom would have flipped her finger at the TV. I could imagine her clear, low voice: “Tax cuts for the rich, the housing market crash, Enron, rolling blackouts, banking scams and million-dollar bonuses doled out to the very ones responsible for the mess. And now they hope we’ll elect them to run our state!” The words disappeared in a twinkling, replaced by ideas tumbling around inside my head.



Mom would have taken a stand. And I wanted to speak up, as a sort of tribute to her memory, but I couldn’t see it or express it or draw it or sing it or shout it, or even pray about it. The words hid themselves behind a shapeless wad that was feelings, all stuffed inside of me. Lukewarm, mush that’s been standing, that’s me, I thought. Absentmindedly, I rubbed my hand along my leg, feeling the bumps of a very old scar.



That night I dreamed about a wild little boy swinging a baseball bat. The principal said that the child was violent, and there wasn’t anything she could do.



He kept on swinging; only now he was swinging paddles instead of a bat. I came up behind him and got his arms pinned to his sides. So much I wanted to say. “You have power now with those paddles, but it’s only temporary. And you’re giving up so much for that power. Who’s going to trust you? You can’t play with the other kids, or have fun or get to go places or do things. You can’t be trusted. Who knows what you’ll do? And there are so many good things you could do. You could be a friend. You could make things better. As it stands, you’re good for nothing.” He struggled, but I held his arms pinned to his sides. And he was inside me.

I woke up with my hand clapped tightly over my mouth.



A couple of days later, Mom's landlady called with her condolences, and said that she’d give me some extra time to clear out the apartment, but she really needed it empty by the fifteenth of August.



So one particularly lousy Saturday, I let myself inside and went through her things. There were pitifully few of them. Most of her cherished knickknacks had been sold at the garage sale right before she’d given up her oh-so loved home and moved into the apartment. Independent living they called it.



I didn’t think Mom had made out a will, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t have much money, and, anyway, I was the only one left. Still, there might be some charity or some friend that she wanted to remember. And maybe that’s what she wanted me to know with her last words. I looked in that bottom left drawer, and in the very bottom I found a worn, yellowed manila envelope. From inside of it, I pulled out a spiral notebook, and I cried because the pages were filled out in Mom’s handwriting. The writing was faded and it was hard to make out some of the words. On the first page of the notebook, she’d added a Post-it, and the shakiness of the handwriting indicated that she’d added it recently. “This happened in 1939,” said the Post-it. “And I was too frightened to speak. But we can’t forget it, because if we do, it’ll happen again.”



I half expected Mom to sit down next to me and drape an arm across my shoulders. In fact, I imagined that she did exactly that, as I sat down on her chintz-covered couch and began to read the notebook.



The day James landed the job in the petroleum refinery, we celebrated with Gallo wine and Spam sandwiches. The money was nothing at first, barely enough to scrape by on, but everyone knew that, if you worked hard, you’d climb up the ladder and then they’d treat you good and you and your family, you’d be sitting easy. Only trouble was we never did know anyone who was sitting easy – least not any of us.

Well, the work was hard, but James, he never grumbled. But I worried. He came home every night smelling of sulfur and diesel, and the smell was on the clothes, and if they got mixed up with Jenny’s clothes, then her clothes smelled of diesel and sulfur too. And I noticed that James was coughing a lot and getting short of breath. Pay wasn’t much, but we didn’t want to get branded as trouble makers, so we weren’t complaining about it.

Maxfield Grossman used to show up outside of Gate 14 at 5:30 a.m. on the first Tuesday of every month. Every month he had a new flyer that he was trying to pass out. And he’d try to get the men to come to a union meeting. “How about it, James?” he’d say. And James would say, “I need this job, and I’m not about to risk losing it for a couple of extra dollars.”

But then there was the turnaround – when they had to shut down one of the plants for maintenance – and, during this particular turnaround, Harvey and Earl had to muck out the still bottoms. Near as I can figure, this is what happened. They had to crawl into the reaction tanks and clean out the tar which was stuck to everything.

There’s supposed to be someone on watch whenever anyone’s inside the tanks, and that was supposed to be Milton. Only Milton had been called down to the pier to help unload, so no one was watching Harvey and Earl. And Earl had asked KO, the foreman, if they could wait till Milton got back so that they could have someone on watch, but KO just said to be careful. And KO was all grumbling and mean because, while the plant was shut down, there was no product heading for market.

Turnarounds always took longer than they were supposed to, and everyone was grumpy on account of the long hours and the heavy work. And KO was grumpy because his boss kept on his back about when they’d get the plant up and running again. But mostly KO was grumpy because he was just plain mean. So he told Harvey and Earl to get their asses inside the tank and start mucking.

Well, Harvey and Earl, they hung a sign on a post or something saying that they were inside. All the equipment was already turned off on account of the turnaround, and then they dressed down to their skivvies and put on a rubber suite attached to a thick hose that supplied clean air for breathing, and climbed down a ladder into the tank and started the cleaning. Only trouble was there were still a few puddles of a soupy liquid in the bottom of the tank, and someone – they never did figure out who – turned on the pump while Harvey and Earl were still inside.

First the ladder got knocked over. The puddled liquid was strong acid and it started splashing, and it ate through the rubber suits in next to no time, and Harvey and Earl, they started hollering, only no one could hear their voices from inside the suits and over the roar of the pumps. Earl, he climbed out, but Harvey’s hose line got hung up on something.



Well, James, he was the first one to hear the ruckus and he slapped at the controls to stop the machinery. Earl had run over to the safety shower, but no water was coming out of it, and Earl must have been panicking, because he just kept yelling and pulling on the handle, and still no water came out.

So James grabbed at Earl’s arm and managed to steer him across the walkway to another safety shower, and he yanked at the handle and managed to get water out of it. He tore away at the pieces of suit that were still stuck to Earl’s body. They both stood under the shower just catching their breath, and James could feel the acid stinging him through his shirt. Meanwhile, some of the other guys got Harvey out of the tank, and everyone could tell then and there that he wasn’t going to make it. They got him on a stretcher, and by that time, he wasn’t screaming or crying or anything. Only his arms and his legs were twitching and shaking, and his eyes kept rolling back into his head.

KO said it was all Earl and Harvey’s fault for going into the tank without a watch, but James had heard the whole thing.

And they’d promised the men time and a half for working the turnaround, but it turned out that the work was badly behind schedule, so instead they docked the men for the extra down time. And the next time, Max showed up at Gate 14 with flyers announcing a union meeting, James said, ”count me in.”

And I said, “James, I’m going too. This union stuff scares me to Kingdom Come, and if you’re going to do something dumb, I want to know what it is.”

Mrs. McConnell next door was going to watch Jenny, but she couldn’t at the last minute, so we bundled her up in a nightgown and took her with us.

Well, seventeen of the men showed up that night, and they talked about money and safety. Jenny was almost asleep, and, truth be told, so was I, and that’s when some union busters crashed through the door and all hell broke loose.

James and Jenny and I were sitting near a back window, and James pushed us out through it. And for a while I thought we were safe, that we wouldn’t be discovered.

There were about thirty of them, each covered up in a sheet, and they started swinging at our guys with clubs.

The ghost men! I remembered it suddenly - like water spilling over the side of a dam, the memories all but drowned me. Ghost men! In my head, that’s what I called the bad men because of the sheets. I remembered it – remembered the night - crouching in some bushes behind a big old half-dead tree. Ma had told me to be quiet, but I screamed, and she put her hand over my mouth. They must have beat up Pa. I remembered the sounds – swishy, slapping sounds like when you work on a punching bag. And sharp, stinging sounds. I could recognize Pa’s voice trying not to scream but still some grunts and groans and swearing got out of him like bursts from a shotgun.



And I could hear the sounds as if they’d just happened, and they sent a shiver through me, a prickly frozen feeling, dull and prison gray - like walls of fear, keeping the screaming inside, not daring to let it loose.



With every inch of me, I wanted to throw the notebook away, never to touch the sensations associated with it. But I knew I had to finish reading it. I owed at least that much to my mother. And I had to do it right now, because this was a place in my mind that I didn’t want to have to visit again, ever. I turned the page.



Instead of Mom’s loopy writing, the next page had pictures attached by yellow, crinkled tape. The first one was of Pa with a swollen lip and dried blood around his nose and mouth. Next, there was a photo of his leg, all bruised purple and swollen. And a photo of his back criss-crossed with thick, bloody cuts and welts. And finally, there was a picture of a small child’s leg, my leg, with a bright red burn on it.



The picture of Pa’s back was the worst. It made me ache to look at it. Instinctively, I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream. My hand was clammy, and suddenly I was oh, so cold. And my chest was heavy, as if crushed by rocks.



I turned the page to find more of Mom’s journaling.



There we were crouched down in some sorry shrubbery. I tried to keep Jenny still, but she was only three and she was scared, and her screaming attracted the men’s attention. One of them grabbed me and another snatched Jenny. Just pulled her right out of my arms. They taped her mouth to still her screaming. And one guy lit a cigarette, and he brought it up to her face. I watched the dull orange ember and I saw the tail of ashes grow. Closer and closer, he brought it up to her face. I remember screaming “No!” and just crying and crying. And he dropped it into Jenny’s lap.

“Hey, let her be,” said the other one. “She’s just a kid.”

“Hell, she’s nothin’ but a red diaper baby.”I remember his words, the way he spit them at us, like we were dead sewer rats, stinking, disgusting. He played some more with us and with the cigarette, and then he put it out – on Jenny’s leg. She screamed, but the sound couldn’t get out on account of the tape. He put it out as if Jenny’s leg was an ashtray.

Then they raped me. They hurt me bad. I never did tell James. I don’t think he ever found out.

I can’t write any more about that.

Then they threw us all into the backs of a couple of pick-ups and they drove us out to the fields and left us there still tied and taped. Like buckets of hog slop. Some of the men finally managed to work their ropes loose and we began the long walk towards home.

I think James had a sprain or break or something and he limped like crazy, but he didn’t let on that it hurt ‘cause Jenny was so young and so spooked. I knew she was hungry and hurting but somehow, she knew not to cry – just stumble along. Pa and I carried her some, and some of the others did too, but we were all pretty messed up, and she ended up walking a far stretch of the way by herself.

My hand still covered my mouth, pressing hard to hold back the scream, because, if I could just hold it back, then that terrible night wouldn’t have happened. Pa’s back and Mom’s crying, they were all my fault. All my fault because of me screaming. But I’d never do that again. No matter what, I’d keep still. For the rest of my life, I would keep still.



Then everything would be all right.



But it had happened, and I remembered it, the explosion of pain, and the smell of my burned flesh. I could still smell that tobacco mingled with my burning flesh. That smell was to stay with me for the rest of my life, a crushing, stifling feeling. I never did try smoking. I was just about the only kid in my high school class who had never smoked.



I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I was cold through to the bone and shaking like I’d never stop. Fearful memories rushed through me like a typhoon, pressing hard against my chest. It felt like I was having a heart attack. I was about to die, and I’d die with Ma’s words hidden behind my hand. So I forced my hand from my mouth, and threw back my head, and screamed.



At first it was just a mewing sound barely strong enough to make it out of my mind, then a sick croak, and finally, a long wail and a full, scream – primitive, torn from my soul.

For a long time I rocked back and forth and cried like I’d never stop, and the rhythm and the tears were soothing like balm on a bad wound. And I just sat there rocking and crying my body’s rhythms back to normal. The crushing, icy dread subsided. I felt lighter, stronger, as if I’d just wakened from a nightmare, as if I’d killed Sauron. I looked back at the journal. There were only a few more paragraphs left.



It was the KKK that did it. Most people think that they only bothered blacks, but they also went after Jews and communists, and union organizers. And they surely went after us.

Looking back, it’s amazing that unions ever got on. It seems like they had everything stacked against them. The owners had money, respectability. They had the ear of the newspapers, and the use of the sheriff to keep us in line.

And yet the unions had to win. There were too many of us. And we didn’t have much to lose. When our kids went hungry or got sick and we couldn’t afford a doctor – well, then you’d do just about anything, and that includes organizing. But in the end we had to win. There were too many of us and we were too poor.

I looked down at my hands, now resting in my lap, and I knew I would speak and write, and shout and sing and pray my mother’s story - as if I’d ripped the tape off of my mouth. And as for Meg Whitman’s ads, well, they were a step backwards, a step towards the days when profit counted for more that human lives.



So I copied my mother’s journal, and published it in a blog on the internet. And at the bottom of the page, I added:



“FIX CALIFORNIA. TAX THE RICH.”



“DID YOU GET A MILLION $ BONUS? GIVE IT BACK.”



“WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS LOSES.”



And I made up business cards and passed them around everywhere I could think of. They had the web address on them and the words “I love you, Mom.” I hoped that people would read the blog and know my mother, but at least I felt comforted knowing that I had done my best to tell her story to the world.



About a week after I’d given away the last business card, I saw a car with a bumper sticker on it FIX CALIFORNIA. TAX THE RICH. And the address for my blog was there in tiny letters. I felt like hiding. It wasn’t my style to be noticed. But this was about Mom. At least that’s what I told myself. So I made up a bumper sticker for myself as well. And I made up some posters and hammered them into the ground where motorists could see them.

The bumper stickers and signs multiplied into the thousands, until they were a common sight throughout California.



Then, a six-year-old kid walked into a clinic with a Tupperware container filled with pennies and nickels that he wanted to donate. His story made the news. After that, others donated to the clinics and the after-school programs. Welfare moms volunteered their time. People volunteered and donated in droves. Everyone wanted to help fix California.



And then the miracle happened. A billionaire gave away his bonus. Not to fund his political agenda – he just gave the money to three public schools, with no strings attached. Some of the others followed, giving their bonuses to hospitals and Head Start programs, and to Oakland’s police department, and to the cities and counties that had cut their budgets. Because it was the locals who, ultimately, had paid for the bonuses. WE were the ones who had paid for the bonuses.



It happened all over the country. “It’s only fair - the right thing to do,” someone said. I saw it on the news – the best news cast I’d ever seen.



I went to work on another poster with a song of thanks on my lips.

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