Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (7 page)

__________________________________________________________________

1978

U.S. President
: Jimmy Carter

Best film
: The Deer Hunter; Midnight Express, Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, An Unmarried Woman

Best actors
: Jon Voight, Jane Fonda

Best TV shows:
Dallas; 20/20; Taxi; Mork & Tracy; WKRP Cincinnati; Diff’rent Strokes

Best songs
: Stayin’ Alive, Kiss You All Over, Three Times a Lady, Hot Child in the City, Boogie Oogie Oogie, Grease, Just the Way Your Are, You Needed Me

Civics
: balloon angioplasty developed; U.S. Supreme Count in Bakke case bars quota systems in college admissions; Briggs Initiative defeated in California; Harvey Milk assassinated

Popular Culture
: Jim Jones mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana; Walkman stereo; And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, The World According to Garp by John Irving, The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich, and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk published; Rainbow flag designed

Deaths
: Hubert Humphrey, Norman Rockwell, John D. MacArthur, John D. Rockefeller III, Carl Betz, Peggy Wood, Will Geer, Totie Fields

__________________________________________________________________

Jake was a good sport about the wedding even though absolutely no one from his family attended. At the last minute his mother announced that she was afraid to fly, so there wasn’t enough time for his parents to take a train from Orlando, Florida to Los Angeles for the wedding of their only child. But Jake was as gracious as he could be under the circumstances. Socializing without a tenor sax in his hands was not his strong suit but he managed to get through it all. Immediately after the wedding Jake and I returned to Florida, to a deeply redneck part of the state where he was a high school band director. We had no honeymoon. No time and no money. Jake needed to get back to prepare his band to march in the Ocala Christmas Parade the following weekend. Our wedding night took place in his, now our, apartment in bumfuck Florida, just before the colitis attacked my body with full fury.

The small rural town in which we lived, population 2,000, was about 90 minutes north of Tampa, and not unlike the place where Jake grew up. The next town north from ours was smaller and even more redneck—if that were possible. At the north and south ends of that town on State Road 301—the only way in and out—were signs that read, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you here.” Being Jewish (and now frightened), I suspected I was about as welcome there as the African American people, some of whom were now my friends. It was late 1971.

The colitis overtook my body with a vengeance immediately after the wedding and I was hospitalized in Orlando for several weeks, from just before Christmas to just after New Year’s, 1972. I was living a lie, 3,000 miles from my family and from Mitra, and profoundly miserable, though Jake and his parents were wonderfully attentive and kind. I was very ill and felt terribly alone in the middle of friggin’ nowhere. What saved me, I believe, was getting pregnant.

Jake didn’t want children, at least not right away. I was too ill to work and desperately needed a distraction. Pregnancy, to my surprise, provided that for me. In fact, it was as if my body said, “Okay, we have an important job to do here so let’s not screw this up.” The colitis subsided although I was left for a while with the remnants of the accompanying arthritis that attacked my joints. I was downright skinny from the colitis but my knees were the size of grapefruits. My elbows were so swollen that I could barely brush my hair or my teeth, and sitting down on a toilet was extraordinarily painful. Luckily, but slowly, it all subsided.

I remember when my mother was so ill with colitis and the subsequent arthritis that kept her so debilitated. I tried to suppress that memory but now my body was as wounded as hers had been. I remember my father making cocktails of cod liver oil and orange juice for my mother, something he’d read somewhere or heard. He was convinced it would work. It—or something magical—did work because Mom got better over time. Nonetheless, I remember its grip on her, and on us as children, and I feared for my own child-to-come. Finally, though, as promised by my doctor, it subsided and I felt well for the first time in nearly a year.

I loved being pregnant. It gave me a focus. I felt valuable and important. I spent all of my waking hours looking forward to having a child, something I truly never thought about in my entire life. Getting married and having babies just never occurred to me. It’s not that I thought they were bad ideas. I just never consciously envisioned myself in that way, as someone’s wife and someone’s mother.

Jake’s disinterest in children was fine with me. He worked with his high school band and flew small airplanes. Both kept him busy enough. He was a good man, treated me well and with great concern, and was not at all demanding about much of anything. We both disliked the town in which we lived and were thrilled when he was hired as the band director at a brand new school near his hometown just north of Orlando. In the summer of 1972 we were able to move away from Redneck Hell, USA, but really, we went from the frying pan to the fire.

Moving to Jake’s hometown meant living near Jake’s parents. Coming from a large and loving family, I thought this would be a good thing. Jake was an only child. His mother Cynda was born and raised in the same town as Jake, as were her mother and brothers. She was a slender, put-together, stylish  kind of woman with beautiful expensive clothes that she wore well. She was welcoming and caring when I first joined the family, and had genuine deep concern for me when I was so ill.

Jake’s father, Big Jake, was a sweet, quiet little guy who had migrated to Central Florida from South Carolina—Suth C’lina—when he was quite young. He was a Southern “cracker” and proud of it. He also had a history of being a fall-down drunk. He would take little Jake to bars with him when Jake was just a toddler, so Jake knew every swizzlin’ alcoholic in the county. When Big Jake found ‘ligion, he “got saved” and quit drinking. I remember one Sunday afternoon, sitting in a restaurant with the family when some sloshed old drunkard sauntered over to our table, leaned against my father-in-law and slurred, “Hey Big Jake, I liked ya’ better, boy, when ya’s a sonofabitch.” Cynda nearly choked.

When Big Jake got sober he became a land appraiser and made a ton of money evaluating major properties in central Florida. Cynda worked for Big Jake. I quickly discovered that Cynda was downright mean, not satisfied unless she controlled every person in her world. She soon detested me because, I suspected, she was unable to exert much control over me. She stopped at nothing, justifying everything in the name of God. Whether he agreed or not, Big Jake allowed Cynda her reign. Once when a flock of pigeons roosted on the roof of her house, Cynda announced, “Ah prayed really hawd for Gawd to remove those pigins, and lo-and-behold, He did! It was truly a merracle!” It wasn’t much of a merracle or miracle for the pigeons. They were lying dead in her back yard after having been shot at close range. Either she hired someone to do the deed or she did it herself. Regardless, I seriously doubt it was God’s intervention.

Jake’s folks were pleased that their son, a practicing atheist at the time and therefore a disappointment to them, married a Jewish woman. They said it “put diamonds in our God crown,” or something ridiculous like that. But that honeymoon didn’t last very long. I was a disappointment to them on a variety of levels, not the least being my growing need to distance myself from them, especially from Cynda.

I first became suspicious of Jake’s parents’ politics when they quit the Southern Baptist Church because it had become too liberal, they said. “It started lettin’ in the wrong people,” declared Cynda. So Big Jake and Cynda bought some land, built a big one-room structure, and formed their own church, the local Bible Church. Jake’s mother, now a church owner, informed pastors about what they must preach. If they didn’t preach the sermon of her choosing, they were fired. It was many a preacher who moved through those revolving doors of bigotry.

Jake’s parents often invaded our house on Sundays after their church service and brought some of their bigoted cronies with them—unannounced, of course, and with conversion on their minds. Jake and I hated when they did that, so one Sunday we answered the door in our bathrobes, looking as if we’d been romping in the hay.

“Well, hey there! Happy to see y’all although we weren’t expecting comp’ny, as y’all can see. Come on in! Have some sweet tea and a moon pie?” I was downright cheerful, sporting my best, albeit exaggerated, Southern accent. Horrified, they fled in a fury and never again returned on a Sunday morning without calling first.

During another visit, my daughter, Berit, who was about three years old at the time, was watching Sesame Street. Roosevelt, the African American Muppet, was doing a shtick with Bert and Ernie. Jake’s mother pointed to the television and tersely announced, “There Berit! There’s a nigga. You have tuh be careful ‘round them.”

“Whaaaat???” I was in disbelief! This was over the top, even for Cynda. “Don’t tell her stuff like that!”

“Well, ya know it’s true, Ronni. If a nigga has one ounce a whaht blood in ‘em, they got some hope. He maht even be able to get outta the yard and inta the house. But if a whaht person has an ounce a nigga blood in ‘em, he’ll always be bad.”

“You’ve GOT to be kidding! Out! Leave my house now! I do NOT want my daughter hearing such bigoted garbage in her own home.”

“Jake?” Cynda looked at my husband, her son.

“She’s in charge of the house, Mom, just like you’re in charge of your house. I’ll talk with you later about this.” That was the closest I ever heard Jake stand up to his mother. Cynda left but not without swearing to get her vengeance. So much for Christian love.

~~~~~~

When Berit was born my step-grandmother Mae graciously came up from Miami for a few days to give me a hand. My grandfather, Schoney, was with her. He had a small tape recorder and recorded his first great-grandchild every time she cried, saying it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. And then he’d listen to it! For hours! Every time I’d lie down for a much needed nap, he’d turn on the tape. I’d jump up from my nap because I heard my baby cry. Berit, of course, was fast asleep. So annoying, that tape! But the one funny thing my grandfather did, I have to admit, was to tell Jake’s prim-and-proper mother Cynda, who was slim and stylish in a prissy buttons-fastened-up-to-her-neck sort of way, that she could park her stockings by his bedside any time. He was a known womanizer which wasn’t funny, but the look on Cynda’s face sure was! She was furious but said nothing, just turned on her heels and huffed away. Priceless!

Jake expected and asked little of me. As long as dinner was ready and the beer was cold, he was fine during the week. On weekends we often went camping or spent time with friends from college, many of whom were also band directors in the Central Florida area. Jake was never the doting-father kind of guy and rarely participated with the children. They were solely my responsibility.

I was a great mom. I did not work outside the home for most of my marriage because it would have cost way too much to hire a sitter on Jake’s teacher’s salary. I did, though, make a few extra dollars occasionally by being the substitute teacher for all of our band director friends. Eventually I got a part-time job at Burdines Department Store, working evenings and weekends, to help supplement Jake’s income. But mostly, I was at home with the children.

Berit, to whom I referred as Treble Clef throughout my pregnancy, showed early signs of brilliance so I enrolled her in a Suzuki violin class at the age of 16 months, on a 1/10th size violin. She was reading by the age of two so I talked the local pre-school into admitting her even though she was much younger than the other children. They tested her then invited her to enroll. Through that pre-school she took little-kid classes in computers at what was then Florida Technological University in Orlando. She was four. She remained identified as gifted until she graduated from high school. She was offered a full scholarship to the University of Florida but her father’s parents shipped her off to a missionary school in bum-fuck Wisconsin. She was kicked out for some sort of bad behavior after the first semester, returned to Central Florida, got a job at Disney World, and married the first guy she dated. But I digress.

Berit was born in 1973, Erik in 1976. As gifted as Berit was intellectually, Erik was the more emotional child, so demonstrably loving and gentle but with occasional flashes of anger. Both children were breast fed, potty trained at the appropriate times, and had darling personalities. Both were good and kind and sweet, and I was a damned fine mom whose children were the center of my universe.

~~~~~~

The first time I contemplated leaving Jake—irrespective of my sexual orientation—was during a weekend trip to Disney World in 1977. Berit was four, Erik was almost a year old. Jake didn’t care much for the whole Disney World thing. Everything disturbed his senses: the lines, the commercialism, the fact that hundreds of acres of beautiful old Florida scrub had succumbed to a giant mouse, and I understood. We went to Disney World anyway, for the kids and with friends who also had two young children. We’d spent a good portion of the day standing in lines which parlayed Jake’s irritation to full blown rage. By the time we went to dinner, he was boiling.

Erik began to cry in the restaurant. Jake believed that children should never be heard in public places and gruffly ordered me to take Erik outside immediately. I did, without dinner. Soon after, Jake emerged from the restaurant, fuming, with Berit in tow.