Ch 6: Science and the Art of Persuasion
Almost 20 years before scientists begin mapping DNA, I wonder about genetic possibilities in my high school biology class, while at the same time, a broken heart drives me to leave home.
A lot of adopted kids begin to ask questions when they first learn about genetics in high school biology. I was no different. Despite the fact it was now a stunning silver gray, I knew Mom originally had black hair. From the one photo I had seen, I figured Marlee had black hair, too. The photo was in black and white, so I couldn’t tell for certain, but it was definitely much darker than mine. If Mom’s first husband and my supposed father, Bob, had black hair, too, where did my red hair come from? Was it possible for two black-haired parents to have two red-haired kids?
“Theoretically, yes,” my 10th grade biology teacher responded when I asked, “but it’s rare.”
I swallowed hard at the answer, but I didn’t let on the reason for my question. Although some kids began to question whether the parents who were raising them gave birth to them, I seriously began to wonder whether the father who was raising me, the father who legally adopted me, was actually my biological father. That would be weird, I knew, but my love of mysteries encouraged me to ask the questions.
My best friend (and lab partner), Cindy, and I would spend hours spinning tales about how it might have been possible for Mom to get pregnant twice by a man who was not her husband (I had no doubt that Jarrett was my full brother. Despite our 21-month age difference, we could have been twins). It was great fodder for conversation for two high school sophomores as we explored the meaning of fidelity and infidelity in the teenage relationships that exploded around us. Cindy thought it was a riot—the idea that parents had exciting, secret lives. We laughed and joked about every soap opera-like possibility. Although I played along, it always left me with a gnawing feeling in my stomach that would not go away even after I left Cindy’s house to go to home to mine.
I guess you could say I was a late bloomer. By the time we were in 10th grade, Cindy, along with every other girl I knew, was all about boys, I had no interest in dating. I had survived junior high without a boyfriend, or, for that matter, even a date. By tenth grade, the pressure grew.
If my parents were alive today, they would deny this, but by the time I turned 15, a year before I could legally drive without a licensed driver accompanying me, they let me take the station wagon whenever I wanted to go out. It was the only blue car, or should I say, not-green car, I ever remember having as a kid. In those days, stations wagons were big hunkers, and this one, probably a 1967 or ‘68 Chevy Impala, was no exception. Not exactly a teenager’s dream car. But it was a car, and that was all that mattered to me.
On a typical Friday or Saturday night, Cindy and I drove the eight miles from Rogers to Bentonville (best known today as the home of Wal-Mart Corporation) to look for boys. “They have cuter boys in Bentonville,” Cindy would say, and off we’d go. There was this one boy, James, that Cindy particularly liked. I remember his name because James Taylor’s album, Sweet Baby James had just come out and Cindy was convinced it was just for her. Typically, we’d meet up with James at the Bentonville Bowl (classy date, I know). While Cindy and James would go to his car to make out, I would sit in the station wagon and wait. When they were done, I would dutifully drive her back home while she described, in remarkable detail, everything they did.
When Cindy became consumed with boys and dating and started pushing me to do the same, I found another friend—one who wasn’t as boy crazy—and started spending more time with her. Cindy and I still got together, and we still talked about boys, but I stopped driving her to meet them. I don’t remember how that changed, only that it did, and for a while, it worked balancing two separate friendships: with Cindy and my new friend, Beth.
Beth had just moved to Rogers and needed a friend. She liked boys but had lots of other interests too, like books and travel, so, with her, I felt like I could contribute something to the conversation. For a few months, the pressure to date subsided. But then I introduced Beth to Sally.
Sally was a casual friend who I hung out on occasion with in junior high. She could be described as kind of a wild kid. Her father owned a clothing store downtown, so everyone knew the family. They also had more money than most of us—certainly more than we did. Sally drove too, but not a clunky station wagon like me. Sally drove a late-model Oldsmobile Cutlass. She loved to drive fast, but her dad must have known that and had some type of control put on it that didn’t let her go over 70. That really pissed her off, but it didn’t stop her from pushing the car to its limits. Her family owned a lot of undeveloped property located off dirt roads outside of town. She loved to race down those roads—the dust enveloping us in a cloud so thick she’d have to turn on her windshield wipers to see the way forward. When we reached any place where a car could pull off and hide in the trees, Sally would note it as a possible parking spot (with a boy, that is).
I don’t remember how it happened, but somehow, someday, for some reason, I invited Beth to go with Sally and me on one of these adventures. Sally said OK, even though she didn’t know Beth. The next thing I knew, they stopped returning my calls, stopping inviting me to go to the movies with them, stopped speaking to me at school. I felt like a jilted lover who never saw it coming. I had already been missing Cindy, and now I had lost Beth, too.
I responded by shutting myself into my room whenever I was home, which was all the time I wasn’t in school or church. I’d put on a record, lay on the bed, and stare out the window. Sometimes I’d read. Sometimes I’d grab a hairbrush to use as a microphone and watch myself in the mirror as I lip-synced the Billboard Top 40. In those moments, I imagined myself a sexy (male) pop star with an adoring woman-friend watching from the wings. It never dawned on me that this would be considered unusual. I knew nothing about alternative lifestyles. I just knew boys had more fun.
I emerged from my room only to eat, and since my favorite TV series Star Trek had gone off the air earlier that year, even TV couldn’t entice me to stay out in the public areas of the house after I completed my obligatory chores cleaning up the kitchen.
I didn’t know then why I didn’t like doing the things other girls my age did. I didn’t know why I got bored spending all my time talking about boys. I didn’t know then that my life would take a different course from theirs.
As I look back on that tumultuous sophomore year, three scenes reverberate in my memory as clearly as if I’d just watched them in a movie.
Scene One
I’m in Speech class—sitting in a school desk, my feet curled up under the seat, closed books on the desktop, my head down, my eyes staring at the floor. My brother’s friend, Nancy, comes into class and sits at the desk next to me. I barely notice her and don’t acknowledge her. She leans across the aisle toward me. “Jarrett says you’ve been depressed lately; do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
I feel heat rising in my face. I’m immediately self-conscious. As a redhead with fair skin, I know that if I’m feeling heat, my face is showing it. I turn my head the other way. My heart is racing. In that split second, I wonder what vibes I’m putting off that even my brother, who barely notices me, had perceived my mood. I wrap my arms tighter around me. I’m mortified that anyone could break through my shields to know how I’m feeling.
“No, I’m fine,” I say, quickly, without looking at her. “But thank you,” I add, almost at a whisper.
“OK,” she replies, as she pulls herself back to her desk. “But if you ever want to talk about anything, give me a call.”
I still don’t look at her. I don’t respond. Relief sweeps over me when Mr. Smalley calls us to order and class begins.
Nancy and I never talked about it. I never talked to anyone about what had happened. Mom noticed that I didn’t hang out with Beth and Sally anymore, that I didn’t hang out with anyone anymore, but she didn’t push. No one pushed. I imagined an invisible deflector shield around me like the one that encircles the Starship Enterprise that I didn’t allow anyone to breach.
Scene Two
Mom and I are in the kitchen. She’s screaming at me about something I don’t remember. I’m startled by the intensity of her anger. She starts smacking me, first on the arm, and then my face, something she had never, ever done before. I flee to my room. She chases me there. I roll over my bed and wedge myself between the bed and wall to get away from her. She climbs on the bed and slaps at me with both hands. She mostly misses. After a few futile attempts to reach me, she leaves me laying there, slamming my bedroom door on her way out.
I stay on the floor between the bed and wall for several minutes, long enough for my shock to subside, for my heart to slow down, to feel safe. By the time I got up, I could hear Mom in the kitchen. I know she is preparing dinner for my brother who’ll be home from football practice soon. By the time he arrives, she will have composed herself so that everything will appear normal to him. She would never want him to see her that way.
I stay in my room. I wish I could cry, but, just like Mom, I never cry. Instead, I grab my Teddy Bear, Timmy, the one I’ve had since I was two, and bite hard on his ear before throwing him across the room.
“I have to get out of here,” I mouth to the image in the mirror.
Scene Three
I hurry out to the mailbox, as I have done every day since I carefully typed a letter on the old Smith-Corona typewriter Aunt Babe gave me, folded the letter neatly, and put it in an envelope, which I then licked, stamped, and prayed over before dropping in a mailbox near my high school. I know a reply will take a couple of weeks, maybe longer, but that doesn’t stop me from checking.
I pause before opening the mailbox. Today would be the day. I know it. It’s been just over two weeks, and the waiting has become unbearable. Before pulling the mailbox door open, I invoke the name of my only true friend, Jesus.
“Jesus, let it be here, please. The letter I’m waiting for. The one that can free me from this life.”
I spy it even though it’s covered by credit card bills from dad’s most recent business trip. I slide the envelope out and leave the others there. I have what I came for. I stare at it as I run my fingers over the embossed name on the return address, St. Joseph’s Academy, Adrian, Michigan.
The envelope is thick and heavy like it holds the keys to heaven. I run into the house, letting the front screen door slam behind me.
“Any mail?” mom asks as I slither past her.
“Oh, I forgot to check. I’ll get it later,” I lie as I steal into my room. I close the door behind me, press my back against it, and slide down to the floor. I tear open the envelope. A full-color brochure falls out with a photo of the three-story brick building I remember from a visit there when I was little.
Situated at the end of a series of connected building that includes the Adrian Dominican Motherhouse, St. Joseph’s Academy houses an elementary school and a high school girls’ boarding school. The photo floods my mind with memories—of nuns draped in white and black walking serenely among stately old buildings and towering oak trees toward the grotto where the Blessed Virgin Mary awaited their arrival. My dad’s sister, my favorite aunt, Sister Patricia Anne—Aunt Millie to us—who died of cancer five years earlier, walked with them in the center of the group. A feeling of peace and belonging rushes over me, just like it did when I saw the nuns there. I must have only been seven or eight at the time, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling. If I play my cards right, this envelope will be my ticket back there—and out of here.
All I have to do to go there instead of returning to Rogers Senior High School is convince my parents to send me.
I don’t remember all the arguments I made to persuade my parents that they should send me to boarding school in Michigan, especially since Jarrett was graduating high school and leaving for the U.S. Naval Academy in a couple of months.
I know I worked on Dad first. In fact, I don’t remember talking with Mom about it at all. The arguments I do remember, probably because they were the ones that worked, started with telling Dad how much I loved Aunt Millie and how much I missed her. Playing on the prejudice that I knew both Mom and Dad had toward southerners, I then told him I needed to leave Arkansas and go back up north so I could get a good education. I told him that I didn’t like being in public school and that I had already taken all the classes I wanted to take at Rogers High. I needed a more challenging school.
Whether they agreed with me or not, something worked, because rather than completing my high school education in Rogers, my parents drove me over 800 miles north to attend St. Joseph’s Academy in Adrian, Michigan, for my junior and senior high school years.
Mom later claimed it was the worst decision she ever made in her life. That’s because it was there that I found out why I didn’t like boys.
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Oh I want to wrap young you up in a bear hug, Annette. I know that feeling - not in the exact same way, but similar - lines redrawn, and you're suddenly on the outside.