Not being enough
Divorce is hard. In my experience, it rips back the band-aid on long forgotten wounds. For me that meant the resurfacing of my deep insecurities rooted in worthiness, or lack thereof — to be loved, to be wanted, to be cherished, to belong to someone whose very existence represents home. Many of my experiences with love have been peppered with a recurring reminder that I am not enough … that is, all except for my grandma. She loved me without qualification, hesitation, or criteria.
In her sixties by the time I was born, my grandma would have been politely referred to as a “broad” back in the day. In her late teens, she moved from Small Town, Louisiana to make a life for herself in New Orleans and by all accounts she “was nothing nice”. Most of her stories weren’t told until she passed, but there was one story my mother periodically shared.
The story was that grandma had been the evidence of a torrid affair between her passé blanc mother and a dark-skinned Black man. Grandma arrived a vulgarly described “shit brown” and outed the whole family. A victim of colorism herself, she was indeed color struck. And then there was me. I was the brown skinned offspring of my high-yellow mother and that [insert disparaging descriptor here] she had “laid down with”.
Grandma loved me despite — or possibly because — our sameness. I never had to earn her love and that is what made me love her more. I heard tell that grandma made my mother keep me. That might have been a wonderful story of facing responsibly, only it seemed to me that my mother didn’t really want me — my grandma did. It also seemed that having to keep me only helped my mother resent me for it.
Grandma was lenient as grandparents are wont to be. She let me eat the sugar left at the bottom of her coffee cup and bought me caramel corn from the Canal Villere supermarket. She let me walk through the living room to get the mail and stay to visit her fish. I was her sidekick, puzzle partner, and garden intern. I was her road-dog to pick up commodities and day old bread. I was her affixer of Green Stamps and channel turner extraordinaire. I was her “Kim”.
To clarify, my mother had named me “Shawn”, she said after a clever boy in the neighborhood. But my grandma, who despised nicknames or shortened names of any sort, promptly renamed me “Kim Kim” after a cab driver on the show Hawaiian Eye. And that became the name I was called by those who knew me and the family well. For my part, I can say that I rather enjoyed having a secret identity. It was a testament to all we shared.
We shared the Tab sodas she kept under her bed. We shared evenings in her climate-controlled bedroom watching television as the scent of the Youth Dew she applied after her bath hung in the air. But perhaps most importantly, we shared secrets.
My grandma was good at keeping secrets. We didn’t find out until she was dead that she had a first husband or that she was somewhat renowned for her use of a switchblade. She didn’t even tell my mother that she wasn’t her natural child. And to be completely honest, she only told that secret when the Navy recruiter showed up asking for parental signature. What a day that must have been. In one fell swoop, my mother learned who she thought was her momma wasn’t; her daddy had a whole other legitimate family; and the recruiter would have to drive nearly 3 hours out to the country if he really needed that signature.
But oh, how those secrets made me feel grown-up — like I had something worth knowing and people who weren’t us couldn’t know. It was a secret that my grandma kept whisky in the living room curio cabinet behind the tablecloths. It was a secret that I grandma would eat bread pudding she said she made for me because she was diabetic. It was a secret that my mother’s god child had been “touching me”.
He was 14 and had called me a liar when I told. But I hadn’t lied, and he knew it. I am not certain how things evolved. I just know that he had a heart condition and my grandma highly encouraged a surgery where he had a not quite 50–50 chance of living. Charity was however a training hospital. And his was the first funeral I ever attended.
The touching remained a secret and, most importantly, I couldn’t tell my mother because grandma told me not to tell. I couldn’t tell her that it happened because it was wrong. I couldn’t tell her who did it because he was family and I wasn’t sure whether I would be in trouble for it. I couldn’t tell her that it felt good because it confused me and I didn’t have the words to ask “why”. Even if I did, I feel confident those words would have been strictly forbidden.
That’s the part no one ever acknowledges about the sexual arousal of a child. The physical response to stimulation; the inability of the child to understand let alone express what they are really thinking or feeling; and the mental gymnastics that are necessary to stifle a reaction that is natural but premature. There is no functional way to live with it; so dysfunction is the norm. And I, like millions of others, repressed (a word used in hindsight).
Not too long after, the great move to San Diego happened. Maybe because it was just the two of us but I can say that my mother and I were very close then. We played boards games, went to movies, and watched TV together. I almost didn’t notice not having any friends outside of school. Saturday ballet, ice skating, and modeling; Sunday puppet shows at the mall; and the periodic camp coupled with my vivid imagination ensured I wasn’t missing out on much. I mean sure she was strict and as I got older there were lots of things I couldn’t do even after we returned to Louisiana. Sleepovers, spending time at other people’s houses, dating were all strictly forbidden; but it’s not as if I had another existence I could use in comparison that might have told me that something was irregular.
Outside of school, we spent a lot of time in church, going to church related organization meetings, watching TV, and judging the immorality of people we knew. I don’t claim to have been a perfect child, but since I never liked being hit, I largely did what I was told. Funny that I still managed to anger her without really knowing why.
In a word, she was mercurial, although my grandma preferred a more simple phrase: she had ugly ways. Sure her moods were unpredictable, but since I was the only other person there, her swings must have been the result of something I did. No; there wasn’t tension every day. We could go for weeks without me doing something wrong; then at times it seemed she was looking for reasons to be upset with me. And that’s just what made it all so hard to navigate. The same action or inaction could garner entirely different reactions. One moment she was pleased with me, usually publicly and it most often coincided some award or other accomplishment of mine for which she was certain to take the credit. A moment later she was cross and I was in trouble most times not really understanding what I had done. As I describe things in hindsight, it was akin to walking through a mine field in that a prolonged lack of explosion lulled me into a false sense of comfort — a belief I had finally achieved the calm that the surface suggested was possible. At least if you are indeed walking on eggshells, you always know where you stand.
Albeit illogical, I was determined that I could have her unconditional love if I only figured out the right sequence of events, the correct formula, the trickety trick that would make her want me. But the more elusive her affection, the harder I tried. And when that wasn’t enough, I worked harder still.
My rebellious years didn’t happen until I was in my early 20s and living apart from her. And that may have been the grace I needed because the older I got and the more sustained physical distance between us, the better I understood that her swiftness to anger had almost nothing to do with me.
If I am honest, our already strained relationship inched towards a break point for years although I wouldn’t have phrased it that way at the time. It just became easier to get along with her the less I had to deal with her. But once I became a mother, she wanted to be involved so she moved into the apartment attached to our house.
I refused to allow her into discussions or decisions between my husband and myself, so she developed a relationship with him that didn’t include me at all. I refused her guidance of how to rear my children, so she set about to undermine me and went as far as to develop a relationship with my oldest’s 4th grade teacher whereby they had a whole other curriculum for him than I knew about. That same teacher wrote a letter in support of the abuse allegations because I would not take him to Greece for the summer if he didn’t pull up his grades. And as an aside the school refused to fire her.
So, when I told my mother that I would be filing for divorce, I asked her whose side she would be on. I didn’t expect but hoped for solidarity. Her response was that she would be on the boys’ side.
With that I accepted I would not have her as an ally. What I didn’t expect is that she would help him bring child abuse charges against me. There was a laundry list of accusations that painted me as a literal crack whore, who had a penchant for both abuse and abandonment to establish how unfit I was to be a parent. I wasn’t exactly surprised that she moved to Mobile into an apartment next door to my then husband in order to co-parent my children.
However, the accusation that did shock me was that I was clearly mentally unstable because I had attempted suicide in college. That accusation conveniently omitted that it followed a date rape. But in the interest of full disclosure, it is important to note that my suicide attempt was not because of the rape itself and she knows that.
She denied it for years, maybe still does, but the truth is that I called home day or so after the “incident” not remembering details of what had happened — only flashes that were a testament to how drunk I had been that night. I was scared, crying, and begging her for help although I don’t know what I expected her to do. Whatever it was, she would do it and make things alright.
I don’t know how long it took but she grew tired of my lack of answers and yelled at me demanding whether I just had relations, although she chose more colorful language. Then she hung up on me because she had to go back to work.
That memory still makes me bristle like I’m hearing it for the first time. It was harsh, crass, unfeeling. I was so lost and didn’t know what to do. I did however know that word was not allowed. I had broken the rules and she was angrier than she had ever been with me. I crumbled.
I fell apart in no uncertain terms. I scrambled for anything I could do to make her talk to me. I called and the phone rang until there was a fast busy. I called her employer, but she wasn’t in the office. I prayed that she would talk to me. Call after call; ring after ring; she didn’t’ answer. My adult mind believes she really had gone back to work; 18y/o me panicked. I wailed that she had left me. I couldn’t catch my breath. Short inhales countered with lengthy sobs. She didn’t love me anymore and it was all my fault. I had done the wrong.
That may seem like an overreaction, but I was very Catholic and had been taught that word was not to be done before marriage. I had been curious. Was this my punishment? I was drunk at his place. Was it my fault? My best friend at the time had him take her home but left me she said to keep me safe because he had been doing lines. Is this what safe looked like? I didn’t press him to take us both in his 2-seater. By not demanding to leave, did I deserve it? I was playing Aerosmith’s “Take Me to the Other Side” when he returned. By the title alone, did I ask for it? I am pretty sure that I never said “yes” but I don’t remember that I said “no” each time he suggested sex, kissed or repositioned me. I am only clear that the next day, he took me to the grocery store to get cookies and dubbed me his girlfriend. Was it right now?
It was done and I could think of nothing to make up for what had happened. And the one person I thought would help had abandoned me. I was so terribly overwhelmed and fundamentally broken. I knew for sure that I couldn’t live without her love and approval. A bottle of pills later, I went to sleep hoping the hurt, the loss, the desperation would stop.
I’m told that while I was hospitalized, she picketed the campus with signs saying they should expel and charge the rapist. I flew back to Louisiana a few weeks later at my mother’s behest, moved in with my grandma, and transferred in to a local university by Fall. But there was never any closure and certainly no healing.
We went back to business as usual as if it didn’t happen. Other people who weren’t us weren’t to know, almost like it was a secret — only this time my mother was in on it.
I couldn’t fully process her rejection and I was suddenly less prone to jump through the hoops of her contentment. So, the fissure in our already cracked relationship kept spreading over time.
I ended up divorcing more than just my husband. I don’t have a relationship with my mother at all any more. Despite the years of strain, I say without hesitation that I had not intended to sever ties with her, but this is where we are. I have forgiven her for her part in the child abuse accusations, but it’s harder to let go of not being fully loved, not being wanted, not being enough.
