Daddy's Girls (33)
“We thought you were dead,” Gemma said with her usual bluntness. Their mother nodded and wasn’t surprised.
“I know he told you that when you were younger. I thought by now he’d have told you the truth.”
“It would have made him a liar. I guess he didn’t want to admit that,” Kate said more diplomatically. “We found your divorce papers in the safe after he died. We never knew you were divorced. That’s what made me look for you online. There was no death certificate with the other papers.” It was obvious why not now. “And we found the relinquishment papers,” she said more softly. “It was too late to ask Dad what really happened, so we wanted to see you. We would have wanted to meet you anyway,” she added, “now that we know you’re alive.”
“I made a terrible mistake. The worst mistake of my life,” she said, referring to the papers she had signed. She went to an outdoor bar then, and poured them each a glass of water, and one for herself, and sat down with them. “I suppose you want to know what happened.” She was grateful for the chance to tell them herself, and was suddenly glad they hadn’t heard it from their father, who might have told them a different version of the story. The gospel according to JT. She knew he had never forgiven her for what she’d done, and the punishment had been severe, a life sentence for her, which he thought appropriate in the circumstances, and most of it had nothing to do with their children.
“I was nineteen when I met Jimmy. He was twenty-one. He was an itinerant ranch hand, going from ranch to ranch and town to town. My father was a minister, and he didn’t want me to be with him. He said he’d never amount to anything. He was wrong about that. I married him anyway, and had you ten months later,” she smiled at Kate, “and Gemma a year after that. I worked at an all-night diner when your father came home from work, and he took care of you while I worked. Times were hard in Texas then, there had been a drought, crops were bad, money was tight, we could barely afford to feed you and ourselves. They used to give me leftover food at the diner. Most of the time, that was all we had to eat. We were dirt poor, with no future on the horizon. And your father…he wasn’t an easy man. He had a vision and he expected me to follow him. He expected me to live by his rules, and do what he said. When you got sick, we couldn’t take you to a doctor. My parents helped when they could. I never met Jimmy’s family. They were from another part of Texas, and most of them were dead or in jail. His father had died in a bar fight. Jimmy was no different from most ranch hands, except that he was smarter and stronger and tougher, and he expected me to follow him blindly. I was madly in love with him. It was hard not to be. He was dazzling and he expected me to follow him off a cliff if he said so, without questioning him, and I got scared. I was terrified about what would happen if one of you got really sick, or he did. We should have been on welfare but he was too proud. He tried to save every penny he could, which meant we had even less to live on. I washed your clothes every night before I went to work so you’d have something to wear the next day.” It was hard for them to imagine the kind of poverty she was describing, but she did it well. They could almost taste her desperation and the dust of Texas as they listened raptly to every word.
“I got pregnant with Caroline when Gemma was a year old, and Kate was two. We didn’t have enough money to feed ourselves, let alone another child, but you were born and you were beautiful.” She smiled at Caroline, who had tears in her eyes, listening, trying to imagine what it would be like if she were that poor and had to take care of her children, with little food, few clothes, and no medical care. “We lived in a one-room shack on one of the ranches he worked on. We couldn’t have paid rent. We had one crib for all of you, which Jimmy built himself, and a mattress on the floor for us. He said things would get better one day, but I didn’t believe him. I was twenty-three years old and exhausted, after four years of desperation. I felt like I couldn’t hang on anymore. And I met someone one night at the diner. He was just a boy my age. He’d saved up a little money, and was heading to California. He used to come see me in the daytime when Jimmy was at work. He was no better than the man I had, or not much, but Jimmy never listened. He didn’t want to hear what I was saying. It was just too hard. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was too scared. I wasn’t as strong as he was. I thought it would never get better, and we’d just starve to death or lose you to the state if they found out how we were living with three kids. My father threatened to tell them, so you’d have decent lives and have food and medical care with foster parents. Jimmy swore we’d make it through, and I’m not sure when but I stopped believing in him. I got sick of being told what to do, and to stop complaining and just do what he said. He could be a hard man, although he meant well. He worked as many jobs as he could get. Once I fell in love with someone else, it was all different. Bobby, the other man, wanted me to go to California with him, and said we’d come back for you later. I refused to go with him and leave you, but it made me see that I couldn’t stay with Jimmy anymore. It’s hard for love to thrive in that kind of atmosphere of deprivation. I felt like a slave, harnessed to a hard man I thought didn’t love me. I don’t know if he did or not by then, but he wouldn’t divorce me. He said we were hitched forever.” Traces of her old Texas accent came through as she talked about the distant past.