Daddio to the Rescue

We were sitting at the kitchen table finishing up dinner. It was a weekday. We only ate in the dining room on Sundays. My dad sat on the wooden, booth-style bench that backed up to part of the kitchen counter. He ate quietly, glancing occasionally through the large round window at the end of the table into the backyard. My mother sat next to him. My grandmother stood in the kitchen, squinting down at us through the haze of her cigarette smoke, her elbows braced on the counter behind my parents. I sat alone on the other bench, across from my mother with my back against the wall. My sister had already finished eating and escaped to the university library to study. She went there often. Did I mention my sister was really smart?

We had been having our usual philosophically charged political conversation just a few minutes earlier. Dad, Deb, and I often talked about weighty things at the dinner table. My mother rarely joined in. My grandmother never did. Deb had just left and the conversation hadn’t yet restarted. Into the silence my grandmother said, “So are you going to tell your mother what you did?” My mother looked up from her plate. She zeroed in on my eyes as if to uncover what I was guilty of doing. I had no idea what my grandmother was talking about. “What?” I asked confused. I looked at my mother and then glanced quickly toward my grandmother and ricocheted by eyes back down to my plate. I’m sure I looked guilty, of something. “You know what you did,” my grandmother sneered in an accusatory tone. She took a long, self-satisfied drag from her cigarette as she hugged her waist with her other arm. I sat baffled and confused. My silence seemed to infuriate her. Oddly, it also seemed to grant her a sense of confidence. She looked excited, as if her chance to show everyone how horrible I was had finally arrived. She exuded a certainty that she would be believed and that my ugliness would be seen. It felt over the top to me, like something from a horror movie. No one else seemed to notice anything weird about her behavior. She spit out her words, gleeful to be informing my parents of my misdeed. “She left her laundry where it didn’t belong!” My mother began to look uncomfortable. She squirmed, glancing first at her mother and then at me. Her eyes ended on me. Her decision made, she dove in for the kill.

“You know you’re not allowed to leave dirty clothes on the floor in the laundry room.” She said this sternly. “I didn’t,” I said.

“Your clothes were not where they were supposed to be,” my grandmother accused. It sounded as if she was saying I was lying. I could tell that’s what my mother thought.

“No they weren’t,” I said. My mother was really angry now. She hated lying more than anything even though she was a champion liar herself.

“Cinse, you know it’s not okay to leave your dirty clothes on the laundry room floor!”

“I didn’t,” I said again, a little more insistently. My mother didn’t back down. She glared at me with distrust and disapproval.

My grandmother sing-songed, “Now you’re in for it.”

“I didn’t leave my clothes on the floor,” I said desperate to be heard but with little hope I’d actually be believed. My final word ended on a small sob. My mother and grandmother both started to yell at me simultaneously.

My father who had been watching all of this silently with increased confusion, said, “Just a minute.” My grandmother and mother continued to berate me. “I said, just a minute,” my father interjected a little more loudly. My grandmother and mother were so focused on accusing and scolding me they didn’t hear him. My father yelled, “Everyone stop! Be quiet.” Then he turned to me and said, “Cinse, what’s going on here?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on…”my grandmother began.

“I didn’t ask you, Phyllis, I asked Cinse,” my father said.

“Well!” my grandmother huffed as she took another drag and turned her body sideways away from the table.

“Cinse…” my father asked quietly, “what’s going on?”

I sputtered my first words, “She’s upset because I put my clothes in the hamper in the laundry room. I washed the colored ones but I didn’t have time to do the white ones so I put them in the hamper, not on the floor, because Mom told me to never leave my clothes on the floor. She’s,” I said sobbing as I pointed to my grandmother, “angry because I put my clothes in the hamper with everyone else’s. She thinks my clothes are too god damn dirty to be in there!” I yelled vehemently.

“Is this true, Phyllis?” my father asked.

“If she was my daughter I wouldn’t let her talk to her grandmother that way,” my grandmother huffed.

“Well thank God she isn’t your daughter,” said my dad.

My mother looked upset, but more embarrassed than angry. My grandmother was spitting mad but it didn’t do her any good. In fact, everything changed. In less than a week my grandmother was gone. She went to be the nanny for some poor unsuspecting children in a wealthier part of town. My parents weren’t upset with me, and best of all, they didn’t seem upset at each other either.

I spoke up and they heard me. At least my dad heard me. And he believed me. He could see me. He could see I needed to be rescued and he did it. It’s funny, looking back I think the only reason my grandmother had the audacity to talk that way in front of my dad was because up until that moment I had been invisible. My mother knew what was happening but chose to avert her eyes. And I had created a camouflage of sorts showing only the good parts of my life to my father, convinced that if he saw the ugly pieces all hell would break loose and my family would shatter. I was right, all hell did break loose, but it brought freedom not destruction.