FRESH YARN presents: Boundaries ... by Bethany Thornton

FRESH YARN presents:

Boundaries
By Bethany Thornton

I stared at the pieces independently writhing on the hot cement and wanted desperately to put them back together -- to mend it and make it whole again.

Instead, Mr. Leland shoveled each piece into a cardboard box and walked back across our adjoining lawns to dispose of it. When I'd called for his help upon first seeing the four-foot reptile in my driveway, I hadn't expected him to cut it in half. I'd expected something more heroic, like taking the snake to a nearby field and setting it free. But before I could state my wishes, he chopped the brown, scaly thing right in two, dead center with the blade of the shovel. He wasn't the type to give a snake a proper burial so I didn't follow him across the lawn.

Our lawns merged to make one large, rectangular playing field, only Mr. Leland didn't allow us to play on his side. We tried to observe the imaginary line between our yards, but in the midst of playing baseball or Frisbee, it was sometimes hard to recognize. My older brother, Todd, was especially unaware of the boundaries, which often resulted in a screeching Mrs. Leland putting an end to our game.

"Witch," my brother would mumble as we headed to the backyard. The backyard was not nearly as fun. The small patch of grass was surrounded by low-maintenance bark chips that stuck to our knees when we fell, and the overgrown pyracantha bushes swallowed our baseballs like a black hole. Our mother budgeted only for a gardener to mow and trim the front. We couldn't afford even this, but the pressure to keep a meticulous front yard was intense in our small neighborhood. It was bad enough that we stood out as the family without a dad; we didn't want to be poorly groomed too.

Unlike our neighbors, we had a single, working mom. Every afternoon Todd and I were home alone. We were latchkey kids in 1970, a time when most people in our northern California suburb didn't even lock their doors. My parents divorced when Todd and I were barely out of diapers. My dad settled us into a house in a safe neighborhood with good schools, and then he split.

There were certain advantages to being home alone. We had the luxury of screaming at each other without adult intervention, and we wrestled over which television show to watch -- Nanny and the Professor or Star Trek. We didn't start our homework until we saw Mom's headlights turn into the driveway. "She's home!" one of us would shout, and we'd run to the table to open our books. Mom had one rule: no visitors while she was at work. It seemed like a ridiculous rule to a nine and 11-year-old, but it was to be respected, just like the Leland's invisible border.

Our mom worked 40 hours per week in an office, but she made time for Little League games and root beer floats on Saturdays. She created grammar sheets as "weekend homework" because "to get anywhere in this world, you must know the basics of grammar." She rarely raised her voice; her stern glare was far more effective than yelling would have been. At times, it stung worse than a belt on a bare behind. She was quiet and intellectual, and she expected us to be the same. Sometimes late at night I'd hear her crying in her bedroom, so without even knowing why, I'd cry too.

My brother's friends drooled over Mom's good looks. She resembled Jackie O. who had also lost her husband, but in a different way, and Mom was also a Democrat. She dressed professionally, mixing and matching her jackets and skirts to make it through a whole week without wearing the same outfit twice. With all of this going for her, some people still kept their distance; I guess they worried her independence might rub off on them like a disease or poison oak.

The '60s had liberated the minds of some women, but working mothers were not mainstream, unless of course, they were schoolteachers or nurses. Our elementary school didn't offer an after-school program because Todd and I would have been the only two kids in attendance. My friend Janet's mother cut people's hair, but her clients came to her house, and our neighbor, Betty, pulled out people's teeth because she'd had some training as a dental assistant. She once looped a piece of green thread around my stubborn bottom tooth, tied the other end to a doorknob and slammed the door. "It worked," I yelped, as I searched the shag carpet for my prize.

I sensed the uneasiness of people around me, but I was too young to name the cause. I just thought the Lelands were grouchy and the Whitmans, who lived three doors down, were hard of hearing. This all changed when Colleen Whitman had a slumber party for her 10th birthday. She invited every girl on the block, except me. I begged my mother to phone the Whitmans hoping my invitation had been inadvertently misplaced. Mom didn't call, and finally, the day before the party, my best friend Sally announced in her most grown up voice, "You weren't invited because your parents are divorced."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I retorted, trying to keep my cool by forcing my thumbnail deep into my middle finger to hold back the tears.

"Divorce is bad. Your home is broken," Sally stated matter-of-factly with her hands on her hips. She looked exactly like her mother only younger.

I ran home and sat by the window waiting for the reassuring lights of my mother's car. "Why are you crying?" she asked as she walked in the door balancing groceries in one hand and fatigue in the other. I told her what Sally said. "Oh, I see." Then she told me how every day she dealt with people like the Whitmans -- people who judged her without knowing her and assumed she had low family values because she was divorced.

"I know it's just the three of us, but why did Sally say we're broken?"

Mom grinned one of those adult grins always accompanied by a heavy sigh. "Because," she hesitated, "when people get married they promise to stay with each other forever and divorce means the promise was broken."

I was shocked, "You broke a promise?"

"It wasn't me, and it's complicated. You were little. That's why you don't remember. We were all hurt by it, and the insensitivity of people like the Whitmans makes it that much harder."

Hurt by it? I scanned my arms and legs looking for bruises and scars but found nothing except a small rug burn I got the day before, wrestling with Todd. I reminded myself that wounds don't always show on the outside especially for grown-ups. Dad, I realized, must have left us with internal wounds, the kind ice and bandages can't fix. My mind overflowed with questions: Is this why Mom cried late at night? Or why her deep blue eyes welled up when the baseball coach told Todd he'd improve by throwing the ball around with his dad? Did it explain my fear of being left alone for even one minute?

I was still the same kid, but somehow after this conversation I felt older. I resisted the urge to call Sally and one-up her with my latest discoveries about grown-ups. I never could have guessed that being excluded from Colleen's birthday party would change the way I viewed my world. I felt left out. We all felt left out. So on the night of Colleen's party, we splurged and went to a drive-in movie, just the three of us. It wasn't the same as staying up all night having pillow fights, braiding hair or painting nails, but it wasn't bad either. At one point, while seated between my mother and my brother in our small car, I stated emphatically, "See, we're not broken." It was my attempt at setting the record straight, at making sure I was right and Sally was wrong. But just at that moment, Mom began to cry, and she never took her eyes off the screen.