Chapter Two

We all pretend I was born on April 22, and we all pretend I was born in Prairie View, Montana. Both pieces of fiction come from the birth certificate my father had fixed up at the courthouse. He owned half the politicians in the building, so it couldn’t have been too hard.

Everyone knew my mother dropped me off at my grandma’s door when I was a few months old, claiming I was Dean’s daughter. Where she had me or on what day, we never established. My grandma didn’t think to question her. That’s because of the kind of man my daddy was and, according to Grandma, I was just another product of my dad’s acquisitive nature. She was often too forgiving of her thoughtless philanderer son.

As far as I know, that’s the last time I ever saw my mother. She did leave a note, though. Dean,

This is your baby.

Her name is Jillian.

I gave her a life and a name.

You do the rest.

You are a son of a bich.

Eva Yeah, that’s how she wrote it. A damning indictment, and she couldn’t even spell it right. I found the note when I was nine, rooting around in my dad’s jewelry box when no one was home, except Connie, our housekeeper. The note was buried beneath all the forgotten, formerly precious stuff that collects under the ring tray in every jewelry box. Even at that age, I could pinpoint the misspelling. It embarrassed me. I also felt bad about the “bich” invective against my poor grandmother, who had wrapped her love around me the second she held me. I still wonder what inexplicable sentiment kept that note in Daddy’s jewelry box. His incomprehensible death made that question unsolvable.

I do know what Mama might have looked like because my father was unvarying in his choice of women. “Dollies,” my grandma called them. And they were all of a type: big tits (these women never had breasts) thrusting out of western-cut shirts. Ass-gripping, high-waisted, boot-cut pants, topped off by large, silver-buckled belts with names tooled on the backs…JoAnne, Dawnie, Betty. Short, they all had to be short, under 5243. And, you got it, they all resembled Dolly Parton. It was a look my father couldn’t resist. When one of them things would bounce into a room, Daddy was lost to me, but only for a few days. After the perfume wore off his shirt, he was pretty much done with her and back to bathing me with his lavish attention.

Sometimes, I liked to think my mother was following my career. That she had both my Pulitzer Prize announcements framed on her living room wall. That she’d read my work over and over again wondering how much of my journalistic success came from her. Mostly, though, I was pretty sure that the only avid reading my mother did was her TV Guide, peering through a cigarette haze, wondering who was going to win American Idol.

I’m certain that I’m a memory she would like to forget. But I’m old enough to know she hasn’t forgotten having me; she’s just tucked me way back in her brain, somewhere in that back forty we all have for stashing painful memories. My back forty is full of them. Why should my mother’s be any different?

To say I wasn’t mothered would be an enormous lie. Grandma did it all. She was the quintessential small-town mother, involved in the school, church, and garden club. She made my Halloween costumes, overdecorated my birthday cakes, and cheered me through victories and heartbreaks. Oh, I was mothered, all right. I just called my mother “Grandma.” No big deal, except when Theo Lamaster teased me about having a dead mother or when kids asked why my mom was so old, their noses wrinkling when they said the word “old.”

Do I look like what I think my mom looked like? I’m relieved to report, no.

“Jillian, you’re an O’Hara through and through.”

“I know, Grandma.”

“My lands, you look just like your grandpa. God rest his soul.”

“I know, Grandma.”

“You’re the same string bean height as your daddy was at your age. And look at your hair. You look like a little Norwegian girl, even though you’re Irish through and through…at least on your daddy’s side, and that’s all that counts around here.”

“I know, Grandma.” This would be when I should have asked about my mother’s ethnic background, but we always pretended she didn’t exist. In fact, I doubt my grandmother ever asked anyone about my mother.

“So like your daddy. And I bet your hair will darken when you get older, into that lovely brown honey color your dad has and Grandpa had, too, until it thinned away, poor man. The boys are going to go wild for you.”

“I don’t know about that, Grandma.”

It was true, I didn’t know about that. I would try to wrap my mind around boys going wild for me. All I could conjure in my imagination was them going wild about picking me for their side when we chose up for baseball. I was as good as any of them and better than some.

I did play dolls with the boys, though. We’d take my dolls up the hill behind my house, build mini combat bunkers, place the dolls in strategic battle positions and blow them to bits with the most powerful firecrackers we could buy. A few cheap Barbies rendered hours of vicious glee. Those are among my most satisfying playtime memories.

In sixth grade, Grandma caught me kissing Kathy Dolman in our garage. I was in pubescent bliss from that kiss. Grandma saw it in my eyes, I’m sure. And bless her soul, all she said was, “Time for dinner, Jilly.” She never again talked about boys going wild for me. She would smile and give low-key encouragement when I’d have a date with a boy during high school. But she somehow knew I was different, even if she couldn’t say the words. I’m sure she was relieved that I didn’t follow up on the Kathy Dolman behavior in public. She trusted me not to embarrass the family, but she never interrupted my closed bedroom door sessions with my high school sweetheart, Annie.

I’m sure Grandma didn’t want to know for sure about my lesbianism because then she’d have to put ugly words to my behavior. Those were the only words to describe me back then. People had no context for me; neither did I, for that matter. But I knew enough to keep my mouth shut, maintain a boyfriend for a few months here and there, and plan my escape from the town that was becoming more like a prison every year.

“Jilly, baby, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An author, Daddy. A famous author like Charles Dickens or Madeleine L’Engle.”

“But, honey, not many authors get famous. And they don’t make much money.”

“Don’t we have enough money already?”

“I suppose we do, baby, but more is always better.” Always snickering after that statement. “I think you could be a writer. Just marry a rich man.” Another snicker. “It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one.”

Marriage? Believe me, I tried to see myself walking down the aisle of our Catholic church, gripping my father’s arm, wearing that white dress. I’d try to envision myself with a bucket of kids, wiping their boogers, driving them to basketball practice, spanking their behinds just to show them who’s boss. I tried, but couldn’t gel the image in my brain. It was elusive, just like imagining a man across my table eating dinner and gazing into my eyes, or driving me in the car with his arm wrapped around me It was like imagining being Queen of England; I sort of knew what the parts were but couldn’t fit them together in my brain. Actually, the queen thing was easier to work with.