“What the hell are you doing here?” my cousin says to me. She is twice my age. Looks like Janis Joplin, if she’d survived. And kept on partying the same way. And had three kids and a biker husband they had to special order a casket for. And they kept on putting pieces of her back together and sedated with enough morphine to not do her any more damage. This woman has always been a secret idol of mine, though the corners of my father’s mouth always took an extra sharp plunge upon finding out that this particular cousin and her brood were present at this or that family member’s home.
I smile. Broad smile. In retrospect I should have hugged her, but we were in the bathroom at the park and I was waiting to leave.
“I heard something about some Sleeths getting together. Maybe a few Hayes.”
“Oh, this is where the family reunion is?” she manages to look confused.
Beside her is my aunt. My uncle’s wife. Maybe ex-wife reconciled now. No blood relation. Tiny, feisty woman. Married to my brute of an uncle. Well, the brutiest of them. Brutest? I was terrified of her growing up, but I loved her. I just knew she would tear me in two if necessary because life had once torn her in two. Her daughters were the same ages as my younger sisters and the group of them was always finding something to do, leaving me to entertain myself quietly. Mostly, I sat and did what I always did when I found myself alone – I listened.
I was compulsively shy as a child. Obsessed with what others thought of me. Horrified at the thought of partner-projects in school because I would be stuck in my chair, waiting for all the other kids to pair up and I was left with the kid who wet himself or has special snacks, or worse yet, I would have to be the teacher’s partner. This left the rest of the class with the impression that I was teacher’s pet or k-i-s-s-i-n-g the special-snacker, when in reality I was just afraid that if I opened my mouth and spoke the first word to another person or stood out in any way, the world would somehow stop spinning on its axis.
That is not hyperbole.
So I learned to blend in. To not be me, to not be seen or stand out in any way so others wouldn’t be upset with or critical of me. I already knew I couldn’t play their rules and didn’t like their games anyway, so I tried hiding. How can you find fault with someone who isn’t there?
I tried to control it after that. The next stage in my growth. To represent myself and market myself like a tennis shoe or a lip gloss. Confident. Hard-working. Better aerodynamics.
This morning as we were leaving for the reunion I looked down last minute at my brightly painted toenails and slightly too snug tank top. A cigarette dangled from my mouth and as we pulled out from the lot, I flipped up the visor mirror.
“Dude,” (I call her 'Dude') I smiled into the mirror and told her, “I am pretty white trash today.”
She shook her head at me.
"Today we are Sleeths.”
Then she cranked up the radio and some hip-hop song bounced the minivan as we rolled through an industrial area. The kind of place our grandfather and our uncles would have worked. On my mother’s side. The Sleeth side. The kind of place my dad’s family might have slummed as plant supervisor but never would have set place otherwise. At least not long enough for any dust to settle on.
My parents’ families lived across the street from one another at one point. It was the first home in which my mother remembers having running water. To some people in my father’s family, especially after the divorce, my mom and the Sleeths became a joke, the name synonymous with poor white trash. And they often made those jokes in front of me. I don’t know if that’s where things started to turn south for me: I really no longer care.
On the way to the reunion, bouncing over the train tracks, I thought about the weekends spent at our grandparents as kids. I loved going down to play with all the cousins, but hated nighttime. I used to lie awake, terrified of the dark, and listen to the lonesome sound of the train whistles. Proof of life, awake, out there somewhere in the night, while in the house all I could hear was grandpa snoring and maybe a cricket we let in during the day or a bull frog outside the window. Mostly though it was the train whistle that let me sleep. That reassured me. To me, this little girl lost in the dark, that whistle was reassurance that even if I fell asleep, the world would still go on and another whistle would wake me in the morning.
A few weeks ago one of my cousins lost his six year old son in an accident at their home. In another lifetime when we were blonde and summer-tanned and Kool-aid lipped, we used to cross the highway to the cemetery and go into the old abandoned buildings we were supposed to stay away from in the ghost town my grandparents settled in. None of us, I’m sure imagined such a thing. I was amazed at the church watching my now grown cousin and his wife go through the process of burying their son. I was amazed at their strength. Amazed at the way they did not curl up into a ball and stop going.
There’s a short story I love and I can remember neither the title nor the author, but it was about the narrator’s dirt-poor family and the rabble of cousins and how when one died in some tragic accident around the family farm, barely anyone seemed to notice. Life went on. As it always had. As it always will. I don’t think facing down our fate that many of us could move forward.
My aunt and rock star cousin and giggle a bit at whatever one of them said last. The sound of a toilet flushes out their words, but I laugh a little anyway as I wait to use the sink in this tiny cinder block latrine. I think to myself how they look as they did twenty years ago, the two of them huddling together in secret laughter. It is good to see some institutions, some relationships, some friendships withstand. It’s good to see that the earth stays on its axis, no matter what I predict.
“What the hell?” my aunt shouts, even though we are a foot apart. She is referring to the open stall behind her for which there is no door.
Considering our white trash credentials, I find it apropos.
