Eavesdropping

I remember the summer I discovered that my mama wasn’t just my mama. She was a woman of mystery and secret whisperings and sly glances and cold aloofness and wild energy. Every summer we returned to her beloved home state of North Carolina, and as we crossed the state line and left the cool mountains of Tennessee and sped through the interstates lined with tobacco and collard green fields planted in sandy Piedmont soil, she seemed to loosen and relax before our eyes-not quite so mean tempered or impatient as before-as she leaned on the accelerator urging those miles to disappear with feverish intensity. Once in the bosom of her girlhood home, she took to hours of wild whooping with my aunts and her childhood girlfriends. They drank TAB soda, smoked menthol Newports, applied and reapplied their frosted lipstick, went barefoot, wore plaid Madras sundresses, listened to Barry and Elvis on the transistor radio, and took long drives in the country-without the children. They pored over yearbooks and photo albums and talked about old boyfriends and distant, unknown relatives as if they might show up for supper any minute. And mostly we children stayed out of their way. If you got too close or interrupted, you were likely to get a slap that would make you think twice next time. Best to let grandma solve your problems. Until the summer I turned ten-which was my eavesdropping year-I never really noticed or cared about “lady talk.” That was the summer I first noticed that barely perceptible division between the world of women and men. Why did all those ladies throw sideways, (barely disguised) faintly disgusted glances at those oblivious dads/husbands who were standing by the grill drinking beer from brown bottles? What did those low murmurings and derisive snorts mean? What had those dads/husbands done to deserve their cold disdain? Did those men not see they were being studied under the shadow of dark glasses and faintly arched eyebrows that clearly pointed to their shortcomings? So I went on the prowl, determined to discover my mother’s secrets. I hung back on staircases; skulked around the darkened hallway in listening distance of the wall mounted phone; and slunk around her lounge chair pretending to be bored and indifferent. And for all my sneaky efforts, I only managed to hear more garbled whispers as well as suffer a series of vengeful, stinging slaps for my sneaking around. My mother, totally exasperated with my pathetic, thinly veiled detective skills, actually made me go sit with the dads-who were totally oblivious to the dark undermining dangers those women posed to them. And after suffering the boredom of their man-talk about oil prices, war, and car troubles, I felt too peevish to even warn them-so I wandered off to play with my cousins who had found a broken Easy Bake oven in the neighbor’s garbage can-leaving those pitiful sitting duck men to their future doom.

My mother felt distant to me that summer-although I could feel her watching me like a hawk-as I did her. And in spite of my persistence, I never did learn her secrets that summer. Instead I discovered that my mama was more than my mama. She was capable of covert operations and murky subterfuge and shifting alliances. And there were parts of her that her children and husband had no claim to. With the arrogance of well-loved children, we thought we owned her body, heart and soul. But this I can attest to: there was a piece of herself that she kept for herself-this mysterious, hidden garden of a woman’s heart.