Trapped by Circumstance

Mary Lou Edwards

“I don’t need a University of Wisconsin directory. I need a talented young lady like you to work for me,” the man on the other end of the line phone flirted.

Pushing the most recent edition of the UW Alumni Directory, dialing telephone numbers non-stop--busy signals, hang ups, rude refusals--made this alum’s response both intriguing and enticing.

Quickly perusing the bio of my potential savior, I noted I was talking to the owner of a well-known photography studio with an impressive Michigan Avenue address.

“Sir,” I responded, “I’ve had my offer of this directory refused, but I have never had such a creative rejection.”

“Rejection? Young lady, you come see me tomorrow and you’re hired!” he boomed. I had no idea what his job offer entailed, but escaping the hellhole of tele-marketing was too tempting.

“I will be at your office tomorrow right after work—at 5:15,” I said, wondering how I’d make it running in high heels from Wacker Drive to 620 North Michigan.

“See you then.”

From sweatshop to Magnificent Mile in one five-minute phone call? Maybe this would be the Chicago version of Lana Turner’s Hollywood discovery at Schwab’s Drug Store. I prayed I was worthy of the opportunity. I was the luckiest girl in the world.

The next afternoon I rushed up Michigan Avenue to Valhalla dreaming of working for this prestigious operation. With a bit of luck, I might be able to continue on a part-time basis when I started college in the Fall.

As I ran up the street, I thought of the time I had served at Rockwell Publishing with a hundred quasi-literate dialers, working on commission, elbow to elbow in a boiler room dive hawking this incredibly detailed piece of drek. Even on a good day, it was impossible to make a living wage, never mind my college tuition. Hour after hour we dialed Wisconsin graduates with a canned pitch designed to appeal to memories of their glory days. The spiel was lame, but it was worth listening to if only to hear our preposterous rebuttals when an alum was reluctant to waste his money.

If, for instance, someone said he couldn’t afford the directory because his house burned down, and he was destitute plus he just found out his wife was the arsonist who wanted him incinerated to collect on his insurance so she could run off with his best friend, I would have a perfect response. Even if he added he was contemplating suicide.

“Sir, now more than ever you need this directory. You cannot pass on this incredible resource. It is filled with names of contractors who will rebuild your torched house, stockbrokers who will make you wealthy, financial planners, divorce lawyers, criminal attorneys who will put your ex-wife in jail, insurance agents who will write a policy that will make your spouse wish she’d not acted so precipitously, and psychiatrists who will help you deal with the pain of betrayal by your best friend. And the support team will all be Badgers eager to assist a Badger brother.”

If, by then, the alum wasn’t begging for a copy of the directory, I’d continue.

“You will also have this handy referral to help you when you begin dating—hundreds of educated women who need not make money in the sleazy way your soon to be ex-wife tried, women who will renew your will to live. Cultured women who share your love for your alma mater bonding with you during Wisconsin football games.

I guarantee you will regret not having purchased the leather-bound edition since your copy will be dog-eared from constant use reaching out to your Badger family who share your Badger pride!”

Fortunately most of the alumni didn’t have such complicated problems, but I did use some variation of the above on most solicitations. Sterling Catch, who offered me the job, hadn't even heard my dazzling sales pitch. What impressed him so that he wanted to hire me sight unseen? Was it my precise diction? My sophisticated delivery? Did he detect the conviction in my voice?

But it didn't matter. Right then, as I hurried along Boul Mich, my focus was on my lucky break.

The Michigan Avenue address reeked of status and respectability. Mr. Catch awaited my arrival and, after a cursory interview of sorts, said I could start the next day. Having asked nothing about my education and/or experience, I figured he was just an excellent judge of raw talent. He was, however, a bit vague about my job responsibilities.

He said, “I am designing a position just for you. While I work out the details, you can familiarize yourself with the studio and staff.”

A job. created. specifically. for me? I was awestruck.

For the first week.

Then I realized Mr. Catch was the anti-Statue of Liberty, welcoming the hungry and tired, as well as the naive and stupid. He preyed on vulnerable souls.

Apparently years before, he had been the photographer of choice for the North Shore’s upper crust, but his glory days were behind him. After succumbing to too many glasses of bubbly and a plethora of sweet, young things, he was left only with arrogance and his extraordinary sales skills. Indeed, if Mother Teresa herself appeared in his studio, he would have considered seducing her. If she failed to recognize her good fortune, he would interpret the rebuff as her loss, and immediately shift into Super Salesman mode to offer her, at a greatly reduced price because of the sheer volume, individual portrait sittings of every forlorn wretch who had ever crossed her path.

Something in his life had gone awry resulting in vanities and character defects so enormous that even an Oprah intervention would have been wasted. His targeting the pathetic resulted in a staff that perfectly reflected his predatory proclivity.

Mandi was the Anna Nicole look-alike receptionist who had been married and divorced so many times she stopped changing her last name because of all the paperwork. She was late a lot and had many court dates. Her complex child-support and alimony arrangements, she said, required frequent tweaking, but I suspected the chronic tardiness and incessant lawyers’ calls had more to do with her nighttime activities.

Mort, the genius retoucher, smoked in the darkroom, and, I reckoned, drank the photo- developing chemicals in there as well. Like a mole, he ventured out of the darkness only occasionally, blurry-eyed and shaky, searching for “… that bastard Sterling!” who routinely demanded he do the impossible.

Theodosia Goodsell was a munchkin widow who suffered ill-health and was particularly vexed by self-diagnosed “neuralgia” which caused her to disappear for days on end. Only gallons of gin soothed her pain. On her good days, that is, the days she showed up in working condition, Mrs. Goodsell’s sales skills put even Mr. Catch's to shame. Her job was to call on the recently bereaved to offer them a once in a lifetime opportunity to order an outrageously overpriced oil painting of their newly deceased loved one. Unfortunately though, her frequent slugs from her thermos of “cough syrup” while telephoning potential patsies led to more than a few bizarre scenarios.

Irene, the resident artist, who executed these paintings was responsible for making the bereaved’s dream a reality. She spoke five languages fluently, but only enough English to keep us confused. Her salad days were spent fleeing the Nazis and now, because she’d lost everything in the war, including her academic credentials, she was reduced to painting over huge enlargements of snapshots. Often the head of the subject in the original photo was pea-size and Mr. Catch would insist Mort blow it up to 16x20, thereby obliterating the facial features. It was Irene’s job to paint a face that would be somewhat recognizable to the widow. Much of the time, not because of Irene's lack of expertise, the finished portrait would make a paint-by-number picture look like an Art Institute masterpiece.

Completing the off the wall cast was Evelyn Bates, a society woman who’d fallen on hard times. She never quite came to grips with the fact that life had relegated her to soliciting portrait sales from survivors of the dead. She took great pains to maintain the pretense of working “just to keep busy…” but her hopelessly outdated wardrobe, and tales of forty-years past soirees signaled her denial.

It was an unusual group, but even more peculiar was the fact that there was no photgrapher on staff. Instead we had a series of photographers who would apply for the "vacancy," work like demons during their unpaid month-long "audition" photgraphing weddings, bar mitzvahs and debutante debuts and pray they'd get hired. They would cover a variety of events so Mr. Catch could get a "valid sample of your work," but, alas, at the end of a month they never quite had what it took. "You are a competent photographer, but you're missing that 'certain something' I can't explain," Mr. Catch would say. "You're just not a good fit for my North Shore clientele." It was a brilliant never-fail scam.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had nothing on us--a talented addict, a wacko single mother, an ancient alcoholic widow, a delusional has-been with a dying husband, a Displaced Person who had lost everything in the war, an "auditioning" photographer and a broke college kid.

Trapped by circumstance, desperate for work, we were a captive crew ripe for exploitation which Mr. Catch scented like a foxhound.

Outside of the events captured by the "probationary" photographers, the dearly departed were the headliners. In the days when Kodak Brownie box cameras were considered high tech, when certain socio-economic groups cherished a snapshot of a loved one the way blue-bloods revered a John Singer Sargent portrait, Mr. Catch carved a predatory niche, and he never looked back.

MLSE 04/09

Not Every Woman's Dream

Mary Lou Edwards

Long ago there lived a girl named Thumbelisa who did not want to be a bride. Actually, it was not being a bride that bothered her, it was marriage, but Thumbelisa lived at a time when most maidens became brides, when it was very important to be married.

Thumbelisa had studied the ancient civilizations and was not impressed with the Greeks who believed it “…a woman’s duty to remain indoors and be obedient to her husband” nor with the Romans who declared “…a woman had no rights. In law she remained forever a child.” Then there was the Jewish law that said “…a wife was owned by her husband.” Even when she dismissed these notions as relics of the past and set aside the biblical teachings that ‘a wife was to submit to a husband,’ ‘he will dominate you,’ ‘you are subject to him,’ she was still looking at wives in the village who were overworked, underappreciated, overwhelmed and undervalued. No, Thumbelisa thought, this is not something I want to do.

Her culture, however, dictated three choices--nun, spinster, wife. Exist under God’s thumb, suffer under the King’s thumb or languish under the Master’s thumb? Name your poison. She couldn’t fathom being dictated to by the Pope, perishing in a convent, much less subsisting as an old maid in the kingdom forced to live with her parents forever, so, by default, it was marriage. But, adding insult to injury, Thumbelisa had not even a poor prospect, let alone a worthwhile catch. “Settling” was out of the question. Bad enough to shoot her future from a cannon without tethering it to someone she’d “settled for” ‘til death do us part.'

She’d had a bit of a reprieve because the King believed every maiden should be educated—an unusual notion in the old kingdom. His theory was a maiden needed an education to fall back on in case she married a louse, not the most sterling of reasons to pursue learning, but she was not one to stand on ceremony. School bought her time, and she was grateful. Her family had always said, “Oh, she’s the one into books, not boys…” as though she had to choose between knowledge and knuckleheads, but schooling did postpone the moment of truth. Now, though, her education was complete, and she was eligible.

Thumbelisa considered running away, but leaving the village was treasonous. She prayed to St. Quirinus, Patron Saint of Obsessions, since that was what her problem had become. In a state of rapture, a vision appeared and spoke. “It is not the thought of sharing thy life that that thou fearest—it is the thought of having a husband! Get married,” the voice commanded, “and pretendeth thou are not. Catholics believeth in denial.”

Thumbelisa thought the solution peculiar, but she could not be choosy. She would get married and, in her mind, pretend she was not. She would search for a man who would become her best friend. They would fall in love, and, before she could back out, walk the plank of matrimony.

She switched her allegiance to St. Raphael, Patron Saint of Friendships and Good Marriages. If this plan was to work, if she was not to get cold feet, a short engagement was essential followed by a swift wedding. Then she would have a friend, a partner, a husband, and the dreaded word would no longer strike fear in her heart.

She called upon St. Jude, Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, and before she’d even finished her Nine-Day Never Fail Fast, a prospect appeared.

A man whose values aligned with hers like tumblers in a lock giving access to a space that was safe and comforting. A person whose manner suggested he had no interest in using his thumbs for anything other than a gesture of encouragement. A friend who allowed her to be herself, who prized an independent woman, who wanted an equal partner. That--he was an impressive gentleman--handsome, tall and distinguished—was a bonus. Best of all, he had a great sense of humor--her knight without the armor.

She began to consider taking that leap of faith.

She was not so naïve to think him perfect. She’d been raised by King Perfect and that was a harrowing journey. No, this man was better than perfect—he was perfect for her.

From the outside, they were almost a comic study in opposites—tall/short, blonde/brunette, WASP/ethnic, agnostic/Catholic, reserved/brash. Yet though they differed in background, politics, personalities and demeanor, their hearts were of the same mold. They shared many a shortcoming, complementary ones too. But neither ever entertained the notion of changing the other, in part because they were smart enough to know that would be futile, but more importantly, because they loved and accepted the other just the way they were.

Her friend didn’t always understand her fears--some funny, some not so—but he respected them.

“If we wed," she would remind him, "I must keep my checking account, have my own coach, and work outside the castle. I will also maintain my friendships with my maids.”

That’s up to thee, if that is what thou desires, he would respond, wondering how the seed of dread had been planted.

“Also," she would persist, “Can we vow to love, honor and respect, instead of obey?”

“It is called wedlock," he tried to reassure, "but you will not be imprisoned."

If Thumbelisa survived one hundred plagues, she knew she could not find a finer man.
He knew she carried a lot of baggage; he had met the royal clan. She must have had, he thought, a lot of help packing those bags. He trusted she would divest herself of some of the items when she realized they no longer fit, if indeed, they ever had.

She had found the perfect traveling companion. For the first time, she trusted the journey could be equally rewarding.
Critical details remained. It was customary to have long engagements--less than a year raised eyebrows, but if she couldn't get past the betrothal quickly, she would never make it down the aisle and yet another hurdle remained--the King's imprimatur.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” the King inquired, when the Knight asked for Thumbelisa’s hand in marriage. “She is an awful lot of trouble, very strong willed--almost impossible to control, challenges my orders," he ranted. "You will have your hands full. Are you up to the task?”

Those comments gave the Knight a clue as to why her dread was so deep. He understood why she wanted the hoopla over quickly--how a long waiting period might provoke anxiety, cause her to doubt her choice, allow her fears to implode.
Yes, the King was vexed at the suddeness of the wedding, but he appreciated divesting himself of the thorn in his side.

They would wed the following month. The event would be put together in record time with just enough trappings to keep the villagers' tongues from wagging. There would be no engagement ring, a borrowed wedding gown, no bridesmaids, simple gold bands, a banquet small by kingdom standards. They would omit the word "obey."

The eve preceding the nuptials,though, King Perfect, who was not happy with the plans, ordered Thumbelisa to tell the Knight to get rid of his beard for the ceremony. “I would prefer a clean-shaven face,” he declared.

“He is perfect just the way he is,” she smiled.

The morning after as church bells clanged, Thumbelisa handed over her heart.

THE END

MSLE 03/09

Don't We All and Haven't We Always

Mary Lou Edwards

When I write about my father, the picture painted can be harsh. It was a thorny relationship, I joked, because we were twins born thirty-three years apart—mirror images who shared generous hearts and quick minds, but also iron wills and fierce tempers—a volatile combination. Perhaps a lithograph, where oil and water don’t mix, better describes the bond, but I prefer heavy oils which never fade.

All paintings require contrast and balance, emphasis and proportion and perspective. No small task to see a picture when one is in it, distance oneself when love blurs the vision, or appreciate a child’s worm’s-eye view for what it is—justified, but limited.

The brush of humor blends rough lines, the stroke of wit softens glaring reality but, without perspective, the finished product is one-dimensional, without texture or shape. Creating the illusion of three dimensions by applying layers of heavy oil, scraped from the palette of emotion with tints of laughter and shades of hurt, is no substitute. Though impaired eyesight was corrected early on—I wore eyeglasses from third grade—it would take much longer for me to recognize my heart’s limited perception, clouded by circumstance, distorted by pain.

Age, however, changed my vision, allowed me to fly above the landscape, to get a bird’s-eye view of a sub-culture which rigidly defined the male role as man of the house, breadwinner, ruler of the roost and king of the castle. A culture that not only accepted certain behaviors, but expected and required them as well. A culture that revered rules, and valued authority over expression—where shame and fear kept people in line—where life was serious, tough, leaving no room for mistakes, risks or wrong moves—where there were no second chances.

New lenses improved my mind-sight. My expanded point of view neither justified nor defended; it simply clarified and validated. And that clarification and validation shifted me toward the light, toward understanding and compassion, allowing me to inch forward.

“At that time, in that culture” does not excuse the absurd or rationalize the unacceptable, but it does allow me to see the humanity of the man behind the behavior, a man who did his best with what he knew. And except for the psychopaths of the world, don’t we all and haven’t we always?

The mother who had her kid's feet x-rayed in the shoe store to insure a good fit, the grandmother who cradled the baby in her arms in the passenger seat, the parents who told their sons and daughters they weren’t smart enough, good enough, fill-in-the-blank enough to make them stronger, more resilient to life’s vagaries, were acting out of concern and love.

The doctor who prescribed a stiff cocktail for the overwhelmed patient, the experts who advised parents who’d lost children not to talk about it, not to bring it up, to just move on with their lives, the priests who counseled women to stay in abusive marriages believed they were operating in everyone’s best interests.

Mistakes made in the name of progress, in the name of honor, in the name of God, in the name of love.

Wearing my “at that time, in that culture” spectacles, I see that long before one is a parent, one is a human being with often too little time, too many demands, too much responsibility and too few resources. I realize some of life’s best lessons are about what not to do. I celebrate, through story-telling, the hilarious parts of my experience and I document the painful to weaken its hold.

Most importantly, I no longer evaluate yesterday’s mistakes under today’s microscope.

I accept that once I know better, I am obligated to do better. I am committed to not repeating errors, to speaking out when my gut tells me something is amiss. And if I miss such an opportunity, I pray my children know I did the best I could and extract every last bit of humor from my less than perfect parenting.

I hope they look back to the past to understand and appreciate, but not get stuck staring. I pray they have the moxie to paint their own pictures and the courage to include a self-portrait.

And finally I trust they will take responsibility for their lives and understand that, after all is said and done, they are the curators of their own collections.
MLSE 2/09

The Sleeping Baby

Mary Lou Edwards

It made no sense.

Girls didn’t get kicked out of school.

Even boys didn’t get kicked out of school unless they were totally incorrigible, and incorrigible was loosely defined.

Bean the Fiend practically killed someone with a baseball bat, and he didn’t even get suspended. They said it was because the guy he almost murdered was colored, and colored people were not supposed to come into Bridgeport so he was really asking for it. But my dad said no human being deserved such treatment, and the incident was a dirty shame. Nothing happened to Bean and he should have been history.

Joey the Nut torched someone’s garage: he wasn’t expelled either. The grapevine had it that graduation was only a couple of weeks away so the nuns didn’t want to bother, but I suspected they were worried the convent would go up in flames if they dared get rid of him.

Two criminals skated, and the nuns wanted to throw me out?

The day before, Sister Margaret Anne, my six foot, seventh grade teacher, who sported more than a bit of a mustache, had clomped over to my desk in her huge black wing-tips and handed me an envelope. “Give this to your parents,” she barked. “I want to see them as soon as possible.”

In the days before teacher conferences were routine, when dads worked double shifts, when moms made tri-colored Jell-O molds and baked cookies from scratch, having your mother, never mind both parents, called to school was equivalent to an executioner’s drum roll.

I sat at the kitchen table preparing myself for something awful, but this?

“You finally did it,” my father announced as he hung up his jacket and pulled out a chair at the table. He and my mother had just returned from the dreaded meeting. “You got yourself thrown out.” Lowering his voice so as not to wake my sister, he continued, “Yes, the nuns have finally had enough of your big mouth. They want you gone—out of there—by the end of the school year. Shaking his head and raising his eyebrows with a you-just-never-learn look, he added, “I’ve told you a million times to watch your step.”

“Jim, stop it,” my mother said as she put away cooking utensils. I could not believe mom was fooling around putting away the dinner dishes at a time like this. Apparently she’d yet to realize my disgrace would instantly qualify her for The Mothers Who Failed Hall of Shame.

My heart was thumping; I thought my pajama top would fly up in my face. I knew my father was not joking because he had almost no sense of humor plus he had warned me, “Your smart mouth will get you in trouble one day. Mark my words.” It was clear that a girl who spoke out had a major disability. Sooner or later, she was guaranteed her Waterloo.

But it seemed so drastic.

True, I had gotten more than my share of checkmarks in kindergarten, but, for the most part, I had cleaned up my act. Gone was the girl who would not put her head down on her desk and rest quietly, wait her turn patiently at lavatory time or play well with others. I still had a few flaws, but not enough to warrant capital punishment. My grades were excellent. I’d read my brother’s copy of All Quiet on the Western Front by the time I was ten. I wasn’t perfect, but, unlike a lot of the troublemakers in my room, I never had to put money in the Mission Box for The Pagan Babies in China.

OK, so I finished my assignments lickety-split and spent time whispering and passing notes until the slow-pokes were done with their work. But I was also the one who helped other kids diagram sentences and drilled them on the state capitals. This was my thank-you for grading all of Sister’s spelling tests every week, for putting all the arithmetic problems on the blackboard every morning? This was my reward for spending my daily recess down in first grade dressing the brats who couldn’t even tell their right boot from their left? Would they really dump their star funeral mass singer who chanted countless dirges whenever another parishioner kicked the bucket?

My mother, noting the shock waves of disbelief and anger roll across my face, intervened.
“Jim, stop this nonsense,” she insisted, “tell her the truth.” My mom was trying to pull me in off the ledge my father was greasing.

As she stood at the sink filling Skippy's water bowl, she said, “You are being double promoted because of some test your class took. Your scores were very high.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you, Mary?” my dad interrupted. “She’s a giant pain and they want her out of their hair.”

Just before the meeting, my mother had taken a cake out of the oven and now she put it on the table. She believed food always made things better.

“Yes, they’re sick of putting up with her,” he said, while I sat there totally bewildered. “Sister didn’t want to be blunt, but I could read between the lines. She was trying to be nice.”

“No, that’s not true,” my mother shot back, cutting an extra big piece of chocolate cake for me. “Daddy’s just saying that because he doesn’t want you to think “who you are.” He doesn’t want you to get a big head,” my mom whispered, as though this all made perfect sense.

Was my father practicing his version of that old Italian adage about only kissing sleeping babies? If you kissed a baby when she was awake she might think she was really special, really important, and, God forbid, think “who she was.”

Sensing my confusion and getting impatient with this mind-game, my mother picked up the empty plates and put them in the sink. “Listen to me. Sister Benedict said you need to be challenged. On Monday, you’ll go to 8th grade for two months and then graduate. Now get to bed. It’s late.”

The drama was over, just like that. No one asked if this was something I’d like to do or what did I think. No discussion, just get to bed.

The thumping of my heart subsided, but the spinning in my head had only just begun. The master of mixed messages had added another chapter, Planting the Seeds of Self-Doubt, to his best-seller How to Destroy Your Kid’s Confidence.

For graduation I was given a stunning Art Deco wristwatch with a tiny diamond on each corner of its beautiful hinged platinum case. The square white-gold face had small, swirly Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9. My mother confided that she’d objected to the expense, but my dad told her my present had to be really special to show me how pleased they were of my achievement. Why couldn’t he have told me that? Why couldn’t he just say, “Your mother and I are really proud of you.”

And then it occurred to me that, maybe as a baby, he'd only been kissed when he was sleeping.

MLSE 01/09

Out of Respect

Mary Lou Edwards

I’ve had my share of culture shock as I traipsed through Europe, the Americas and the Middle East but nothing could have prepared me for my first encounter with a burqua clad woman on a flight from Rome to Beirut. Not pictures, not books, not stories—nothing could have prepared me for the searing image of the ghostly apparition.

A fastidiously groomed man in a Savile Row suit, Gucci loafers and a Rolex guided the ethereal shroud to its seat. Swathed head to ankle in a voluminous black cover replete with a plastic Darth Vader-like screen masking its face, it seemed like a character in “Night of the Living Dead.”

When the meal was served, her gloved hands flipped part of her veil forward creating a mini-tent under which she ate. Except for her feet, you would never have known it was a person—no skin, no arms nor legs, no voice.

I was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed though I’m not sure which part of the scene prompted my visceral reaction. After all, growing up with nuns exposed me to some very unusual attire and I was steeped in a religion which routinely vilified women as “occasions of sin” so it wasn’t as though misogyny was exactly foreign to me.

Maybe it was the proud, pristine peacock steering the faceless, formless figure down the aisle. Maybe it was the innocent faces of their children who would soon learn that, at puberty, the boys would become men and the girls would disappear. Maybe it was the realization that a change in geography could make any woman, myself included, an erasable nonentity. Maybe it was the neon jelly slippers that peeked from beneath the capacious black robe. Whatever it was, it overwhelmed my heart.

In Beirut, I shared the encounter with my Egyptian friend, Mohsen. “Ah,” he explained, “we Arabs respect virtuous women—that is why we require the burqua.”

Oh. My. God.

Years later, my daughter told me about helping to plan a Take Back the Night rally on campus.
“Hundreds of students,” she explained, “will protest violence against women. We’re going to chant ‘Yes means yes! No means no! However we dress, Wherever we go!’ It’s about victimization,” she declared, “about empowerment, too. But really, Mom, I think it’s about respect, don’t you?”

“Yes, Lia, it is about respect,” I replied, flashing back to the image tattooed on my soul so long ago. “Americans don’t always get it right, but we do keep trying.”

MLSE 11/08

Elephants in Limbo

Mary Lou Edwards

Long before learning to read books, I learned to read people. Having a father with a mercurial temperament was the catalyst, no doubt. Being on hyper-alert for glaring eyes, exasperated sighs, raised voices—the phonics of dysfunction—often, but not always, kept one out of harm’s way.

A subskill necessary for people-reading fluency was learning not to ask questions. Way before ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ became a part of America’s political lexicon, I’d been trained in ‘Don’t You Dare Ask’—a skill I so perfected a mere raised eyebrow, a simple sideward glance was enough to stop. right. there.

The list of verboten topics was endless encompassing everything from family history to current events. Further complicating the problem was the fact that no map existed showing where the land mines lay and an innocuous inquiry often detonated an explosion of confusion that neither education nor therapy could heal.

“Dad,” I asked as I knelt at the family plot in Mt. Carmel Cemetery, “why are Little Nonna and your brother and sisters buried here while Grandpa is all by himself at Oak Ridge Cemetery which isn’t even Catholic?”

“You’re supposed to be praying for the dead not asking nosy questions that are none of your business,” he said in his usual you-are-such-a-pain-in-the-neck voice as he tried to shimmy the old gravestone the years had pushed off center.

“Mom, why doesn’t Daddy talk to Uncle Joe?” I asked, after observing at a family wedding reception that some of my favorite relatives were seated at tables at the opposite end of the banquet hall.

“If you were supposed to know, Miss Nosy Pants, we’d tell you,” she answered, staring straight ahead.

Once I was peering through our venetian blinds watching the public school kids walk by on their way to class. My brother, sister and I had the day off in honor of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. “Why do mostly colored kids go to Ward School and only white kids go to St. Jerome’s?” I wondered aloud.

“I suppose because they’re not Catholic,” my Mother said in a tone of voice suggesting I should be on my hands and knees helping her wax the kitchen floor instead of staring out the window.

Ignoring the hint, I persisted. “Aren’t they worried about going to Hell?”

“I guess not. Go do something useful.”

“What’s in a CONDEMNED movie that makes it bad?” I asked my friend, Janice, as I searched The Motion Picture Ratings in The New World, the Catholic weekly newspaper, hoping to find a movie my parents would let us see. "Don't even look at the Condemneds," she warned, "or we'll be in big trouble." Then she added, with cantaloupe-sized eyes, "We're not even supposed to be talking about this stuff, but my aunt said Baby Doll is a dirty movie and that's why it's a C."

After years of “don’t be so nosy” and “mind your own business," hundreds of grimaces and rolling eyeballs, I came to believe that not only our living room, but everywhere I roamed, was a veritable elephant graveyard.

Would I never know why Uncle Salvatore lived in a hospital, what Uncle Gio died from or why colored people lived two blocks away but never crossed Wentworth Avenue? Even Nancy Drew, my favorite girl detective, would have been hard-pressed to solve these mysteries with every question stonewalled.

Years later, I could really relate to the rabbi who prayed at the Wailing Wall for a half century with no reward. “What does it feel like to pray for peace at the Wailing Wall for fifty years only to have your country in constant conflict?” he was asked. “It feels like I’m talking to a fucking wall,” he said.

I sympathized with the rabbi, but at least he’d never been subjected to the Sister Adorers of the Most Precious Blood. Trained as human walls to not recognize a straight answer, they specialized in teaching a unique blend of God’s Word and bizarre folktale.

As a student, I tried very hard to restrict my questioning to only those issues which truly baffled me since these harridans had no compunction about playing the ‘God will send you to Hell’ card to keep kids in line. There were times, though, when I just really had to take the risk and at least try to get some of this straightened out. I knew I couldn't get to the bottom of everything at once lest I be expelled as a "troublemaker" and shipped to the public school so I'd judiciously drop a question here and there.

“Sister,” I asked when she was not on the warpath, “why would God punish a baby and send it to Limbo forever just because she died before she was baptized?”

"God knows what is best for us," Sister said.

“Sister, if your body must be buried in a consecrated cemetery in order to go to heaven, what happens to people who burn in fires? What happens if someone dies in the forest and an animal eats him? Does he go to Hell?”

"Finish your assignment instead of worrying about animals in the forest."

“Sister, what happened to the Christian martyrs who were eaten alive by the lions in Rome? What if the lions left an arm or a leg? Would the arm and leg get buried? Would just the arm and leg go to heaven? Would God say, 'I know all things and I know who you are even without your head. Come on in anyway.'”

"You are making Jesus very sad with all of your silly questions," Sister hissed.

But I couldn't stop wondering and worrying--not just about the Coliseum and the Limbo babies and the forest.

What about my friend Catherine's mother who was getting divorced and going to Hell? Catherine said her mother told her it was better to go to Hell than stay married to Catherine's father. How could anyone, in her right mind, deliberately antagonize God with a statement like that? I could just hear God say, "Lady, you are toast!" I said a novena for her hoping to mitigate God's anger, but boy, she sure was asking for it.

And then there was the boy across the street who was killed in a car crash the very same Sunday he slept through Mass. All the busybodies said his mother set the alarm clock for him but he'd turned it off. Did he turn it off deliberately and say, "The heck with it. I don't feel like going to Mass today." or did he turn it off thinking he'd just lie there an extra five minutes and accidentally fall asleep? Big difference. If he intended to slap God in the face, he was burning for all eternity. If it was just a stupid mistake, God might have shown him some mercy and he'd just have to make a stop in Purgatory before going to Heaven. How long would he be stuck in Purgatory? Oh, no. I hoped God didn't take that the wrong way--I mean, I didn't really mean stuck. I knew Purgatory was a lucky detour around Hell--no one cared if it took a little longer to get to heaven.

I prayed God understood I wasn't trying to be a smart-aleck. I just really needed more answers, but I was getting the message, albeit slowly, that asking made things even more complicated. Maybe I was supposed to stop with the questions and mind my own business. Maybe there were some things I wasn't smart enough to understand. Maybe it was true that if it was in my best interests , they'd tell me.

I asked the priest about it in Confession but all he said was, "Bless you, my child, just believe," but believe what?

Did Father not realize I wanted to believe, but I was having trouble with some things that just weren't adding up?

Then slowly, as I grew up, I noticed more inconsistencies, many contradictions, even some big fat lies and no one said a word.

Why did priests, who took the vow of poverty, drive luxury cars and get new ones every year? Why were our nuns paid $8.00 a month? What happened to indulgences that were supposed to get me into heaven sooner? How was it that the wealthy got annulments while the divorced who had no financial resources were banned from the Sacraments? Why did exorcism vanish? Abortion is killing, but war, well, that depends? What happened to the $4 million dollars that the National Council of Bishops lost when Chicago's Cardinal Cody was treasurer? Why, for over 25 years did the Cardinal's divorced cousin with 2 kids always live across the street from him no matter where he was assigned?

The questions kept coming and they ranged from the ridiculous to the scandalous.

Cardinal George announced at a press conference that the Pope had declared Limbo a thing of the past. “From now on,” he proclaimed, “Limbo will no longer be taught.”

“Does that mean,” an obviously pagan reporter had the nerve to ask, “that Limbo no longer exists?”

“I didn’t say that,” said the tap-dancing Leader of the Flock, “I said the Papal directive states it will no longer be taught.”

Nice turn of phrase--world-class parsing that would make Bill Clinton envious, but, let's be honest, Limbo is so last millenium the Faithful consider George's proclamation white noise.

Let's save our energy, some said, for things that really matter. Does a Holocaust denier qualify?

"In the interests of unity in the Church..." the Pope recently UNexcommunicated a bishop who loudly proclaims that no Jews were gassed in Nazi death camps. After a disastrous two weeks of international outrage, the Pope backpedaled insisting no one told him--the German Pontiff--about this hate monger's horrendous reputation.

Could it be that the world's premier Christian asked one of his sycophants and was not given a straight answer? Or could it be he did not hear the answer because of the trumpeting of elephants chained in the Vatican's dungeon of Dogma?

I'll bet at least two of those Papal bulls, Hypocrisy and Pedophilia, are making quite a racket these days and the College of Cardinals better pray that Complicity does not rear his ugly head too.

MLE 10/08

The Torture Hour

Mary Lou Edwards

The dinner hour started in its usual manner with warnings of don’t touch, it’s hot, be careful. Mom placed a Pyrex platter on the table guaranteed to jump start every salivary gland on the planet. Wisps of steam rose from the bubbly gravy and stringy mozzarella smothered yet another culinary masterpiece. It was hard to believe that such an auspicious beginning, replete with the heavenly aroma of basil and olive oil, could turn into a meal from hell, but we’d been through the drill often enough to know the inevitable conclusion.

The minute my father opened the cedar-lined closet doors the drama began. Just hearing the creaky wheels of the cart that held the behemoth Magnavox reel-to-reel tape recorder roll over the slick wood floor would be enough to start the nervous snickers and stage whispers to mom.

“Please, Mom,” my brother begged, “don’t let him ruin our dinner again.”

“You know you hate it too,” I’d hiss. “Be honest, Mom, and make him stop.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” my sister would whine.

“You kids had better be quiet,” Mom would warn, giving us a take-no-prisoners look. “Don’t make trouble and get him angry!”

By then Dad had threaded the huge circular wheels with the magic music recently captured on magnetic tape and was taking his seat at the head of the table. As we bowed our heads for the requisite murmuring “Bless us, O Lord, for these Thy gifts…” we knew the amen would signal the beginning of the torture hour also known as the music appreciation lesson. In reality, it was the precursor to waterboarding.

Even the heaping plates of fabulous food could not anesthetize us from the musical cacophony that was to ensue.

With the loud click of the PLAY button, the air was filled with Lawrence Welk leading his band of acoustic terrorists with “Ana one, ana two, ana three…” in a nauseating version of the Beer Barrel Polka or his Champagne Lady of Music warbling “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”

By the end of the first stanza, the deterioration of the family dinner had begun.

With each grating, offensive squeak of the string assassins, my brother would grimace and clutch his heart as though being attacked, my sister would knock over a glass of milk hoping to get sent to her room, our dog Skipper would skitter off suddenly remembering a prior engagement and my martyr mother would be looking heavenward as though begging God to strike her deaf immediately. My father’s steely-eyed glares of disgust at this contemptible conduct elicited more wisecracks and uncontrollable laughter inevitably resulting in the family sin worthy of capital punishment—milk-pouring-from-someone’s- nose-who-was-acting-silly!

“It is sinful to waste milk and revolting,” Dad would intone and, at this point, the simple dysfunctional family dinner would turn into an event guaranteed to provide full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.

Snapping the STOP button, he would launch into tirades about rudeness, ingratitude and stupidity interspersed with “You kids don’t know good music.” His tongue lashing about our being unteachable was rather paradoxical since it was Mr. Welk who would declare, “Myron and I will now do a solo together.” After all, we’d know the difference between the Roman numeral I and a capital I on a cue card and wouldn’t announce, “And now for a song from World War Eye.” but we were the idiots? The irony was knee deep but totally wasted on my dad who’d pontificate, “They don’t write songs like this anymore...” as “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey…” blared in the background.

Actually my father’s harangues were more palatable than Welk’s prototype elevator muzak. Somehow our digestive tracts had become accustomed to my dad’s force feedings of ridicule and shame, but our lower GI’s never quite adjusted to the diabetic inducing renditions of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
MLE 09/08