My sister’s name was Anna but my mother called her Kitty, my brother was Edward and she called him Buddy. She called me “Susie” and when she said my name it sounded like she was spitting. The name came out in short, mean, little snaps. You could tell she hated me just by the way she said my name.
My half-a-sister, Rayleen, started calling me "poor ole Susie" and it stuck like 1960’s contact paper. Nothing would erase that perception. I could change my name, my address, my occupation, I could marry a Marine, a carpenter, a rich man, a Canadian, I could live in a mansion, a commune, a tenement or a car, I could work for a genius, a casino, a defense contractor, the city council or an A&W root beer stand. I could dance topless or teach Sunday school. It did not matter. Nothing I did would remove Rayleen’s curse. She never bothered to acknowledge my accomplishments and never passed up a chance to remind me of my failures. When she looked at m, all she saw was “poor ole Susie.”
When I looked at her I saw a sister that I loved. I never saw the conniving, mean spirited, white trash hillbilly, living in a run down prefab 1960’s bungalow on food stamps and welfare. She had my number on speed dial and whenever she needed me I always came running. Once I flew cross country to help her when she had surgery. While she was in the hospital, I cooked meals, cleaned house, did laundry and cared for her four year old son 24/7. A week later she was home again and finished with me. She coldly handed me a twenty dollar bill and told me to find a new place to stay. She acted as though she had done me a favor. Years later she accused me of abusing her son because I taught him to tie his shoes. She never once said “Thank you.” Not once. Nor did she lend a hand when her “mother’s other children” needed help. Instead she just stopped taking our phone calls if we were no longer of any use to her.
I have had my share of troubles. I always seem to crumble at the worst possible moments. I never have a breakdown when the rent is paid. I never lose my job when unemployment numbers are at a record low. I crash and burn in public. Just as my kids hit puberty, I fell apart. I was struggling with lung disease but didn’t know it yet. Like other seriously ill women, the physical disease was ignored while male doctors treated my “mental” disease. I was tired because of the “change” or because I was worried about losing my looks. They gave me antidepressants that only caused insomnia that exacerbated the problem. The doctors played antidepressant roulette trying to find the magic pill. All the while, the lung disease when untreated and my life disintegrated. I couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t support my kids and didn’t have the energy to reign in a teenage daughter who responded to my failure by raising hell. I’ve often said that Lilly Beth would grab a can of kerosene and start pouring if the house was on fire – as least she could maintain a sense of control that way. Since she was tiny she has raged against the inequity of the world and hated feeling powerless. Max tuned into video games and tuned out the battling women.
When everything finally fell completely apart, my kids and I were scattered across the county. Lilly Beth went to live with foster parents (her choice) Max went to live with Kitty and I slept for a month. When I woke, I checked on Lilly Beth. She was settled in with a family she deemed worthy of her. So, I headed out to reclaim Max. He was not at all happy to be living with my sister Kitty. I swore that I would be there before Christmas to take him home. I was unemployed and broke and the only way to get to Max was to work my way back to him. So I offered to help my mother move in exchange for plane fare to Max.
When I got to Detroit, all Mom’s things were packed and being loaded into two huge trucks. Half-a-sister Rayleen was there suffering from another illness and needing help. I couldn’t believe that she was so oblivious to my situation. I wasn’t a teenager with no family and no home who did her favors for a place to sleep. I was a grown woman with a family of my own in crisis. She pressed me to stay and help her. I reminded her I was there to help our Mother move. Then she managed to get the knife in and say,” Poor old Susie, always in trouble.” I looked at her and said, “I’m sorry I can’t help this time” and walked outside.
The ride down south was an episode of Dukes of Hazard. My Mom rode in the first truck and I rode in the second with a cousin. We took steep mountain roads on two wheels at breakneck speeds. When we got to my Mom’s new apartment, the boys left the furniture and boxes on the porch and told me that I’d be moving it inside alone.
I was already sick with emphysema by then but I didn’t know it. The emphysema was the reason I couldn’t hold on to a job, the reason I didn’t have the stamina to battle my teenage daughter. I didn’t know that I just knew I was exhausted all the time. First I got the boxes inside and one by one I tried to get them up the stairs. It took forever and often I just wanted to quit. But my mother had offered me plane fare if I finished moving for her. I knew Max was miserable and he was counting on me. It was getting closer and closer to Christmas so I kept at it.
Doing all the moving was hard enough but being with my Mother was torture. I was a hostage subject to her mood swings and idiosyncrasies. The worst part was the hunger. My mother’s new apartment didn’t have a refrigerator or a stove. It seems she was in no rush to purchase one. Instead she spent most of her time on the other side of the apartment complex at her friend Mona’s house. Her friend was a short woman with brassy blond hair and a house full of QVC collectable dolls. As the British say, she was mutton dressed as lamb. The first time I met her she had been very pleasant but each meeting after that became more hostile. That’s the way it worked with my Mother. It’s not just that she was insecure and needed friends. She needed to have her friends hate her children. She needed to have her children’s friends prefer her company. She would announce that she’d won over one of my friends and I would end the friendship. Whenever I went to Mona’s to remind Mom that we had to go somewhere, she left me standing in the doorway with my stomach growling as they finished eating. I was never invited in and was never offered food.
While Mom was visiting Mona, I’d spend my time trying to finish the unpacking. I’d get through the day pretty good but at night fell the hunger would eat at me. I’d wait for my mother to come back home. I had no money and no car. Sometimes we’d go out for dinner but mostly it was take out fast food and sometimes not that. If my mother had eaten at her friend’s house – I was on my own. One night we had planned to pick up some Kentucky fried chicken. All day as I worked I looked forward to that moist tender chicken, the creamy mashed potatoes and baked beans. It got later and later and finally I walked across the way to my mother’s friend’s house.
Mona opened the door a sliver when I knocked. I could smell the food inside. She said, “I’ve fixed some food for your poor Mother. I was worried about her not eating. She’ll be home shortly.” I walked back shaking from hunger.
When my mother finally got back I reminded her about the bucket of chicken. She handed me five dollars and told me to pick some up for myself. I didn’t argue, I just took the keys and left. Unfortunately, everything in that small town closed at 9 PM. Not even the grocery store was open. No 7-11 or AM PM, only a lonely gas station vending machine. I sat in the car and loaded up on candy bars and Pepsi. It worked for awhile but I knew that at 2 or 3 AM I’d be wide awake and hungry.
A few days later we went to visit my Aunt Sue and Uncle Paul who lived an hour’s drive away. Uncle Paul was my Dad's best friend and the person who introduced him to my mother. I hadn’t seen my Aunt and Uncle for years and had almost forgotten Aunt Sue till one day I found myself in the sanctuary of her kitchen and the comfort of her biscuits and gravy.
When we arrived my Mother started her act. She flopped down in nicest chair in the room and complained to my Uncle that, “All this moving has been hard on these old bones! I wish I had SOMEBODY who would me!” She rolled eyes in my direction. Truth didn’t matter. In her presence I was always the lazy ungrateful child.
As I sat there in Aunt Sue’s living room, my stomach started to growl. Then suddenly an arm was around my shoulder and Aunt Sue was saying, “Come on in the kitchen with me.” Sue took me by the hand and sat me down at her kitchen table. Something about it was so familiar and so comforting. She moved around the kitchen and around me like she knew me by heart. There was a gentleness to her that felt familiar to me. She talked as she made the biscuits and gravy for my Mom and me.
My Mom yelled at me from the other room and I jumped. Sue looked at me and said, "Don't you pay her no mind. I know how to handle Burleigh." Then she said, "Susie, Don't you remember when I used to look after you when you were little?" When she called me "Susie" I liked it. I told her I didn't remember much. She told me that she would take me home with her and I'd spend weeks there. I asked her why she would do that and she said "Well, Susie, you're my namesake. You're Daddy named you for me." I never knew that until that very moment.
I liked watching Aunt Sue in the kitchen. She pulled the skillet from the oven and started the bacon. Then she took out the flour, baking soda, baking powder and the cutting board. She was frying the bacon with one hand and mixing the biscuit batter with the other. She’d close doors with her knee and close the cupboard with her elbows. Before long the bacon was finished and the biscuits were baking. Aunt Sue washed her hands in the sink and dried them on her white apron with the cherries on the pocket.
When my Mom reneged on her promise to give me plane fare to go to Max, it was my Aunt Sue who gave me the money for a bus ticket to Florida. It took 36 hours to get to Max. Thirty six hours of every crossroad in every Podunk town in South Carolina. But I made in Christmas Eve and Max greeted me by picking me up and swinging me around and around. He was overjoyed and so was I.
Along the road of life I’ve found comfort in other women’s kitchens. I started these stories as a way to honor those women who took me in and gave me sanctuary and comfort food. My Aunt Sue was one of those women and it wasn’t until late in life that I remembered her. Within a year of her giving me sanctuary in her kitchen, she was dead, Cancer. Yea, Biscuits and gravy is one of the recipes, from my Aunt Sue. I’m named for her.
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