Holes in Her Head
By Deb Nordlie
Packed in the way back of our grey Chevy station wagon were our suitcases and miscellaneous boxes––with a twenty-foot-long U-Haul hitched securely behind. We waited for Mom to edge out of our Pennsylvania driveway.
Mom twisted sideways in the driver’s seat to tell us the truth. “Kids, this trip is going to be rough. I’m the only driver, so I’m going to get tired and maybe kinda grumpy along the way. I don’t want to burden you, but we don’t have much money for this move.” She paused. “I’ve saved a bit... ” and she trailed off. Then her voice edged toward bravado, “But once we get to Arizona, I’ll find a job and a place for us to live, too. Don’t worry, kids, I’ll figure this out.”
We sat silently, shifting in our seats and staring out the window. There was no need for us to respond because there wasn’t a word Mom said we didn’t already know. Ever since our father left, we knew she had always “figured things out” for our family.
As a single parent, she had always done her best for us. She talked with friends at work and church about this lengthy trip, asked everyone she knew about long car rides with little kids, and got advice about pulling a bulky and sometimes obstreperous U-Haul on unfamiliar highways. We knew how well she had planned for this drive into our futures.
We nodded, just watching Mom sorting through her words.
“We have to do this, kids. I know I have holes in my head, but I have to do this. For us.”
I clutched my constant companion,The Diary of Anne Frank. Ned sat with his G.I. Joes around him. Jimmy, sucking his thumb, sat stuffed among the suitcases, and Patty rode shotgun with Nancy Drew, Girl Detective.
Pulling the AAA map from her purse, Mom said, “So. Let’s go.”
She turned the key in the ignition. She drove west.
***
Mom was right. The longer we were crammed together in our station wagon, the more we understood: this trip was going to be rough.
First, October’s heat was astonishing. We left the East in the chill, but the Indian Summer in the Midwest that year was furious. Somewhere in Ohio, Mom decided to change out of the thick black turtleneck she had dressed in earlier that morning. Saying we had to “hurry to make time,” she had me hold the steering wheel while she jimmied her arms out of the sleeves. She pulled the top over her head, flapped her arms, and allowing the breezes from the open windows to cool her armpits, declared, “Gosh, that feels good.” She tossed her shirt to me, and I nonchalantly leaned out the window to attach the shirt to the radio antenna. While her turtleneck flag waved to the world, the five of us spent the next hour or so inventing improbable scenarios where we were stopped by the highway patrol with Mom “big bazoomed” and shirtless.
As we crossed the country, we ate cheaply from shared Howard Johnson plates, occasional splurges at an A&P, or from roadside stands.
At a stand in Illinois, we bought apples and a jug of cider “for the road” which was Mom Code for “no dinner tonight—this is dinner.” We chomped on the apples and dinner was forgotten. The next day, our stomachs rumbling, Mom pulled off under some trees, mere inches from a farm’s white picket fence, the U-Haul’s tires settling into some muck. I ferreted out cups and the cider and Mom twisted off the cap from the gallon jug. Something, or maybe it was just the sun playing tricks on our eyes, something wispy rose from the bottle. The cider had a distinctive taste, a distinctive tang. After we finished off the jug of heat-induced fermented cider, we napped under the trees, and later, it all seemed pretty funny as she tried to pull out, the Chevy’s tires making sucking sounds before they connected with the asphalt. We were giggling too hard to notice there was white paint decorating the Chevy’s front bumper.
But as the days went by, we became more and more irritable, and events were increasingly less amusing. This was partly because Patty and I were abysmal readers of the TripTik. Once, I had the thing upside down, and Mom grabbed it in frustration and pitched it in the back seat, narrowly missing the open window. We became much more careful after that. And when Patty got us lost in Missouri, Mom shouted a memorable phrase, “Damn-it-all-to-hell-son-of-a-bitch” when she had to back the “damn U-Haul” out of a dead-end road.
Somewhere, I think it was Oklahoma, yes, near Norman, Oklahoma, Mom was so spent and exasperated, she pulled the car to the side of the interstate, opened the driver’s door, and walked off in tears. That was one of the low points of the journey.
Then there was the New Mexico Incident. She abruptly bumped over the center divide of I-40 and made a U-turn, saying, “I can’t do this, kids, I can’t do this. We’ll have to go back.” But mere minutes later, she regained her resolve and reversed our course. We continued driving west into the glare of the sun.
Six days from our start, just as AAA had planned, we arrived at our destination and stopped at the Cowboy Motel near Phoenix, the palm trees lining the driveway already looking burdened with the morning heat. The sun radiated off the faux-adobe, and the whole scene looked like we felt: pathetic, shabby, worn out. We lugged in the suitcases while Mom detached the U-Haul. Inside, she wearily leaned against the door.
Jimmy and Ned were already dozing in the swamp-cooled room. Patty and I sat cross-legged on the dusty linoleum floor watching her as she cleaned her glasses on the hem of her shorts. Then, in a resurrection of sorts, Mom, her fingers raking through her recently Miss Clairol-ed hair, said, “Girls, I’m going out for a minute. Lock up, stay inside. I’ll be right back. Promise.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
I was thirteen and so only a little bit scared. Mom did say she’d be right back. The boys were asleep. So I picked up my friend, Anne Frank, and Patty pulled the bed pillows onto the cool floor for herself and Nancy Drew. We read. The boys snored.
Within the hour, Mom returned, softly whispering our family’s code words, “chocolate chip cartwheels” to gain entrance, carrying a paper grocery sack and a bag of ice chips. We heard her empty the drippy ice into the bathroom sink and plunge in the bottle of milk she’d bought. Back in the bedroom, she tipped the contents of the grocery bag onto the bedspread of one of the double beds: wax paper-wrapped bologna, a box of saltines, a jar of Hellmann’s mayo, and four packets of Necco wafers.
Mom sat alongside our supplies, the lumpy bed caving in with her weight.
“OK, girls, I’m going out again. I’ll be gone longer this time because I need to do some important business. But the same rules apply,” she said. “Deb—keep the kids here and let no one in. Here’s food, here’s the Flash-Matic for the TV, lock the door behind me.”
She set her shoulders and left us, murmuring, “I have to do this. I have to do this.”
I think we were too exhausted to question her. Too hot and too pooped. Too dazed.
Patty followed and locked the door behind her and, seconds later, I leaped up to put the dangling safety chain in its lock.
Now, I really was worried. It wasn’t just Arizona that was new territory to us. It was this situation and no one around to tell us what to do.
The only thing I did know how to do was return to Anne Frank. Patty, nervous too, but taking my lead, flipped open her book.
Before either of us had even completed a chapter, the boys awoke. They were stiff from their crumpled-up sleep, but that disappeared when they spied our bed-pantry’s largesse. They dove in, making towering sandwiches of bologna and saltines dipped in the goopy white Hellmann’s. Fascinated with the motel’s technology for the ancient TV and eventually figuring out the remote control, we made a picnic on the floor with our provisions. We hooted through a wacky program called The Wallace and Ladmo Show on Channel 5 and then pro-wrestling on KPRO-TV, Mighty Channel 8. The hours took care of themselves, and between our books, the TV, and the bologna, we remained peaceful and entertained.
No problems for the first five hours.
Then there were problems.
We were nervous.
We were bored.
Pushing aside the lowered shades, we could see the murky green swimming pool outside, begging us to leap in, to cool off, to release some of our pent-up energy. But I said, “Nope. Mom said we have to stay right here.” Then? Throwing caution to the wind, we jumped up and down on the saggy double beds, catapulting from one to the other, our voices screeching. Pillows were heaved, a lamp was knocked over.
But with a pounding on our door, our silliness halted. Ned’s voice quavered, “What? What’s the magic words?”
“Magic words?” came an unexpected Hispanic voice. “The magic words are shut the hell up in there.’”
We got the point.
So, Jimmy unearthed the checkers, and we sprawled on the linoleum to play. Patty and I read aloud to the boys. Thinking about the swimming pool, we each took long soapy baths. The sun began to set. We hated bologna.
At almost six, when we couldn’t tolerate each other anymore and even the Flash-Matic held no charm, a knock and the words “chocolate chip cartwheels” whispered from the door set us all scrambling.
Mom had been gone a year, a century, an eon. Almost seven whole hours. And in those seven hours, she had done the impossible: been hired as a nurse at a local hospital, rented a three-bedroom house on Pecan Road, ordered furniture from Sears, registered three of us in school, and found daycare for Jimmy.
“Hot diggity,” she whispered more to herself than us. “I did it, oh, I really, really did it.”
***
Years later, Mom finally admitted it. “Yes, I did have holes in my head, but I did it for us. For our family.”
It was true, she had done it. Despite her trepidation and even with those holes in her head, she had done the impossible: with resolve and determination, she’d given our family our future.
Guest essay written by Deb Nordlie. Deb has taught English since dinosaurs ruled the earth. After a lifetime of writing assignment sheets, she’s branched into life stories, believing “we are all anthologies filled with personal short stories and poems.” Currently, she teaches English in adult school and scribbles away at the Great American Novel. You can view her work at the Chestnut Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Coffee + Crumbs, and Crown City Magazine.