Remembering Sue
I’ve had some old memories come back to visit today, and as for that sort of thing, one seems to give birth to another.
Some of the most vivid things I remember are times when I knew I was encountering some sophisticated act—something foreign to my hillbilly upbringing. Some I learned from Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt—such as what to do with your knife after you’ve ickied it all up cutting something or spreading something and you don’t want to put it down on a white tablecloth (not that I saw many white tablecloths). Other things, I learned from my friends.
Here’s one: Sue sitting in the bathtub while I tried on her mother’s make-up, telling me the order in which body parts should be washed, “or you’ll spread germs.” I didn’t get that. Why would it matter if I used the washcloth on my thighs after I swooshed it between my legs? But that’s what her mother taught her, and her mother was a sophisticate, a divorcee, head cashier at the local Riverside Market. It was 1978, maybe ’79, and Sue was still in Catholic school, damned to wear those green plaid uniforms but secretly envied by the rest of us girls. Sue had a weird nose but good cheekbones, and though she tried a little too hard to fit in with the rest of us public school kids, her bleach blonde mother (still wearing it in a beehive that late in the decade) was exotic, and we all wanted to hang in her immaculate fourteen by eighty.
Though we got away with a lot at her house when her mother was at work, we didn’t hang around much when she was home. She was incredibly strict, and, we learned, not afraid to use a backhand to enforce her rules. Sue still did her best to fit in with the lawless crowd, though. We all got an education the night she opened her mother’s secret cabinet. It didn’t take long for us to bait in the young, cute guys and feed them Pepsi with a few drops of Spanish Fly. A promise of unlimited Atari play did the trick, but Ms. PacMan was getting more action than we were—and besides, what would we have done with them had the aphrodisiac worked?
One of the last times I saw Sue was at Amy’s wedding. I didn’t recognize her. She was always slim, like her mother—whom we learned restricted her diet, as obesity was a sign of sloth. Standing outside the church, babe in arms, she had to have been two hundred pounds, maybe more. Her eyes were sunken in her the fat of her face, and even her quirky nose had lost it’s sharp upturn in the extra padding. I tried not to look shocked and I’m sure I failed miserably. We made small talk, avoiding the subject of the elephant she’d become. But, I saw her again late that summer—or was it the following year?—and she was back to her fighting weight. There was a mention of her mother’s nagging, how many sit-ups she started with and how many she still did every day and the stress of motherhood and the roll that she just could not get rid of, no matter how hard she tried. Sage hadn’t come along yet, so I listened, haughty and superior, knowing I was still bikini material. Though I’m not a pound over my weight at graduation, maybe even a pound or two lighter, I have come to know the ravages of motherhood. But that day, I just looked at her as though she were old. She was twenty-one.
Sue died twelve years later. I heard about it a few months after the fact, while I was firmly in my own state of inertia. Cancer. I don’t know what kind, or if she suffered, or what happened to her husband, her two children or her mother. So far as I was concerned, she was just plucked from the face of the Earth, and all I have of her are memories of our fist fights, her mother’s sex toys and a sense that she never quite fit in—which made a maladjusted girl like me feel a little better about myself.
Till later...
Some of the most vivid things I remember are times when I knew I was encountering some sophisticated act—something foreign to my hillbilly upbringing. Some I learned from Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt—such as what to do with your knife after you’ve ickied it all up cutting something or spreading something and you don’t want to put it down on a white tablecloth (not that I saw many white tablecloths). Other things, I learned from my friends.
Here’s one: Sue sitting in the bathtub while I tried on her mother’s make-up, telling me the order in which body parts should be washed, “or you’ll spread germs.” I didn’t get that. Why would it matter if I used the washcloth on my thighs after I swooshed it between my legs? But that’s what her mother taught her, and her mother was a sophisticate, a divorcee, head cashier at the local Riverside Market. It was 1978, maybe ’79, and Sue was still in Catholic school, damned to wear those green plaid uniforms but secretly envied by the rest of us girls. Sue had a weird nose but good cheekbones, and though she tried a little too hard to fit in with the rest of us public school kids, her bleach blonde mother (still wearing it in a beehive that late in the decade) was exotic, and we all wanted to hang in her immaculate fourteen by eighty.
Though we got away with a lot at her house when her mother was at work, we didn’t hang around much when she was home. She was incredibly strict, and, we learned, not afraid to use a backhand to enforce her rules. Sue still did her best to fit in with the lawless crowd, though. We all got an education the night she opened her mother’s secret cabinet. It didn’t take long for us to bait in the young, cute guys and feed them Pepsi with a few drops of Spanish Fly. A promise of unlimited Atari play did the trick, but Ms. PacMan was getting more action than we were—and besides, what would we have done with them had the aphrodisiac worked?
One of the last times I saw Sue was at Amy’s wedding. I didn’t recognize her. She was always slim, like her mother—whom we learned restricted her diet, as obesity was a sign of sloth. Standing outside the church, babe in arms, she had to have been two hundred pounds, maybe more. Her eyes were sunken in her the fat of her face, and even her quirky nose had lost it’s sharp upturn in the extra padding. I tried not to look shocked and I’m sure I failed miserably. We made small talk, avoiding the subject of the elephant she’d become. But, I saw her again late that summer—or was it the following year?—and she was back to her fighting weight. There was a mention of her mother’s nagging, how many sit-ups she started with and how many she still did every day and the stress of motherhood and the roll that she just could not get rid of, no matter how hard she tried. Sage hadn’t come along yet, so I listened, haughty and superior, knowing I was still bikini material. Though I’m not a pound over my weight at graduation, maybe even a pound or two lighter, I have come to know the ravages of motherhood. But that day, I just looked at her as though she were old. She was twenty-one.
Sue died twelve years later. I heard about it a few months after the fact, while I was firmly in my own state of inertia. Cancer. I don’t know what kind, or if she suffered, or what happened to her husband, her two children or her mother. So far as I was concerned, she was just plucked from the face of the Earth, and all I have of her are memories of our fist fights, her mother’s sex toys and a sense that she never quite fit in—which made a maladjusted girl like me feel a little better about myself.
Till later...
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