How Do You Grab a Naked Lady?
A MemoirBy Sharon L. HicksAbbott Press
Copyright © 2012 Sharon L. Hicks
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4582-0619-0Chapter One
Part One
1940–1960 Hawaii/California/Hawaii
"SHARON, I AM WRITING A BOOK! The title is Fuck!"
Fuck was Mother's favorite word.
"F is for, U is you"—she points at me—"ITLITL is see"—she points to her eyes—"and K is clearly." She spoke deliberately. An. Emphasis. On. Every. Word. "Come on, Sharon! Don't you get it? For. You. See. Clearly. Everything is so fucking clear to me!"
She plopped down next to me at the kitchen table while I was eating an afternoon snack of milk and cookies. Her green eyes were wild and frenetic; sharp as cut glass, they darted about as though they were looking for a place to land. I was terrified of her eyes, and instantly my stomach clenched.
This was how it started—enunciating every word in slow motion, and then the restlessness and the itching. Her bright-red polished nails tap-tap-tapped on the tabletop. She was a watch wound too tightly; it was only a matter of time until the spring popped. Mother laughed at her own cleverness, then leaped from the kitchen chair and began pacing.
I had to admit it: it was clever—the way her mind worked and the way she saw things differently from most people. Still, at sixteen, I was more interested in the fact that I was homecoming queen for Roosevelt High School and that the football game on Saturday was against our biggest rival, Punahou School. I was more interested in imagining my dress. How it would be strapless and pink, with loads of crinoline and dyed shoes to match. How I would be smiling and waving, and the entire city of Honolulu would be cheering for me as I rode around Honolulu Stadium in a horse-drawn carriage.
"Sharon, are you listening to me? I had a twenty-four-karat gold necklace made for me with the letters FUCK to dangle across my chest. It costs fifteen thousand dollars. Let's go pick it up."
I shoved another cookie into my mouth and became intensely interested in the scratches on the table. The good news: we were still sitting at the table, which meant this wasn't actually a problem—yet. Still, my stomach knotted.
I didn't want to go with her. I never knew how to handle her when she started careening out of control. There was no telling what she'd do, and it was her unpredictability that left me unbalanced. Will she hurt me? Will she hurt someone else? Will she hurt herself? Still, there was that split second when I thought that maybe this time she would hold it together, as though she had a choice, as though she controlled her brain rather than the other way around.
"Come on! What are you waiting for?" Mother slapped the table.
The room began to pitch and roll. I gripped the sides of the table, trying to keep my balance. Mother filled the room; she pressed herself into every corner. It suddenly felt claustrophobic in our wide-open kitchen, even though it was surrounded by windows and sliding-glass doors. I twisted my head and looked through our kitchen sliding-glass door, out past our backyard and its pristine green lawn, out past the palm trees swaying in the breeze to the blue of Maunalua Bay. Out there, all was calm and serene. Peaceful.
"Let's go, Sharon!" Mother's voice slung shot me back into the kitchen.
Suddenly, I was in our convertible hurtling at breakneck speed down the middle lane of Kalanianaole Highway, broken yellow lines on either side. Mother winked at me. "This is my special lane." Horns honked loudly and insistently at us for being in the wrong lane, the lane used for passing vehicles only. Mother shook her fist like a dictator. "Don't they know who I am? Some people can be so stupid!" I crouched in the seat and gripped the door handle with both hands.
Mercifully, ten minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot. Mother had barely turned off the engine when she leaped from the car and shot, like a bullet, through the front doors of the upscale department store straight for the fine jewelry department. Then, for reasons unknown, I followed her.
The cool of the air-conditioning hit me in the face as I stepped through the doors. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lighting. I saw Mother standing at the jewelry counter talking to a tiny Japanese saleslady. I'd be willing to bet the word fuck had never once crossed her lips. I positioned myself behind a rack of women's Hawaiian dresses. My eyes peeked out just above the metal bar of the clothes rack.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Hicks," the saleslady said in her breathy, friendly voice, "but management would not allow us to make the necklace."
Mother stiffened. I pressed myself deeper into the clothes rack, camouflaging myself in silk prints of red hibiscus and golden pineapple. My heart pulsed in my throat. Other shoppers milled about—perfectly manicured housewives. They were innocents.
I felt a bit jealous. The air around Mother warped and then expanded, like a balloon being stretched beyond its capacity. She was bristling.
"Oh, yeah? Well ... fuck you!"
The balloon burst.
"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!"
The words rained down on me like gunfire. It happened that fast. One minute I was sitting at the kitchen table enjoying a tidy little snack of milk and cookies, and the next I was hiding inside a rack of women's clothes while my mother sprayed startled customers and salespeople with "Fuck you!" like Howitzer gunfire.
Without warning, my mother spun around and headed for the escalator to the second floor. When she reached the top, she positioned herself behind the Plexiglas barrier directly above the fine jewelry department. A smile inched its way across her face. I wanted to close my eyes. Some things children should never witness. But it was like a train wreck: you know you shouldn't stare, but you're compelled to, just in case someone asks you about it later and you should have all the facts straight.
Yes, Officer. Yes, she did pull her muumuu over her head. No, no she wasn't wearing any underwear. Yes, sir. Completely naked. No, she never did this before. Yes, sir. This was the first time she stripped naked in public. May I go home now, please?
It happened in one swift, fluid motion. Mother pulled her muumuu over her head and then let it flutter over the railing, where it settled gracefully on the fine jewelry counter below. There she stood, my mother, on the second floor, behind the see-through Plexiglas barrier, naked.
My heart crashed to the floor. I took a deep breath and clenched both fists to my chest, where my heart once dwelled. My world stopped abruptly and then fast-forwarded when I heard Mother scream, "Fuck all of you!"
She threw her head back, then started to descend to the first floor on the escalator. All eyes were fixed on her, just the way she liked it. As she paraded down the escalator, she yelled, "You're all a bunch of shitheads! All of you! Shitheads!"
Shithead was Mother's second-favorite word.
When she was almost to the bottom of the escalator, I started to leave my hiding place to get her muumuu that was resting on the fine jewelry counter. But I hesitated. If I moved, then people would know she was my mother.
Still, I recognized that at thirty-nine, my mother was seductive and curvaceous. She was round in all the right places, and this was a sticky point for me because I looked an awful lot like her. All right, I liked being attractive. I would need that to land me a husband in a few years. I just didn't want anyone thinking that the resemblance between my mother and me was anything more than cosmetic.
I stood hidden in the clothes rack. She was reaching fever pitch now, her arms flailing as though that would add more force to her words, more momentum. Two blue-uniformed security guards arrived, one at the top and one at the bottom of the escalator. When Mother saw them, she smirked. In the midst of my mortification, I realized that to her this was just a game, an afternoon of fun. She pedaled backward on the escalator and then pranced down a few steps. Up a few, down a few. She kept up this awkward little dance for hours, or so it seemed. Down. Up. Down. Up.
"Come on, you fuckers. Come and get me."
The guards hesitated. The one closest to her, the one at the bottom of the escalator, yelled, "Hey! How do you grab a naked lady?"
A third guard arrived with a blanket. He threw it around Mother and grabbed her. She twisted and threw off the blanket. The guard threw the blanket on her again and held her firmly.
I hurried to rescue Mother's muumuu from the top of the jewelry counter and followed her and the security guards. While the guards took Mother inside the manager's office, I stood inside the doorframe, her muumuu over my arm. Mother threw the blanket off and sat in a chair, legs crossed. She narrowed her eyes at the security guard, a dare. The security guard wrapped her with a blanket again. This time, Mother smiled and tittered, sounding like a little girl.
"Are you her daughter?" the store manager asked me.
"Yes, I am." My voice was calm and even.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother waggling her foot, willing me to look at her, to talk to her. I fixed my gaze on the manager.
"Is there someone you can call?" he asked.
"Yes, thank you. I'll call my father. He knows what to do."
The manager clicked his pen nervously, as though he wanted me to say or do something else.
"I'll need her purse and her jewelry," I said with an air of authority and resignation.
Mother knew the drill. She giggled and batted her eyelashes at the store manager and security guards while she slipped the rings from her fingers. I stuffed her jewelry inside her purse and then turned to walk out of the office, my feet feeling like concrete blocks. I ambled down the hallway, anxious to put some distance between Mother and me.
Her voice chased after me. "Sharon! Sharon! They pissed me off! Dammit! I was counting on that FUCK necklace. It's the title of my new book! Shitheads!"
* * *
Later that evening, Dad told me that Mother was not arrested but committed to Kaneohe State Mental Hospital, locked in a secure ward. These incidents with Mother were taking a toll on him; he looked haggard and worn. It pained me to see him this way. He deserved better. I will never be anything like my mother! I will never disappoint my dad, like she does.
MY DAD LIKED TO TELL me it was love at first sight. He was visiting his best friend, Louie, when he saw Mother sleeping on the living room couch. That couch was the only piece of furniture in their rented apartment. Grandmother Nowell moved constantly, trying to find the cheapest apartment for her and her three youngest children of twelve: Louie, Mother, and Ernie.
It was 1933, and times were tough. The only work available for a single mother in Los Angeles was as a maid. Grandmother Nowell scoured the morning papers for a cheaper apartment; then, when she found one, she piled the kids in the car and relocated. They moved fifteen times in three years, hence the dearth of furniture; it was easier to pick up and leave if all they owned were the clothes on their backs.
"I'm going to marry your sister," Dad said that afternoon in Louie's apartment.
Just like that.
It was one of the things I admired most about my dad—the way he knew what he wanted, the way he wasn't afraid to snatch it up and make it his own. Whenever he told me this story, I thought of Sleeping Beauty. Only instead of chaste little pecks on the cheeks or lips, Mother and Dad necked like crazy in the back of Louie's car, much to the consternation of Louie's girlfriend (and future wife), Mackie, a die-hard Catholic. Mother never was what you would call a proper girl.
Anyway, I thought Dad the perfect Prince Charming with the way he rescued Mother from her life of poverty. She was fifteen, and Dad was seventeen. They married the next year. But I sometimes wondered if she regretted getting married so young. Maybe if she had waited a few years—waited until she was a little older, waited a little longer to have kids, to have me. Maybe everything would have been okay.
IT WASN'T THAT I BLAMED myself for her illness. But according to Dad, it all started when I was born in December of 1940 on Friday the thirteenth. Not entirely an auspicious beginning.
I liked to imagine that before I was born, Mother, Dad, and my brother, David, were this perfect little American family, similar to the one showcased in Father Knows Best. I pictured Mother and Dad smiling sweetly at one another as they clinked their glasses together at dinner to celebrate their good fortunes. I saw David with his hair slicked back with pomade and his feet dangling from the chair that was too big for him as he reached forward to join the toast with his glass of milk. Everyone was happy. Content.
And then I showed up and Mother didn't leave her bed for an entire year. She had the baby blues—times ten. She didn't have baby blues with David's birth four years earlier. Not that I compared us. Not that I think this had anything to do with why she seemed to love him more than me.
In 1940, Dad worked for May Company as a buyer of women's clothes. He had been working for May Company for nine years, ever since he graduated from high school at age fifteen. It was a step up from his days of hustling newspapers and getting paid to tell johns where to get the girls on the streets of Los Angeles. (Sometimes it was hard for me to imagine my dad as a ten-year-old pimp.) As a buyer, Dad took the train to New York City for weeks at a time. On those train trips and in New York City, Dad was exposed to men with drive and ambition. He became enamored of these gogetters, longed to emulate them. Already an avid atheist, drive and ambition became his gods.
Because of her depression, I imagined the separation was especially hard on Mother. But a man with ambition was what she wanted. She wanted to connect to it, to make love to it, to marry it. In the 1940s, women were expected to stay at home, raise their children, keep their mouths shut, and defer to the whims of their husbands. That was definitely not my mother. She could mix it up with the best of them. She loved the rapid-fire logic of a man's mind; she loved to think and reason and debate. I thought it was the thing Dad loved best about her. It made her unusual. Special. A partner rather than a subordinate.
Grandma Hicks, Dad's mom, told me that during my first year, while Mother was sidelined by her depression and Dad was busy building the American dream, I was left alone in my crib most of the time. Grandma said when I "messed my pants," I twirled my "mess" in my hair and smeared it all over my crib and anyplace I could reach behind my crib. First thing Grandma did was raise the blinds and bring the sunshine into my room. Then she bathed and dressed me, prepared my bottles, fed me, and scrubbed my room while Mother stayed in bed. Grandma brought me love.
It was Dad who explained that after a year of Mother being depressed, he took her to a psychiatrist. Dad described the doctor as a big, redheaded Irishman who took one look at Mother and threw her on the couch. Wham! She had her first electric shock treatment. On the drive home, Mother couldn't stop talking. She couldn't wait to fix dinner for all of us. Shock treatments were a medical wonder. Dad was a believer.
Our family life wasn't always bad. There were lots of good times when I was young. I guess that was why it was so hard, because I knew that normal was possible.
Like the times when David would organize a puppet show for all the neighborhood kids. Dad built the stage, and Mother sewed the curtains. David named his puppets Stepin Fetchit and Bozo the Clown. At four years old, it was my job to sell the tickets to the neighborhood kids and to pull the curtains at just the right time—a real family affair.
And at dinner, the four of us gathered around the table in our mismatched dining room chairs. (Mother insisted we each pick our own chair at the furniture store. I picked a lightwood one that had indentations on the ends of the arms where my thumbs fit. Plus, it felt good on my bottom.) Mother, Dad, and David talked and laughed about the puppet show and batted ideas around for the next one. Dad asked David about his various adventures in the neighborhood and reprimanded him for trampling Mr. Pingston's lawn. I sat there swinging my legs in my special chair, marveling at the way the three of them packed a room.
Sundays were my absolute favorite. We woke up very early and piled into the car. David settled himself over the hump on the floor next to the backseats and breathed in the gas fumes on the way to Griffith Park. When we arrived, David jumped from the car (presumably for some fresh air) and headed straight for the stream to catch crawdads. I chased after him, desperate to be included in everything he did. We explored trails and paths, ran up and down hills, and played catch. At home, David was always ditching me, treating me like a real nuisance. But on Sundays, I had my big brother's attention.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Do You Grab a Naked Lady?by Sharon L. Hicks Copyright © 2012 by Sharon L. Hicks. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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