Shake, Rattle, and Roll: Because You Are a Girl

The long, low white 4-bedroom house crouched in wait on a big corner lot shaded by silver maple trees. I can still see the kitchen, the dining room, my bedroom, and the patio outside where I spent so much time. I can picture the television and its rabbit ears in the living room, and the big plaster boxer dog, Quatre Cinq (45, for the year that they were married), that my brothers had given to my parents for their 14th anniversary. The life-size plaster dog stared with a deeply sorrowful, resigned look on his face. You don’t want to know what goes on in this house, Quatre Cinq might say. Conspicuous was the total lack of crucifixes or pictures of Jesus with the crown of thorns on his bloody head. We were clearly not a good Catholic family.

I spent most of my time outside, playing under the bridal wreath bushes with stuffed animals and flowers. I was also delighted in borrowing my older brothers’ record player and 45-rpm records. Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry. I loved that music. I would sit on the floor for hours feeding one 45-rpm disk onto the player at a time. Carefully lift that arm and place the needle on the 45. Pop. Click, click, click. Certainly part of the magic of the record player was that these precious items belonged to my brothers, whom I idolized. The music carried me away.

Carried me away from the screaming. They were at it again. The walls seemed to shake as the angry words bounced off of them.

“Money!”

“The house!”

“The Church!”

“That (other) woman!”

The fighting was intense and I would cringe in my room while my parents screamed at one another.  

The screams flowed through the house: loud, tremulous, high-pitched. “Church,” “Knights of Columbus,” “Country Club,” rang out like a pop music refrain. 

Occasionally, I could make out an entire sentence in the screaming, “I don’t know why you wanted to have these children when now you never want to spend any time with them!”

“I would spend more time at home if you were not drunk all the time.”

Mom was not drunk all the time. My mother would binge on beer sporadically while maintaining sobriety most of the time. A law was enacted at the end of Prohibition and lasted until the 1970s, rendering Greeley a dry town. No alcohol of any kind was sold in Greeley. But oh boy, cross the southern city line! We would drive to the tiny hamlet of Evans, where taverns and liquor stores seemed to be the only reason that Evans existed. And indeed, Greeley people would go “over the hill” into the taverns south of town to drink and dance. 

I’m like a one-eyed cat, peepin’ in a seafood store.

(“Shake, Rattle and Roll” written in 1954 by Jesse Stone and performed by Bill Haley and the Comets, among many other artists.)

On summer days, Mom would take the big old station wagon and drive to Evans and then out to the country where I would help her by flinging empty beer cans out of the windows while she drove and sipped on a fresh cold one from the Knotty Pine Liquor Store in Evans. These excursions were meant to be secret, but they were not.

I was very close to my father and thought he was God himself. He called me Cubby and I called him Grrr. 

Daddy Bear gave me the dubious job of spying on my mother and reporting back to him just how much she was drinking. I understood that the drinking was not a good thing because she was so mean, and I thought I was doing the right thing. 

“Just keep an eye on her and tell me what she’s doing. Is she hiding any liquor in the house? When was the last time she drank? We are doing this to help her.”

When the walls rocked with furious screaming (Shake, Rattle, and Roll!) I wondered how my telling on Mom was helping her. My hands shook and the room quivered with anxious, volatile energy as I ratted Mom out again. He was my Grrr, and he loved me. Right? He took me into his lap and he cuddled me. I loved his warmth, his gentle hands, and the Old Spice smell of him. He told me he would help her. I thought I was doing the right thing. I knew that she knew I was spying on her, and I knew it made her angry. Why was I the one given this job?

How did my brothers stay out of all of this? They remained elusive and semi-independent characters as they were 6 and 8 years older than I was. They got all the privileges and no accountability because, as my parents continually said, “It’s different because they are boys.” To me, they were great heroes, even though they teased me cruelly. The family said they were infallible and were operating under special rules, so I, too, thought the boys could do no wrong. Sometimes they were tender and protective, but mostly they enjoyed having power over me. They loved calling me names, and they loved making fun of me.

Oh no, not again. Not again.

My vertebrae were poking into the hard floor as were the sit bones of my skinny ass. I saw their large boy hands circled around my tiny wrists, and I knew they would hold me down and tickle me until I cried. At 14 and 16 years old, the boys had hit their growth spurt and had man bodies. They loomed above me and moved in closer to intensify the hold. Dave held my shoulders down and I gazed into his raw acne outbreak while the citrus smell of Brylcreem crawled up my nose. “No, no, no, no! Please don’t tickle me. Please don’t,” I screamed. Mike, a gleeful sneer splashed across his face, moved in and poked at my ribs with his wicked fingers until I sobbed.

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