Two days later I found a Church that sponsors “Divorce Recovery” classes. Today will be my first meeting. A long-paved winding driveway, besides a beautifully manicured lawn, and I find a parking spot in the back of the Church. I was told when I enter the Church from the parking lot to go downstairs to the basement. I am to look for room 101.
I knock. No one answers. I grab the doorknob and cautiously push the door open. ‘Hello,” I say as I peek my head inside and look around. I look at my watch the Divorce Recovery meeting would start tonight at 7p.m. Oh, I am 15 minutes early. I walk inside. The room is vast and bright. Right in the middle sits a humongous round table surrounded by 20 chairs. One wall has rows of tall windows that brought in the light and a view of the parking lot.
I went back out and into the hall towards the long racked green leather sofa shoved against the wall. I slumped back into the couch. I sit and wait. I try to get my neck and tight shoulders to relax. I read once pretend someone just pulled your hair. A good trick it feels better, but I look like hell. I feel like shit. I have been crying now for eight days straight. The worst is in the morning and going to bed at night.
I look at the pasture that desperately needs mowing. How do you run a lawn tractor? I don’t know. That was Nick’s job, like taking out the garbage. As i sit waiting, I thought of an old saying my Mother used to say about the three greatest living hells: To be in bed and sleep not; to want the one who comes not; and to try to please and please not. The smell in the basement of the Church reminds me of something, what was it? Oh…suddenly that smell of ammonia brought me right back to the early 1960’s and elementary school.
Those early cold mornings. My brown and white saddle shoes feeling heavy on my feet. My bare cold legs. The crisp itchy tulle slip that made my skirt poof out like and open umbrella. My pink pullover sweater my mother had knit. I had straight cut bangs an inch above my eybrows. My hair pulled back so tight in a ponytail I could barely open my eyes.
It was Parent night at the school. The teacher had taken my parents over to the bulletin board on the wall. All of the classroom student’s names were on it. Being that my last name ended with a Z my name was always at the very bottom. On the bulletin board each student had a Gold Star for every accomplishment behind their name. By the time my parents got down the alphabet to see my name you could hear all the air getting sucked out of the room from my Mother’s gasp.
I had no Gold Star. Not even a half of one. My father turned around and slapped me across the face so hard I dropped to my knees. My face inches from the floor where my nose inhaled that awful Ammonia smell. “You idiot.” he cried out. He yanked me up with my arm and we immediately left school. The Carnival I had looked so forward too.
The following morning and for several thereafter, my father would come home from work and sit with me at the kitchen table going over my studies. As i remember from that was his large heavy hand wrapped around mine in a vice grip, pinching and hurting me. He would lead the pencil in my hand tracing the alphabet with me or writing large numbers in my Big Chief writing tablet going over the multiplication tables.
And that is what happened. I have thought about this long and hard enough to know that this was a truly defining moment in my life because…I didn’t give a shit anymore. I was such a small little person, but I knew “I was an idiot nothing could change that.
‘Hello.”
Deep in thought I push the memories aside, burying them under my file of ancient history. I jerk and jump up.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” said a skinny elderly man. He reached for my hand and he shook it with a light touch. ‘I’m Don. Welcome to Divorce Recovery. The group you never wanted to join. He had a halfhearted grin. He wore a baseball cap, plaid shirt and blue jeans. “Fellow me.”
‘Your name is Sandy right?” I nodded. I know I lied. But I don’t know these people and I’m too embarrassd to tell them my real name.