On our trip back home, Grandpa seemed happy. He no sooner stepped into the backseat of the Buick before he leaned forward and handed Mother a huge wad of bills. Our trip home was full of many more comforts than the trip going, but we paid for it. Dressing Grandpa in the morning was impossible. He put his pants on backwards. He couldn’t get his arms in his jacket. He didn’t know how to tie his shoes. He refused to wear socks. He didn’t have any table manners, or teeth, for that matter. His baggy trousers were damp all the time. He was incontinent. This annoyed Mother to no end. We put in long, long hours driving in order to make it back in three and a half days.
Needless to say it was a whole new life with Grandpa occupying one of our 3 bedrooms. Dad refused to participate in his father’s care at all. That was Mother’s job. The details were unbelievable. Grandpa would sneak out of the house and run away at least twice a week. Mother had to go looking for him all over the neighborhood. Finally, we locked him in his room. He would pound on the door so loud he caused the neighbors to complain. When his bowels became impacted, Mom forced Dad to give him an enema. The results were so awful the toilet plugged up. It didn’t take long for us to decide that Grandpa’s condition was beyond home care. Arrangements were made to transfer him to the veterans hospital on Sawtelle in Los Angeles. Dad drug his feet on this, but Mother insisted.
The last time I saw Grandpa he was waving goodbye from a car driving him to the old soldiers’ section of the veterans hospital. Dad never forgave Mother, even though he never bothered to lift a finger to help. I’m ashamed to say, Martha and I gave Mother no help either. We were teenage girls, and Grandpa was an embarrassment. Later I found out that while Mom was burdened with the hardship of caring for Grandpa, Dad was seeing another woman. It wasn’t long after this he drove off, never to return.
The Sea of White Crosses
Five days a week for the past four years, I’ve taken a shortcut through the very same veterans hospital off San Vicente near Sawtelle. On the north side of the complex is the graveyard Duke refers to as “the Sea of White Crosses.” Sometimes I tell him about all the soldiers who lived and died to help keep our country safe. He always wants to know if they looked like the green plastic soldiers we buy at Target.
Until I read Mother’s words, I didn’t know the story of an incontinent, wandering Keaton fellow who shared a house with his young granddaughter Dorothy, who was on the eve of meeting a certain Jack Newton Hall, who would become my father. How is it possible that I could have driven by Duke’s Sea of White Crosses for so many years without knowing my great-grandfather Lemuel W. Keaton Jr.’s cross was so close to home?
Sermons
All sermons were always about the resurrection of the living Christ Jesus of Nazareth, born to save mankind from the threat of an eternity in Hell. The catch was you had to be born again. I played it safe. I read my Bible and proclaimed in testimony at prayer meetings that I indeed was saved, sanctified, and born again. Whenever I had the courage to stand up and state my memorized passage, the entire congregation smiled. I never understood what my declaration meant. I just wanted church to be colorful. I just wanted beautiful music like Handel’s Messiah and Copland’s Appalachian Spring. I didn’t want to hear about Blood and Death. Yet this was the ritual you couldn’t avoid. Blood. Sin. Guilt. Tears. Death. Shroud. Tomb. It was nothing more than a relinquishing of our free will to a philosophy that all men are born in sin and must be forgiven and saved from themselves in order to qualify for eternal and everlasting peace. It has taken all my 60 years to straighten out my thinking on all this, and believe me I am finally un-burdened. I am free of the fear instilled in me, free from the angry God, the straight and narrow path to Heaven, and the fiery anguish of living in Hell. I am grateful to whatever force in the universe there is that has removed me of all the ugliness imposed on me by false ideas about what life should be. And when I’m through with my time in the scheme of it all, I’m not afraid of what comes after. Amen.
Playing with Death
When I was ten we moved to Garden Grove for six months. Dad rented a house with a rock roof. The man and woman who owned it were brassy. She had bleached-blond hair, and he owned a bar. Dad called them “alcoholics.” I’d never heard that word before. It meant they drank a lot of liquor. Dad said the landlords were slobs. He was right. The house was a mess, but it had four bedrooms and two baths. It was the biggest house I’d ever seen, way bigger than the blue stucco house he had moved in a truck to Bushnell Way Road in Highland Park. The kitchen had swinging doors, like the ones in Gunsmoke, starring James Arness. Dorrie and Robin shared a bedroom. Randy, who was eight, had his own room, like me.
One day Robin was playing with friends in the backyard. I wanted to join in, but nobody cared, especially Robin. I decided to take one of the ropes from our swing set, wrap it around my neck, and pretend I was hanging myself. When Robin ran past me without so much as a nod, I started to make loud choking sounds. Surely that would make her come to her senses. But, oh no, she kept on playing. So I showed her. I slumped my head over the rope even farther, gagged as loudly as I could, took a deep breath, let out a scream, and died. She never noticed.
With my face knotted up in tears, I ran inside and told Mom that Robin let me die. She looked at me and asked why did it matter so much whether they played with me or not? Death, even a pretend death, was not the way to get what I wanted. It was not a game. In her face I saw what I hadn’t seen in Robin’s. Concern. The truth is, I would have done the whole stupid thing over again just to have her wrap her arms around me so tight I could feel her heart beat.
Mom’s empathy was bottomless, an endless source of renewal. I can still see her sipping her afternoon cup of Folgers coffee while I sat across the kitchen counter in some form of distress. It was a scene we would relive in endless variations throughout the years. Her message was always the same. “Don’t be so sensitive, Diane. You’ll show them one day. Go for it.” And, like clockwork, even if I failed I kept going for it, not only because I longed for validation but also because I wanted to come back to her and that kitchen counter for as long as forever would last.
Those days were terribly puzzling, especially when I became aware that Robin had no interest in playing the part I wrote for her or that alcoholics drank stuff that made them bad people, much worse than Willie Blandin and her bad cigarettes. But the worst, most bewildering, awful thing came the day Daddy took it upon himself to tell me I was about to become a woman soon. A woman? Was he crazy? I ran to my bedroom, slammed the door, and threw myself on the bed facedown. Mom came in a little later and said I was going to love being a grown-up girl. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I was disgusted. I didn’t want a period, whatever that was, or breasts, or hair in my privacy area, like her. I didn’t want to be a woman. I wanted to be me—whoever that was.
Bloody Sunday
Easter Sunday was as important and exciting as Christmas. The beauty of the day, so big in the world of Christianity, was never given much play. Instead, we were told in long-winded sermons about the cruel crucifixion of Jesus Christ, our savior who died on the cross, shedding his blood to save us … ME. I could never grasp the meaning of this idea. Our hymns were burdened with words like: “Washed in the Blood of the lamb.” “I’m saved by the Blood of Christ.” “He shed his precious Blood for me.” Blood, the big symbol, meant absolutely nothing to me.
Easter meant one thing, a complete new outfit. Mother would begin making my dress early. My favorite was a pink ankle-length gown with a deep ruffle on the bottom and at the neck. We all bought new shoes and new hats. All the ladies and young girls in their springtime finery would parade around the grounds of the old Free Methodist church. It was our version of the Easter Parade. I loved it.
Save It for Later
Even before I was a teenager, I realized something was wrong. Being the first of four children, I couldn’t understand why all the attractive genes had been passed on to my younger sisters, Robin and Dorrie. This incredible botch job had to be corrected. I hated my nose, so I slept with a bobby pin stuck on top, hoping the bulb would squeeze into a straight line. In Mom’s bathroom mirror