E9. Grandma Continued

A cup of coffee overflows onto a saucer, while birds gather on a shelf to peck at suet. A grandmother puts on her best and decides to act without knowing the full story. 
Sadie takes us into the fields and the woods that served as her second home. She shares the fantasy of possessing a forsaken shack where, nearby, a skunk shows mercy in contrast to human cruelty.
We surmise the social rules that keep us from stepping in: fear of getting it wrong, of making it worse, of being accused of meddling, and why believing children matters. This is a story about the power of one steady adult and the brave decisions that can shore up enough endurance to go on.

If this story moves you, share it with someone who needs courage, and subscribe for more of Sadie’s journey.

Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer 
  • with music via Epidemic Sound
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Transcript

Portrait Of Grandma’s World

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story about an older adult looking back on her abusive childhood. It's a conversation between Sadie and myself, Pam Colby, her longtime friend. We are exploring how early trauma can affect a lifetime. Thanks for joining us. Hey Sadie. Hello, Pam. Here we are again. Here we are again. Today we're gonna talk a little more about your grandmother, one of my favorite topics.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Well, thank you. Yes, I want to talk a little bit more about some memories I have with her.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

She is such a big character, and you write about her in such a way that I feel like I know her.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

She was so significant. I don't know what I would have done without her.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah. So I'm looking forward to hearing more. Okay. Well, here we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

There were times when Sue and Grandma sat at her kitchen table, eating pancakes or soup, while birds flitted back and forth outside the windows, pecking at chunks of suet placed on shelves, suspended by wire from the eaves. Here at the table, Grandma drank her coffee in a bowl-sized cup, set on a saucer. Every morning, once the coffee percolated in the tin coffee pot on the wood stove, Grandma took down a can of store-bought evaporated milk. She poured the milk into her big cup of coffee until it spilled over the edge and filled the saucer. Then she'd slurp some from the cup till there was room to pour the saucer full back in. As Sue watched this ritual, she pictured the gold enriched cream pouring from the separating machine into glass mason jars each evening after milking was done at her folks' house. Perhaps Grandma just preferred the Storbot kind. Grandma wore full-size cotton print aprons over her dresses. They looped over her head and had bibbed fronts, decorated with rick rack or sturdy binding tape and tied at the waist from behind. They had pockets in front and a wide swath of stains going all around the apron halfway between hem and waist, where she wiped her hands a hundred times while baking or sampling. She only took the aprons off if she was going out somewhere or was expecting company. She wore sturdy lace-up shoes and thick, shiny support stockings. At night, before getting into bed, she took her long, thin white hair out of its bobby pins and braids and let it fall down her back against a floor-length flannel nightgown. Then first thing every morning, she wove that hair together again, winding the braids into coils across the top of her head. She kept her combs and bobby pins in a conch shell on her dresser. As a child, Sue was fascinated with the conch shell, the crusty pinkish-orange exterior, with the smooth abalone bowl inside. Grandma had another big shell that the grandkids could put close to their ears, believing they could really hear the ocean sounds. On late summer evenings, Sue watched Grandma slice and jar watermelon pickles from the leftover pink-edged melon rinds. She watched Grandpa's freckled arms knead bread dough, saw the jiggle of loose skin run up her inner arms as she did so. Grandma made loaves of brown bread every week through all the years, even after Grandpa died and she lived on the hill alone, even after she was blind. Grandma made that bread so many times, she knew it all by touch. When Grandma came to visit her son's house, she hiked down the hill at an angle, passing the plateau, where for decades she grew outstanding vegetables. Veering gradually away from the lake, she hiked through an open field, pulling up every mullen weed she saw, which is why she had fewer mullen weeds than any of her neighbors, or so she thought. She then climbed through a barbed wire fence, crossed over the ditch, and up to the blacktop county road that passed right by the Laznich front yard. Except for midsummer when the trees were full, Sue could watch her grandma going home again, or look across that field at night and see the lights on up in Grandma's house. One afternoon, when Grandma came to visit, she stood at the windows in Ma's house and looked across the driveway to the gardens, growing thick with weeds. Overwhelmed with other work, the family was behind in this tour, and Grandma had spare time. Marion, why don't you let me go out there and get my hands around those weeds? she said. I'm itching for some work, and you have enough to do already. Ma was folding clothes across the room. Those weeds are none of your business, Ma said sharply. That's not your garden, and the kids can do it after school. We don't need your help around here. Ma did not look up or stop what she was doing. Silence stretched between them for a long-drawn moment. Then Grandma reached down for the pattern picture she'd brought and mumbled how she supposed she'd better go now, and walked slowly through the room and closed the door behind her. In the silence that followed, Ma continued folding clothes.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

First I want to start with the relationship between your mother and your grandmother because your grandmother was your father's mother. Right. Right. And here your mother is with all these kids living with her mother-in-law across the street, who is really there for her. And yet your mother won't take the help.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

I don't remember my grandmother coming very often, even though she did live, it was probably a quarter of a mile across the road and up the hill through the fields. And my dad took care of the land, had animals on the land that she owned. So he was up there a lot, and kids were up there a lot up until this whole situation with me. She was certainly around at holidays. And I also think she took care of us a lot when our parents had anything to do with separate from us. I think she was involved in the beginning. But now, when I talk to my sister, the whole story is that it was all grandma's fault, that grandma didn't think that my mother was good enough for her son, that grandma interfered, that grandma favored me. That's the story that I hear from my sister. But my grandmother wasn't there when my mother was doing all this stuff to me. My grandmother didn't know the half of it really.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

But your grandma knew enough.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

She finally knew enough, yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yes. To actually turn your mother in the end.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah. Which then just changed everything.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

What a powerful woman she was in so many ways, just uh living in Did she have indoor plumbing?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Uh yes. She had indoor plumbing, she had wood stoves. She had a heater stove and a cook stove. And she was blind in those last years. So she did need to in the end go to Montana to her daughter's house in the winter because she was afraid of burning the house down.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So was grandma in Montana for the winters when you were still living at home?

Woods As Refuge And The Gunnysack

Suicidal Thoughts And Turning Back

SPEAKER_01 8:20

No, that happened after I was gone. I just heard about it. I think I might have heard that it was about to happen before I left. But I was never there when she was gone. I do want to tell another story that gave her reason to go and look for help. Okay, let's hear that. Eventually, Sue spent most all her time in the woods. She knew every bit of land around, like it was intimately hers, the sloping fields and wide ridges back of Grandma's barn, the line of woods behind abbeys that connected with her paws. She knew muddy potholes, well worn cow paths, secluded woods, and grassy pasture. She felt akin to animals. She could glide right up beside a herd of sheep without them running from her. She adored the cows especially, for their gentle dispositions and sad eyes that seemed to bore into her soul. In warmer weather, she crept up to the reedy golden edge of swamp to bask in sunshine and watch Oreoles and red winged blackbirds flit among the cattails, or in the woods with her back against the bark of trees. She listened to squirrels chatter as they raced from branch to branch above her. She perched on her heels fascinated by droves of tiny ants that carried loads twice their own size to rounded ant heels. Day after day, month after month, she roamed among the animals, drawing comfort from their quiet, accepting ways. One summer afternoon she was cutting through the woods behind old Abby's place. This was the only way to get around to Grandma's without being seen from the road. It was a pleasant early evening, and Sue moved at a steady pace, oblivious to details around her, until she heard a scratch of leaves and saw movement right in front of her. She froze. Less than ten feet up the path, a skunk had stopped, also, and stood motionless in front of her, its tail lifted above its striped back. She held her breath while she and the skunk waited for the other to move first. Time stopped as they stood amongst the branches and the leaves. It was the skunk who was the first to turn, lumbering off the path, instead of spraying her. Sue dropped down on her knees. Why had he trusted her enough to let her go? Because instead of wearing clothes, she wore a rough, brown, gunnysack around her. The gunnysack was a favored humiliation Ma insisted on that summer. Ma made the primitive dress by tearing a hole in the stitched end of the sack, big enough for Sue's head, then two more rips along the sides for each arm to go through. It was scratchy on Sue's otherwise bare skin with a weave loose enough to see through, but it covered her a step up from being totally exposed and naked, which did happen other times. When Sue rested in the woods, she took off the sack because the coarseness of it dug into her flesh wherever she put pressure on it. While walking, it was just the loose scratchiness that bothered her. No one outside the family ever saw Sue in her gunny sack, as far as Sue knew except one night when Grandma did. Ma instructed her to wear it up the hill to Grandma's Get a note saying you've been there and then come right back here, she said. This didn't make sense to Sue. And she wondered on Ma's motives as she made her barefoot way up Grandma's Hill through darkness. Indeed, she was excruciatingly ashamed to stand in Grandma's lit up doorway in her gunny sack. But being shamed in front of other people was typical and she understood how grandma saw things different than the others. Through Grandma's eyes, this embarrassment could not look good for Ma. When Grandma opened the door, she hesitated for a moment, then caught herself and without making a deal of it, invited Sue inside like nothing was unusual. She wrote the note, bending over at the kitchen table. Then she turned around and handed her the slip of paper. She told Sue in a kind voice to be careful going home. But Sue recognized the stiffness in Grandma's back when she bent over, and she saw the sadness in her eyes behind the smile. It wasn't long after this that Grandma made her trip to town to talk with welfare about her, even though she didn't know the half of it, where Susan was concerned. I did escape in my imagination. I lay on that porch, in the rolled-up mattress, thinking about suicide enough times, until finally the action didn't seem so removed from the thinking of it. I'd thought of many ways to do it, usually by hanging or drowning. I knew about a thick sturdy rope in the garage. One night I stuck that rope inside the porch and kept it coiled in a corner beneath a box of torn clothes stashed there for rag rug projects. For days that rope weighed on my mind. I had to use it soon or return it before they noticed it was gone. It was a relentlessly gray day. After I considered my deadly design, one last time, I picked up an old magazine with a picture on the cover of a pretty blonde girl named Haley Mills. I sat in the corner holding her picture in my hands and read and reread the name, thinking it was a lovely combination. How might my life be different with a face like hers and a romantic name like that? Then I carefully returned the magazine to its original pile and resigned myself. Hers was a different world. There was no better choice for me. But I could not do it. After huddling down in the same corner as before, with my arms around my knees and my heart pounding like the very center of the universe, I stood up, undid the rope, and wound it up again in circles. Later that night I carried it outside to the garage. Back in my hiding place, I cried again at my new failure. If only I was Haley Mills, I could live in a real house and escape this constant cold.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

How are you feeling after reading that, Sadie?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I don't feel much, and I haven't thought of it a lot over my life.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Of the many people I know, you seem like somebody who hasn't been suicidal in adult life. Is that true?

SPEAKER_01 15:48

That is true. A couple years ago I left a 25-year relationship, which was really painful. And there were times when I thought, what's the reason for living? And is this ever gonna go away? And just being constantly in grief. But I wouldn't ever do it. I don't think I'd ever do it. I like my life for the most part.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Do you think had you succeeded in killing yourself? How do you think your mother would have reacted?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Oh, she might have been relieved, actually. I wish I knew what went on in her head. Why she did what she did.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

But for sure it would have just been labeled as the crazy child.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah. I don't know what effect my life had on other people in my family. My siblings must have really thought, I don't know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

But in thinking back on it now, it it makes sense to you. You were being continually miserable. Not having a place in the house, not having a place at the table, not being fed.

Why No One Intervened

SPEAKER_01 16:58

I didn't know of a way out. I don't remember thinking of a way out until I started going to grandma's and then made a attempted trip to get on a train. Yeah, I didn't know how to get out. It was just enduring, that's what I remember, is enduring. Just enduring till the next hour or morning or day. I I I knew about that little shack and I fantasized about that little shack in the woods. Someday I was gonna go live there, which is totally unrealistic in the winter. But I imagined that I was gonna set up housekeeping there, that I would live there, and I would steal food from people's houses and nobody locked their doors. I could watch from a distance. See when they left. I didn't feel like I could tell anybody or I don't remember knowing any way out.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

We're gonna keep telling your story, but the good news is that you did get out. And do you have any message for people who are feeling trapped and maybe suicidal?

Witnessing Harm And Mixed Messages

SPEAKER_01 18:01

In my case, the secret was so deep, it just it was unheard of to talk to somebody, but that's what I should have done. I should have let people know. People did know. They had to know. But people don't want to intervene. And this was a really closed community, people had lived there for generations. You don't mess with other people's problems. Clearly, I looked like a problem. And it's really hard to know if it's cruelty or craziness. People don't want to invade somebody's privacy. I do think times have changed since then. I don't know, I live in the city now. And that was rural. Clearly, people knew something was wrong. And yet, what do you do? You think somebody else is gonna do it. I'd like to finish this episode with a short piece I wrote not about me so much as an example of how I witnessed violence and did not intervene. I was a big sister for twelve years, and I was going to pick her up, her and her sister, at an older relative's house. And I walked in, and the older relative named Ruby was beating up on this little white poodle that was trapped behind the wheelchair, and she just kept viciously hitting it with a stick. I was horrified, but I didn't pick up the dog and go. The social rule of not interfering is so strong. The girls stayed with Ruby regularly, especially J. Lee, the one I was a big sister to, though she was often drugged and sleeping. What those girls endured over the years. I didn't step in about the dog. I did call social services about the girls. The adults party all the time and there's no food, I said. I bought them groceries. I called the social worker, said the messages are all mixed up, the kids are blamed. At IIU, I backed up the childcare worker. I called the social worker's boss. But the truth is, I'm scared to death. I carry my own baggage. Fear so deep it burns into my bones. Oh my god, that poor dog. It's a rage against someone more vulnerable than you. Because you can. Because no one will stop you. What if you do tell? Nothing changes, it gets worse. She owns you. There is no one to hide where she can't find you. No one to help who she doesn't know. If so, they won't really help you. You can see what they're thinking as they look at you. This can't be true. Why is she telling me? There's nothing I can do. I don't know the whole story. Who am I? It's none of my business. She looks okay to me, no broken bones. Kids are resilient. There must be relatives. I hardly know her. Honey, I'm sure it will get better. Just hang in there. Maybe someday you'll understand.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

I really love how within this piece you start to hear the voice of both the one who is being abused and the one who's not acting on the abuse. I think that's really powerful because it took me a while when I was listening to hear that you are putting forth both sides.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, I was just expressing the event in a journal, so it was really free form. But it was wake up to me how I witnessed this. That dog was being hurt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

But it was more than the dog, it was the kids too when you were trying. You tried to stop what was going on there. And you still have a relationship with those kids now. I do.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Years and years later. Are in their 30s. But I also know that I have my own baggage. So that sometimes would stop me from I would worry that I'm invested in believing things were bad. I knew things those girls were really struggling. But even knowing that much, it's so hard to intervene in somebody else's business.

Believing Children And Final Reflections

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Because the our society believes kids belong to the pair. Most societies do. Yeah. But I think the most important thing that you are doing in this podcast is letting us know the voice of the child and believing the child. And that is an important work.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah, you gotta believe kids. It's through adulthood that we learn, we justify things. We justify anything if we wanted that enough. And denial is so prevalent. Oh, denial, yes. Yeah. We really can convince ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Well, we've come to the end of this episode, but once again, you've really enlightened me, Sadie. Thank you so much for sharing.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Thank you for listening. Just thanks for being here. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Thanks for all our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, thanks. And we'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Okay. Bye.