This is another story from a collection called the Anorexics Cookbook
Most people see a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they think of a tall glass of milk. Not me. When I see a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I think of a Mickey Mouse lunch box and a thermos full of sweet tea. I think of lazy summer afternoons and two barefoot girls catching crawdads in the crick. I think of my little sister Whompie and the days when she was my first friend.
Whompie and I mastered peanut butter and sweet tea the summer after my mom married my step-father. We joined the white flight leaving Detroit for the suburbs and moved a few miles south to the little town where my step-father grew up. We left our upper flat on the East Side for a small bungalow on a cul-de-sac bordered by a park. After the confines of city dwelling, Whompie and I were in kid heaven and spent every day exploring the suburban jungle. In the morning we’d pack our lunch box with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fill the thermos with ice cold sweet tea. Sometimes we’d top the peanut butter with sliced bananas and make Elvis sandwiches. We’d climb the biggest tree in the park and perch on a limb surveying our new kingdom. We discovered a crick that ran through the park and waded in barefoot, squishing the cool mud between our toes. We saw some neighborhood kids catching crawdads in the crick. They were hillbillies like us and told us that we had to learn to say creek instead of crick and crayfish instead of crawdads. Whatever they’re called, we filled a jar with them and left them on the back porch. A week later Mom found the jar and when she opened it the stench of decaying crayfish set her back on her heels. Mom yelped and hollered but eventually gave them a proper burial under her tomato plants. She had the best tomatoes ever that year.
Our new town had a Recreation Center that sponsored summer activities for kids. We signed up for swimming lessons at the Rec Center and met lots of other kids from the neighborhood. These kids weren’t Hillbillies like us, they were Polacks, Dagos, Frogs, Micks, Spicks, Kikes and Krauts but we liked them anyway. We’d all get together and ride our bikes to the pool and spend the day swimming. On the ride home we’d stop at the Dairy Queen for a cone of soft serve ice cream. We’d race to be the first in line, dropping our bicycles in a pile as we made a mad dash for the window. We'd stand on tip toes resting our chins on the aluminum counter as we waited to order. The first time we stopped I think we scared the daylights out of the owner. He heard the crashing bikes and then saw a horde of chlorine smelling bicycle riders descend on his shop. When he turned to look out the window he saw our faces lined up along the aluminum counter. It must have looked like a tray of severed heads. At first he gasped and then he laughed out loud. He was still grinning as he took our orders and filled waffle cones with swirls of delicious melty ice cream. We’d have to eat fast before rivers of sticky sweetness dripped down our hands and arms.
Afterward the ride home was always slower. We’d often take the wrong way on purpose just to prolong the adventure. One day we stopped at a neighbor’s who had large back yard full of trees. Some of the trees were full of red fruit that we all thought were apple trees. A couple of the older boys climbed the fence and gathered up some apples and gave us each one to taste. We soon realized they were not delicious apples but bitter crabapples. Then someone threw a crabapple and someone else threw one back and before you know it crabapples were flying everywhere. Whompie and I were trying to get away and headed for home on our bikes. She was in front of me as we dodged the flying crabapples. Then she stopped suddenly and I crashed into her toppling her and her bike. She was yelping and making a lot of noise and I thought she was just being funny. But she wasn’t being funny, she was really hurt. The chain guard was missing on her old bike and when she fell one of the spokes went through her shin. The older boys were joking that the smashed crabapples in the street were part of Whompie's leg. I was terrified and for a moment I believed them. Whompie was crying but I just stood there frozen with fear. Thankfully one of the other kids ran to our house to get Mom. She came rushing out and took Whompie to the Emergency Room. Mom was very angry with me for not taking better care of my little sister. She said that it was my fault Whompie was hurt and got seven stitches. She said the scar would always remind me what a bad sister I was and it did.
Not long after the crabapple incident, the Rec Center held auditions for a Kids Talent Show. Whompie and I were confident we’d be chosen since we sang duets at all family functions and did the Chipmunk Song every Christmas. At the auditions we sat on the floor of the gym as the Director of Parks and Recreation made a speech. He asked anyone with a particular talent to raise their hand. Whompie jumped up and shouted, “My sister is a great singer!” But my talent was never as strong as Whompie’s belief in it and I never sang solo. The Director asked me to stand and sing. I was so flustered that the only song I could think of was “Silent Night”. On a hot summer day, I sang a Christmas Carole to a gym packed with sweaty, sunburned kids. The Director thanked me politely and asked me to sit back down.
We weren’t chosen for the Talent Show but our self-confidence did not waver. At the auditions we met a girl named Debbie who lived a block away from us. She wasn’t chosen either, so we decided to hold our own Talent Show and anybody who wanted could be in our show. We made Debbie’s garage into a vaudeville stage by hanging patchwork quilts across the front. We used milk crates for seating and charged the neighbors a nickel for the show. Whompie and I dressed up as hobos with old suits and slouchy hats we found in an old clothes bin. We even made hobo sticks using a handkerchief tied to the end of a branch. We spent hours practicing the steps for the song “Side by Side”. I thought the lyrics sounded just like me and Whompie.
“Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money
Maybe we’re ragged and funny
But we’ll travel along singing a song
Side by side.
Don’t know what’s coming tomorrow
Maybe it’s trouble and sorrow
But we’ll travel the road sharin’ our load
Side by side.
Through all kind of weather
What if the sky should fall
As long as we’re together
It doesn’t matter at all.
When they’ve all had their quarrels and parted
We’ll be the same as we started
Just to travel along singing a song
Side by side.”
We wanted to be just like Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis and we took turns playing the roles. One would be the silly out of tune Jerry Lewis and the other the great singer Dean Martin and then we’d switch. To be honest, I may have been better at being silly and Whompie may have been the better singer. Our parents and few neighbors paid the nickel to watch our show and we made a grand total of 30 cents which we promptly invested in Coka-Colas from the gas station vending machine. After one performance Whompie and I gave up show business and turned to sports. We signed up to play softball and joined the girls’ team from Newman Park. We both had more enthusiasm than skill but still we got our turn at bat.
When we got hungry Whompie and I would find a shady spot and pull out the Mickey Mouse lunch box. The heat of the day had softened the peanut butter making the sandwiches sticky and delicious. We took turns drinking the sweet tea from the plastic thermos cap. The cold tea hit the spot for a couple of thirsty girls. When we finished we’d lie on the grass and imagine the clouds turning into elephants and butterflies. Sometimes we played red rover or hide and seek with the other baby boomers. We’d spend evenings gathered on the front porch and telling ghost stories while the sounds of the Democratic Convention blared from the TV inside. It seemed like an endless stream of lazy summer days punctuated by porch lights. All these years later, just one sniff of peanut butter and I’m transported back to those blissful summer days with my best friend, Whompie.
It’s funny how things become linked in your mind. Advertisers and politicians capitalize on it. They call it branding. For years doctors told us cigarettes were good for us and pretty ladies on the television told us that blonds have more fun. Lately they’ve been trying to convince us that torture is as American as apple pie and that pole dancing is exercise. They even say there is an alternative truth. But we know better. Or do we? Sometimes the truth gets lost in the wake of a really good lie and sometimes we just prefer the comfort of a good story.
I come from a family of story tellers and most of them are pretty good at it. My siblings could talk the shirt off your back but I couldn’t ask for what was mine. My sister Whompie was the best storyteller of all. She could turn an excuse for not doing her chores into an epic tale by adding elaborate details and sudden plot twists. When Whompie started spinning a yarn we’d all stop what we were doing to listen. She’d get a little twinkle in her eye when she knew she had her audience captivated. But Whompie was no liar; she wasn’t pretending she was being truthful. She knew she was telling a tale and she knew that we knew too. She just hoped to be so entertaining that we’d forget about her chores. She really hated doing chores. She had no time for routines and no appetite for drudgery. She was busy creating and we were all the richer for it. We loved the story and the story teller.
Whompie’s stories were often infused with current events. During the 1960’s Michigan was brimming with UFO sightings and everyone from truckers to college students, from policemen to bar owners claimed they saw UFO’s. They all reported seeing strange lights in the night sky that moved at high speeds then stopped suddenly and changed direction. Reports from Selfridge Air Force Base triggered an official investigation by the US Air Force. There were also a few reports of a space ship landing and the papers were full of UFO drawings. The government dismissed the reports and claimed it was swamp gas but nobody believed them. We thought the government was covering up the UFO landings. We thought the government has been taken over by aliens. People prepared for the invasion, standing guard on their porch equipped with a camera and a shotgun.
One night when Whompie was in trouble for not cleaning her room, she claimed it was because she’d been abducted by aliens. She said that a spaceship landed outside her window and like a whirlwind it scattered her clothes and toys all around the bedroom. It sucked her out the window and she flew through the air like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. After that she said it all went black and she woke up at the playground. That’s why her room was such a mess. The aliens did it. Of course my explanation is dull, but Whompie’s had all the bells and whistles and the flashing lights of the spaceship and the description of the little green men. It was one of her best stories.
At times Whompie didn’t even use words to tell a tale. One day she finished doing the dishes quickly and without complaint. We were all surprised but when Mom checked the kitchen it appeared to be clean. Whompie was all smiles as she left to go play with her friends. It was over an hour before anyone realized that despite appearances, there were no clean dishes anywhere. Instead we found stacks of dirty dishes in the oven, under the sink, the refrigerator and even in the broom closet. At first we were stunned. Imagine opening the refrigerator to find plates caked with bacon grease and egg yolk stacked next to the half-gallon bottle of milk. Or tucked beside the overflowing garbage can under the sink pans encrusted with mashed potatoes Visualize a mixing bowl dripping with cake batter topped with spatulas and beaters sitting proudly in the oven where the cake was baked. It looked as though Salvador Dali had been doing the dishes. It was impossible not to laugh at the spectacle.
She was so imaginative that Mom often forgot about being angry and would laugh out loud instead. That’s how she got out of doing the dishes, got to stay out past curfew and got to claim innocence whenever something was broken. While everyone chuckled at Whompie’s latest whopper, I’d head off to the kitchen to do the chores for both of us. As I washed the dishes I’d strain to hear every word and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from giggling. Whompie and my brother were both funny and charming. I was not. Along with wavy hair I didn’t get the funny and charming gene. Instead I got my Mom’s worker gene and earned her affection by being her helper. I loved the time I spent being her helper and knowing that I was the one she counted on. So while I grumbled and complained about being stuck with all the dishes, I loved Whompie’s stories as much as anyone, maybe more.
At ten Whompie had already begun to write down some of her stories and I was certain she’d be a famous writer someday. After all, a gypsy fortune teller told us that Whompie would be rich and famous and I’d have a husband, kids and a house with a white picket fence. I was content with that fortune but Whompie’s stories made me want to write too. Although I didn’t have Whompie’s gifted imagination, I thought I’d write from experience. Whompie could be the novelist, I would be a journalist. Since I would have to rely on experience for my inspiration, I set out to have some life experiences to write about. Sometimes that meant I made reckless decisions, choosing what was better for a life story over what was best for my life. It took my life down a lot of dead ends and useless detours. Whompie’s imagination proved to be a mixed blessing for her as well.
When Mom married my step-father things changed for Whompie. She still told her stories and our step-father would laugh along with everyone else. Then he would send Whompie off to help me with the chores. Not that he was mean, he wasn’t mean. But he did retire from the Navy and he was a stickler for rules. Whompie didn’t seem to mind the chores so much anymore. When she was finished she’d climb up into his lap and demand a reward for being good. He’d laugh at her and shake his head but he had a real sweet spot for her. Whompie adored him as well and treated him just like he was her father. She called him Pops. At first it was a joke because whenever he would come to visit while he was dating Mom, he’d bring soda pop and chips for us. When he arrived Whompie would say, “Look! Soda Pops is here!” Eventually it became Pops and it was a term of endearment. I wasn’t like my sister, didn’t climb in his lap. Although I liked him, I kept my distance from him. I was awkward and shy and my step-father seemed to understand that. He was the first person ever to reward me for my good grades and he acknowledged it when I was helpful or kind. He made me feel accepted and I loved him like a Dad too. For both of us Pops was the only father we ever knew.
Other things changed as well and I liked the changes my step-father made. For the first time in our lives we had dinner times and bed times and chores and school nights. I liked that. I liked living in the suburbs and having Mom at home because she didn’t have to work nights. We had dinner at Scotty’s Fish Fry on Friday and we went to the Methodist Church every Sunday. I liked that too. The world, which had always seemed frantic and wild to me, now seemed to make sense. It became a place where there were rules to live by and I did well under those rules. For a time it felt like we were one of those happy families on television. But nothing stays the same and trouble soon headed our way.
That fall Mom had a baby sized tumor removed along with her uterus and started menopause at thirty five. My step-father lost his job as Regional Manager for a major supermarket chain and became the owner of a gas station. One day the gas tank he was welding exploded and he was badly injured. He was hospitalized for a month and suffered brain damage. His recovery was slow and he never did get back the vibrant, good-natured man that he was. Since neither one of them had health insurance, the medical bills were forcing us into bankruptcy. We had to make a lot of adjustments to survive. We had to move from the little copycat house on the cul-de-sac with all the parks. We moved to the old part of town on the other side of the tracks. We sold the fancy new car and Mom went back to working nights. Money wasn’t the only problem but the lack of it made everything worse. Instead of facing the problems together, Mom and stepfather lashed out in well-worn bad habits. My step-father drank to dull the pain of failure. Mom went through early menopause without hormone therapy. She became prone to fits of temper and hysterics. My brother, who had always been able to calm Mom, was gone. He was caught stealing a leather jacket from a dry cleaner with his best friend. The best friend’s parents talked to the police chief and he went on to graduate and go to college. Mom and my step-father got in an argument at the police station and my brother went to the Army and was sent to Vietnam. My half-a-sister Rayleen, who had been living with her father’s parents in North Carolina, moved up north after she graduated from high school to live with us permanently. She fell in love with the first man she dated and had to get married quickly. Mom was trying to make up for missing her childhood by paying for Rayleen’s very fancy church wedding. If we weren’t bankrupt already, the wedding broke us. We were a soap opera script.
After the accident my step-father was no longer the same man. He was stingy and angry most of the time. He resented every dollar that was spent and complained about money constantly. He moved his bachelor pad bamboo bar into my Mom’s newly decorated formal dining room. She hated the thing. She hated what it represented, and all the drunken nights it enabled. But there the monstrosity sat, mocking her from the dining room. Most nights my step father would come home from work, eat dinner and then sit at his bamboo bar drinking himself into a stupor. He was the only father I’d ever known and without him I felt lost. I didn’t want him to fall off the barstool and get another concussion, so I watched out for him. My mother was working nights again and driving home on icy roads at 2:00 AM. I didn’t want her to get into an accident. I worried about both of them. I could see my step-father from the sofa in the living room and I’d wait till he was nearly falling off the stool to send him to bed and wait to hear Mom pull in the driveway. Then I’d go to bed myself and try to get some sleep before school.
One night I was really tired from cheerleading practice and as hard as I tried I couldn’t stay awake. I fell asleep on my side facing the back of the sofa. I was sound asleep drooling on Mom’s fancy pillows like the family dog. I felt something odd and half woke to sense my step-father sitting next to me rubbing my butt with his hand. He was murmuring, “Oh, you like this, don’t you? I know you like this.” I was frozen, afraid to breathe. I pretended to be asleep hoping he’d stop but he didn’t stop. I was thirteen and my immature body was confused. I hated it, I didn’t hate it. I pushed myself back into the sofa and tightened myself against his hands. I was so confused, right from wrong I kept thinking, don’t you know right from wrong. But no one told me about this. No one told me that I could be betrayed by the man I considered my father and my own body at the same time. No one told me the only father I’d ever known would be the same man who violated my innocence on the sofa. I couldn’t believe what happened. I refused to believe it. I closed my eyes tight and my mind tighter. I went far away. After that night I became the night watchman. I became vigilant. I was very careful not to fall asleep on the sofa and I stayed awake so I could keep watch over Whompie till Mom got home.
That summer I took Whompie with me and we spent the summer at my friend Lana’s house. Lana and I had been 8th grade cheerleaders together and became best of friends. That summer she was left in charge of her four younger siblings including a sister Whompie’s age. She lived in our old neighborhood on the other side of town. Whompie and I would ride our bikes over to visit. Whompie was still riding an old bike without a chain guard. My bike wasn’t much better but I did have the chain guard. When we rode I was always careful to ride beside Whompie, never behind or in front. It was a long ride and sometimes it was too late to make the ride home so we just started spending the night. We’d be there for weeks at a time without going home. When we did go home the situation was awful and we were glad to leave again. We joined Lana’s family for most of the summer and since Lana’s Dad was a Navy pilot we spent a lot of time at the naval base. We used the pool and the sauna, went to the movies and the PX. It was a wonderful summer but it ended when Lana moved away leaving me feeling alone. Whompie and I went home and I started the nightly vigil again.
I was starting my sophomore year and my grades had taken a nosedive. I don’t know if it was lack of sleep or a psychotic break but I lived in a kind of fugue state. My English teacher requested a conference because of an essay I wrote about the difference between existing and living. I sounded suicidal. I was suicidal. When Mom worried about what was wrong with me half-a-sister told her that it was because Whompie wasn’t doing her share of the chores. She said I had too much responsibility. Then she asked me to babysit her kids. I started stopping at St Joseph’s Catholic Church on the way home from school to pray for God to kill me. I asked the priest once what to do. I wanted to know if I could kill him or if I could kill me. He said if he killed me that was alright but I could not kill him or me. I started keeping a knife under my pillow. I argued with Whompie because she changed bedrooms and moved to the one closer to our step-father. It made it harder for me to keep watch over her. I learned later that the yellow bedroom had a cubby where she would hide. I don’t’ know how long we lived like that, waiting for Mom to come home and pretending everything was alright.
Not long after that Mom cornered me in the bathroom asking, “Is she lying? Whompie says your stepfather molested her, is she lying?” I really didn’t know. I had destroyed the memories on the sofa the best I could and for decades that night fades to black. All I remembered of that incident was my step-father sitting next to me on the sofa as I slept. My memories of time at home are riddled with holes. Trying to remember just made me nauseous and that feeling of nausea has yet to fully dissipate. The mere mention of that night and I am overcome with the stench of Aqua-Velva after shave mixed with Kessler’s Whiskey. Even when Whompie begged me to remember I could not. So when Mom asked me “Is she lying? Whompie says your stepfather molested her, is she lying?” I simply said, “No”. Not because I knew my stepfather was molesting Whompie because I didn’t know. I just said, “No”. I didn’t say “I don’t know about Whompie but I know that I’m not sleeping at night.” I didn’t say, “My grades have fallen from straight A’s to D’s because I sleep through my classes instead.” I didn’t say any of that. I just shook my head, “No” I said, “Whompie is not lying.” But it didn’t help. No one believed her. Not even me. It’s not that I thought she was lying, but that I thought I had protected her. I thought I had kept her safe from him. I thought I had been a good sister.
One day we came home from school to find the minister from the local Methodist Church in our living room. His name was Reverend Light but he brought darkness. He accused me and Whompie of lying about our step-father and warned that we would burn in hell for our sins if we didn’t confess. We looked at each other but we never confessed. Our step-father moved back in but Mom locked us in our bedroom before she left for work. We lived in this bizarre situation for months till our step-father finally moved out. He didn’t move out because Mom finally believed us, or because he confessed. He found a new waitress who had lots of daughters and no sons. He left to start all over somewhere new. Eventually his family welcomed him back as the victim of vicious rumor told by ungrateful step-kids.
Our family fell apart after that. Some say it was because Whompie lied. Some say it was because I told the truth. But I say it had nothing to do with anything Whompie and I did and everything to do with my step-father and it only took me a lifetime to figure that out. We moved to a new town and tried to put things back together but Mom was broken. Something inside her was broken. In less than a year Mom ended up in a mental institution and Whompie and I ended up in foster homes. Whompie bounced from one home to another. I paid room and board to live in a basement for two years. Whompie stopped telling stories hoping to prove her honesty. But no one believed her and we all missed her stories. Whompie didn’t seem to realize that they hadn’t believed me either. They wouldn’t have believed anyone because they didn’t want to know the truth. They sought the comfort of the lie, the lying Lolita lie and the myth of the wanton girl child. The women didn’t trust us with their men and we learned not to trust them either. Their men saw us as fair game, spoiled goods. They could do whatever they wanted and no one would believe us, which meant we would always be targets for sexual predators. We would never be safe ever again.
Whompie got pushed out into the world before she was ready and when she stumbled and fell her family did not rush to her aid; they just shouted condemnations, abandoned her and said it would teach her a lesson. It taught her alright. It taught her that she could not trust the world. She learned cruelty and ruthlessness. She spent the rest of her life trying to convince everyone of her honesty, even when she lied. She stopped being Whompie and insisted on being called Kitty.
For at least a decade Whompie and I wandered unable to take root anywhere. We lived in different houses with different friends and different boyfriends. At one point we rented a little house on the Southside of Detroit near Rose’s Bar and Grill. It may have been the summer of love but this was the coldest winter in nearly forty years. We had managed to get the house but we had no furniture, no utilities and no food except for a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread and a box of tea bags. We were freezing and hungry but when Whompie and I saw the peanut butter and tea we were mildly soothed. Our friend Bobby was visiting and said, “It’s too bad you don’t have some milk for peanut butter sandwiches”. To which we both replied, “Who drinks milk with peanut butter?”
All I know is this, my sister was my first friend and to this day there is no one who knows my heart and soul as she does. No one can hurt me like she does. My life is hacked with her sabotage and yet I miss her. Decade after decade I retrace my steps to find my way back to that childhood alliance. To find the thread that I can pull to unravel the mystery and find my way back to her, to the comfort and giggles of that first friendship. So when others see peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a tall glass of milk, I see my little sister and my very best friend. I see Whompie.