SUNDAY LUNCH AT MOM’S COUSIN DINNIE’S: JUNE 1969
I hadn’t yet recovered from a concussive first year teaching ninth-grade English
in West Berkeley, from ear-shattering shrieks,
“Mothuh Fuckin Honky Bitch” rattling
steel lockers, and here we were, on my first trip to my mother’s homeland, pulled up
in a rented Morris Mini at a gray stone, rose-trellised,
three-story house in Windsor. And here
they were, Dinnie and husband Jack in brown tweeds with their three grown kids
lined up by the arched entrance. I’d heard about Dinnie
for years, how, during the late thirties,
Mom lived with Dinnie’s family in Hong Kong where the cousins crooned a breathy
Andrews Sisters knock-off act for the fellows in
the Royal Navy. Now this silver-haired,
brogue-shod, square-shouldered woman was striding up to my mother, murmuring
“Pamela darling,” in a voice so exquisitely muted you
couldn’t have known they hadn’t seen
each other in thirty years. The two exchanged pristine pecks on the cheek. Luncheon
was a limp white fish with hand-picked peas from
the garden and boiled potatoes on
gold-rimmed white bone china, and the conversation perked along politely, like water
in a kettle just shy of a full boil. Asked about
the students I taught, I tried to
explain: a half mile from the Black Panthers’ headquarters, Telegraph Avenue, pimps,
Black Muslims, acid-dropping by the train tracks, but
then Penelope, Dinnie’s eldest, just
back from her posh au-pair gig in Provence, asked: ” What ever do you do about their
accents? They must be dreadful!” she moaned. I know
I came close to spitting a mouthful
of white potatoes onto the ivory linen table cloth and I’ve no memory of what
I said. Now I think of the way Mom, after sixty
years in the States, still fussed
about British accents that didn’t approach RP standards. And I couldn’t have told
that young woman almost my age that I’d spent years
trying to flatten the lilting upper-crust
British intonations I’d learned at my mother’s knee, and that I’d begun saying “How
ya doin,” and “Gimme five,” even grinning at
“Sheee-it, Man” coming from
the coaches at lunch. And I couldn’t have explained that, as we hustled our students
out of the building while hall guards searched for the bomb
reported in sombody’s locker, the need
to keep a lid on panic made grammar seem minor. I’ve been away from Berkeley
now as many years as Mom had lived in the States
before our lunch with Dinnie, and after
three decades in Texas, I know I drag out my vowels, multiplying dipthongs
into tripthongs. In fact, a friend in Brooklyn has
fondly mentioned my “soothing Southern
accent.” Mom would have been horrified. I’d like to see Penelope again. Both our
mothers are gone. I’ve heard her granddaughter ‘s dating
a guy from Jamaica who’s into trip hop.
“ELEGANT,” SHE SAID
My new friend was chuckling, saying she cracked up when I let fly
with the “f” word while speaking to an audience
of five-hundred because, she said, I look so “elegant, a class act,
a knockout.” I changed the subject. She doesn’t
get it. In the Bean family, I was the clumsy one, by sixth grade
inhabiting a close-to-six-foot, rib-protruding,
hunched-over frame, buck teeth in braces, wispy blonde hair, pale
bluish eyes. Called “Scarecrow” and “String Bean” by
other kids. “Boobless Bean,” my nickname in high school. And
with a regal-shouldered, chocolate-eyed, russet-haired
mother who modeled for the fashion pages of The Tucson Daily
Citizen. My brunette little sister: “the pretty one”:
began Flair Modeling School at fourteen. Those 1950s
Clairol ads: “Do blondes have more fun?” Not me—
I didn’t measure up. The time I brought my drawing of a girl
to show Daddy and his only comment was a clipped,
“She’s not very pretty.” Over my parents’ Old Fashioneds,
banter about women: “pert little nose, a shame
about her piano legs”; “good-hearted, but that horrendous
pitted skin.” Now the flesh of my arms droops
like crumpled silk. Yet my husband swears he loves
my bones. Once, when Mom was around my age,
she spoke of her granny Lilian Walker Graves, who sparkled
on the vaudeville stage. “I’ve told you she was
a beauty, simply stunning,” Mom said, adding that men tripped
on their shoe strings at the sight of her. “And my
own mother,” she went on, “had that same quality, just as I did,
and—as your little sister does,” she added,
looking at the ceiling. But then, the year before Mom died
in the retirement home, as I walked beside
her electric cart while she steered past wheelchairs and
walkers, a resident stopped us: “Why Pam,”
she gushed, “This daughter of yours—no one would question
you’re her mother! She looks just like you,
moves with your elegance, your grace.” Mom jerked upright
and sputtered, “She does?” and pressed her foot
on the accelerator, whizzing off. I had to run to keep up with her.
