Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story Read online

“That’s not good enough! You need to show me some respect! When I ask you how your day is, I expect you to tell me. And I don’t mean a one-word answer!”

  By now, I had lost any appetite I had for the hamburger-noodle mixture on my plate. I just wanted to be away from this. I glanced at Heidi, who kept her eyes focused on her plate. I noticed that Jacob had pushed his chair closer to Mom. Daniel was now on Mom’s lap and was burying his face into her shoulder.

  “I don’t need to put up with this!” Connie screamed, shoving her chair away from the table. “I’m out of here!”

  She stormed out of the kitchen, ran down the hall, and slammed the front door behind her.

  My heart was pounding. I had to get out of there too. I pushed my chair back from the table and picked up my plate to take it to the sink.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Earl spewed. “I didn’t excuse you from the table! Sit down right now!”

  “NO! You’re not the boss of me! Don’t tell me what to do!”

  Mom jumped in, determined to regain some control of the situation.

  “Ingrid, you sit down at that table right this minute!”

  Sometimes at this point in the dinner fight, I had the courage to follow Connie out the door or run to my attic room and barricade myself inside, but something about Mom’s voice made me stay put.

  I sank back into my chair and felt my fingers curling into fists as I listened to Earl’s repeated demands that Mom do something to make us respect him before he took matters into his own hands.

  I was scared that he would turn his anger on me. But after a few minutes he wore himself out, pushed away from the table, and headed for the living room. Mom followed behind him.

  That was the sign for all of us that it was safe to leave the table. I cleared the dishes and began washing them, wishing I was anywhere else.

  Though Mom was determined to fulfill her devoted Mormon wife role and seemed resigned to her new second-class citizen status, the one area in which she stood firm was in the baby department. She felt that it was both her duty and right to bring as many spirit children into the world as possible and she was determined to have at least one child with Earl. There was only one problem: Earl had gotten a vasectomy, and he had lied to Mom about it.

  Years later, Mom told me that prior to getting married, Earl had told her he wanted more children as much as she did and had promised that they would start trying right away. It was one of the reasons Mom―who was then forty years old and worried she was running out of time―had hurried into the marriage. Earl waited until they were on their honeymoon to tell her about the vasectomy.

  “That’s when I knew I had made a huge mistake,” Mom told me. “He started acting different and showing his true colors the minute we got married. But what could I do? I couldn’t just tell the bishop that I wanted to get another temple divorce.”

  Mom was so angry about the betrayal that Earl reluctantly agreed to a vasectomy reversal operation. For a week afterward, he laid sprawled out on the green couch in his powder blue cotton pajamas, polluting the living room with his rotten hamburger stench while whining that he was too sore to move. When he did get up to go to the bathroom, he walked as though a two-by-four had been wedged between his legs.

  The thought of Mom actually having a baby with Earl was so repulsive to me that I started begging God not to let it happen. This time, our lack of money didn’t even factor into my panic. That was nothing compared to the horror of having a half sibling that carried his genes.

  A FEW WEEKS before school let out, Dad called to say he had a girlfriend.

  “I think you are really going to like her, Ingrid. Rhonda’s a good person and she lets people do their own thing. She’s not addicted to religion and she doesn’t try to rule anybody.

  “And she sure as hell isn’t looking to be a mother to anyone else,” he added with a laugh. “She has three daughters of her own, and believe me, that’s more than enough.”

  Dad’s news didn’t even faze me. In fact, I was kind of happy about it. I hoped Mom would get jealous and realize what a horrible mistake she had made.

  So that we could meet Rhonda, Dad invited Connie, Heidi, and me to spend the weekend with him in Salt Lake City. But instead of going to his apartment, he surprised us by renting a room at the Holiday Inn Fun Center.

  “I figure you girls deserved a little break from Earl,” Dad said. “So I thought we’d do something special this weekend.”

  It was like entering an amusement park. The hotel had an indoor swimming pool and hot tub, a miniature golf course, two ping pong tables, and an arcade.

  Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of quarters for each of us. “Here, this ought to cover you for a while. Don’t spend it all at once because it’s got to last you.”

  Dad spent the day in the hotel room making business calls while my sisters and I alternated between the swimming pool, the miniature golf course, and the game room.

  At around six that evening, Dad ordered pizza and Rhonda arrived with her daughter, Andrea, and Andrea’s baby son, Jackson. Natalie and Dana, Rhonda’s other two daughters, weren’t with her.

  I knew from Dad that Natalie, who was thirteen like me, was a juvenile delinquent who had already been arrested several times for stealing and underage drinking. I was intimidated and even a little envious when I heard this because it sounded like she was much more sophisticated than I was. Dad said Dana was nineteen, worked at a record shop, and spent most of her time with her boyfriend.

  I took in Andrea first. Dad had told me that she was sixteen, and though Mom made me skip our sex education class at school so I wouldn’t get any ideas, I had discussed the topic enough with my friends to know how babies were made.

  I liked it that Andrea had a baby. I thought it made her cool and mature.

  Andrea was beautiful. She had long, dark hair, sea-blue eyes, and smooth, flawless olive skin. She wasn’t much taller than me, only five foot three or five foot four, but I thought she was movie star material. Just looking at Andrea made me feel self-conscious. Though my scar had faded some since the car accident, a thick layer of scar tissue ran from the corner of my mouth to halfway up my right cheek, and I knew it was the first thing anybody noticed about me. I had also recently hit puberty and gained ten pounds. Next to her, I felt fat and ugly.

  At ten, I figured Heidi probably didn’t care much about looks. But I wondered what Connie was thinking. She was the same age as Andrea and definitely had more of a sporty look about her now. She and Andrea were about as opposite as two people could get.

  “Hi,” I said awkwardly. “Nice to meet you. Cute baby.”

  “Thanks,” Andrea said.

  I turned my attention to Rhonda. For a mother, I thought she was attractive—and she was definitely a lot more modern-looking than Mom. Rhonda had reddish brown hair that she wore in a short, layered cut that had been teased with a comb and sprayed in place so that it couldn’t move. She was thin and was made up with purple eye shadow, a thick coat of mascara, and a layer of foundation. I liked her smile, and her green eyes looked kind, but she seemed very nervous and her hands shook the whole time we were eating pizza. Later, I found out that she smoked—something Dad couldn’t stand.

  We didn’t say much to each other. We just all smiled awkwardly and ate our pizza. After a couple of hours, they left.

  Though I was a little worried about how Rhonda and her daughters would accept me, I liked it that Dad had a new girlfriend. I was proud that she was pretty and relieved that she wasn’t religious. Dad wasn’t settling for some loser like Mom had.

  AS SOON AS SCHOOL let out, Dad picked up my sisters and me and took us to the new doublewide trailer he had recently rented in a suburb south of Salt Lake City. The minute we pulled into the neatly kept trailer park and I spied the swimming pool, I knew I was going to have a good summer. Dad’s trailer was spotless and smelled new.

  I thought it was beautiful.

  Like our Mississippi hou
se, Dad’s doublewide trailer was covered in wall-to-wall, short shag, cream carpet. The door opened into a small living room, with an island counter that separated it from the kitchen. The trailer had two bedrooms, one where my sisters and I slept, and the master bedroom where Dad slept. Dad’s bedroom had a large bathroom with a round Jacuzzi tub and a walk-in closet packed with suits. We instinctively felt his room was off-limits, but once, when he was at his office, Connie and I snuck into his closet and began counting his clothes. Connie started on one end and counted suits. I took on the dress shirts.

  Connie finished first.

  “He’s got thirty-one of them!” she announced, her voice a mixture of amazement and disgust. “Can you believe it? Thirty one! He could wear one every day of the month and never run out.”

  I counted more than a hundred dress shirts, most of them white. It was like entering a men’s clothing store. Many of the suits were still in their bags and looked as though they hadn’t even been worn. The ones not in suit bags smelled like Old Spice aftershave. I buried my face into one of the jacket sleeves and inhaled. I loved Dad’s smell.

  Connie was upset by all of Dad’s clothes, given the hand-me-downs and secondhand store clothes we were usually forced to wear. But I was proud of Dad and his fancy wardrobe. To me, it was proof that he was starting to become a successful businessman. I knew that presidents of companies had to look nice.

  Sometimes the three of us would go swimming at the trailer park swimming pool. Most of the time, though, we accompanied Dad to his office. JB Systems, Dad’s tool business, was housed in a large warehouse located in a business park a few miles from his trailer. Aside from the restroom, the building consisted of a single 10,000-square foot room that was divided in half by a wall of sheet rock. The back section, which could only be accessed from the outside by two floor-to-ceiling steel garage doors, housed the tools—everything from screwdrivers, hammers, and wrenches, to metric socket sets and power drills. When Dad’s sales crew was ready to hit the road, they just backed up their trucks to the loading dock, opened up the garage doors, and loaded up the tools.

  The front half of the warehouse was an empty, open space that Dad envisioned would one day be filled with cubicles and office workers. His desk sat in the left front corner and faced the only window, which looked out onto the warehouse parking lot. Dad spent most of his day there, pacing in front of his desk as he talked on the phone with his sale guys, his tool suppliers, and the numerous people to whom he owed money.

  I was mesmerized by Dad and could spend hours just sitting in a metal chair next to his desk, listening to him talk business. I loved the rhythm of his voice and felt so happy just to be in his presence that it didn’t matter what I was doing. With Dad, there were no rules. We didn’t have to read scriptures in the morning, didn’t have to go to church on Sundays, and didn’t have to deal with Earl. We also didn’t have to do much housecleaning because Dad was rarely at his trailer and we usually ate our meals at McDonald’s or Denny’s.

  Connie and Heidi didn’t find life with Dad nearly as appealing. They were bored and Connie needed to go back home anyway because she was starting her summer park job again. Within a week, they both left. I knew Dad had hoped they would stay longer. But I was secretly happy they were gone because it meant that I had both the bedroom and Dad to myself.

  The two of us quickly fell into a daily routine. We both prided ourselves on being early birds and each day we got up at 6 a.m., showered, dressed, and headed to Denny’s for a quick breakfast. Then we drove to the office, where I entertained myself for the next several hours while Dad talked on the phone. When Dad needed to go to the bank or the post office, I tagged along. When he needed a Sugar Free Dr Pepper, I ran to the office park vending machines and bought one for both of us.

  Dad’s tool business was thriving. His sales crew was selling so many tools that he purchased two semi-trucks and had the words “JB Systems” painted on the side of each. Dad had always said he was going to be a millionaire, and with his business growing the way it was, I was sure it was now only a matter of time.

  “You want me to let you in on a little secret?” he asked me one day as were driving home from the office.

  “Yeah, of course,” I answered, thrilled that Dad wanted to confide in me.

  A mischievous smile spread across his face. “It’s about how I got started in this tool business.”

  Dad told me that after Mom served him with divorce papers, he was devastated and rented a cheap motel room for a few days while he figured out what to do. He said he wanted to come off the road so he could spend more time with us kids, but he didn’t have the money to rent an apartment and establish himself in business.

  “I didn’t know what to do but I needed cash to pay my motel bill, so I headed to the bank to withdraw the two hundred dollars I had in my checking account. But when I got there, I discovered the bank had made a mistake and had credited seven thousand dollars in cancelled checks to my account.”

  Dad paused for effect and I laughed with excitement.

  “I tell you what, Ingrid. It was like manna from heaven. I decided to hurry and empty the account before the bank discovered its mistake. Just like that, my problem was solved. With seven thousand dollars, I had enough money to set up my tool business.

  “You see, Ingrid. You never know when opportunity comes your way. The way I view it, it was a short-term loan from the bank.”

  Dad told me he used the money to rent the apartment he had started off in and office space. Then he went to a local tool wholesaler and stocked up on inventory. Next, he gave each of the guys who worked on the road with him a few hundred dollars’ worth of tools on consignment. When they ran out of tools, Dad shipped more out to them. Within a month, business was booming.

  “I knew at some point the bank would figure it out and about a month ago, I received a call from the bank president,” Dad continued. “He said he wanted to meet. I tell you what, Ingrid, I was nervous. I mean, can you imagine what I was feeling? But I went to that meeting acting innocent, like I had no idea what he wanted to discuss.”

  “So what did you do? What happened?”

  Dad chuckled.

  “Oh, you should have seen him, Ingrid. He was so angry he was shaking. He said, ‘Mr. Ricks, do you mean to tell me you didn’t know that the money wasn’t yours?’ I looked him straight in the eye and I said, ‘Sir, do you mean to tell me that your bank doesn’t know how much money is in people’s accounts?’ We both just stared at each other for a minute. Then he told me he wanted the money back and I told him that if a mistake had been made, I would be happy to pay it back, but I said that I could only do it in installments. In the end, we agreed to payback terms of a few hundred dollars a month.

  “So you see, Ingrid, it all worked out just fine.”

  He laughed again and then got serious. “I want you to remember something about your Daddy. I’m a creative financier. I don’t do things the traditional way. But I always figure out how to make things work.”

  I shifted closer to Dad and gave him a hug. I was proud that he was able to talk his way out of trouble and leave even the president of a bank at a loss for words. Dad was special that way. He could talk his way out of anything.

  THE FREEDOM I HAD with Dad was intoxicating. He told me he believed in treating me like an adult, not a child, and he talked to me like I was his equal, always asking for my opinion and always listening to my point of view. He trusted me and let me do whatever I wanted to do. In return, I danced circles to please him. I washed and dried our laundry at the trailer park Laundromat each week, and made sure that the trailer stayed spotless. Whenever Dad needed to get a tool shipment out to one of his sales guys, I helped box up the merchandise and label it.

  Life was easy. Most evenings we kicked back at the trailer and watched TV, relaxing in comfortable silence. Now that it was just the two of us, we started buying TV dinners for our evening meals, which I prepared for us in the microwave. On weekend nights,
Dad usually headed out on a date with Rhonda. I loved my alone time. I spent the time reading or flipping through the stack of fashion magazines Dad bought for me. Sometimes, I took long baths in his Jacuzzi tub. I felt relaxed and calm.

  Aside from Dad’s desk and a few chairs, the one other piece of furniture in the office was a mini-jogger trampoline that Dad had picked up, thinking it would be a great way for him to get in a little exercise during the day. I often passed my time at the office jumping on it and decided that I was going to get serious and drop a few pounds.

  Just before seventh grade ended, our gym teacher had made us line up in single file to be weighed. One by one, she motioned for us to step onto the scale. When it was my turn, she called out the words “One hundred and three pounds!” in a voice I was sure was loud enough for everyone to hear. I was so ashamed I wanted to burst into tears. I was only five foot one and had started to feel fat even before Mrs. Shipley confirmed it for me. But at home, Mom insisted that I eat everything on my plate, which made losing weight impossible.

  That night after dinner, I locked myself in the bathroom and stuck my finger down my throat to make myself throw up like the anorexic girl I had read about in the book, The Best Little Girl in the World. But it backfired miserably. I hated the sensation of throwing up and when I finally triggered the vomit, it didn’t just come out of my throat, it came shooting out my nose. I couldn’t breathe and started gagging and gasping for air, which is when I heard pounding on the bathroom door.

  “Ingrid, what’s going on in there?” Mom demanded, her voice sounding more angry than concerned. “Open the door right this minute!”

  The vomit was still flying out of my nose, spraying the toilet seat and the floor around it, and chunks of dinner were pushing their way up my throat. I couldn’t leave the toilet, and answering her was out of the question.

  “Ingrid, I’m serious. Open the door. Now!”

  I waited at the toilet until my stomach had emptied itself and then crawled over to the door and turned the lock. My throat and nostrils were burning and I noticed that some of the vomit had ended up in my hair.