Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story Page 9

  “That hurts,” I moaned.

  “It’s okay, honey,” a voice said. “We’re going to move you real gently and then get you to the hospital so we can get you all fixed up.”

  I was lifted onto a stretcher and felt someone put gauze on my face and wrap my head. Then I was carried into the waiting ambulance. Out of my left eye, I saw Mom lying on a stretcher next to me. Her head was wrapped too.

  “Where’s Phyllis?”

  “She’s fine,” Mom whispered over to me. “She’s getting a ride to the hospital to be checked out, but everything’s okay with her.”

  A few minutes later I was lying on a table in the emergency room with bright lights shining into my face. Several people gathered around me, cleaning up my face, giving me shots to deaden the pain. Then the doctor came and sewed up my face and head and covered them with bandages and gauze.

  He x-rayed my right shoulder and neck and announced that my collarbone was broken. Someone pushed me forward while a nurse put a brace around my body and my right shoulder. When they finished, a couple of people lifted me onto a stretcher and a nurse wheeled me into a nearby corridor. I saw Mom lying on a stretcher across the hall.

  “We just need to keep you here for a few minutes while we prepare a room for you and your mother,” the nurse said softly.

  I nodded. I didn’t care where I was. I just wanted to sleep.

  I was drifting off when I heard Karl’s voice.

  “Ingrid,” Mom called from across the hall. “Karl’s going to give you a blessing.”

  Her words came at me like a shock of electricity. I was suddenly wide awake and felt a charge pumping through my body. In the Mormon church, it was common for a priesthood-holding dad to bless his family members when they were sick or hurt. But Karl was not my dad or anything close to it, and there was no way I was going to let that goon touch me, let alone say some prayer over me.

  I heard him coming toward me.

  “Get away from me!” I yelled frantically. “Don’t touch me!”

  A surge of panic rushed through me. What was he even doing at the hospital? Where was Dad? Why wasn’t Dad here?

  “Ingrid, you stop that right this minute!” Mom barked from her stretcher.

  Karl stepped behind me and rested his hands on my head.

  “Get AWAY from me!” I screamed. “Get AWAY!”

  The nurse who had pushed my stretcher into the hallway a few minutes earlier came running.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here but you are clearly upsetting her and you need to leave now!” she barked at Karl. As soon as she said it, his hands were gone and I heard his footsteps retreat.

  I wanted to hug the nurse. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  I could feel Mom’s rage from across the hall. I didn’t care. He was gone. I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep.

  Later that morning, after the nurse had settled us into our room and left us so we could get some rest, Mom came unglued.

  “Ingrid, you should be ashamed of yourself,” she hissed from across the room. “I don’t know who you think you are, but Karl is a good man and he deserves some respect. The next time you see him, you had better apologize.”

  Tears streamed down the layer of gauze and bandages that covered my swollen face. My head and face throbbed, and my body was stiff and sore. Every time I tried to shift positions to get comfortable, pain shot through my right shoulder and collarbone. I was miserable but Mom didn’t bother asking me how I was doing. All she cared about was her new boyfriend.

  I pretended I didn’t hear her. I closed my eyes and acted like I was sleeping. I ignored her as much as possible for the rest of the day and was relieved when the doctor checked in on us early the next morning and announced that Mom could go home.

  “You’ll have to keep an eye on that concussion and go easy on those fractured ribs,” I heard the doctor tell Mom. “But it’s nothing a little rest won’t fix.”

  Karl came to get Mom an hour later.

  Finally, I could relax.

  I spent the morning watching TV and being attended to by nurses. They brought me grilled chicken, mashed potatoes and chocolate cake from the hospital cafeteria and stopped in every hour or so to see if I needed anything.

  Early that afternoon, Dad came.

  He entered the room carrying the most beautiful flower arrangement I had ever seen. It featured a ceramic girl with soft blue eyes and a brown bonnet on her head. In her arms, she held a colorful bouquet of fresh daisies and tulips.

  My heart danced. Dad hadn’t forgotten me.

  “Hi, Dad,” I called across the room.

  “How’s my beautiful girl?” he replied.

  Dad walked over to a table near my bed and set down the flower arrangement. Then he knelt beside me and took my hand in his.

  “How are you, sweetheart? Are you doing okay?”

  I nodded. His hands were shaking and I noticed that his eyes were red.

  “No one called me to tell me what happened, Ingrid,” he said. “Can you believe it? No one bothered to tell me you had been in a car accident. I didn’t find out until your grandma called me this morning.”

  Then his eyes settled on the bandages that covered my face.

  “What happened to my beautiful girl?” he said, shaking his head sadly.

  Dad stayed with me for about an hour and then left, promising me that he would stay in close touch.

  I enjoyed my break in the hospital and spend the next day relaxing. None of my brothers and sisters came to visit, which was fine with me. But just before dinner, my Young Women’s class from church came and brought flowers. They formed a line and took turns stopping by my bed. Most of them just asked me how I was feeling and told me they hoped I would get better soon. But when Theresa, one of the prettiest girls in my class, got to me, she covered her mouth and let out a little scream.

  Later that evening, a nurse took off the bandages to check on my stitches and told me she was going to leave them off so the wounds could breathe. Afterward, she helped me to the bathroom.

  When I saw my face in the mirror, I screamed too.

  The right side of my forehead was purple, green, and lumpy, and covered in a mass of black stitches. Another thick, jagged row of black stitches stretched from my lip up through the middle of my right cheek. I looked like a monster.

  I cried myself to sleep that night and didn’t fight it when Mom stopped by the next day with a couple of elders I liked from church and asked if they could give me a blessing.

  They put some ointment on my head and then placed their hands over it and started praying. When they got to the part about my face healing so I would look beautiful, I closed my eyes and added my own silent prayer.

  AFTER A FEW DAYS in the hospital, I was released and sent home to recover. The hope and happiness of the past few months were gone, and the air in the house was once again suffocating and dark.

  I spent a week propped up on a church-donated armchair in the living room, too discouraged to even change out of my bathrobe. The right side of my face and forehead was a mass of wiry black stitches and bluish, purple lumps. My right shoulder was still pinned to my body with a brace designed to hold my collarbone in place until the fracture could heal, and I hurt everywhere—inside and out.

  Mom was also sad again. And our almost new mini-station wagon was totaled, replaced by a rusted white Chevy Impala Mom had found.

  I was relieved that Karl stopped coming around. But now Mom’s Friday night trips to the singles dances took on an air of desperation. The fun and sparkle disappeared from her eyes, and Connie and I stopped waiting up to ask her how her evening had gone.

  Mom spent a couple of weeks dating a twenty-eight-year-old guy named Mike but broke it off when she found out he had once taken drugs.

  Then she met Earl.

  Years later, I asked her why she agreed to marry him even though they had only dated for a month—especially when she knew that all of us kids were so against it.

 
She was quiet for a minute.

  “I wanted someone to lead me,” she said finally. “I guess I didn’t want to have to make the decisions anymore.

  “It all would have worked out fine if he had been a righteous leader,” she added.

  CHAPTER 9

  A.E. (AFTER EARL: SPRING 1980)

  AFTER EARL FORBADE me to go on the weekend trip to New Mexico with Dad, a line was drawn, and Mom landed squarely on Earl’s side. As far as I was concerned, she was now the enemy.

  Their wedding reception, like most Mormon wedding receptions, was held in the church gym immediately following their temple marriage. Mom ordered all of us kids to put on our best Sunday clothes and come to the gym to join in their celebration. And once we were there, she insisted on having a family picture taken with Earl.

  The idea of having any association with that greasy-haired creep made my blood boil. Earl wore a powder-blue tuxedo that blended with his pasty pale skin. He had removed his glasses for the picture but his eyes still looked like they were going to pop out of his head. And there was no escaping his cold, icy blue stare.

  “But he’s not part of our family,” I seethed, fighting the urge to bolt out of the building.

  “Ingrid, get in this picture right now!” Mom barked. Connie and I glared at her and then at the photographer. We took our spots in the back on the far left of Earl, trying to secure as much distance as possible between us and him. In the picture, I stared straight ahead—the hatred oozing from my eyes.

  The next day, Mom and Earl left for their honeymoon, but not before arranging for Brother Hammond, a good friend to Mom and a priesthood holder from church, to stay with us. I overheard him and Mom talking about the need for an adult to be there in case Dad “tried to do something crazy.” Dad hadn’t come around since the incident with Earl and I knew his rage was as intense as mine because he had called me a week after to talk about it.

  “If I hadn’t gotten out of there when I did, I would have killed that son-of-a-bitch,” Dad said, his voice rising.

  “What I want to know is why you stayed around and didn’t stand up to them,” he continued. “Why didn’t you just tell them you were going with me to New Mexico anyway?

  “Let me tell you something, Ingrid. No one has the right to keep you from your daddy. The next time that happens, there’s only one thing to do. You tell them to go to hell and you come with me.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said quietly, my face flushed with anger. I wanted to scream into the phone, ask him why he didn’t stand up for me. Why he just stormed out of the house and left me there. Instead, I told him I loved him and hung up the phone.

  MOM AND EARL spent nearly a week exploring the national parks in Southern Utah. But instead of returning home happy and refreshed, Mom looked tired and defeated. Her steps were heavy, like she was carrying a hundred-pound weight on her back, and her eyes looked even sadder than before.

  The next morning at scripture reading, she told us it was time to set some new ground rules.

  “Earl and I have talked and we feel that you children should call him something that shows respect,” she said. “We know the name ‘Dad’ is reserved for your dad, and is special to you. So we would like you to call Earl ‘Father.’”

  I looked at Earl, who was seated next to Mom on the couch. He was staring at me and flashed the same mean smile he wore when he announced that God didn’t want me spending time with my dad.

  I shifted my gaze to Mom, who stared at the ground, pretending like what she had just asked us to do was as normal as asking someone to pass the butter.

  I shot an imploring look at Connie, who appeared ready to blow.

  I looked back at Mom, wondering what happened to her promise that Earl wouldn’t try to take the place of dad.

  “But he’s not our father,” I said, punctuating my words to get my point across.

  “I can tell you one thing right now,” Connie fumed. “I am not calling him that.”

  “I’m not either,” Heidi added.

  Jacob and Daniel, now seven and two, said nothing.

  “This isn’t respectful!” Earl bellowed at Mom. “Tell your kids to show me some respect!”

  “Why don’t you start showing us some respect?” Connie snarled back.

  Mom looked like a deer caught in headlights.

  “Children, stop this right now!”

  A long minute of silence followed.

  Mom glared at us and then turned to Earl. “Why don’t we start scriptures? We’ll talk about this again later,” she said softly.

  I HAD TEN WEEKS to go until summer break and survived each day by crossing it off on the calendar that hung on my bedroom wall, counting down the days until school was out and I could be with Dad. He had invited me and my sisters to stay with him for a while during the summer, and Mom, who was already exhausted by the war now raging in our house, readily agreed to let us go.

  The atmosphere at home was tense and hostile. It started at six a.m., when Mom summoned us out of bed for our morning scriptures. Earl now lorded over the green couch, causing Connie, Heidi, and me to retreat to a spot on the floor at the far end of the room so we could steer clear of him and his smell.

  There was a new pecking order in our house: Earl, then the rest of us. Shortly after moving in, he announced that as the priesthood holder and man, he was the head of the household and was now in charge. At morning scripture time, Earl now decided who would read from the scriptures and what scriptures to read. He chose the hymns we sung and he said the closing prayer—unless he decided Mom or one of us kids should say it, at which point we were supposed to follow his command immediately and launch into prayer.

  Earl never lifted a hand to help clean the house or make the food. He said that was a woman’s job. He also didn’t like the meals we ate as a family. He wanted meat. Mom, always in a hurry to get out the door to work in the morning and always exhausted from her day, became his indentured servant. In the morning, she piled Earl’s plate with bacon and sausage while the rest of us ate our Cream of Wheat cereal. At night, she loaded up his plate with the buffalo meat and venison he had stuffed into our deep freezer when he moved in.

  Breakfast wasn’t bad because everyone was in a hurry to get out the door and we ate in relative peace. But dinner was a nightmare.

  Earl sat at one end of our long, rectangular plastic banquet table. He had declared that spot the “head of the table” and the place where the “head of the family” should sit. Every evening he took his seat and waited for the separate meal he’d ordered Mom to make to be placed in front of him.

  Earl had implemented a “no talking unless spoken to” rule and was the only one who could initiate the conversation. Other than reading scriptures or praying, our family rarely interacted with each other anyway, so aside from being annoyed that he had made the rule, I didn’t care about not talking; it meant I could zone out and shut out his sound and smells. What pissed me off was when he addressed me and actually expected me to respond. Connie and Heidi felt the same way. As a result, sitting down for dinner was like sitting on top of an active volcano.

  Like most dinners, we spent the Tuesday evening after Easter sitting around the table, staring silently at the plate of food in front of us while we waited for Earl to bless it.

  He took his time looking around the table to make sure everyone had their arms folded before he started.

  “Our Father, bless this food that my wife prepared for me and that we are about to eat. And bless this family that they will listen to my guidance and the authority you have given me as the priesthood holder and rightful head of this household.”

  It was everything I could do not to scream and start punching in walls. I opened my eyes and looked across the table at Connie, who was staring blankly at the wall in front of her.

  Earl finished his prayer with a loud “Amen” and Mom repeated it. The rest of us grabbed our forks and started concentrating on the Hamburger Helper Mom had made for us, trying to shut
out the sounds of Earl attacking the slab of undercooked venison heaped on his plate.

  Earl cleared his throat. “Connie, how was your day today?” he started, his tone demanding and condescending.

  Mom may have been buying this whole priesthood authority crap but Connie wasn’t about to play into his game. She ignored him and continued eating her food.

  Earl was prepared for this because it was a repeat of almost every other dinner. He leaned over his venison-filled plate so his face was within inches of Connie’s.

  “Connie! I asked you how your day was and you are going to answer me!”

  She stayed silent, which I knew took some serious willpower with Earl polluting her airspace with his rotten-hamburger breath. I bit my lip to suppress a laugh. Connie had just turned sixteen and had decided she didn’t have to take this crap from Earl. In her defiance, I felt like she was standing up for all of us, and I was proud of her for sticking to her resolve.

  Mom, fearing a fight, spoke up.

  “Connie, Earl asked you a question. Please answer him.”

  Connie looked up from her plate at Mom and saw the pleading look on her face. She slowly turned toward Earl and glared at him for a long minute.

  “FINE!” she said with such force that I could see spit flying out of her mouth.

  “WHAT did you just say to me?”Earl bellowed, shaking his meat-filled fork in Connie’s face. “If you think you can get away with talking to me like that, you are wrong!”

  Connie looked back down at her plate and resumed eating.

  Earl turned his anger on Mom.

  “Tell your daughter to show me some respect! I’m warning you, do it NOW!”

  Mom’s face wore a mix of fear and resignation.

  “Connie, Earl asked you a question. Please answer him.”

  “I did! I said my day was fine!”

  Earl jumped up from his head-of-the-household seat.