Tuesday - Step on a Sapling
Jul. 31st, 2007 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about my husband's grandmother, Violet, and how I'd never met a person before Jeff who came out and admitted that his sweet little old granny was kind of a slut in her younger days.
In the South, especially, the only thing more sacred and virginal than a mother is a grandmother. I'm not quite sure how this came to be the case, considering that in order to become a mother, one assumes a woman has gained some experience in worldly things. But people have a way of acting like their mothers and grandmothers are as pure as the driven snow, no matter how unlikely the case this may be. I can promise that both of my own grandmothers were morally impeccable, or so I've been told. My husband's Louisiana hellion of a granny just happened to be the exception to the rule.
I first got an inkling of Violet's past when my mother-in-law sold a lake house back in her hometown of Zwolle,* Louisiana. The house had some structural issues in addition to a lot of wear and tear, and was sold "as-is," meaning that the new owners were warned about what they were getting. After the sale, they decided to sue, anyway.
Jeff snorted. "I don't know how those people think they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere in court in that town," he said, "Because everyone they come in contact with either grew up with mom, or they slept with Violet."
"Really?" I asked, "You mean Violet got around?"
"That's putting it mildly."
In Violet's defense, Zwolle is not a very big place. Even if she did sleep with every guy in town, it's not like saying she slept with half of Dallas or anything. She could accomplish this task and still have time to keep a neat house and raise a family. She was married to Jeff's grandfather for a good 50 years, which is an impressive feat, and she often bragged about it. What she never mentioned was that these years weren't consecutive. Listening to my mother-in-law talk, you pick up on the fact that her parent's relationship was a bumpy one.
"We were living in California when I was 11," she might say, "Or, rather, Daddy and we kids were. Mama and Daddy were separated then." "Daddy was at my wedding, but Mama's husband at the time wouldn't let her come, because he was jealous of Daddy." "Mama and Daddy were divorced at that time, but they were talking about getting remarried." All this at a time when divorce was rare in America, and rarer still in a small town. Jeff's grandfather married the talk of the town, a girl that everyone knew never said no. Not only did he marry her, he married her over and over again. Violet was known to be high-strung and high-maintenance, whereas her husband was quite, dignified and reserved. These two proved that not only do opposites attract, they also can repel and attract again over and over.
Violet lived to be 93 years old. Her reputation in her family was that of a self-centered diva who always demanded the center stage. To tell the truth, I kind of liked her. She was demanding, but she could also be sweet and affectionate. Since I was fresh meat and did not come preloaded with years of exasperation about her exploits, she treated me like I hung the moon. Anyone who thinks I hung the moon is all right by me. Violet and I adored each other.
I've always accepted people for who they are, but I admit that I also like to know how they got that way. I was handed the key to the enigma that was Violet after she died. After her funeral in May of 2005, I was sitting in the courtyard of a resort lodge in Zwolle with all of my husband, his brother and him mom. Everyone was telling stories about the recently departed, as people tend to do at these times. Jeff's mother then brought out the key, which she had carried around in her mind for decades.
"You know," she said, "Mother was raped. Twice, she told me.
"The first time, she was just a little girl. I've seen pictures of her as a child. She was such a pretty little thing, too. She told me an uncle – she never said which one – lured her into a barn and raped her. She never told her mother and daddy. She said her daddy would have killed the man if she had, she really believed that. But she was scared and she never said a word to them. Then it happened again when she was a teenager, with somebody else that time.
"All those men she was with over the years, and she never enjoyed any of it, you know. She told me she was frigid. I guess she got something out of it, somehow, but she didn't enjoyed the sex. It was just something she did."
With those facts, the chaos of the puzzle of who Violet was and how she got that way shifted in my mind and the pieces slipped into place. I've heard it said that the way to bend a tree is to step on it as a sapling. Almost 100 years ago in the woods of Northwest Louisiana, someone found a pretty little magnolia sapling that he damaged in a way that made it grow at what the world saw as a rakish angle. She committed no crime that day, but of the two people to walk back out through she barn door, she's the one who grew up to be the talk of the town. After that, she became the girl who never said no, because she'd learned early that no one listened to her when she tried to. What happened to her in the barn stayed locked in the dark until she told her own grown daughter when they were both old women.
It's funny how we think we know what makes a person tick, only to find out we were wrong all along. Sometimes the slut turns out the be frigid, and the kindly uncle capable of things most unkind. People are puzzles, and when the pieces of a puzzle get broken out of their alignment, it can take a lifetime for the real picture of who a person was to emerge again.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
*it rhymes with tamale, if that helps.
In the South, especially, the only thing more sacred and virginal than a mother is a grandmother. I'm not quite sure how this came to be the case, considering that in order to become a mother, one assumes a woman has gained some experience in worldly things. But people have a way of acting like their mothers and grandmothers are as pure as the driven snow, no matter how unlikely the case this may be. I can promise that both of my own grandmothers were morally impeccable, or so I've been told. My husband's Louisiana hellion of a granny just happened to be the exception to the rule.
I first got an inkling of Violet's past when my mother-in-law sold a lake house back in her hometown of Zwolle,* Louisiana. The house had some structural issues in addition to a lot of wear and tear, and was sold "as-is," meaning that the new owners were warned about what they were getting. After the sale, they decided to sue, anyway.
Jeff snorted. "I don't know how those people think they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere in court in that town," he said, "Because everyone they come in contact with either grew up with mom, or they slept with Violet."
"Really?" I asked, "You mean Violet got around?"
"That's putting it mildly."
In Violet's defense, Zwolle is not a very big place. Even if she did sleep with every guy in town, it's not like saying she slept with half of Dallas or anything. She could accomplish this task and still have time to keep a neat house and raise a family. She was married to Jeff's grandfather for a good 50 years, which is an impressive feat, and she often bragged about it. What she never mentioned was that these years weren't consecutive. Listening to my mother-in-law talk, you pick up on the fact that her parent's relationship was a bumpy one.
"We were living in California when I was 11," she might say, "Or, rather, Daddy and we kids were. Mama and Daddy were separated then." "Daddy was at my wedding, but Mama's husband at the time wouldn't let her come, because he was jealous of Daddy." "Mama and Daddy were divorced at that time, but they were talking about getting remarried." All this at a time when divorce was rare in America, and rarer still in a small town. Jeff's grandfather married the talk of the town, a girl that everyone knew never said no. Not only did he marry her, he married her over and over again. Violet was known to be high-strung and high-maintenance, whereas her husband was quite, dignified and reserved. These two proved that not only do opposites attract, they also can repel and attract again over and over.
Violet lived to be 93 years old. Her reputation in her family was that of a self-centered diva who always demanded the center stage. To tell the truth, I kind of liked her. She was demanding, but she could also be sweet and affectionate. Since I was fresh meat and did not come preloaded with years of exasperation about her exploits, she treated me like I hung the moon. Anyone who thinks I hung the moon is all right by me. Violet and I adored each other.
I've always accepted people for who they are, but I admit that I also like to know how they got that way. I was handed the key to the enigma that was Violet after she died. After her funeral in May of 2005, I was sitting in the courtyard of a resort lodge in Zwolle with all of my husband, his brother and him mom. Everyone was telling stories about the recently departed, as people tend to do at these times. Jeff's mother then brought out the key, which she had carried around in her mind for decades.
"You know," she said, "Mother was raped. Twice, she told me.
"The first time, she was just a little girl. I've seen pictures of her as a child. She was such a pretty little thing, too. She told me an uncle – she never said which one – lured her into a barn and raped her. She never told her mother and daddy. She said her daddy would have killed the man if she had, she really believed that. But she was scared and she never said a word to them. Then it happened again when she was a teenager, with somebody else that time.
"All those men she was with over the years, and she never enjoyed any of it, you know. She told me she was frigid. I guess she got something out of it, somehow, but she didn't enjoyed the sex. It was just something she did."
With those facts, the chaos of the puzzle of who Violet was and how she got that way shifted in my mind and the pieces slipped into place. I've heard it said that the way to bend a tree is to step on it as a sapling. Almost 100 years ago in the woods of Northwest Louisiana, someone found a pretty little magnolia sapling that he damaged in a way that made it grow at what the world saw as a rakish angle. She committed no crime that day, but of the two people to walk back out through she barn door, she's the one who grew up to be the talk of the town. After that, she became the girl who never said no, because she'd learned early that no one listened to her when she tried to. What happened to her in the barn stayed locked in the dark until she told her own grown daughter when they were both old women.
It's funny how we think we know what makes a person tick, only to find out we were wrong all along. Sometimes the slut turns out the be frigid, and the kindly uncle capable of things most unkind. People are puzzles, and when the pieces of a puzzle get broken out of their alignment, it can take a lifetime for the real picture of who a person was to emerge again.
*it rhymes with tamale, if that helps.
