Friday - The Compound
Jun. 23rd, 2006 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about one of my favorite conversations with Leslie from a few years back, one that did not leave me feeling like my heart would break. This conversation, while twisted in more than a few ways, still always makes me smile when it replays itself in mind.
First, a little background. Leslie and her mother, my Aunt Jo, do not get along. I am not saying that their relationships is strained or that they do not get along very well. I say it as an absolute: they do not get along, period. Jo is my favorite Aunt, and Leslie is one of my two favorite cousins (you can't make me pick between you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
noblwish, sorry). They are both wonderful people. However, they are two wonderful people that should never be in the same room together.
Jo cannot forgive Leslie for not being the daughter she wanted and believed that the adoption agency should have delivered, and Leslie cannot forgive Jo not being the mother she needed. The most uncomfortable place I can standing is between the two of them while they use sharp words to try to cut each other to ribbons. I don't know why they still bother; after more than 4 decades of these verbal spars, the scar tissue they have accumulated shields each of them from the stabs of the other like coats of armor.
One day several years ago, they went together to visit another aunt of mine, Corina, at her home in the country. Leslie calls this place The Compound, because its inhabitants remind of her of a cult, she says. All of my Aunt Corina's overweight, unhappy, unmarried daughters lived out there with their mother, in trailers on her property. The extended family still calls these women The Girls, though they are all in their 50's and have not been girls in a long time. Only the youngest of The Girls, Bonnie Jean (a.k.a. B.J.), had ever married and had two children and two divorces under her belt. While she was married, she and her husbands still lived at the Compound. None of The Girls could bear to leave their Mama because they felt that their Mama needed them around. A couple of my younger male cousins and their wives and broods also lived on the property. The Girls keep them around to do the heavy lifting and to complain about how they will never amount to anything. The Compound Cult is one of man-bashing, and the few male members of this cult accept this as the price to pay for rent-free living.
One of B.J.'s children is a son, who at the time was about 12 years old. Norman is named after his grandfather, the only man that the Cult considered to have ever been worth a damn. Sadly for Norman, he did not inherit his grandfather's exemption to not being worthless and the family grapevine said that B.J. had told him as much almost every day. She pulled him out of school when he was in first or second grade and announced that she would home-school him, but never bothered to do much teaching once she did. The family grapevine also said that he was essentially illiterate, as well as semi-feral.
"Nina," Leslie said to me on this day, "we were sitting outside under that big oak tree by the driveway. You know the one. We're all out there: me, mama, Corina, and all of The Girls, including B.J.
"B.J.," she digressed, "What the hell kind of woman decides she wants to be called B.J.? She picked that, Nina! B.J.! B and J have only ever stood for one thing in my mind, and let me tell you it doesn't stand for Bonnie Jean.
"Well, Norman walks up and he's got his BB gun," she continued, "He doesn't say a word to anyone. Something is wrong with that boy, I swear to God. It was the creepiest thing. He takes that BB gun and he puts it up to his eye and he starts aiming it at each of us, going from one to the other. And I'm looking at B.J. to see if she'd going to say anything, you know? Because that would be the normal thing to do. But she just ignores him.
"I mean, I'm watching him, and then he takes the gun and he's got it aimed at my Mama's face and he's keeping it there on her, aimed at her head and looking at her through the site. Mama, God love her, keeps on talking like he's not doing this and she's looking over at B.J. out of the corner of her eye, and I'm looking at B.J., and B.J. is just oblivious, like this kind of thing happens all the time and it's no big deal.
"Now this was starting to piss me off," she said, "that B.J. is so irresponsible that she won't say a thing to her psycho brat about this. I was raised around guns and I was taught that you don't point them at people, you just don't." She paused.
"Nina, I hate my Mama as much as anyone does," she said, "I really do. But, I gotta tell you..."
"...that if anyone is going to shoot your Mama in the face, it's going to be you?" I asked.
I heard Leslie howl on the other end of the phone. It took her a minute to stop laughing so that she could talk again.
"Exactly!" she said, "That's it, Nina! I'm glad you understand."
I don't, exactly; I got along with my own mother pretty well. It felt good to make Leslie laugh, though. If I ever have to be alone with the two of them again, I think I'll make a point to be sure that it is in a firearm-free place.
First, a little background. Leslie and her mother, my Aunt Jo, do not get along. I am not saying that their relationships is strained or that they do not get along very well. I say it as an absolute: they do not get along, period. Jo is my favorite Aunt, and Leslie is one of my two favorite cousins (you can't make me pick between you,
noblwish, sorry). They are both wonderful people. However, they are two wonderful people that should never be in the same room together. Jo cannot forgive Leslie for not being the daughter she wanted and believed that the adoption agency should have delivered, and Leslie cannot forgive Jo not being the mother she needed. The most uncomfortable place I can standing is between the two of them while they use sharp words to try to cut each other to ribbons. I don't know why they still bother; after more than 4 decades of these verbal spars, the scar tissue they have accumulated shields each of them from the stabs of the other like coats of armor.
One day several years ago, they went together to visit another aunt of mine, Corina, at her home in the country. Leslie calls this place The Compound, because its inhabitants remind of her of a cult, she says. All of my Aunt Corina's overweight, unhappy, unmarried daughters lived out there with their mother, in trailers on her property. The extended family still calls these women The Girls, though they are all in their 50's and have not been girls in a long time. Only the youngest of The Girls, Bonnie Jean (a.k.a. B.J.), had ever married and had two children and two divorces under her belt. While she was married, she and her husbands still lived at the Compound. None of The Girls could bear to leave their Mama because they felt that their Mama needed them around. A couple of my younger male cousins and their wives and broods also lived on the property. The Girls keep them around to do the heavy lifting and to complain about how they will never amount to anything. The Compound Cult is one of man-bashing, and the few male members of this cult accept this as the price to pay for rent-free living.
One of B.J.'s children is a son, who at the time was about 12 years old. Norman is named after his grandfather, the only man that the Cult considered to have ever been worth a damn. Sadly for Norman, he did not inherit his grandfather's exemption to not being worthless and the family grapevine said that B.J. had told him as much almost every day. She pulled him out of school when he was in first or second grade and announced that she would home-school him, but never bothered to do much teaching once she did. The family grapevine also said that he was essentially illiterate, as well as semi-feral.
"Nina," Leslie said to me on this day, "we were sitting outside under that big oak tree by the driveway. You know the one. We're all out there: me, mama, Corina, and all of The Girls, including B.J.
"B.J.," she digressed, "What the hell kind of woman decides she wants to be called B.J.? She picked that, Nina! B.J.! B and J have only ever stood for one thing in my mind, and let me tell you it doesn't stand for Bonnie Jean.
"Well, Norman walks up and he's got his BB gun," she continued, "He doesn't say a word to anyone. Something is wrong with that boy, I swear to God. It was the creepiest thing. He takes that BB gun and he puts it up to his eye and he starts aiming it at each of us, going from one to the other. And I'm looking at B.J. to see if she'd going to say anything, you know? Because that would be the normal thing to do. But she just ignores him.
"I mean, I'm watching him, and then he takes the gun and he's got it aimed at my Mama's face and he's keeping it there on her, aimed at her head and looking at her through the site. Mama, God love her, keeps on talking like he's not doing this and she's looking over at B.J. out of the corner of her eye, and I'm looking at B.J., and B.J. is just oblivious, like this kind of thing happens all the time and it's no big deal.
"Now this was starting to piss me off," she said, "that B.J. is so irresponsible that she won't say a thing to her psycho brat about this. I was raised around guns and I was taught that you don't point them at people, you just don't." She paused.
"Nina, I hate my Mama as much as anyone does," she said, "I really do. But, I gotta tell you..."
"...that if anyone is going to shoot your Mama in the face, it's going to be you?" I asked.
I heard Leslie howl on the other end of the phone. It took her a minute to stop laughing so that she could talk again.
"Exactly!" she said, "That's it, Nina! I'm glad you understand."
I don't, exactly; I got along with my own mother pretty well. It felt good to make Leslie laugh, though. If I ever have to be alone with the two of them again, I think I'll make a point to be sure that it is in a firearm-free place.
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Date: 2006-06-23 09:27 pm (UTC)