What Were They Thinking?
Part II: Janet Anderson’s Story
I sighed when I heard Marilyn’s story. We all glanced toward the kitchen to see if any of ‘the kids’ had heard her heart-rending confession. Danielle was the only one in sight and if there was ever a woman who knew how to keep her mouth shut, she was it. If she’d even heard. She was checking the oven and we could all smell the cinnamon rolls.
“It was my fault,” I whispered into the quiet. “I had no idea what my daughter was training to do… or teaching Brian.”
13 Escape
I’M SHARP AS A TACK and dumb as a rock. That’s what I’ve believed since the day I married that despicable man the week before college graduation. How could I graduate summa cum laude and still be so stupid?
I already had a job offer at a financial firm in New York and we moved the week after graduation, combining the move with our honeymoon. I thought he was smart and clever and would have a job soon after we moved. But he didn’t. He made an effort, I guess. He even went out and picked up temporary jobs, but no one was spoiling to hire a Humanities major. And I’d only been on the job two months before I found out I was pregnant.
I was thrilled. Derek, not so much.
“How are you going to keep working with a kid? You don’t think we can live in New York City and raise a kid on what I make as a bartender, do you? We should head down south where I’d have some opportunities. There’s no work for me in New York.”
He was right about that, but we also needed the health insurance provided by my company—at least through the birth. And we had a year’s lease on our studio apartment in New Jersey. I got up early in the morning and caught the train into the City and got home late at night. Derek went to work at the bar at six and got home after two, stinking of stale cigarettes and booze. And when he got home he’d wake me up to do my wifely duty, even though I had to be up in three hours to go to work.
“Why don’t you try getting into sales? You always were able to convince people of anything.”
“You want to be married to a used car salesman? Maybe I should go door-to-door selling Fuller Brushes or Hoover vacuums. It could be months before I even got a commission. Don’t be ridiculous, bitch.”
Now I was a big-bellied ugly bitch. He’d liked me originally because I was tall and elegant. He was six-three and I was nearly six feet tall myself. I was eight months pregnant and felt like I was six feet wide, too.
My job gave me three weeks off when I went into labor in order to arrange for childcare. I figured Derek was home all day until I got home. Certainly, he could take care of our child during the day.
He flat-out refused. I needed to hire a babysitter if I wanted to have a fucking kid around. Better yet, give her up for adoption and let’s get back to fucking.
I found a daycare near where I worked and took Whitney with me into the city on the train each morning and back to Hoboken in the evening. I spent my lunch hours visiting my daughter like she was in a prison. I hated my life. I wanted to spend my time with my precious little girl and instead I carted her off to a bunch of strangers and visited her.
Nothing breaks apart all at once. I wish it did. Derek not only tended bar, he drank at them, too. I kept believing he would get a real job, but he couldn’t even keep a job in the same bar for more than a few months. I managed to get birth control so his nightly demand of his rights as my husband didn’t risk another pregnancy. And if I wasn’t ready and willing, he got angry. In fact, he got angrier and angrier the longer I worked and the more he drank. It was little slaps at first, ‘to get your attention.’ Then complaints about how the house was kept, how noisy the brat was, why I didn’t ever cook, and why I wasn’t getting a promotion again. The answer to that last question was easy. I was a clock-watcher because I had to pick up my child on time. My manager said I wasn’t willing to put in the effort it took to excel in my career. I would never get promoted.
Whitney was in first grade when the shit hit the fan. He beat me badly enough to put me in the hospital. I’d come home to find my daughter home from my school and my husband making her run around the house naked as he had her do chores for him. I screamed at him and snatched Whitney away from the bastard. He hit me repeatedly while I continued to scream. A neighbor called the police. They called an ambulance. I had a concussion, broken ribs and a twisted arm.
I pressed charges.
I was lucky. I got a dynamo of a lawyer who encouraged me to file for divorce and get a restraining order at the same time. There is no faster way to get a divorce in New Jersey than to have your husband convicted of felony assault and child abuse. He was sentenced to ten years with no opportunity for probation until he’d served five. I changed my name back to Anderson and changed Whitney’s name as well. We headed west.
I didn’t even have a car. We caught a train for Chicago. Grand Central was only a few blocks north of my office and I had Whitney by the hand pulling a little trolley with our worldly possessions in it. My final paycheck was in my purse and I wrote a check for our ticket on the Lake Shore Limited. It seemed awfully expensive, but we needed a sleeping compartment.
I picked up every newspaper for towns we’d pass through on the way to Chicago to search the want ads. I didn’t know what I’d be doing but I’d need a job pretty quickly. I’d broken the bank to get my divorce and had only a few hundred dollars to my name.
When I saw the ad for a manager of a bookstore, I gathered our bags, took Whitney’s hand and got off the train when it stopped in South Bend, Indiana. I’d had it with the big city and needed to find a place where we could live in peace. I suppose it was stupid to just get off the train but, like I said, I’m sharp as a tack and dumb as a rock. I just knew that this was going to become our home.
It took a few days to get things squared away. I discovered the bookstore was quite a way east in Mishawaka. But I got the job. I started looking for a place for us to live and discovered a run-down two-bedroom bungalow just outside the city limits. It was furnished and I took it. Whitney was enrolled in school to start second grade in the St. Joe Valley School District.
Managing a newly opened bookstore in a large nationwide chain suited me well. I had good work credentials and knew I had good management skills. It was a great place to meet people and Whitney was always welcome to come to the store and read after school. There was just one thing. Whitney was tall and some of the kids made fun of her. I knew what that was like, having been the tallest and gawkiest girl in my elementary school. I needed some way to give her confidence to stand up for herself.
And a way to protect herself from the stupidity that I’d fallen into.
“Honey, I’m pretty sure that the proper way to use your chopsticks is not to stab your food with them,” I laughed.
“I can’t get them to pinch together. Show me again, Mommy.”
“May help young student of Chinese?” an old Chinese man asked as he approached our table. We’d seen him in the restaurant before but I didn’t know if he was a customer or part of the family who owned the restaurant. His charm and broken English were disarming.
“My daughter hasn’t quite figured out how to use chopsticks,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it eventually.” He glanced at my own awkward grip on my chopsticks but was kind enough not to mention it.
“You write with pencil?” he asked Whitney.
“Uh-huh. I mean, yes, sir,” she answered.
“Hold first kuài zi like pencil,” he instructed. He took one chopstick from her hand and she gripped the other like a pencil. He pushed the stick through her fingers so a couple of inches stuck out instead of just the point. She looked at him curiously. “Can move peanut with pencil and not hand?” he asked. She flicked the chopstick and a peanut went flying off her plate. He laughed. “Very strong girl. Need a stopper.” I was intrigued and tried holding my own chopstick like he said instead of having it between my fingers. “This kuài zi stopper,” he said holding up the other stick. He slid it into the cradle of her thumb and forefinger and braced it against her little finger. “Put stopper on plate and push peanut to it.” It took her a couple of tries but she managed to push a peanut between the two sticks. She got excited and squeezed. A second peanut went skittering across the table. I was too busy trying the technique myself to laugh at her awkward effort.
“Too slippery,” he said. I went to the counter and I thought he was leaving us but he quickly returned with a spoonful of little mint pillows that were given to guests when they paid their check. “This not run away.” He checked her grip on the chopsticks and then directed her to pick up a mint. Again, she had to try a couple of times but managed to lift one of the candies. “Practice here,” he said pointing to the mints. “Fill belly here,” he added, handing her a fork and pointing to her food. We both laughed and the old man bowed to us and backed away. Whitney tried the technique a couple more times and managed to get a mint to her mouth.
“Okay,” I said. “Mints for dessert. Eat your food with the fork like the nice man said.”
“Mommy, I did it,” she beamed. I grinned and reached over to snatch a mint myself. Using the sticks in this position was much easier than the backward way I’d learned to hold them. We laughed and finished our meal, then took turns capturing a mint and popping it into our mouths. The old man met us at the cash register and presented us each with a neatly wrapped pair of bamboo sticks.
“Practice with… soft…” he turned to the woman at the cash register and rattled something off in Chinese.
“Excuse grandfather, please,” the cashier said. “He say to practice using chopsticks with soft food first, like marshmallow. Then try other food.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said.
“Thank you,” Whitney chimed. I was at least raising a polite child.
“I teach more next time,” the man said bowing slightly. Whitney picked it up right away and bowed to him.
And that was how we met Master Cho.
By the end of the month, we’d eaten at the little Chinese restaurant seven times and the man continued to instruct us in use of the chopsticks and other little things about our food. He suggested tofu for our first meal to be eaten with the chopsticks. It was tasty and soft. We ate most of our meal with them and were successful as long as we didn’t squeeze too hard.
School had not started yet, so Whitney was going to the bookstore with me every day. Usually, she would sit in the children’s section and quietly read, but before long, she was running next door to the Chinese restaurant to meet with Master Cho after the lunch crowds had left. I was a little worried and pulled the young woman who was cashier aside to be sure Whitney was not being a pest and to inquire about the old man.
“Grandfather is Kung Fu Master. He say little girl his to-dai. He wishes to teach her.”
“Teach her Kung Fu?” I asked. The woman nodded.
“He say she has strong jīngshén. Her spirit. Good student will be powerful shifu, a teacher.”
That gave me a lot to think about. Did I want to have my daughter learning to be a martial artist? The answer came in the form of a letter from the Hoboken city courthouse. My now ex-husband had been moved from Hoboken to the State Prison in Trenton. He was to serve five years of a ten-year sentence before he was eligible for parole. My little girl was eight years old. I hoped she could learn to defend herself better than I could.
Whitney adjusted to school well. She knew her father was in prison, but we did not speak of it. Her memories of him were dissociative. She shut them off and I let her.
She was the tallest girl in her class and I was worried, having been unusually tall in school myself. At five-eleven-plus, I was still considered unusually tall but I’d learned to handle comments about my height. I was worried about Whitney. The first few days of school she came home slumped over and dejected. Some kids had made fun of her, of course. I did my best to encourage her but I was only a mother. On the weekend, I took her to see Master Cho while I went to work.
When I joined her for dinner, I found my daughter standing straight and tall with a big smile on her face. We were pretty good with our chopsticks by now and enjoyed the meal. Whitney was much better than I was. I only barely saw the pillow mint come flying toward our table at the end of the meal but Whitney snatched it out of the air with her chopsticks. I was amazed. On the way home, she surprised me again.
“Mom, I need a basketball. Master Cho says everyone in Indiana plays basketball. I need to learn.”
By fifth grade, Whitney was both tall and proud. She never mentioned her martial arts training to anyone as far as I knew. But she never slumped her shoulders and everyone knew she played basketball. I looked into summer camps and found a weeklong sports camp for boys and girls. She had a good time, but she also was excited to be home so she could spend her days with Master Cho. I discovered she was helping at the restaurant, which worried me. Certainly, I’d used her at the store to stock shelves, too, but I didn’t like the idea of her being used instead of taught. She set me straight in no uncertain terms. She only worked alongside of Master Cho. She didn’t do anyone’s work for them but she got to help and that made her proud. I couldn’t fault that. Besides, so far, Master Cho had refused any payment for her lessons and I could see how well she was progressing both at home and in school that fall.
“Janet, do you know your standing?” Dave Albright asked. He was my boss, the district manager, and visited the store at least a few days each month. He sat across my desk from me with the store accounts in front of him.
“I know we’re not the biggest store in the region,” I said. “But I think we do okay.”
“Okay is an understatement, Janet. You are right. This isn’t the biggest store in the region. But it does have the highest profit margin by percent of sales. In fact, it’s two percent higher than your nearest competitor.”
“I don’t consider any of the company stores in our region to be competition, Dave. We’re all on the same team.”
“That’s what I like to hear. But in a corporation, everyone is measured against everyone else’s performance. In a nutshell, you are doing well.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s why I’d like you to take over as district manager.”
He what? I’d settled in to a comfortable life in Mishawaka. I’d managed to get a mortgage and buy the little house I’d rented. I’d made some modest improvements. My daughter was in sixth grade. I imagined that I would live and die as the manager of this bookstore I’d grown to love. I couldn’t pull up by the roots and move again. It wasn’t fair to Whitney.
“You’re the district manager!”
“And the only thing that is preventing me from becoming regional manager is finding my replacement here.”
“But… I can’t leave, Dave. It’s a wonderful opportunity but I couldn’t move with Whitney in school and finally feeling like she has a secure home. I love my job but I’m a mother first.”
“Janet, I admire you. Not just because you are a successful store manager but because you are a strong, self-sufficient woman. I know these past years haven’t been easy on you. And work never makes life easier. If I can work it out so you don’t have to move—will still be based here in Mishawaka—will you consider taking this position?”
That was blunt. A straight question requiring a straight answer. I would have to travel. I knew Dave traveled quite a bit visiting the stores. And he had to report to a regional meeting every quarter. I’d need some amount of childcare when I was gone. But if I could keep my roots here, would I consider the position?
“Yes.”
Master Cho’s granddaughter was pregnant and did not want to stand in the restaurant all day. I asked if she would consider working as my nanny. She agreed on the spot. When I was out of town, Whitney would stay with her family. Of course, no one was fooling anyone. Whitney would spend every available moment with Master Cho. But at least I was now able to pay something into his family, if not directly to him. I knew that he had begun teaching something called Tai Chi at the YMCA. I guessed that it was some of the rudimentary forms that Whitney had already learned. But he earned little and depended upon his family to care for him. I felt I was giving back and Whitney was ecstatic.
I continued to find basketball camps in the summer and since she spent so much time with him otherwise, it wasn’t difficult to convince her to attend for longer periods. He even assisted at the YMCA camp she went to. I stopped to pick her up after returning from Indianapolis one night and found the two of them playing a strange game of basketball in the driveway. It was almost a game of keep away as one would hold the basketball in front of the other and move it around until it was captured. Then the other would keep it away. It involved dribbling, shooting, and simply passing the ball from hand to hand, around the back, and between the legs. I didn’t know if they were practicing basketball or Kung Fu.
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