long hours of homework so that I could excel in every subject. Piano and voice lessons filled whatever free time remained. There were few opportunities for friends and recreation, and little chance to indulge in frivolous pastimes like shopping or telephoning, daydreaming or watching TV.
I remember vividly the most defining—and devastating—moment of my childhood. I was a young girl—seven years old. My parents threw a birthday party for me and invited my classmates. My father overheard me on the phone telling a classmate what present I wanted—a certain doll, or book, or game. Afterward, Father scolded me, saying, “You shouldn’t ask your friends for gifts. It makes you look greedy, as if that’s your only reason for a party. If someone asks you what you want, tell them you don’t want a present.”
“But I do want presents,” I argued plaintively in my reasonable seven-year-old logic. “Why should I say I don’t when I do?”
“Because a proper young lady is careful not to appear selfcentered, as if gifts are all that matter,” my father explained. “It’s the company of your friends that counts. In fact,” he added in that intrepid voice of his, “to teach you a lesson, I’m going to instruct all the parents not to send gifts, so you’ll understand what’s truly important in life.”
So no one brought gifts, and I felt deeply shamed to think that everyone considered me a selfish person. That party was the worst event of my young life; all the children seemed to understand even without saying it that I didn’t deserve to receive presents As my classmates played games and ate cake and ice cream, I struggled to pretend that nothing was wrong, but I couldn ’t keep back the tears. At last I ran to my room and collapsed on my bed in deep sobs. My parents sent the children home and never mentioned the party again. but from then on I was known to my classmates as “the girl who doesn’t get presents.”
After that party, I made it a point never to ask for gifts for Christmas or birthdays; I simply showed grateful appreciation for whatever I was given. But Father’s lesson had been too well learned I found it difficult to ask anyone for anything—a favorite food, help with homework, a preferred television program. At all costs I would not be considered selfish.
My goal in life became to accommodate others, to make sure they were happy and content. I found a sort of spiritual satisfaction in sacrificing my wishes for another’s, as if I could somehow atone for my childhood greed.
That attitude carried over into the rest of my life. I grew up feeling that my own needs and desires were somehow shameful and suspect, and that it was in bad taste, if not actually sinful, to let others know what I wanted The proper thing was to pretend I had no needs or yearnings—better to acquiesce to the wishes of others and make them happy. So I grew up determined to please my parents by behaving like their perfect little girl
I was careful never to vent my emotions around them—anger, fear, frustration, disappointment or sadness; rather, I always wore a smile and pretended everything was wonderful, so that my father would give me his smile of approval and praise me for being his “goodas-gold little girl.”
My mother, too, seemed to love me most when I was on my best behavior, so I saved my tears and anger for moments when I was alone in my room, where I could sob into my pillow or pound my mattress with my fists when I was angry.
I realized as an adult that my parents had taught me, perhaps inadvertently, never to be candid with another human being, nor to express my own wishes and desires, but rather to bow to the opinions of others and deny in a sense my own personhood, my own right of expression, even my own right to make mistakes.
But when I turned eighteen, things changed. I was seized by the same sense of daring and rebellion that was typical of others my age. I found myself wanting to strike out against the limits imposed on me, to stretch myself, to do something bold and excessive, perhaps to begin walking down an unknown road and never turn back I was obsessed by a restless yearning for something that had no name, no substance, no form. I dreamed of recklessly toppling my sane, sensible world
It was during this period of inner conflict that I met Rick Lancer. He was playing summer stock at a little theater near the university. A classmate introduced us. I loved Rick immediately. He flattered me, courted me and carried me away with his dreams and schemes, only to eventually compromise me and cast me aside.
Rick was an actor with an actor’s flair and sense of the dramatic. He prodded me out of my shyness, chided me for my rigidity of spirit and taught me to “loosen up.” He promised me the world, the moon and the stars—or at least a wedding and a honeymoon, as soon as he saved up the money from his next gig He gave me an inexpensive ring with diamonds no more real than his love for me. I still recall his words: “We’ll announce our engagement when I get the lead in summer stock. Doll, we’re as good as husband and wife. Don’t let some silly little paper keep us apart. Let me love you the way a husband should “
I never actually said yes to Rick, but neither did I quite say no. I felt emotionally overpowered by him, mesmerized by his flamboyance and style And, of course, I had been brought up to please without protest those I loved. and so I let Rick Lancer take what he wanted.
By the time I realized I was pregnant, Rick had already journeyed to New York with a local acting troupe My letter telling him about the baby was returned marked Address Unknown.
My pregnancy devastated my parents and put an irreparable chink in their carefully laid plans for my life They told me I had betrayed the long years of nurturing and intense devotion they had invested in me My father considered my pregnancy an act of rebellion against him. “After all I’ve done for you, to think you could do this to me— heap shame on the family name!” But he had a remedy for every situation, even the tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy.
“You made a mistake, but we’ll take care of it,” he told me, his voice edged with contempt. “It’s all arranged. Your mother will go with you. No one will ever need to know Your life will be back on track before you know it.”
I burst into tears and for the first time in my life stood up to my father “No, no, no! You can’t make me kill my baby! It’s mine and you can’t have it!”
When I refused the abortion, my parents sent me to a private university in another state where no one knew me. I completed my sophomore year and earned a straight-A average, but I was going through the motions, dazed and numb. I was painfully alone, except for my baby growing inside me—my wee, constant, unseen companion. At night I would lie in bed and talk to my child, pouring out my hopes and dreams for the two of us. I would feel him kicking, a foot here, an elbow there. We played a little game: I’d press the spots where he kicked and he’d nudge me back. Kick and nudge, kick and nudge. I vowed I’d let him grow up to be his own person, but even as I made the promise, I knew I could never keep it…because I couldn’t keep him.
My parents made it clear I couldn’t come home with a baby, and when I threatened to go elsewhere, my mother told me the awful news My father was seriously ill and needed me at home “He asks for you constantly, dear. You’re the only one who can comfort him.” Two weeks later I delivered my baby—a pink, thrashing, bawling seven-pound boy I saw only briefly as he was taken from my body and placed in a bassinet I wanted my son more than I had ever wanted anything in my life, but in my mind all I could hear was my father’s voice denouncing me: “You’ve sinned You don’t deserve to keep your child!”
So I signed the papers for his adoption, convinced my life was over at the tender age of twenty. I never anticipated the emotional upheaval I would experience by giving up my child. After he was taken away, I felt a physical ache for him—my arms ached to hold him, my breasts ached to nurse him. It was as if my very heart had been torn from my chest
Three days later I returned home, desolate, my arms empty, to offer my ailing father what little comfort I could muster. But without a word or a