Free Bastards: A Memoir by Mary Anna King Page A

disposal. My seven-dollar stash of pennies could keep us afloat for a couple of days at least.
    TWO WEEKS later, soon after school started, Mom and Mimi broke the news to us that Jacob, Rebecca, and I were going to Oklahoma with Mimi. It was what we wanted and now it was happening. It felt inevitable, unstoppable; not at all the way I expected.
    No legal papers had been drawn up to transfer custody to Mimi when she scooped up my sister in 1983. When my mother returned for her child, it was impossible for Mimi to say no. But this time around, if Mimi and Granddad were going to help, they had terms. If they were going to take the three of us under their wing, they’d need custody granted to them. They’d need a piece of paper to get us enrolled in schools and listed on Granddad’s insurance, something that would make it possible for them say no next time. After another week to get all the paperwork in order, we were off. Still, Mimi and Mom promised that the arrangement was temporary, just until one of our parents could get back on their feet enough to bring all three of us back.
    We didn’t have a lot of luggage. Most of our clothes and toys were too ratty to bother packing. We’d figure it out when we got to Oklahoma, Mimi said.
    In the plane, I sat next to my brother. Mimi and Rebecca were across the aisle and one row back. My feet stuck straight out in front of me. Mimi gave me a stick of gum at the airport so I could chew it and my ears wouldn’t pop when we got in the air.
    As we left behind the salty humidity of New Jersey, a flight attendant handed me a packet of peanuts. I was entering a world where people handed me things when I needed them, where I got the things I wished for. I no longer had to worry about where my next meal would come from, and I was done, too, with the concern about how I would stay attached to my brother and sister. I’d no longer have to watch my mother for the signs that she was falling apart.
    It was in that moment of emptiness when we reached a cruising altitude and I was neither in New Jersey nor yet in Oklahoma that I finally felt it, the donkey kick to the ribs that only a great loss can give a person. I had never been away from my mother. Not once in my life had I gone an entire day without seeing her. Now I’d have to live without her. The woman who understood everything I meant to say, who let me bury her face with her hair so I could dig her out again. The woman whom I didn’t let hold my hand when I got my ears pierced because I’d thought I was too grown up. I didn’t feel grown up now. I wanted my mommy more than I had wanted anything in my life.
    It’s only temporary , I reminded myself. I didn’t know how long temporary was, but I did know that it was not forever.
    I stared out the window, past my brother’s head. I had been excited to distraction about getting on an airplane because I was certain that once I was above the cloud cover I would see where the Care Bears lived. If I could get their attention, if they saw my brother, sister, and me in transit like this, the Care Bears would scoop us up, bellies blazing with rainbow light, and fix our fractured family. Or maybe the Care Bears would let us live with them in the clouds where there weren’t any grown-ups to muck up our lives. That might be the best of everything.
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    1 The scene works best if read aloud, ideally by two people. If you’re alone, give it a shot. Or if you have a close friend at hand, share. If, on the other hand, you are on a train, plane, or otherwise beside a stranger, just use your imagination.
    2 Obviously, I would never speak about my own mother this way. But Tarantino might. Speak about somebody else’s mother, I mean, not necessarily his own mother . . .

Reflections
    M imi herded my siblings and me off the plane and through the airport arrivals gate at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. At the end of the skyway stood my grandfather, the man my mother had run