It was at the farm, shortly after Great Aunt Martha died. My parents’ old furniture, the stuff they bought when they were newly married, was moved into my room (blond Heywood-Wakefield, mid-century-modern, you know); they’d inherited a Stickley set from Martha, which my mother believed was a better class, and fit, than HW. As a result, their old set became mine (I wasn’t asked), meaning I had the only double bed in the house among my parents’ children. This became a problem for me, one I had no control over, because my mom was still so angry about the move to that big, old, impossible to keep clean house, set in the middle of nowhere at the end of a dirt road, dammit. I was busy trying to stay out of her line of fire. Big fail, but still, hey, no complaints from me, ma! Life is good! Yay!
Mom and dad soon bought a green faux leather convertible couch for the downstairs, with a double bed inside, ostensibly for guests who stayed over, yet when guests were scheduled to arrive, it was decided that they would stay in my room (decided by my mom), while I slept on the convertible in the TV room. I hated this, but again – no complaints, ma, not within my power to change it, even when her favorite brother, our Uncle Bob, pointed out that he and Eleanor would be happy to use the convertible sofa bed, and wasn’t that – booting a nine-year-old out of her bedroom – a little unfair? Thank you, Uncle Bob but – nope!
Yes, I know, what a first world problem. You had your own bedroom, Moj? Shut the fuck up. Okay, yes, all true. I know. I know. I know. And. Here we are. Or, rather, there I was, learning how not to fight for myself and have any healthy boundaries because – well, what’s a boundary in 1969 or ‘70? The barbed wire fence keeping the neighbor’s cows in? The stone walls that run in straight lines all over the farm? The doors on each of our separate rooms? Maybe. I was a kid. My cousin, a teenager twice my age whose family had left the farm months before, had sexually assaulted me in a field below the house the week before we moved in. My mother was in a state of fury, and despair; I was her favorite target for the rage she was unable to send my dad’s way. Boundaries? What’re those? Fight for myself? Who’re you kidding?
Having to wait until various relatives had risen for breakfast to go in and get my clothes for the day was one embarrassing indignity, seeing my aunts’ and uncles’ suitcases and various pajamas and undies laid out on the floor, my bed, or dresser was another. That smell, too, the funk of adults, was also embarrassing, and embarrassingly unavoidable; what is that!? I could not ask; who would I ask? It was very disconcerting, like the smell in the bathroom after my mom had been in there. Not farts, mind you, something else.
Worse by far, however, than being pushed out of my room for funky guests by my funky mother, was the invasion of the covers snatchers, my siblings: Polly saw a spider, Peggy didn’t feel well, Freddy had a bad dream – these among others were the reasons why I was constantly hosting my siblings in that goddamned double bed I never wanted.
Fred was the worst of the covers snatchers; when he ‘visited’ I basically had to struggle to get even a corner of my own blanket, in a house that was always cold in winter, except, you see, nothing was mine, and never would be until I had a job, and money, and owned my own home. Everything in this house, including the clothes on your back, and don’t you forget it, belongs to momma, to your father, too, but, (and you know this is true) it all, you too, girlfriend, belong to mother. You are in her power, and under her control.
Compounding the problem of the double bed were not just the pre-boundary acknowledging world, my youth, inexperience, and general state of helplessness, it was the fucking door. My bedroom door would not close, would not lock, which meant it was open to all, so, c’mon in! My dad did, once, shave a quarter inch off the top of the door, but – I kid you not – the fucking thing expanded again and after a few glorious months of having actual, wonderful privacy, it was once again open season on the Moj Motel. Once, my older sister walked in on me trying to get a Modess Sanitary pad situated, using one of those vaguely garter belt thingummies that I sincerely hope no longer exist. This embarrassed the living shit out of us both, but didn’t hinder her constant depredations, during which she would regularly steal from my closet, my drawers, my privacy, my life.
More than anything, however, what pressed and oppressed me at that time was the sense that somehow it was my responsibility to make things better, to fix and heal and comfort my siblings, helping my parents out because that was what was required: me – such a disappointment – being a good girl for a change, making life easier for them (for my mother, never the most nurturing female, bless her heart). At at least in this area, the nighttime rituals and ritual interruptions of childhood, comforting my sisters and brother was my responsibility, not my parents. It was suffocating, this way of ‘being good’. After seeing the film Premature Burial, where Ray Milland plays a man with epilepsy whose wife is trying to shock him into a false death long enough to bury – and murder – him for real, I began to have recurring nightmares of being buried alive by my own family, and by my inability to unring the bell of the wide-open accommodations of the unwanted, unasked for double bed.
Eventually, finally, I was able to get a twin bed installed; the double was moved into my acquisitive older sister’s room; she had gone to college in another state, and wasn’t home a lot, so it finally made sense to the parental units (my mom) to make a change, thanks be to gawdess.
All I wanted as a child was a room of my own, the dignity endowed by an autonomous space, one in which I could play and pretend and read and write and imagine. All I want now is the same, with a door that not only closes, but locks. I have that, and find myself happier – and more content – than ever. Virginia Woolf said in 1929, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Or non-fiction. Regardless, amen to that, sister. Amen to that.