My parents' parties continued through the winter and into the spring of ‘75. The crowds were getting a bit smaller though, as if there were only a select group that continued to get invited back. And I still couldn’t go down to the Lover’s Hideaway once the lights dimmed and that now-familiar aroma, along with its accompanying laughter, rose up the stairwell. Diane, my mom’s current confidant, was at every house party my parents had. Chunk and Porky would be there too since they were my dad’s two closest friends. The three of them even opened a side-hustle garage business during this time of our lives together. It wasn’t far from our house and was in a rickety, three-bay tin building tucked behind a store called Truman’s. Tommie Dean and his buddies would perform routine maintenance jobs on vehicles that belonged to friends and neighbors. From time-to-time, someone would bring in a car that needed the odometer rolled back for nefarious reasons. My dad and his buddies always did it even though it was frowned upon by the folks who’d end up buying those cars. The only reason I got to tag along was because Chunk and Porky felt sympathetic since they knew my dad didn’t want anymore to do with me than was necessary. So they always found some way to make sure I got to hang around the shop and fetch tools. If either one of them needed a socket wrench or a specific screwdriver, they’d ask me and I’d get it. My dad never asked me to help him with anything, even if he was waist deep in a knuckle-busting brake job. It’d been six months since my mom had to share the news that I didn’t want to hang out with him and his racist cohorts. His ensuing reticence towards me was commonplace by then. While my dad wanted as little to do with me as possible, at least he didn’t mind if Chunk and Porky showed me any attention. My dad never even gave me looks of disapproval if I made one of my occasional gaffes, such as knocking over a glass during family suppers at our kitchen table. I can’t think of a better way to describe what it was like other than to say I seemed completely invisible to him during that time of my life. It was like I didn’t exist as far as my dad was concerned.
As for those Saturday night parties in my parents basement, there were about two dozen regulars, maybe more, coming and going in those days. These were the men and women who were so welcomed by my parents they didn’t have to bother knocking. Even though this close-knit group of friends were all very nice, I’d learned to keep to myself and stay away. There was still something about these get-togethers that caused me to feel anxious, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. As much as a part of me wanted to have a chance at a do-over with Diane and her younger girlfriends, it terrified me to think I might have to do something I wasn’t ready for, at least not yet. So instead, I played outside with whoever might still be up past their bedtime. If there was no one around, I’d sit on our carport and listen to the music and laughter emanating from our basement. Occasionally there would be cheers and wolf-whistles, but I had no clue as to why.
I also hadn’t explored the basement after any more parties. I was learning the ropes pretty fast in those days and knew enough to know I might not like the answers I found down there. I still wasn’t over the embarrassment of having my naïvete exposed during the Halloween party the previous autumn. Being embarrassed was becoming something that seemed to happen more often when I found myself too interested in my parents' world. As tantalizing as it all was, I ultimately figured it’d be better to leave well enough alone. So I stayed away from the Lover’s Hideaway.
Meanwhile, my mom had taken her incantations and seances to a whole ‘nother level. Her fascination with the occult had turned a corner and she was no longer describing her interest as if it were some novelty. She was exceedingly interested in witchcraft and referred to herself as a bona fide witch. It was hard to tell if this was all an act to keep interest up or if she really believed she was a legitimate witch. Either way, the focus of their parties - at least the first hour or so - were centered around my mom’s spell-casting sessions and seances. Knowing my mom, I’m sure she put on quite a show.
On one hand, Judy-O was very intelligent, well-read and incredibly artistic. Both me and my daughter currently have some of my mom’s paintings adorning the walls of our homes. My mom also wrote lots of poems and I have most of them archived in her old scrapbooks for safe-keeping. She even volunteered to help with the art class at my elementary school for a few weeks back in the early seventies. I was extremely proud of my mom then and was glad she was there for me to be able to show her off to my friends. She was always cheerful and seemed truly excited about whatever was happening, even if she didn’t completely understand it. I also appreciate that she had a surprisingly keen sense of sophistication. I know this because one of my mom’s high school chums once told me a story about Judy-O giving her a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume as a wedding gift while they were still teenagers.
On the other hand, my mother had a hard time sitting still and being normal. Her capricious nature often led her to rhapsodize about risqué subjects as if she had no filter. Being cute and somewhat mischievous gave her some latitude to recover from any breach of etiquette and other such faux pas she made around others. I could sense that my dad wasn’t as interested in giving her as much leeway and would prefer she tried to blend in. But my mom was never going to blend in and my dad was short-sighted to think she ever would. I also have to wonder how my mom was able to acquire a bottle of Chanel No. 5 with no more money than she had back in 1959.
Another thing about my mom that I began to figure out: she wasn’t exactly chaste. Back then, I didn’t even know there were words for what I was comprehending about Judy-O. Nonetheless, I knew enough to know that a lot of my mom’s hedonistic behavior was indicative of her sexual proclivities. I knew that because I was twelve going on twenty, but I didn’t understand it like I do today. I was aware enough back then when I was around my friends' moms to know they were nothing like my mom. The more obvious those differences became, the more self-conscious and abject I became of my mom and her lascivious behavior, which was occurring more often. I realized a lot of the guys coming to our house for these parties were much more interested in my mom than they were ol’ Tommie Dean. I also had to wrap my head around the fact that my dad didn’t seem to mind.
A few years ago now, I learned from my mom’s cousin, Carolyn, what life was like for Judy-O while growing up in the mill village in Lyman when she was just a kid. Carolyn, who also lived in the same mill village back then, told me my mom used to wait for another strange man to show up at their house during the day. This always occurred after their dad had gone to work at his first-shift job at Lyman Mill. Their mother, the one I’d eventually refer to as “Tama,” would invite these unfamiliar men over to visit, always after her husband had left for the mill. Then their mother would eventually disappear into her bedroom with these strangers and proceed to do what adults do when they're incapable of keeping a promise. So one day her daughter decided to sneak into her mom's room, hide under her bed and wait for the inevitable return with her strange man du jour. Judy-O would then listen as her mother had sex on that same bed. Carolyn claimed those rendezvouses, underneath the bed in her mom's room, were a common occurrence for her twelve-year old cousin back then. Carolyn said she knew this because every time it happened, Judy-O told all the neighborhood kids about it, like it was no big deal.
While it now seems obvious just how much my mom was like her mom, I used to not think so. Even my mom's fascination with the occult makes more sense when I stop to consider that folks used to routinely visit my Tama because she possessed the ability to ‘talk off warts.’ If you aren’t familiar with that term, you’re probably not alone. Then again, I’m sure I could ask many of my older southern compatriots and they’d quickly entertain me with a story about someone they knew from their past who either had a wart talked off or, better yet, knew of some elderly individual who could perform this procedure.
Talking off warts is a phenomenon with a storied past, even though it's been around for centuries. It’s also an ostensibly southern tradition that’s handed down from generation to generation. My maternal grandmother once told me it’s something that gets passed on by way of a lengthy, ritualistic explanation. She also said women could only get it from men, and men could only get it from women. My Tama explained to me that it’s somewhat taboo to talk about the intricacies of talking off warts or to speak about the nuances of how it’s actually handed down to someone else. She further explained that if the person with this gift tells another how it works, then they’ll lose the ability. I’ve since learned that plenty of folks think talking off warts is the devil's business and want absolutely nothing to do with it. According to my Tama, there’s no magic involved and it’s really more of a matter of faith. That faith requires the two individuals involved in this solemn ceremony to truly believe the liberation from those unsightly warts was entirely possible. Otherwise, as it was told to me by my late grandmother, it would never, ever work.
The gist of the actual procedure went something like this: the healer rubs something metallic, like a coin or knife blade, over the patients’ wart. While doing this they murmur an incantation, or a prayer. Whether or not it's an incantation or a prayer is subject for debate and probably depends upon whom you ask. I just know that whatever it was the healer murmurs is done so low it’s unintelligible. When the healer is done they send the patient on their way. A week or two later, more often than not, the wart will have mysteriously vanished.
Some folks think ‘talking off warts’ is a myth, a thing of folklore. There are also those who believe it to be derived from spiritual entities of Native American origins. There are others who believe it to be black magic or voodoo. Then there are those skeptics who believe this magical wart cure is the result of hypnotic suggestion. All I know is my maternal grandmother could do it. As for whom she may have passed that gift down to, let's just say that I have my suspicions.
What I eventually came to realize, long after my mom and her mom had both left us, was how similar the two of them could be. Even so, Judy-O seemed to gravitate towards her dad’s company while her connection with her mom always felt forced. It’s not like they argued about things, in fact, they seemed to agree on whatever it was they might find themselves chatting about. It’s that they had a very perfunctory relationship. However, my mom always lit up when her dad walked in the room. She’d be almost giddy and he knew it, which always made him smile.
As for my mother and how she compared to her mother, they both had two specific characteristics which stood out amongst the rest. The first was the seemingly insatiable longing for the touch of a man, and then there was the ability to perform feats that might as well have been magic to most people, like summoning spirits or making warts disappear by uttering some incantation. These were the ways Judy-O and her mom were eerily similar. Looking back, reflecting on the two of them with the realization that the decisions they made ultimately allowed me to exist in the form I do today, I’m thankful. It’s also why I love them both. However, I loved my mom the most, even though it was my Tama who introduced me to the brazen music of Loretta Lynn with her crooning critique of the times.
I wish I could do a better job of describing what my mom was like during that time of our lives. I still can’t seem to find the right terms, the right adjectives to use in order to paint a more accurate picture of her. Words like eccentric and idiosyncratic come to mind. Now, years later, after she has been dead for over a decade, I’m still at a loss for the right words in regards to what my mom was like to be around back then. I cherished our time together and adored her immensely. I always wanted to be with her and to help her. As I got older I began to realize the more I knew about her the more I knew that I didn’t really know her as well as I thought I did. She really was a bird of a different feather, probably more than even she realized. I think William Blake might have been thinking about someone like my mom when he wrote “No bird soars too high when they soar with their own wings.” Okay, maybe not exactly like my mom, but like her in the dreamers-got-to-dream sort of way. Say what you want to about ol’ Judy-O, but she lived a life that left her cheerful more often than not. I can say that because I never once heard her complain about anything or anyone, ever. She died the way she predicted she would die. She even told me, with a smile on her face the last time we ever spoke, dying that way would make her happy.
Wherever she is, I like to imagine she’s soaring with other birds like herself. And something tells me she’s still soaring pretty high.
© 2023 Joseph Phillip Lister Sr.
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