![]() ![]() My mother’s thoughts were undoubtedly on the shame I’d brought her.įive days earlier I had given birth to a daughter. My mind was on the infant daughter I’d just relinquished by signing a one-page document. The drive home from New York City was two and a half hours of total silence. She hung up and told us the house had sold, but the buyer was lowering the offer because her favorite part of the whole house, that beautiful wallpaper upstairs, had been removed. We stood around as her face dropped then she started laughing. We were relieved to have it done and waited with anticipation for the buyers to start bidding. ![]() If you didn’t look too closely, the final result wasn’t bad. Exhausted herself by this point, Mom told us just to do our best. Painting was a bit easier but still a chore. Our mother narrowly averted mutiny with promises of take-out burgers, malts, and fries for lunch and dinner, plus a transistor radio tuned to our favorite rock-and-roll station. ![]() (We were constantly taking off the hot rubber gloves our mom supplied.) Several times we almost succumbed to the fumes and had to lean our heads out an open window and gulp fresh air. ![]() The acid in the stripper burned our arms and hands. The next week we spent the blistering summer days in our un-air-conditioned upstairs stripping wallpaper. After some negotiating, we exchanged our first choices - dark purple and navy - for lavender and light blue. We loaded into the station wagon and went to the paint store, where Mom said we could pick out the colors for our bedrooms. Desperate, Mom decided the reason it wasn’t selling was the upstairs wallpaper she had always disliked it. Months went by without any offers on the house. Unfortunately our mother had been unable to find a job that paid enough to allow us to remain there. The show-stopper was the ornate wooden banister that led upstairs, where the three bedrooms all had domed ceilings and floral-patterned wallpaper - pink flowers in the girls’ room, blue in the boys’, and trailing green vines and roses in the master bedroom. We lived in a three-story Victorian complete with servant bells, a garden room, and a swimming pool. Our main concern was whether we could stay in our house. We weren’t surprised we’d all known there were problems. I was ten when my mother informed my siblings and me that she was divorcing our dad. ![]()
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