Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [10]
In that environment, God and Mama merged in Mary’s mind as twin keepers of a stern domain pocked with unpredictable hazards—on earth as well as in heaven. The church told her that all of us are born with a sinful nature. Damnation is a living reality for those who do not reconcile themselves with God. In that domain, Satan was a constant living presence. It was a struggle to stay within the narrow safety zone. Mary once dreamed of a God with a giant hand coming to get her. She hid behind a rock, to no avail. God found her.
The hymns she learned in church, with their beautiful melodies and emotional lyrics, were earthy and alive, filled with vital images that spoke to her.
When we walk with the Lord,
In the Light of His Word,
what a glory he sheds on our way!
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
God represented danger, but also safety. This was a contradiction that would influence much of her life, layering it more with guilt and worry than with peace. It would dictate her response when her own son’s crisis erupted.
When Mary was ten, Alvin, now a commissioned officer, went to sea and was gone much of the time for the next two years. Mary felt further exposed and more lonely than ever. At Christmas, Ophelia gave the kids the kind of gifts that would keep the children distracted and out of the way. She seemed to favor the boys: Warren, the eldest, and, born years later, Porter and Charles. The girls, especially Jean and Mary, had a harder time, it seemed to Mary.
In school, at Jefferson Elementary in Oakland, Mary felt like the ugly duckling. The other girls all seemed prettier, got good grades, and wore nice clothes. The Harrisons weren’t poor—Ophelia worked to augment her husband’s salary—just not sensitive to matters of style and peer competition.
Adolescence brought more trauma. When Mary started to menstruate, Ophelia seemed as upset as she was about it. “You’ll start to bleed,” her mother had warned her, “and if you mess with boys your belly will swell up.” Sex seemed dangerous and vulgar, something you didn’t talk about. Ophelia would tell her girls that a boy’s kiss on the cheek could get them pregnant. Mary dreaded growing breasts; they would stick out and make her conspicuous.
She was conspicuous anyway. While other girls were setting their hair and snaring boyfriends, Mary continued to wear pigtails to age thirteen. By her teens she weighed 150 pounds and wore a coat in class to hide her bulk. This made her no less boy conscious. She obsessed over boys without fully understanding what it meant. While she envied the other girls their boyfriends, she harbored romance-magazine fantasies of meeting an older man, marrying, greeting him at the door at the end of the day…
She made a few friends and was allowed once to go to a pajama party, and, at fourteen, on her first date, to the movies with a boy named Louis. He kissed her a couple of times. But after the show he told her he was going to a party “where you can’t take nice girls.” Mary walked home alone.
For all her indifference day to day, Ophelia was possessive and fearful for her children. The world was a dangerous place. As they matured, she struggled to rein them in.
Mary as a teenager fought for a measure of independence. Her desperate quest for security obscured a strong inner will that in other circumstances would have produced a powerfully self-motivated person. That strength would show up later in tragic circumstances, but it surfaced as a streak of rebelliousness in her teens.
At sixteen, while a student at Oakland’s Fremont High School, she befriended