Chapter 19: Privately

Dear Ruth, and Rose

Thank you for your kind wishes and thoughts towards me. Please forgive my stepping out of bounds, to write you a private note, and I ask you to honor my wish and keep it private. Normally. Earl and I don’t keep secrets from each other, but there are things I want to say, that he doesn’t know, I know about.

Before I blurt out Earl’s secrets, the ones he doesn’t know I found out, let me correct you on some misconceptions you have unfortunately formed.

First, I’m not the best choice as a wife for Earl, in fact, I’m an unlikely candidate, unlikely to ever be a candidate. Did Earl mention, I’m a gypsy? Well, I am, and girls typically marry young in my culture. I won’t conform to that self destructive tradition. My values are my culture’s values but modified by self love and my instincts for self preservation. Having a half dozen kids before I’m thirty, a grandma before I’m forty and looking like I’m pushing sixty in my late thirties, no thanks, that ain’t for me.

Life is hard for gypsy women living traditional roles. Another tradition is, we marry our own kind. Other gypsies. When it’s time, when I decide it’s the right time for me, I’ll follow tradition and marry within my culture. Hopefully, I’ll still look good enough then.

Congratulations on catching a young man like Earl, at your age. You’re my role model. That’s my ambition when the time comes, but he has to be gypsy. We aren’t inbred, like some think. Plenty of girl’s get pregnant by outsiders, to provide infusions of fresh blood, but they don’t marry outsiders. Our culture can only remain intact if we don’t assimilate. Inviting in outsiders, would bring an infusion of other cultures ideas. Blood and genes is fine, new ideas and mores not okay, if we’re to remain gypsies. Earl needs to understand I can’t and won’t marry him. If you won’t marry him, maybe Betsy should.

Betsy loves your daughters and they love her. Earl loves her and I believe Betsy loves Earl. Those are the ingredients for a family. Your daughters are cute, and I think they’re adorable, but that’s not saying I adore them. Sorry, I don’t want kids of my own or anyone else’s for a long time. My suggestion is, push Betsy’s name forward and leave mine out of it. An true anecdote to make my point clearer. Earl’s mom Irene is next to helpless in caring for your kids. Betsy is their care giver. Betsy comes home, and the kids are frequently wearing wet and dirty diapers. For how long? Irene claims never to know. Means she doesn’t check. Not often, or often enough. In the middle of the night, if the kids wake up screaming, Irene calls Betsy next door, to get up and tend the babies in the middle of the night. Walk the floor with them all night if necessary, while Irene grumpily goes back to bed. If she called me up, woke me in the middle of the night? The first time, I’d tell her to go fuck herself! A second time, I’d come over with a whip to teach her some civilized manners. A third time, if she was that horribly dense and unable to learn, I’d torch her house! You don’t want me as a surrogate mother for Cathy and Susie. You want Betsy, or someone very much like her.

Time for secrets I’m not supposed to know, and I don’t know if you’re supposed to know. Hope this shocks you! Shocked me, that parents could be so heartless and cruel They’re monsters!

Earl was forcibly sterilized when they arrested you. He plots revenge on his parents who instigated it and the doctor who authorized the procedure, and cut him.

A sterile husband is useless to me when I decide to start my family. A sterile boyfriend is perfect for me to fool around with at this stage in my life. I’m a selfish bitch, I know it and pride myself on it.