Momma got dressed and went outside to find out what had happened. I was bursting with curiosity but she told me to stay inside. I continued to look out the window, but all I could see at that point was my mother talking to Linda’s father and brother.
When Momma came back inside, I could tell she was upset because her body was stiffer than usual and she had a frown on her face. She immediately went over to the dining room table where she kept her cigarettes, sat down, and lit one up. As she took her first puff, her shoulders relaxed more and I could tell it was safe to ask her what had happened.
“What did you find out, Momma? What was going on?”
“Well, that man they arrested was a peeping tom.”
“What’s a peeping tom?” I asked.
Momma shot me a look that said, I don’t really want to explain this to you. She sighed. “Just be patient and let me tell you the story and you’ll understand.”
She explained to me what Linda’s father had told her—that a few nights earlier, when Bud had come home from a date, he had seen a man lurking outside our house and looking in our windows.
As Momma talked, I imagined that the man had gotten an eyeful: it was summer and my mother had been traipsing around naked nearly every night.
Bud told his father about the man, Momma said, and they decided to watch to see if he’d come again. Sure enough, the very next night he was back. So they decided to take matters into their own hands.
“What were they going to do?” I pressed.
“Stop asking me all these questions. I’m trying to tell you!” Momma hissed. “They had noticed that the man used their yard to make his entrance and exit to our house, so as soon as it got dark they put up a rope between the two houses. Then they waited for him to come back.”
I could just see Linda’s father and brother waiting in the dark like amateur detectives. I wanted to ask Momma how long they waited but I knew better.
“Sure enough, the man came back, and just when he was positioned outside our living room window they yelled out, ‘Hey! What are you doing there!’ They scared him and he ran out of our yard and right into the rope, which knocked him to the ground!”
Momma didn’t tend to be dramatic but she told this part of the story with great relish. She was obviously pleased that the man had been caught, and she seemed to be caught up in the excitement of the moment.
My reaction to the story was different from Momma’s, though. When I heard the story, I felt scared to realize that someone had been watching us like that—scared and exposed. I was afraid it could happen again, that the man could get out of jail and come back or that another man could watch us like that.
I did feel relieved that the man had been caught. And I felt vindicated. There had been someone looking in at me in the bathtub all along—I was sure of it now!
I suddenly felt a wave of rage rising up inside of me. Why didn’t my mother ever believe me? She hadn’t believed me about Steve and she hadn’t believed me about someone watching me in the bathtub.
And I felt embarrassed—that my mother had enticed this man in the first place by walking around naked, that we didn’t have enough money to buy curtains. And embarrassed that the neighbors had to take steps to protect us because my mother wouldn’t. Why couldn’t Momma just put on some clothes like a normal person? She’d always stressed that the worse thing I could do was embarrass her in front of other people, and here she’d gone and embarrassed us both.
But Momma didn’t seem embarrassed at all. I had seen her thanking the Landers men in her charming way. And of course, she never acknowledged to me that I’d actually had good reason to be worried about someone looking in the bathroom window while I was taking a bath.
As if things weren’t bad enough, shortly after the peeping tom incident, my uncle Kay came to live with us. I had never met Uncle Kay, so at first I was happy about meeting another uncle. I assumed he’d be as nice to me as Uncle Frank and Uncle Forrest, and I was excited to have him live with us. My mother explained that it would just be temporary until he got a job. She also told me that like Uncle Frank, Uncle Kay was a hopeless alcoholic and this was why she hadn’t seen him for such a long time. But she didn’t seem bitter toward Kay the way she did toward Frank.
Uncle Kay was a strikingly handsome man in his early forties with beautiful, thick, prematurely grey hair so typical of the Irish. He was a large man, about 6’3”, and like me, he was “big boned.” In fact, Uncle Kay had a similar body type to mine— tall, long arms and legs, and a tummy. My mother had always said I resembled my father, but I could clearly see the similarity between my uncle and myself, and it felt good to know we were related.
Some of the neighbors also saw the similarity and asked me if he was my father. I guess they must have asked my mother as well, because one day, shortly after Uncle Kay arrived, Momma complained to
