Tenderness

Abstract

Tenderness Mary Milstead (bio) I return to the image of her bare feet—they are small and white, and I am drawn to her softness, which is familiar to me. Telling my mother's story requires this sort of time travel. I know her well, from her silver-white hair down to her painted toenails, but I didn't know her when it happened. It would be another four years before I was born. On a recent summer visit to my home in Portland, my very Texan mother and I sat on my back porch in the afternoon sun. I offered her a foot rub and she accepted, sliding off her flip-flops. She loves the heat, and is always cold when she visits, but we were lucky enough that August visit to be bathed in sunshine—finally, it was warm enough. It was our last afternoon before she flew back home, so we were savoring our time together. She reached down and showed me with her fingers where the pressure point was for her lungs, just below the bone at the ball of her foot. ________ That night, before anything happened, she had been sitting on a low wall looking out at the city lights. Legs crossed, flip-flops dangling from her toes. Her hair was long and black, wavy and parted in the middle. It was mid-January, but a warm night. 1972. She was a nineteen-year-old out on a date with her boyfriend, and she doesn't remember what they were talking about. They hadn't been there long, and it was nice out. [End Page 59] Earlier they'd been at a potluck with a group of friends, and when they'd left, Michael suggested they stop for a while at Mt. Bonnell, a popular overlook with a view of Lake Austin and the city lights in the distance. They'd never been there together before. My mother told me that when he first suggested it, she felt nervous. She was clear that it wasn't any kind of premonition—she never sensed the impending tragedy until it was upon them—just a general sense that it was getting dark. And of course good girls avoided places that might be dangerous at night. But she was with Michael, and he was a great guy: she was safe. She thought, really, that just being with a man meant being safe. It usually did. She and Michael were newly dating, but they'd known each other for a while. He worked as a manager at a natural health food store and was part of her tight circle of friends—mostly young, mostly college students, people interested in spiritual growth and love and peace. She and Michael had talked about marriage, and she thought she might spend the rest of her life with him. So she had a momentary twinge of fear, but it didn't last, and by the time she was walking up the stone steps toward the top of Mt. Bonnell, she was mostly calm and happy, enjoying the night. They sat and talked on a low stone wall with a perfect view. It was just the two of them up there that night, at least as far as they could tell. There was a parked VW Bug in the clearing, but no other people. And so, when one of her flip-flops fell into the dirt just below, she didn't reach down to get it. She heard it land with a soft thud and figured she'd just grab it when they left. Instead, they were soon interrupted by a voice in the dark behind them. "Turn around, and don't make any trouble." Two men, a gun. My mother was not the type of girl to make trouble. And she knew instantly that this was not a joke, not some kind of prank or mistake, no matter how surreal it felt. She would do everything they told her to do. Within a few minutes, one of the men was holding her off to the side of the clearing by her long black hair. The other man was standing by the parked...