Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
I can barely remember the first time I gambled. I remember more clearly a time in my life when I went to Vegas a few times. It was almost like a routine with me and my mom. She lived in Needles, California. It’s a hoe-dunk town in the middle-of-a-nowhere desert on the border of California and Arizona. It suffers from the stifling heat that nothing grows under except the tan my mom had on the one arm closest to the driver’s window from her daily 15 minute drive back and forth to work. Mom took a supervisor’s position there. It’s hard for me to understand why she took this job, other than it would pay her more and she might get to retire early. She moved into a fifth-wheel trailer at a big camping park on the Colorado River to save even more money. And to live rent-free, she volunteered her time at night booking the in-coming campers in. So, whenever I came to town to hang out with Mom, we often scooted off to Vegas, a not-too-far drive away, and stayed in the traditional downtown Vegas at a casino called The Horseshoe. This was the home of cheaper rooms and two dollar steaks served from 11pm, a place we could afford and, with a little luck, we might come home with a few more bucks than what we started with. We usually played Blackjack. Mom liked Blackjack and we would often practice in our room and play during non-busy times, which were early mornings or early afternoons, when the locals and old-timers gambled at the two dollar tables. You had to know what you were doing or you messed up their odds and they would tell you so. Sometimes in the afternoons, after I’d had a couple of free drinks, I’d wander over to the Craps table, which was just a game of chance. You didn’t have to think. You’d pick a number and they rolled the dice. If you’re number came up, you won. If it didn’t, you lost. I liked playing Blackjack and games of chance, but if I ever got on a losing streak, I had a rule about how much money I was willing to lose. The minute I went over this amount, usually ten dollars, I would walk away. I couldn’t stand losing my hard-earned money, so I knew I never had to worry about a gambling addiction. The toss of a dice and the loss of a dollar together was too much to bear.
I’ve always liked spending time with my mom. We had always lived far apart since I was eighteen, so I would often plan a vacation with her or just come and hang out with her. I had no idea that my sister felt differently about spending time with my mom until a few years ago. Susan’s the type of person who holds everything in, quiet as a mouse in regards to important things, then will suddenly break, releasing an avalanche of hurtful truths, past regrets and anger…until recently. I noticed a change in her after we nursed our father through death; she began to open up. I think it was the passing of our father, of not having another family member she was close to, or maybe the mortality of our time left, but she began to tell her truths, to set things straight, to find her voice to the wrongs of her childhood. It wasn’t until now that I am able to see the start of her story. What was that sound? Was it the sound of silence that her heart could bear no more that prompted her to speak? At first it was light whisper, nothing you could actually make out as language, but I asked, “What did you say? Did you say something?” She spoke it so softly and then asked Mom to speak for her to the one who wronged her. When she told me that she asked Mom to speak for her, I called my sister, “Susan, you have to talk to him yourself. Don’t you see? He holds power over you until you find your voice. You must use your voice to take your power back.”
“You’re right Tami Lou! I’ve got to use my OWN voice….using my voice is taking my power back.”
It wasn’t much longer after that and Susan began to speak to us more, to share with us parts of herself that had remained hidden for too many years. She came around to Mom’s more often and did this and that for her. She often asked Mom if she could stay the night. The other day when I was talking to Mom and asked how Susan was doing, Mom said, “She’s an angel.”