Safe House

Her voice was the sound of honey poured over gravel. It was the most beautiful voice I ever heard. I still think about her and wish I could hear her just one more time outside my mind.

Anne would play her old beat up guitar and sing for us in her little white safe house on the side of a steep steep hill in Lower Lake California. Mom told me she had gotten a full ride to Juilliard but turned it down to be a Jehovah’s Witness instead. When I was older I realized what that meant and wondered why she gave up that opportunity for a life of austerity and insanity. Details I will never know.

Her house was where I first experienced a luna moth sweeping by me on a warm summer night. All pale celadon and furry feelers filled with magic. We watched her giant wings resting on the tree for as long as the moms would let us before shooing us into bed. 

Anne’s house was a sanctuary of pandemonium, stacked with clothes on all the surfaces, used furniture that mostly worked, filled with dogs, kids and fun. It served a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and pasta. She would cook and talk to me while I washed and Twila dried. Her voice kept me sheltered. I can still hear her very loud loud laugh in my mind. I have never heard another laugh that was even close to the pitch of her deep resounding lyrical burst of joy. 

After living in hiding with another family for 6 months, to save money, Mom and I had moved to West Virginia in March of 1981 or 82 depending on which set of hand written notebook paper moving records you check. We were running from mom’s abusive ex who threatened to kill us, left gifts on our doorstep, & had been stalking us for three years. By June he found us so we traveled back to Northern California via Greyhound bus for three days and nights trying to hide again. Move and hide, move and hide, move and hide.

We live with Anne for the summer. Mom’s best friend Cherie came in July. They both work nights sorting pears on big conveyer belts at the sheds and sleep during the day. For those months I am Anne’s daughter. Saved from my own mothers hurled anger. 

Somewhere a long time ago there was a cassette tape that traveled with us. The only recording of Anne singing  that we had. I treasured that tape. The familiarity of a voice that curled home around my shoulders. I could feel the baking heat and see the laundry drying on the line outside her house, in her lilting lullabies. 

All three of these mothers had left abusive marriages. Trying to navigate the 1980’s standards of a world designed to ignore the men who beat their wives. A society that turned their heads and hearts away from these rebellious foolish women who wouldn’t just stay put and be grateful for the breadwinner. Safe houses weren’t common. So these women found each other. Took care of each other and their children together. Took turns being mom. Out of necessity.

In those moments though, I was just in the chaos of six kids living in one house, very quietly during the day so that two moms could sleep and one mom could do laundry and manage us. Kids finding magic in endless hours playing in the red dirt desert hills scorching heat. 

Linear time isn’t real for me. I know we lived there longer than just those three months of summer that year. That lifetime gave me a pocket of refuge, and a haphazard family full of joy. A voice full of deep rich laughter that sang me to sleep. 

Anne, thank you for your safe house. I wish I could have told you how much it meant.

Postscript: I have been trying to find Anne or her kids online now for many years. I learned of her death this morning and decided it was time to post this piece I have been sitting on. Here is a photo of her that I finally found online.