Read The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir for Free Online

confused and was sleeping on the couch, or why they weren’t speaking to each other. Then one day my father moved out and into a one-bedroom apartment where all four of us kids often spent weekends camped on the recliner, two or three chairs pushed together, as well as the kitchen and living room floors. I remember trying very hard to rein in my emotions and not do anything that would upset them further or add to their problems. I just wanted to make things better, but this was one situation over whose outcome I didn’t really have any control.
    It wasn’t until many years later that my mother told me they had never really learned how to communicate their needs toeach other. I believe now that there was never any one precipitating event, but that my mother was simply harboring a lot of resentments they’d never discussed. By the time my father was aware of it, it was too late.
    After the divorce, my mother went back to work full time and we became latchkey kids. We returned from school every day to a house that was empty except for our animals. Needless to say, the house was a mess, and so were our lives. No matter how much newspaper we put down, we’d wake up in the morning to discover that the dogs had relieved themselves all over the rug. We did our best to keep things clean, but we were just kids, and Mom invariably came home to find the sofa stripped of its cushions and the four of us hiding in the “fort” that we’d made. “Jeez Louise,” she’d scream as she walked through the door. “You kids are driving me crazy!” But she never punished us. I think that because she had been brought up so strictly she never wanted to put the same kinds of restrictions on us, but she was exhausted and overwhelmed, and she just wished we’d work with her to create some kind of order in our lives.
    Much as I loved playing with my sisters and brother, and was certainly part of the mess, I hated seeing my mom so unhappy and I wanted her to be okay. As a result, I began taking it upon myself to create order out of the chaos. I became hyper-responsible and began ordering my siblings around, constantly telling them to pick things up and clean up after themselves—to the point where they started to respond by saying “Yes, Mom” or “Yes, boss.” Because I felt such a profound sense of responsibility foralleviating my mother’s stress, I hated it when the others seemed reluctant to get with the program. I could understand why they might resent obeying my orders, but that didn’t stop me from issuing them. In truth, the chaos was getting to me, too, and bossing around my brother and sisters was just my way of exerting some modicum of control.
    Besides the pleasure I found in my classes with Sheila, the one activity that gave the whole family a bit of happiness and a break from our never-ending squabbles was horseback riding. Ever since she was a little girl, riding had been my mother’s greatest love, and now it was something we could all do together. Being on horseback and being in the studio were the two places where I felt happy and that I belonged.
    That said, however, accidents happen. One day when we took a trail that went around the golf course near the stable, the horse I was on got hit in the foot by a golf ball, which caused him to buck and rear, throwing me off his back and into the air. I landed on my ankle, spraining it badly. For some reason the doctor I went to put me in a cast and I was unable to dance for the rest of the summer. When the cast finally came off, the arch on my right foot had flattened out and the foot had stiffened up so that I would never again be able to point it as well as my left. That foot would give me trouble for the rest of my dancing life.
    My favorite pony was Gent, a chestnut with a black mane and tail and white spots on his back that gave away the tiny bit of Appaloosa in his gene pool. He stood just under