Theresa Darlin'

The game happens at wedding receptions. The bride and groom choose eight people, give or take a few, to partake in a dance competition. The competitors are called out, one by one, onto the stage and asked to place a paper bag over their head before dancing commences. This is to ensure that there will be no cheating. No move stealing. The DJ yells go and everyone begins flailing arms, shaking legs and jiggling bottoms. It's supposed to be a lot of fun.

Things didn't go exactly as planned.......



My younger sister was born in 1984. My parents named her Theresa Darlene Brookbank after both of her grandmothers. She hates her middle name because it is reminiscent of "darling", which she believes could be easily confused with any number of other pet names. Theresa Sweetheart Brookbank. Theresa Honey Dumpling Brookbank. Theresa Cookie Brookbank. When talking to her or shouting out for her attention in a large and crowded room, I'll usually go for the shorter, more concise T, Teets, Hog Teet or T-bag. When we were children, three and four, four and five, Theresa would call me Boy. It was a child's nickname for a person who's name she couldn't quite seem to grasp. It wasn't nearly as colorful as the code names I had chosen, but it certainly got the message across in the simplest way possible. It immediately let you know who she was talking to and what gender they were. The only confusion I thought the name held was my ethnicity. I constantly felt as though people were looking around for the black slave that was put in charge of this young white plantation heir. She'd stand at my side, six inches, a foot shorter than me, whispering my name, never talking louder than a mouse fart, trying to get my attention, needing me to do something for her, "I need a spoon........." or "tie my shoes.........." or "get me water.............". It was very easy to look over her if a dog was barking, a siren was passing or the wind was merely blowing. She was just a very soft spoken child.

In public, my sister would stand next to my mom, never getting too far out of sight and if she needed something and there was anyone around, it was imperative that she whisper directly into my mother's ear. As she got older, what we all thought was being "soft spoken" became full fledged shyness. Once she was four and five, if you needed to ask her something and weren't in our immediate family, she would bring up her forearm and cover her eyes, trying to stick her head in the sand like a human ostrich. The answers she held for you, the keys to your clues, were locked up tight. There was no use trying. You could tie her up, hang her upside down and stick bamboo shoots under her fingernails. She probably wouldn't even scream because it would be considered too much of an extrovert activity.

Elementary school began and Theresa's condition had now turned from "being shy" into a full blown "condition". At the start of kindergarten, my mom ends up mailing a letter to the teacher, informing her that Theresa was indeed just "exceptionally shy" and not "mentally ill". My mother tells her that Theresa will just sit at her desk and listen, she won't say a word, not even if she has to go to the bathroom. She'll just sit there and develop a bladder infection rather than speak. The school probably could have enrolled Theresa in some sort of special education program designed for children who didn't know how to speak and it's very likely that our family never would have known about it. Theresa merely would have continued to attend school, sitting in the back of a class filled with handicapped children and listen while the teachers and teachers aides tried to teach these six and seven year olds the alphabet and how to count to ten.

It's first grade and Theresa gets a bloody nose. Maybe it just happened. Maybe it's really dry in the classroom. Maybe she forgot to breathe. Crimson driblets are pulsing slowly down her face, making her nose look like a leaky faucet from the Amytiville House. In real life she doesn't raise her hand. In her imagination she does and twenty some children turn their soft, white cherubic faces in her direction, staring at her like porcelain dolls. They all watch and none blink. They are the judge, jury and executioners of the school. They weren't friends with her but they could judge. They could think. They could wonder. She could go to the teacher's desk, but that would require interaction, talking, speaking and all she was really capable of was grunting for yes and hissing for no. Plus all the children's eyes - their black glass eyes watching her step by step up the aisle. What if they all pointed? What if they all laughed? Would the teacher join in? What would she do? Run out of the room? To the bathroom? Down the hall? Home? These options couldn't even be considered. Drastic measures needed to be taken.

She opens her desk and finds her box of Kleenex. As children, kleenex were always on the list of school supplies we had to buy. Pencils, notebook, ruler, kleenex. Hey, everyone has to blow their nose and for the kids who didn't actually enjoy eating the glue (like my wife did) we actually preferred to wipe it off on something. So Theresa grabs the box and blows her nose into it, turning it from a virgin hanky into a used tampon. She shoves the kleenex towards the back of her desk and grabs for another one. She continues this process, desperately trying to plug the problem, trying to remain quiet and inconspicuous among the enemy. It is always the person who wants to be noticed least that will be noticed most. When you are trying to sneak around, you look suspicious and people become interested. I picture her lifting up her desk casually and then desperately shoving her fingers into her nose, rolling them around the cartilage, trying to mop up every drip of this catastrophe before someone notices. I picture her peeking her eyes up over the top of her raised desktop and glancing around. i picture her feet hanging a few inches above the floor, the toes of her saddle shoes tapping up and down nervously. I picture the kids slowly getting one another's attention, pointing at her. I picture the teacher sitting behind her big wooden desk thinking, "Maybe I should enroll her in Special Ed...."

One after the other her kleenexes are stacking up, starting to form a big red pile behind her school books when finally, as bloody noses do, just stops. She lowers her desk hatch, never raising her eyes, never looking at anyone and just begins to read.

As she gets older, the problem does anything but solve itself. During church, at communion when everyone stands up and walks down the aisle to receive the bread and wine, Theresa just stays seated at the pew, watching as everyone else heads down, one at a time. She looks at each and every one of them and thinks there is no way anyone will be looking at her. She begins taking jobs that allow her to avoid the public eye whenever possible. First she gets a newspaper route that requires her to work at 4am before the vast majority of people are out and about or even awake. When she needed more money she got a job at a fast food restaurant, requesting that she stay in back and never ever under any circumstances work the register or the drive-thru.

I'm over at her house one day and hungry. I get up to get some food from the fridge without asking. These are the things that make family. You can say anything at anytime. You have the liberty of searching through anything they have sitting out and you don't have to ask when you want some food. You just get up and open the fridge and open the cupboards and take whatever you want as long as it doesn't look too expensive and you eat it. So I walk into her kitchen (she's living on her own, alone now) and I open up the refrigerator and see a can of Bud Light, two slices of cheese and a box of baking soda. I open the freezer and find ice trays without ice in them. I move to the cabinets, sure I'd be able to at least drum up a few old bread heels for a dry cheese sandwich. No. There's some canned spinach and some chocolate syrup. I sigh and grab the spinach, asking her if I happened to miss the butter. "No", she says, "I don't have any butter". "Garlic salt?" I ask. If I'm going to choke down canned spinach, it can't be just plain. I'd rather starve. As it turns out she DOES have garlic salt. In fact, she has quite the supply of different seasonings. I ask where it all came from and she says, "Mom". I ask her if she ever cooks and she says, "Sure". I ask why she doesn't have any food and she says she doesn't like going to the grocery store alone. She says it makes her uncomfortable. I ask why and she says she doesn't know. She says it's just all those people, all of them around her, watching her. I try to tell her that they're not watching her but she politely disagrees.

I ask her if she's ever seen those Verizon Wireless commercials - the ones with "The Network" - the large group of people that follow the nerdy looking cat in the glasses around and she says yes. I ask her if that's, like, her worst nightmare. I say, "Imagine you're walking down the street and you just turn around and there is a thousand people just standing behind you, staring at you. Would you scream?" She considers it for a moment and then says, "Have you seen my new Chia pet? It's hair all fell out. It looks like it's going through chemotherapy". She gets up and puts on a hat, considers herself in the mirror and turns to me. "Do I look good in hats?" I tell her yes. She looks back in the mirror, makes a face and throws the hat on the couch. I ask her what she eats, how she eats and when, truly interested and just slightly concerned for her well being. She says, "Burger King. Every day. Dollar menu. Sometimes soup. Mom brings me soup sometimes."

I cook my spinach and she warns me that it tastes bad and is really old. I dump too much garlic salt in to try to mask it's natural flavor and take a bite. She's right. We go buy tacos.



I proposed to my wife while still in college and we got married after we'd both graduated and were living together in LA. We planned on doing a beach wedding and just saying that anyone who wanted to come could and anyone who couldn't make it didn't have to bother. It seemed like a pretty simple layout to us but our families, who ALL lived in South Dakota weren't quite buying it. They begged us. They tried to "reason" with us. They bartered with us. "If you come back to South Dakota.........EVERYONE that is planning on buying plane tickets to fly out will give you their travel money as a wedding present." We'd ask, "Then why don't they just use that money and come out?" Apparently that wasn't the point. We (my wife, mostly, I guess) planned the wedding from Los Angeles and when it was time to head back, we did. We caught a plane, flew into Sioux Falls, bought a car before the wedding day and planned on driving it back to LA for our honeymoon, taking a ten day trip.

I was the first one to arrive at the church on the day of the wedding. I showed up at 10:30, got dressed and ready by 10:45 and then waited. Jade's dad and brothers showed up next, then came my dad and then my friends. We were all ready and everyone came and went from the room the men were assigned as they saw fit. Everyone but me. I was trapped like some caged animal because I wasn't allowed to see my girlfriend / fiance / wife before the wedding. I had to pee and a five point security parameter was set up just so I could shake out a few drops. The groom's room doubled as a children's classroom on Sunday's so all the chairs were too small to sit on and I was afraid I would break the desks.

At 3:30 the reverend came in while I was alone and asked, without warning, if I was ready to head out in about five minutes. I nodded yes and felt like I was going to throw up and pass out, probably in the reverse order, ruining my tux. Where was everyone? Why was nobody in the room with me? Oh, that's right, they were all out having a good time at my wedding, enjoying each other's company, while I sat alone on a toddler's stool, looking like bad boy Baby Huey. The door opens and Jade's two older brothers walk in. Jordan has skin that is white like paper and a flaming red afro and is a year older than me. I constantly find myself staring into his eyes while he speaks and wondering what his pubes look like. Jarod is three years older than me, has a fit build and I constantly find myself staring into to his eyes while he speaks, wondering what Jordan's pubes look like. They enter and I'm relieved that I'll get a little pep talk before I go out there. "Good work. Don't be nervous. Just relax - it's your BIG DAY!" These are the things I've seen groomsmen say to one another on TLC and thought it was probably how it worked in real life. Instead they both corner me and say, "You have time to run. It's not too late. Your car is right out by the curb. If you leave now you can still make it." I am cornered and claustrophobic feeling and sweating and my stomach is in knots. I feel as though I'm floating through unreality. Maybe I'll wake up soon. The reverend opens the door and stares at the three of us in a way that suggests the older brothers were just finishing up a pep talk for the groom to be. "Good work. Don't be nervous. Just relax - it's your BIG DAY!". He stares at us and says, "are you ready?" and I exhale and say "yeah". Jordan and Jarod fall in line behind me and as we exit the room Jarod says, "There's the door...." and we pass the door and Jordan says, "It's too late...."

I walk my soon to be mother-in-law down the aisle and before sitting down, she gives me a big kiss on the cheek, leaving whorish lipstick marks on the side of my face. I have no way of knowing this so I just wander to the back, smiling, wondering why everyone I see is touching their cheek. I touch mine, thinking maybe I had a piece of toilet paper or crumb stuck to my jaw. Nothing. I ignore it and walk my mom down to her seat.

I'm standing at the front of the church and pretty much everyone I know is sitting in front of me. I look out into the crowd and think how small it is. Surely most of the people I know just didn't show up. Shouldn't this place be packed? The bridal march begins and all the couples walk down - my cousin with Jade's best friend, the girl who introduced us with Jordan. My sister with Jarod. Theresa looks like she's holding it together alright but I briefly wonder what's going on inside her head. Is she as nervous as I am? All these people staring at her? Is she about to bolt? Is she having cold feet? I wonder if all the anxiety I was feeling in the back room was being shared by my sister on the other side of the church. We smile at each other, both of us surprised that I'm getting married and then she's passed me, standing on the alter, holding her flowers in a death grip, praying to God that she doesn't pass out. Little does she know, I'm praying the same thing, trying to take the only real advice Jarod and Jordan DID give me. "Don't lock up your knees. You'll pass out." I keep trying to squat a little, trying to keep my knees cocked just slightly.

Silence. A song starts. Women know it as "Canon in D Major". Men know it as "The Here Comes the Bride song". Jade steps through the doorway and rounds the corner with her dad. A million moments in your life to redo and this one you only get once (hopefully). I try to soak it all up and in doing so feel a lump form in my throat like some cancerous mass. My vision suddenly turns to Ripplevision and I am suddenly horribly aware that I am about to start crying. I think of Theresa again. I think of her telling me that she's afraid to stand at the front of church for communion, afraid all the strangers will look at her. I think about how it feels to cry in front of everyone (is that really ALL of them) that you know. I force it back and it steps forward, reclaiming my strength.

A groom crying at his own wedding. How beautiful. Women like that, right? I suppose so. My aunt sees me and smiles and I think, "Okay. Everyone thinks it's precious. I can deal with precious". Then my aunt nudges her sister and her sister nudges her sixteen year old daughter and they all start to snicker. I suddenly realize that many people are glancing at me, looking at me, watching me, wondering if the tears are going to spill over. I tilt my head up towards the ceiling and squint. I pretend I have something in my eye. I rub it out and now I'm certain my eyes look red. Jade is suddenly standing next to me and so everyone is looking at us - the beautiful bride with her sobbing, weeping man-baby. I quickly turn around and drag her up the steps, carrying us away from all those people staring at me. I rub my eyes again and turn myself away from my sort of brother-in-laws. My back has been to them the entire time and they know nothing of my little breakdown and I'd like to keep it that way.

We get to the vows and the reverend says, "Repeat after me. With this ring......." and I try repeating it but am crying and I have to stop and stare at my feet, trying to gain composure. I look over Jade's shoulder, to my sister, who is smiling but I realize that it is a friendly smile and not a smug one. I finish my lines like an actor on a stage and am instantly awarded the Longest Time to Repeat Vows award. Next is Jade and she starts off okay but then breaks down and I'm not sure which is worse, crying alone or crying together. Her crying seems to be setting me off, making it impossible for me to stop. My sobs have become uncontrollable and I feel helpless. I want nothing more than to just have my face be dry and why am I SO HOTTTTT? Jade tries slipping my ring on my finger but I've gotten nervous and when that happens, my fingers bloat up like chubby little sausages. I don't know the exact science behind why or how this works but I believe it has something to do with an evolutionary cause and effect. She pushes the ring down to the top of my second knuckle and then just stops, not able to force it. I stare at my ring finger and realize it looks like it's wearing a golden belt.

The reverend finishes up his message, marries us and we turn to face everyone. The tears suddenly stop and the clouds part and the day is sunny. As it turns out I will be able to walk out with a shred of dignity. We take a few steps down the alter and a violent spell wipes over me and tears begin streaming down my face. If I were wearing mascara I'd have looked like Tammy Faye Baker, I'm sure of it. I grip Jade's hand and we run down the aisle, salty tears streaming out behind us.

We hide in a back room, waiting for the guests to exit the church so they can throw confetti at us. Jade tells me to take off my ring and look inside. I do. She has engraved, "We're Not Gonna Make It" around the center. "Oh, WOW!" I say. We go outside and everyone is waiting for us. I take a few steps and one of my cousins throws a handful of confetti at me. It lands and rests in the hollows of my ears and sticks to the dampness of my face. He disappears into the crowd only to appear a few feet down the line with another handful. Where was he getting this stuff? He threw another fistful at me and this time I'm sure he had mixed in a few small pebbles. I was pelted in the side of the head and something hit me in the eye. I wiped it away and was certain everyone was thinking, "oh great, here we go AGAIN".

Outside the reception hall we had a marquee made that read, "John and Jade - Tying the Noose". We went in, got our dances out of the way and let the party begin.

There's a game that happens, mostly at wedding receptions. A dance competition. But there's a catch. The DJ tells us to pick our eight people. He tells us to choose whoever we want and tell them what's going to happen. We tell them that they place a paper bag over their head and start to dance. They agree. But then we tell them that when the music starts, they just take off the paper bag and walk off stage, leaving one person, who would be my cousin and best man, on the floor, unknowingly dancing wildly and stupidly, all alone, while everyone cheered on the invisible contestants. We choose Thomas and Brett, friends from college. We choose Jarod and Jordan, Jade's brothers. We choose Anna, the maid of honor and we choose Lindsay and my sister Theresa, our bridesmaids and we choose Mo, my best man. We tell all of them, minus Mo, that when the music begins, REMEMBER, just take off the bag and walk away. When we tell Theresa, she is sitting at a table behind two empty bottles of champagne and four bottles of Bud Light. She says, "I don't wanna do that". I say, "You don't have to. You just stand there and then you walk off" and she says, "I don't have to dance?" and I say, "No" and she says, "Okay".

So the DJ stops the music and announces the competition. He says we've chosen our people and he calls them out, one at a time. They take their spots and are given their paper bags. The music starts and the dancing begins, sort of. Six people reach up and remove their paper bags. Brett, Thomas, Jarod, Jordan, Anna and Lindsay all wander from the floor to join the audience. Theresa, who should've joined them, still has a paper bag over her head, her hands on her hips, shaking her butt back and forth. Mo has his arms in the air and is doing what I'm sure he would call "The Lasso". Theresa begins gyrating her arms back and forth, imitating a train. Mo holds out his arms like a capital T and begins spinning in circles. He falls down and his bag falls off. He tries to grab it, tries to keep it on, but happens to catch an eyeful of an empty dance floor, minus Theresa. The DJ shouts, "MO IS DISQUALIFIED. HIS BAG HAS FALLEN OFF! PLEASE STEP TO THE SIDE MO. YEAH, BRETT! NICE MOVES! KEEP IT UP ANNA!".

And there's my sister, quiet and shy, standing in front of two hundred people, four hundred eyes on her, a paper bag over her head as she holds the ends of her dress up and kicks out her legs in a burlesque style gesture. She bends over and cha-chas with her boobs. She turns around and shakes her butt in everyone's face. She suddenly and without warning lies down on the ground and begins doing her version of the worm, which pretty much amounts to her lying on the floor, rocking from side to side. The DJ shouts, "OKAY! THAT'S IT! I THINK THERESA HAS WON THE DANCE COMPETITION! YOU MAY REMOVE THE BAG!" and Theresa pulls off the paper bag and turns around and sees, standing behind her, what basically amounts to the entire Verizon Wireless network, staring at her and laughing, but in a good way.

She smiles and quickly exits the stage, heading back for her table. She grabs her beer, drops it and grabs the bottle of champagne, tilting it bottoms up like the Titanic. She says, shouts, over the music, "WHAT HAPPENED???" Jade and I, laughing, try to explain. She rests the champagne bottle against her face. "WE TOLD YOU TO TAKE OFF THE BAG!" "THE WHAT!!???" "THE BAG! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE IT OFF!" "I DON'T KNOW!" she shouts. "WHEN DID YOU TALK TO ME?? WHEN DID WE TALK??"

People have begun pouring back onto the floor. Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" starts up and I grab Theresa's hand. "LET'S GO!" I scream. She takes it and I head out onto the dance floor with my sister and brand new wife.





EPILOGUE:

The next day we open all of our presents and neither Jade nor I ever see one red cent of that plane ticket money offered to us by so many desperate and devoted relatives. Oh well, that's what family is. You lie and manipulate each other to get what you want.