A memoir--a fatal wounding

As my older sister and only sibling Lynda and I were growing up, it was always my mother who tried to get her to help or to be kind to me. Once Lynda babysat for me while our parents went out to dinner. Since mom usually cooked meat and three every night, Lynda and I were so excited about having chicken pot pies for our dinner that night. As she took them out of the oven, one slid off the cookie sheet onto the kitchen floor and was ruined. Lynda said to me, “I dropped your pot pie.” And the funny thing was that I believed her.

Then there was the time that my mom asked Lynda to give me a home permanent. My hair was fine and straight, and curly hair was in style in the late 50s. Both mom and Lynda had naturally curly, wavy hair. Apparently, Lynda left the rods and solution in too long, and the home permanent fried my poor hair into permanent frizzes. My hair was ruined, but nothing could be done, but for me to endure for weeks/months to come. Lynda didn’t say nor act as if she were the least bit sorry.

I remember two incidents where my sister accused me of stealing from her--once when I was in middle school, she tattled to mom and dad that I had stolen an ink pen from her. Still later after she married in college at age 20, I, at 16, went to visit her for a few days. As I was leaving to catch the bus home, her husband had me open up my suitcase, saying that I was stealing the record albums in my suitcase (that my sister had actually loaned me). I was shocked and embarrassed and hurt. Later, I realized that Lynda had told him that I was a thief.

Then there were my eyebrows, which when I was in middle school had begun to grow across the bridge of my nose. One night at the dinner table, my mother asked my sister if she would show me how to pluck them properly. To which Lynda responded that it didn’t matter if I plucked my eyebrows or not, that I “was so ugly that plucking would not help me.”

Here I am in early high school, swimming in a local lake, sans hairstyle, sans makeup, etc. 

What I don’t recall is my parents’ reaction to her hurtful remark. I don’t remember that they said or did anything. I envision silence around the table, almost as if they agreed with her assessment of my looks. The sad thing was that I believed her.

Still later at a country club dance when I was a freshman in high school and my sister a freshman in college, we were both dressed to the 9s for the dance. A young man came to our table where I sat with my parents (Lynda was dancing, and I so wanted to dance.), and he said, “Your other daughter is so pretty.” Then he looked at me and said, “Ooopps!”

You see my sister Lynda looked like my pretty mother, and I--I looked like my father’s family, whom by then my mother decidedly did not like and had voiced her dislike of them quite often. She also thought that the Drawdy women were not pretty women.

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Here's a picture of me at a dance as a freshman in college--circa 1967. I now disagree with my mother: The Drawdy women are pretty women!

The question remains:  Why didn’t my parents--my mother especially--protect me from such blatant cruelty?  Why didn’t she take me aside and tell me that she thought I was pretty? I do not remember her ever contradicting Lynda’s nor the young man's hurtful remarks. I do not remember my mother ever telling me that I was pretty.