to someone more deserving. The emotional cost, the tension and the anxiety, may be considerable. Such was to be the case with Truman, at any rate, and it is impossible to dispute his bleak and chilling judgment of his own mother: “she was the single worst person in my life.”
She did not hate him; if she had, he could at least have hated her in return, simply and unconditionally. Nor, though she continued to dump him in the laps of other people, did she really ignore him; if she had, he perhaps could have ignored her too. What she did was worse. She let him know that after all the years, and after all her battles to gain custody from Arch, she still regarded him with ambivalence: she loved him and she did not love him; she wanted him and she did not want him; she was proud to be his mother and she was ashamed of him. Her feelings toward him oscillated between polar extremes, in other words, and from one day to another, sometimes from one hour to another, he could not predict how she would greet him.
The loving mother, the one he had known in Monroeville, remained warm and full of concern. The unloving mother looked on him suspiciously, as if he were not her child, but the son of the father he so much resembled—and only a poor substitute for the boy she really wanted to have and at last felt she should have had with Joe. This mother could be cold and cruelly critical, eager to find and eradicate fault.
She often accused him of lying, and she worried that he might have inherited Arch’s inability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Joe tried to calm her, assuring her that all boys tell fibs, but she was not persuaded. Jealous of the monopoly Joe seemed to have on his mother’s affections, Truman was not grateful for his help either. Joe did his best to be a good stepfather, but Truman went out of his way to antagonize him, making fun of his Cuban accent, for instance, by repeating, like a parrot, every word he spoke. Joe took such affronts patiently; Nina did not. Both his lying and his rudeness to her new husband were mere irritations, however, normal annoyances she could live with. What truly bothered her about Truman, what she found embarrassing and intolerable, and what she could not accept, was something he could do nothing about: his effeminate, girlish behavior.
People in Monroeville had already marked him down as a sissy, and for almost as far back as his memory carried him, he had been aware that he was the subject of talk, someone both his parents and his Faulk relations thought they had to defend and make excuses for. According to his Aunt Tiny, Nina’s sisters refused even to let their children play with him because of his “sissyish traits.” As the years passed, the differences between him and other boys became even more pronounced: he remained small and pretty as a china doll, and his mannerisms, little things like the way he walked or held himself, started to look odd, unlike those of other boys. Even his voice began to sound strange, peculiarly babylike and artificial, as if he had unconsciously decided that that part of him, the only part he could stop from maturing, would remain fixed in boyhood forever, reminding him of happier and less confusing times. His face and body belatedly matured, but his way of speaking never did. “His voice today is identical to what it was when he was in the fourth grade,” observed one of his teachers many years later, when Truman was well into middle age. “I hear him on television or the radio and I recall him as a young boy.”
Yet no one was more aware that something was wrong than Truman himself. For much of his childhood, until he was nine or so, he found being a boy so demanding and burdensome that he actually wanted to be a girl. “I didn’t feel as if I were imprisoned in the wrong body. I wasn’t transsexual. I just felt things would be easier for me if I were a girl.” Any parent would have been concerned about such a boy. Nina, who had always
She did not hate him; if she had, he could at least have hated her in return, simply and unconditionally. Nor, though she continued to dump him in the laps of other people, did she really ignore him; if she had, he perhaps could have ignored her too. What she did was worse. She let him know that after all the years, and after all her battles to gain custody from Arch, she still regarded him with ambivalence: she loved him and she did not love him; she wanted him and she did not want him; she was proud to be his mother and she was ashamed of him. Her feelings toward him oscillated between polar extremes, in other words, and from one day to another, sometimes from one hour to another, he could not predict how she would greet him.
The loving mother, the one he had known in Monroeville, remained warm and full of concern. The unloving mother looked on him suspiciously, as if he were not her child, but the son of the father he so much resembled—and only a poor substitute for the boy she really wanted to have and at last felt she should have had with Joe. This mother could be cold and cruelly critical, eager to find and eradicate fault.
She often accused him of lying, and she worried that he might have inherited Arch’s inability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Joe tried to calm her, assuring her that all boys tell fibs, but she was not persuaded. Jealous of the monopoly Joe seemed to have on his mother’s affections, Truman was not grateful for his help either. Joe did his best to be a good stepfather, but Truman went out of his way to antagonize him, making fun of his Cuban accent, for instance, by repeating, like a parrot, every word he spoke. Joe took such affronts patiently; Nina did not. Both his lying and his rudeness to her new husband were mere irritations, however, normal annoyances she could live with. What truly bothered her about Truman, what she found embarrassing and intolerable, and what she could not accept, was something he could do nothing about: his effeminate, girlish behavior.
People in Monroeville had already marked him down as a sissy, and for almost as far back as his memory carried him, he had been aware that he was the subject of talk, someone both his parents and his Faulk relations thought they had to defend and make excuses for. According to his Aunt Tiny, Nina’s sisters refused even to let their children play with him because of his “sissyish traits.” As the years passed, the differences between him and other boys became even more pronounced: he remained small and pretty as a china doll, and his mannerisms, little things like the way he walked or held himself, started to look odd, unlike those of other boys. Even his voice began to sound strange, peculiarly babylike and artificial, as if he had unconsciously decided that that part of him, the only part he could stop from maturing, would remain fixed in boyhood forever, reminding him of happier and less confusing times. His face and body belatedly matured, but his way of speaking never did. “His voice today is identical to what it was when he was in the fourth grade,” observed one of his teachers many years later, when Truman was well into middle age. “I hear him on television or the radio and I recall him as a young boy.”
Yet no one was more aware that something was wrong than Truman himself. For much of his childhood, until he was nine or so, he found being a boy so demanding and burdensome that he actually wanted to be a girl. “I didn’t feel as if I were imprisoned in the wrong body. I wasn’t transsexual. I just felt things would be easier for me if I were a girl.” Any parent would have been concerned about such a boy. Nina, who had always
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