Red became the colour of my gratitude

*Dateline Mississippi Gulf Coast, 1984*

It was late summer.  this, because we'd already had the eclipse. 

I was in the bath and Daddy was washing my hair, asking about my week. He worked away then, teaching welding in New Orleans. He'd been a welder in the Navy and was teaching his craft.  He listened to my idle chatter whilst he rinsed my hair. 

Suddenly, my mother appeared, her face molten.

'Peggy! What in the...are you okay?'

'Okay? Oh-KAY?' I remember her voice hitting new levels of anger. 'I'm doing your laundry, you bastard, and you want to know if I am OKAY?! I guess that depends if you're expecting me to wash these too!' 'These' flew through the air, hitting him in the face. He flinched, swatting the red traingle of fabric away.  The very red triangle of fabric landed Iin the bath beside. My mother turned and got a little wedged in the doorway, sobbing. My dad tried to help her; she shoved hi. away, shouting. 

'I KNEW you were up to something. The 'extra shifts,' saying you're staying at Carlos' but never being there.  You lying piece of...' He tried to interject. She screamed louder, their voices moving further down the hall.

I picked up the red sheee fabric. It fascinated me. I could tell it was underwear but it wasn't any underweark like I had ever seen.  Red with red lace. 'Trashy,' I would hear my mother say to her girlfriends. 

I suppose it was trashy. There was shop at the mall we walked passed sometimes, Fredrick's of Hollywood. They sold things like this, nightgowns with thin straps. Feather boas. We were shepherded quickly past this shop, as though it held a contagion. 

I suppose it did: desire, sexuality, the flip side of the Madonna/Whore complex.  Obviously, I longed to go in.  I think even then the world's rules baffled me. Why was it okay to wear a leotard or a bikini on stage but not a beautiful red pair of underwear. 

I got myself out of the bath, drying off and wrapping my hair in a towel. I put on my pajamas: Carebear with red sleeves and white polka dots.  I dried the pretty red under wear off in the towel and debated what to do with it.  Even then, hiding things wasn't really an option. My mother knew all my secrets. She told me all hers. We lived each other pockets, ever since  she started getting out of bed again, after her miscarriage with my sister.  Some people said it wasn't really a baby yet but I saw it, in the toilet, after all of the blood. After they rushed her to the hospital, my dad leaving me with the neighbor's daughter.  Almost 7 months. Not long,  but ages away. She came home different, lost. I learned to make tomoto soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, how to turn on the washing machine.  I learned to stop complaining or asking for too much, in case there was more blood or worse.

My mother was pregnant that summer of the red thong- very pregnant. It had not been an easy road.  Is it ever, pregnancy? This baby, she was mad for, even before she knew him. And the desire to become pregnant had burned fiercely,  obsession. Once she was pregnant, she wouldn't let my father touch her.  They began to argue. 'You might hurt the baby,' she'd say. 

Then there was just more time away, in New Orleans.  

The crying and screaming went on for hours. Then the screaming stopped and just the crying continued. My grandfather appeared. There were clandestine meetings in lawyers' offices. 'Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you just can't divorce your husband in your condition. It's against the law.' 

'So is adultery.'

A few weeks later, she drove me over to my friend's house for a sleep over.  'Miss Laura and I will be back later.'  Miss Laura came back but Mama didn't come for me until the next morning. 

'What is all of this about?' Carrie asked. Carrie's Mensa-smart, was even then but emotions baffled her. 'I think it's about the red underwear,' I said. 

'Oh. I mean...can't your mom just buy her own?'

'I think it's more like that time So-and-So stole my hairspray at the pageant except that Daddy might be the hairspray.' I have no idea how I knew that, but I did. Carrie reminded me just a few years ago when we were talking about monogamy from where we stood now. 

My mom drove to New Orleans that night and confronted my dad and Michaela.  They met, talked - sort of. 'She tried to talk to me, told me how she'd heard so much about me, how much your dad loves me...can you believe that?'

The red underwear belonged to a woman named Michaela. Near as I was ever told, she looked like a shorter version of Annie Lennox with blonde hair. 'Short blond hair. Bleached,' my mother would say through clenched teeth. Which is ironic, because she frosted hers. The hours we would spend, pulling tips through the plastic cap, I cannot even tell you.  'Very physically fit. Learning to be a welder. And she wears makeup.' Cue a welling sob. 'If that's what he wants he should just GO!' 

It went on for a few months, these histrionics, made worse by the disappearance of their savings. A lot. Of. Savings.  It got worse for them, for a long time. And that made me sad because really, in the short time before my dad's lies came back to bite him in the ass, the arrangement worked for them, for this time when my mother couldn't fulfill that part of their contract.  I knew even then it wasn't the sex that had bothered her, not really.  It was the lying.  Then, one day, it got better.

In the meantime, began assessing my mother's underwear. I mean, not her pregnant underwear, that would have been rude. I noticed that her style moved between what I would now call 'demurely romantic' and robustly functional. Occasionally a bit of lace, or a pretty pattern. Mostly pale cream, pink, or white. Where was red? Red was trouble, I had learned and whilst I longed to BE trouble, I was terrief of being IN trouble. And that, for me, was the first conscious shift to conditioning I remember making.  Good girls go to their etiquette and elocution classes. They don't wear red.  Good girls don'r smoke standing. Good girls don't....

I began to wonder about other colours, options and then I just stopped thinking about it for a few years. When I returned to my sexual self, I opted for a similar line of demure but I had a special drawer for the items I would buy (or shoplift, because nothing says 'middle class teen girl in crisis' like a healthy shoplifting habit.) Black, lace, leather, an array of colours, styles. Some, I would never wear, just caress. I began to collect, with a more serious eye, toyed with the idea of focusing on historic lingerie, as if that would be a hobby - I didn't really consider myself talented enough to be a costume designer.  But I have a good eye and when I see what I like, I just know. 

Very occasionally something that included red, but never just plain red untiI I found the most perfect thing: a red bralette and girdle by Gossard.  Goddamn, I love this garment.  I love it so much.  It's just the just the right red for me, too. And though it is nothing like Michaela's thong,  it is something that stirred that same excitement, power and curiosity in me.  And that is how Red became the colour of my gratitude to my dad's girlfriend.