The Ride to Jubilee

By Ellen Gibson-Adler

Born in an ambulance fleeing the disease and chaos of Tokyo following World War II, Nelle enters the world like a wild man riding bareback. As the daughter of a commissioned officer in the US Army and a courageous mother who is one of the first wives to join American soldiers in occupied Japan, Nelles young life is dictated by military orders that transport her family from Japan to Alaska to Texas and Louisiana. But it is not long before Nelle begins wearing the scars gained from an anchorless existence that erodes her foundation of stability and parental protection.

As her mother self-medicates her internal demons with alcohol and her father battles mental illness, Nelle emerges as a child who absorbs the strength and fortitude of parents now lost and wounded by war. She is nourished by a miraculous meeting of horses that impart the power to guide her through loss, humiliation, betrayal, and abandonment and embarks on a unique coming-of-age journey, in which she encounters people who recognize her abilities and set her life on a winning path.

In this compelling novel, a girls discovery of an ancient vessel and of a passion for the natural world restores order to her chaotic life and propels her to the ultimate redemption through the power of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480802117

Ellen Gibson-Adler

Ellen Gibson-Adler spent her childhood on the move as one of five girls in a military family. After majoring in Native American studies in college and being involved in two archeological digs, Ellen was influenced to pursue a career in public service devoted to the environment, citizen action, and public safety. She currently lives in Maryland.

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Prologue

I was born at latitude 35° north, longitude 139° east in the back of an olive-green ambulance on the first day of August when an unseasonable snow covered Mount Fuji. The nervous young driver from Yokohama sped in a panic, hoping to get to the army hospital in Tokyo in time, tires lifting off the ground as he raced over the bumpy dirt road. But no matter—my mother was brave, and I arrived in transit. I liked the ride.

After Japan surrendered to the Allies, my mother had sailed on the first overseas ship that carried the wives allowed to join their American husbands, who were soldiers in the occupying army. She was already pregnant with my older sister during that ocean voyage, but I was made in Japan.

My parents married in the jarring time of World War II, when the hopes and dreams of tomorrow were as uncertain and elusive as obtaining extra sugar. Beautiful and handsome and young, they clung to each other and made promises. He would follow his orders and she would follow him.

Michiko, our housemaid and caretaker, decorated the nursery I shared with my sister with four pictures of mounted samurai warriors. Michiko called me Uma, the Japanese word for horse. She told my mother that I came charging into the world like a wild man riding bareback and the name fit me. As I grew, Michiko could do little else but chase after me. I don’t remember much about Japan except for Michiko, but when I close my eyes I can still see those mounted samurai in gold and red robes, wearing horned helmets and brandishing swords, especially one, riding fiercely with outstretched arms, his chin high, face frozen in ecstasy.

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Chapter One

J ourneys never go in straight lines, or at least mine didn’t. When I recall Michiko’s singsong voice, I can still feel the cool silk of her kimono against my cheek. She took care of my sister and me, and our mother, too, who was not much more than a girl herself in 1948. Our father disapproved of Michiko’s influence on us, especially since she was Japanese, but since Momma preferred the company of the other young military wives over her rambunctious toddlers, it is no surprise we picked up Michiko’s language first. Daddy was relieved when we finally left the United States Army base in Yokohama and departed for a new outpost in the territory of Alaska. On our last day in Japan, Michiko presented my mother with a going-away gift. She had painted our names in Japanese characters on fine rice paper, which she rolled and tied with a black silk ribbon. My sister’s characters were more complex since she had two names to manage, Mary Ellen. Although I was also given two names at birth, Nelle Louise, I was known only as Nelle. Michiko rendered that in three simple strokes. At the bottom right corner of the paper, she wrote in tiny, wobbly script Sayonara Maggie and Terry Lyons and my girls.

Images, smells, and sounds came along with me like friendly apparitions. Recollections of our travels on ships and airplanes blend with memories of marching bands, men in uniform, cherry blossoms, log cabins, dog-sled races, howling wolves, and white clover meadows humming with hundreds of fat bees. I still traveled close to the ground when we arrived in Alaska, but it was where experiences started to take hold and clear memories remain. No more nursery for my sister and me, no crib, just a cold, unadorned room with a single small bed for two girls. Michiko’s samurai pictures on the wall of my room in Japan remained seared in my brain, as if she had passed on some message of future deliverance.

We did not know how big Alaska was, or how white or cold, or how crowded with bustling activity until we moved onto the army base. In 1951, my family did not have many choices. Orders came and orders were followed. I learned about captivity later, the emotional bindings that kept us constricted and apart from one another, building the pressures that goaded and hammered on each of us with the passing of time.

My mother became a mother in Alaska out of necessity. With no housemaid or caretaker to help her care for our new baby sister Christine, she washed, cooked, cleaned, and entertained us during long twilight days that amplified her boredom and loneliness. She sipped on liquor all day—her medicine, she called it—which made her silly by afternoon, when we had crazy adventures ice skating and stumbling through deep snow in the forest, calling out to wolves and bear. Our exploits left her weak and wasted by early evening. We giggled at her and clutched at one another when we watched through the front window as she scattered potato peelings to feed the moose that roamed into the yard. The neighbors complained, but she didn’t care and wouldn’t give it up.

She was high-spirited and inventive. When she took my sisters and me into her bed at night, she always had the same large children’s book that Michiko would read to us, with snow-capped Mt. Fuji on the cover. She made up her own stories about the pictures of lovely white-faced geishas and scowling warriors on horseback since she could not read Japanese. But for all her smart and funny ways, meals were sometimes forgotten, bathing was frequently ignored, and sleep would often come to her first. She was not good at taking care of us.

The military base provided certain advantages that helped to shelter us from the imperfections at home. After five years in Alaska, school consumed large portions of our days, except for Christine, who was not yet five. She spent most of her time at home. Mary Ellen read well beyond the level of other nine-year-olds, and I thrived by skating faster than even the stronger seven-year-old boys who were in my class. We had adapted to Alaskan lives, so the sudden news of relocation surprised us.

Daddy stumbled through the front door, stomping off the ice stuck to his boots on the small rubber rug. His long coat was covered with snow and his nose and ears were bright red. We could see nothing from the windows but the blindly white of whirling snow. The blizzard made travel almost impossible. He told us he was lucky to make it home.

He tossed a big envelope to my mother. She caught it and waited for him to take off his wet coat.

Pack-up time, Maggie, he said. I got my orders. He rubbed his hands together. No more days like this one.

My mother opened the envelope and pulled out the single white piece of paper that took her only a moment to read. So far away, Terry. Caballo, Texas. Of all places, she said, stunned.

Where’s Texas, Momma? I asked.

It’s where you’ll have cowboy boots instead of ice skates, she answered, and you won’t have to wear your snowsuit to play outside.

I was all for it.

She explained that would have our own house with a big yard instead of living in military housing, where families were crammed together in sparsely furnished apartment units. She talked of ranches, of cowboys and Indians, and of roping calves and shooting guns. I imagined fantastic sights and extraordinary places. Texas would be wonderful.

As it turned out, Texas presented freedoms in a way Alaska never could. The wide-open spaces of the small town we moved to, away from the military base, meant no one knew us, and the few former restraints on behavior were quickly unfastened. Living off base was disastrous for my father, though. He was increasingly unable to cope outside of the codes and regulations that had previously guided him. The drinking and arguing heightened, frequently becoming unbearable. While my mother was liberated from the protocols and obligations expected of military spouses, she also lost the small cadre of women who had kept each other intact during the hardships in Alaska. For me, the hot weather and open spaces meant I could get on my bicycle and ride, ride away from it, and Momma let me go. But in her isolation from other families, she let herself go too.

After school ended every day, I raced off on my bicycle, exploring the snowless terrain that seemed to stretch on forever. I rode without a shirt, standing up with my tangled hair blowing in the dry wind, pumping the pedals as hard as I could. I saw no need for a shirt on the unbearably hot days, and apparently Momma agreed. At seven, I appeared even younger than that. I was skinny and flat-chested as any boy. Only my long hair gave me away.

On one scorching afternoon, I rode my bike down to the end of the road where a big concrete ditch separated the neighborhood houses from the fenced-in pastureland. The ditch was too wide to cross over, so I stopped my bicycle at the edge, standing and watching him. Coal black and massive, the sun glistening off his shiny coat, the stallion grazed alone. His powerful body and graceful form stood outlined against the canvas of blue sky. Splendid and bold, he looked at me looking at him and delivered to me my dreams.

His dark silhouette grew as he ambled closer to the fence, toward me. I knew we both wanted to close the gap of the concrete culvert that separated us. In that moment, impossible to explain, the chemistry of friendship and affection flooded through both of us. Though fenced in by our different circumstances, we were no longer alone. My adoration of him soothed the worries I was too young to handle. I understood my new companion would give me something to look forward to, a destination to seek, and a sanctuary from home.

In those solitary moments when I watched him, he rescued me from my sadness and melancholy. I fantasized about other worlds across vast oceans with great, rugged snow-capped mountains and heard the echoing thunder of pounding hooves. My thoughts raced with visions of running in the midst of a galloping stampede. Though these were only dreams that filled my head, I knew with certainty that one day I would ride. The ride would take me away, take me to realms not yet imagined, and surely to a less perilous place where my eardrums weren’t pierced by angry shouting and my body didn’t stiffen with fear. I would ride away from the messy house and choking stink of cigarette smoke and rotting food stuck to dishes piled high in the sink.

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So different from me in every imaginable way, my only friend at school, Connie, was pretty and smart, and could draw as if her pencil concealed a magic wand. She came by it naturally, she said, but I decided she must have been born under a special star.

Her house was much grander than the other homes in our small Texas town. White wide-railed fences kept longhorn cattle contained in a pasture at the back part of her family’s land. Connie’s father was rich and drove a long black car that had big silver cattle horns for a hood ornament. I didn’t know why she had so few friends, since she had so much of everything else, but I believed her family’s abundance of riches had something to do with her unusual abilities. I had never known anyone who had so much good fortune.

Connie could pick up a pencil and produce flawless images. Perfection flowed from her hand. Whatever she pictured in her mind, she could put down on a page. She told me it was easy, but I never saw anyone do it the way she did.

One day at school during our third-grade art class, I asked Connie to show me how to draw a horse. She drew one quickly and perfectly, as if she saw the picture in my mind and just grabbed it right out. I took her picture and practiced for hours, over and over again. After some time, I could recreate a fair-looking horse, especially the head. I drew a good strong head with a flowing mane like my steed in the meadow. I drew this picture so frequently, my hand eventually moved with an automatic precision that required no thought. I liked it when someone commented that I had a natural talent for drawing, even though I knew better. Connie had talent. What I had was perseverance.

Man, you can draw! shouted a boy who sat next to me in the classroom, as he saw me filling up my blank page with horses and horse heads. Well, I really couldn’t. Only a horse. But I did not confess to that. Still, the praise made me feel good, and I thought Connie probably felt that way every day.

Several months after we settled in to our new home and established our lives in the small house with the garage and big backyard, removed from the proximity and standards of watchful eyes, a neighbor complained about me.

I could tell something was wrong when my mother met us at the bus stop. She never did that. She didn’t like the Texas heat.

As the bus slowed down, I saw her standing on the corner wiping the sweat from her forehead. She had Christine with her, who was still not yet in school.

Mary Ellen stepped off the bus first and walked over to her, taking Christine by the hand.

You two go ahead home, Momma said. We’ll be right along. She made me wait beside her until they were far enough away so they couldn’t hear.

What’s wrong, Momma? I asked nervously.

She gave me a crooked smile, running her tongue over her lips. You’re growing up … um, maybe growing up too fast, maybe too much a tomboy. Maybe you shouldn’t be riding all over the place alone like you do.

Why? I didn’t understand the sudden concern. This didn’t sound like her.

A neighbor saw you riding your bike alone and got worried about you, that’s all. Other children don’t do that. She means well, Momma explained, and we don’t want any trouble.

I didn’t think she was telling me everything, but I didn’t want to hear any more.

I hardly noticed our neighbors since houses were so far apart, a completely different setting from the apartment dwellings on the military base in Alaska. But I liked riding the long distance to Connie’s house, taking in the grandeur of it, and had no intention of stopping that.

Just days after that conversation with my mother, Connie’s mother shooed me away from behind her screen door when I tried to visit, like you would do to some kind of vermin. So I figured out she was the one who complained to my mother.

I could no more give up my exploring or tomboy ways than Momma could change her nature. She was not one to ask for help or advice. Her desire for privacy eventually led to a need for secrecy. She was tender and gutsy all at once, molded by her own upbringing, which I loved hearing her talk about when the mood hit her right.

While resting with her on the couch one rare quiet morning, I asked her if she wanted to go back home. I was too big for my hometown, she told me, stroking my back as I leaned on her lap. I had to get out of there.

Why? I asked.

"Because I was bored!" she exclaimed, tickling me.

But didn’t you miss your mother? I asked, through my giggles.

Turning serious, she responded, Of course, I did. We always miss our mothers.

Were you afraid?

Not one bit. Not me.

She meant it too.

I wished I could always have her like this. Funny and sober.

Momma was a pretty woman, with full, wavy brown hair and sapphire-blue eyes, her facial beauty flawed only by a large bump on the side of her top lip. It made her smile a little crooked and her expression a little sad. She got that bump in Alaska, though I don’t know how. I only remember looking up at her from the bottom of the staircase when I was three, and seeing her naked with a bloody face. She never talked about what happened and probably thought I was too young to remember, but I often watched her put on lipstick, frowning and stretching her lips as she spread the blood-red color over that bump.

She lost her father when she was eighteen, and I believe she lost some of herself too. Her father had been her anchor, and when he vanished she bobbed about, waiting for someone to throw her a life ring. Then World War II came, which she once declared to me had been the best time of her life. Her ship came in, as she put it. The war gave her the oars to follow in the handsome captain’s wake, a way to escape the painful reminders that surrounded her at home. She would proudly tell stories of how her father had wanted to write for the big screen and the famous producers of Hollywood movies. He would disappear for days in their attic in artistic fugues, and collapsed one day at the top of the stairs, drunk and dead. She said he died before he had the chance to become great, but she thought he had been great nonetheless, because at least he had chased his dreams.

In the early years, she didn’t complain to my father about the hardships she endured in her attempts to feed and care for the family, and he seemed not to notice. After Christine arrived and she was on her own in Alaska and then Texas, she became more overwhelmed and increasingly distant. She didn’t reach out for help, and mostly considered our neighbors nosy and unkind and irritating. Whenever we lacked something, she improvised or we did without.

Momma didn’t drive and had little extra money, so she prided herself on getting creative to meet basic needs. For some reason shampoo was always in short supply in our house. When she used Tide laundry soap to wash her hair, it bloomed like a field of bursting dandelion seeds. She couldn’t get a comb through it for days, but it stayed clean and shiny for a long time. I escaped her attempt to scrub me down with it by running out the back door. I was having none of that Tide.

As her strange and neglectful behavior increased, my need to shield us from it grew. If I can get rid of the bottle, I would think, everything will be okay. Sometimes the vodka would be in the oven. Since she did not cook with the oven when it was blazing hot outside, the familiar squeak of the oven door gave me my clue. For her, it seemed a secure and easily accessible place, while for me it sharpened my detective skills. We didn’t speak about it, but I think she realized I was the one who made the bottle disappear. I could see her upset, but she never said anything. She just tried harder to be more resourceful in hiding the next bottle. I honed my sleuthing skills through careful listening and thorough searching.

One afternoon when Mary Ellen and I entered the house after walking home from the bus stop, we found her sprawled out on her bed in a drunken stupor, her body contorted and mouth gaping open, her face an ugly mask. Christine was sitting on the floor surrounded by her blocks. I could tell from her red eyes and the smudges on her face that she had been crying.

I tore the house apart looking for it. I opened every cabinet, felt under every cushion, and stood on a chair to search the top shelves in the closets. I even stuck my hand inside our tall cowboy boots. While I searched around every room in the house, Mary Ellen tended to Christine, picked up the clutter, and made us sandwiches.

I looked glumly out the kitchen window as the sun set, then it occurred to me. I hadn’t looked outdoors. There was still enough light left to continue my search. I wasn’t going to let tomorrow be like today.

I walked the perimeter of the house and found nothing, but then I remembered an unfamiliar sound that had briefly caught my attention when I left that morning for school. It hit me. A perfectly inaccessible place, for me, she supposed. The garage attic. The last place I could reach or ever think to look.

Afraid any noise would wake her, I positioned an old wooden crate under the attic entrance and carefully stood on tiptoes to grab the hanging rope. I tugged on it, pulling down the metal ladder. When I climbed up to the top rung and warily popped my head up, just high enough to see the floor in the dimming light, I spotted the vodka just a few inches away. I carried the large half-empty bottle down the ladder and shoved the stairs back in place as quietly as I could. Securing