The Acknowledgement

By Ercell H Hoffman

The Acknowledgment is a sensitive and uncompromising novel about a young girl, Gitta, and her struggle for sanity and happiness. It is a tale of passion and deceit. It is also a story which clearly defines mental illness... it's half created, half real tensions. The reader gains a sense of the fine line between mental health and mental illness,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ercell Hoffman Publishing
• Release date: Feb 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958920374

Book preview

To Bonnie, Cynthia and Lisa, with love.

Introduction

It’s funny, how you live each day in a kind of daze, as though it doesn’t mean much. After all, you think, it’s just like the one before.

Then one day, or hour — or perhaps it happens in a fleeting moment: you wake up and take a look around... You discover that it’s late, much later than you thought.

You begin to count the days behind you and match them with your achievements and you discover how much time has been wasted. You feel nauseated because you can’t go back and make it up. You have to start from that moment of awakening. You realize there’s a lot of work to do, and that it will be hard — you don’t have much time. So you try to rush the days.

You work on a job. You’ve been there five, ten, maybe fifteen years. Only now do you realize why you’ve been so tired when you leave that job at the end of the day, and so unpleasant when you go home. There’s no hope of advancing there, not ever. And you had begun to accept your lot... That was before the awakening. And even now, you’re not sure of the future or what it holds for you. There’s no guarantee that you’ll succeed in whatever you attempt. But the thing that makes you move is the fact that if you don’t, you’re bound to fail.

You’re alone. There are just a few people in the whole wide world who have an interest in you... You love those few people and more than anything you can think of, you want to see them happy. You want their lives to be meaningful, fulfilling, rewarding... They’re your children. But you can’t live for them, and that’s good. Perhaps they will know better than you what’s good and right for them. Perhaps they’ll awake much sooner than you. So you wish them your best and do all you can to guide them.

You feel the weight of a great load, and you wonder how you’ll carry it. A still voice within says, Don’t worry, things will work out.

You do what you can, as quickly as you can, time being a factor. You start your journey, and within, you feel glad, eager. Even though it’s late, the fact is you’re now awake.

The Acknowledgement

The sun came out early. It was mid-July and Gitta. hadn’t slept for a single minute throughout the night. She had been lying there in one of the twin beds. Things which had been puzzling her for the past weeks were finally beginning to fall into place. She was anxious to explain it all to her sleeping sister Madeline, who shared the room.

The growing obsession that she was the heir of some Nobel prize and her true identity had been deliberately concealed since her early childhood became the center of her thought. Her fate depended on discovering who she really was. How she was to find out was the anxiety that plagued her.

The car, imported from England, her home, was not a coincidence but a design that offered a clue. She had almost taken over complete possession of it from her sister, Madeline, who paid the notes.

"No, no, no, that car is mine by inherited right! It is not favoritism on Madeline’s part that makes me the true owner .. . But how can I be related at all to her? My intelligence is far superior, not only to her but to all the rest who claim to be my sisters and brothers... But how is it that I look like them?... Yes I do — why, my so-called brothers’ children could pass for my very own, we look so much alike... But how, why?... And Mother? Hasn’t there always, ever since I can remember, been something alien about our relationship? Why was everyone, including Mother, always saying how much I looked like Father?... Were they trying to make me feel that I belonged? Oh God! I have never seen that resemblance. That’s why I would only smile when people said that... What could I say? And because I had no answer and no reply other than a smile, they all began to say, `Oh, what a beautiful smile.’ Oh God! What have they done to me?

"Mother couldn’t like me... How could she? I remember that Christmas Day when she had me pick out one of the only two dresses which I had gotten, to give it to that girl at whose house Santa Claus didn’t stop. It wasn’t fair. I liked both my dresses —why did I have to give one to her? Who was she that she could take my things?

"I didn’t have a choice. Mother made me do it. And when I picked out my new dress I loved and said she could have it, Mother kissed me and said I was a good girl... and God loves good girls who help other people... But I hated that girl. She had no right to wear my dress. It was mine!

I remember all that Christmas Mother went around telling people how I had given that poor little girl one of my new dresses. I didn’t give it to her. She made me do it. But I couldn’t tell people that, so I just, smiled... and people would say what a sweet little girl I was. Before then I liked her. But Mother made me hate her. And I couldn’t stand to see my dress on her, never, never, never!

Gitta dropped into memories from her early childhood.

How could they have been her sisters? Why should they have tormented her with fear because she could not restrain herself from telling the truth about how those chickens had died? Even though they did give her any piece she wished... bribing her not to tell that it was not the hog that killed it, but they, because they wanted chicken for dinner. They told her the story carefully, exactly as she would relate it to Jessica and Louie when they got home. They knew that it was Gitta, the next to the youngest, whom Jessica, their mother, would ask what had happened. Because she, Jessica, could rely upon hearing the truth.

Gitta would stand with her plump face and figure, her eyes sparkling as they gazed directly into her mother’s, and, even with all her practiced efforts to tell the story as it had been told, she could not blot out what she had seen — her sisters, ringing the neck of that chicken. And she couldn’t look into her mother’s eyes and tell her a lie, even though she knew the following day would hold some unknown terror.

It was the barrel and the pond, which had both been there in the back of the house for as long as she could remember. The barrel which sat alongside the corrugated tin roof, placed there to catch the soft water whenever it rained. They emptied it and forced Gitta into it and rolled her to the snake-filled pond, because she had betrayed her promise and told the truth. Although they never really meant to drown her, only to instill the fear that the next time they would.

Madeline also had her way of keeping Gitta in line. She’d go into some corner and pick out one of the granddaddies, the spiders with long legs and a fat stomach, and threaten to put it on her. The sight of those things was so monstrous that Gitta would do anything, after she was out of breath from running, to keep her from putting them on her.

As she lay in one of the twins beside Madeline, she remembered the evening she’d pleaded to her father, that she really did know how to milk the cow. Annoyed by her presence, as he sat in his chair, his head supported by his large, widespread fingers while he talked to himself, unable to suppress a sheepish grin, he gave his consent. Glorified to gain his approval she rushed to the milk bucket and went into the cow pen where she milked the cow. Her plump young fingers wrapped themselves eagerly around the full tits of the cow, and that great sensation of hearing the sound of the milk fill the bucket overwhelmed her. She had practiced several times in the heat of the day when the cow found refuge from the searing summer heat under a shaded oak tree, lying contentedly chewing her cud. God, how she’d longed for a piece of the gum that that cow was chewing!

She’d nearly got a complete bucket full. She sat the milk carefully aside and untied the calf, impatient to get its mother’s milk. Excited to show her father how much milk she’d got, Gitta raced up the wooden steps, warped and slanted from age and neglect. She missed a step, tripped and lost control of the bucket she was carrying. Her father, awakened from his stupor by the noise, came running out with his jerky motions and seeing the milk spilled over the steps, grabbed Gitta up, shook her furiously and slapped her face, shouting in his high-pitched, excited voice and stuttering as he always did, telling her he’d known she didn’t know what she was doing.

She remembered the evening she decided never to eat again. Her mother and father wanted chicken that night for supper. That was unusual because chicken and steak were reserved for Sunday, when they might have company. Gitta had helped Madeline to pick the feathers from it. Her mouth watered with the thought of biting into it after it was cooked. She was hungry. When supper was finally ready, and someone held the platter before the father to select the piece of his choice, Gitta’s eyes landed on her piece, the wing. She couldn’t keep herself from taking it off the platter before her father was finished searching for the breast. That stare of hatred that her father gave her took away her appetite, and she felt no hunger, just pain.

Gitta vowed that night never to eat again. Her hunger grew, but her father seemed completely unmindful, not only of her refusal to eat, but even of her. When her hunger strike reached its peak, she ate again, with the full knowledge that no one really cared whether she did or did not.

As she lay there, unable to sleep, she decided that the folks she had thought were her parents all her life were imposters. She thought she had been taken in some strange circumstances away from her true parents and native home, which she had decided was England. That’s how it had all been. But her real parents had not forsaken her for they had seen to it that she drove a car imported from her home. That Hillman car had to be hers even though it was in Madeline’s name. It had been done that way to keep her true identity securely unknown.

Anxiously she awaited daybreak, knowing she was on the brink of a fantastic discovery. None of her problems were really valid. Her children she’d had from three separate strangers in whom she’d sought love — how they would eat and where they would sleep held no concern to her because somewhere, she knew, a fortune awaited them all, just around the corner. She refused to think of any of it — how she had reached her present state of crisis.

Madeline had moved in with her in a large, oddly-built house which she shared with her three small children. It was with a sense of relief coupled with dread that she had welcomed Madeline and her two sons, who were slightly younger than her own children and far less controllable. But the money she got from welfare on the family budget plan just wasn’t enough to last from month to month. So she had taken to babysitting for Madeline while she worked during the day, looking forward to the hours when she’d only be responsible for three children instead of five. Although Madeline couldn’t pay her much in money, when Gitta was really pressed for food she would bring over a large bundle of frozen chicken backs and necks, which she claimed never to have had a chance to use.

For the first few months, things ran smoothly. Gitta and Madeline showed no sign of conflict. Life actually took on a sense of excitement for Gitta for the first time. She and Madeline went places together, to night clubs and to bowling alleys. At the night clubs Gitta attracted every musician’s eye, even the most prominent in the jazz circle. Life began to really swing. She could look after the children the whole week almost without dragging because she knew each weekend held some new excitement.

Her first blow had come the morning she received a visit from her social worker. She had a job all lined up for her. Gitta was to report to work the following morning at the House of Tuna plant in the port of Long Beach. Gitta had graduated from high school and was taking night courses in an accredited business college. She’d always thought of going to work and had actually been planning on it. But the subtle demand in the voice of her worker filled her with a sense of apprehension, as she pointed out to Gitta that it was either the job at the House of Tuna or no income at all.

Gitta arranged the following morning to be at the plant’s personnel office by seven. As she approached the Pacific Ocean front, the smell of fish grew more persistent. A gray-haired woman with hard features was in charge. Gitta went to her and explained who had sent her there. The woman made a gesture and in a most impersonal voice told her the way to the dock on which she was to report to work, saying that uniforms were available and that the cost would be deducted from her first paycheck along with union dues.

At the end of the day Gitta’s head was in a spin, as she looked back on what had happened. She’d worn heavy black boots which reached up to her knees, long rubber gloves and a scarf around her curly hair. Only the soft baby hair showed around her temple and at the back of her neck. She could see the conveyor belt as it moved swiftly. Women lined up along each side, rapidly placing all kinds of fish, little ones and big ones and even rotten ones into the little slot, made especially for the head of a fish to be removed by the automatic blades which rose and fell as steadily as a heartbeat. With the conveyor belt moving so fast, there wasn’t much time to talk. But Gitta wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. The women who stood, alongside the belt all seemed to possess a certain quality which she had never seen before. Almost all were heavy set, and they looked natural in their boots and head ties. Many of them chewed gum. Suddenly one would speak out, loud and boisterous. They had no problem with communication. But to Gitta their mannerisms were foreign.

When the stern-faced woman from the personnel office walked down the planked aisle, sounding a loud whistle, everyone knew exactly what to do, except Gitta. The conveyor belt came to a stop and all the women seemed to rush somewhere. Gitta tried to follow the biggest group but they all split up into little ones, and she didn’t know which one to join since none seemed particularly inviting. The strong smell of fish was everywhere.

At lunch time Gitta followed a group of people outside. Heavy pieces of steel seemed to have grown from under the planked floor to make way for the shield overhead. There was a truck which carried an assortment of food. The women rushed to it and bought big, thick sandwiches. But Gitta couldn’t think of food. The odor distracted her and she was captured by the ocean which was a few feet away. It stretched as far as she could see. Although she’d seen the ocean many times, it was never that fishy. Before, she had never associated the ocean with the odor she was smelling then.

She walked alongside the shallow safety wall until she found a spot where the fish smell wasn’t so strong and opened a sandwich which she bought. As she started to eat it, it took on the taste of the strong odor. She wrapped it up, held it until she saw the women beginning to move inside again and threw it into one of the trash containers.

When the belt and the blades were running again, the stern-faced woman with the whistle approached Gitta. She told her if she wanted her job she would have to move faster. She demonstrated, taking each fish only by its head and placing it into the slot, never missing a single attempt. Gitta tried again, willing her hands to move faster and trying only to touch the head of the fish as she had seen it done by the woman.

The following day was a repeat of the first, only Gitta felt more comfortable in her high boots and head-tie. More comfortable but no more natural.

At the end of the second day Gitta was told that she was only to report to work if she received a call. The explanation was that they never knew when the boats would come in, but that she was always to stand by. Gitta was relieved, although the other women cursed and complained of the infrequency of the work. She was thinking that she might regain her appetite, and that everything even at home wouldn’t smell like fish if she didn’t have to spend every day at the cannery.

Three weeks had passed and the ringing of the telephone automatically signified apprehension to Gitta. She hadn’t been called to the cannery for more than two days in each week. It was Wednesday morning, just after eight-thirty.

Hello, may I speak to Miss Gitta Richardson, please? Yes, speaking, replied Gitta.

Miss Richardson, this is Mrs. Boulder from the State Employment Office... But first let me ask you, how is work going at the House of Tuna?

Well, things are pretty slow right now. It seems they haven’t been getting many fish on their runs.

Tell me, Miss Richardson, how would you like a different job?

Gitta’s spirit soared with the thought of not having to smell that fish as she answered, Oh, I’d love it!

Then, if you will report as soon as possible to Industrial Uniform Rentals, Miss Richardson, I think there’ll be a job waiting for you.

Would tomorrow morning be too late? asked Gitta.

Well, I’m not sure.... Is there a chance you could get there this morning, or no later than this afternoon?

Gitta did have a way. Madeline had been teaching her to drive the Hillman; and feeling sure that Gitta could handle it, she’d been going to work, taking Gitta with her and letting her keep the car in case she got a call from the cannery.

Yes, I could probably arrange to get there this afternoon. I have the children, but I think I can get a sitter.

Very good! answered Mrs. Boulder. Oh, and by the way, you’ll have to wear pants.

The place looked like heaven compared to the cannery. It was a large, square building, with big and little pipes on the top, with clouds of steam constantly pushing outward.

Feeling satisfaction mixed with uncertainty, Gitta entered the building. She passed a clock attached to the wall that read 2:15. Alongside a wall were huge machines, bigger than the ones she’d seen at the laundromat. To her right were both men and women standing, feeding clothes to fast-moving machines. Gitta could feel what seemed to be a thousand eyes following her. She caught a glimpse of a few faces; they all wore a mischievous grin. She stopped and asked a man standing at one of the huge machines if Mr. Hansen was in, the name the lady at the employment office had given her. With a sly grin he pointed around the corner. Gitta proceeded in that direction which led through a small opening into a larger room. An assortment of garments hung loosely from the racks and people seemed concealed in between and behind all of them.

Mr. Hansen met her with the same kind of impersonal smile as the woman at the cannery, and said that he had not asked for anyone through the employment office. Then suddenly he remembered.

Oh, you must be the girl that Burt sent for!... Of course, follow me.

Gitta saw faces stealing glances from behind shirts and pants on hangers. A strange feeling crept over her as she followed the man in the poorly tailored suit. They walked past rows of garments to