It is considered less risky to expose distant relatives in another state rather than immediate family members. By introducing strangers, he creates the impression that he is letting his partner into his inner world. His ego's self-protection is more important than his partner's safety.
I had been dating my boyfriend for about 3 months when he invited me to visit his relatives in another state. I was not sure I was ready to meet the family, but oddly enough, this wasn’t his immediate family. His dad lived next door to him and they barely grunted at each other if they happened to be outside at the same time. I wasn’t quite sure what that was about, but I didn’t feel I knew MacGyver long enough to pry. Yet I was traveling to another state with him to see where he came from.
It was Thanksgiving and MacGyver was really excited to introduce me to his grandmother, the woman with whom he’d found much comfort and solace during his troubled youth. I was a little church mouse, from a quiet family with a severely conservative background. My boyfriend was half Mexican and came from a stereotypically large extended family; I was overwhelmed when it appeared he was related to half the town. My straight-laced upbringing clashed with his, and I was uneasy with their uninhibited ways. My boyfriend was a quiet one like me, so meeting his loud family was shockingly different than hanging out with him alone. But he promised me he would never leave my side, knowing how timid I was.
We arrived at his grandmother’s home and my body felt a sudden urge to bolt when I saw the entire house packed with strangers. I felt MacGyver’s hand reassuringly on my back guide me through the entryway and into the cramped little kitchen. He patted a seat at the counter where I sat on a stool, and he stood with a hand on my knee as we silently watched the mingling relatives. My boyfriend blended into the background, and I felt camouflaged by his body next to me.
“Hey, man!” a cousin clapped his hand on MacGyver’s shoulder. “How’s it going?”
MacGyver turned and nodded his head at a middle-aged man.
“Great to see you! Hey, this is my girlfriend Julie,” MacGyver said, turning to me.
“Nice to meet you,” I smiled, awkwardly offering my hand.
The cousin had bottles in both hands. Giving one to MacGyver, he neglected to shake my hand with his now available one, but instead asked me “would you like a beer?”
“No thanks, I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh,” he looked at me confused. “How about whiskey?”
“No, I don’t drink,” I repeated.
Trying to help me out, MacGyver said, “do you have some water?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
They made small talk and I became invisible. I was grateful for the hand on my knee, the only thing keeping me from escaping to a bathroom to hide. It wasn’t long before the cousin found a reason to move on. MacGyver spotted his grandmother and tugged my hand to pull me through the tightly packed kitchen where she was standing at the stove, stirring a pot.
When MacGyver touched her shoulder, she turned and beamed. After the little woman hugged him, she turned to me.
“I want you to meet my girlfriend, Julie,” he said proudly.
“How lovely,” she said with a smile. Her soft warmth radiated from her creased eyes and her gentle firmness transferred through her gnarled hands as they gripped mine. There was no mistaking why MacGyver was so fond of her. Without any words, she spoke acceptance and kindness.
“You’ve got to try her red chile,” MacGyver spoke, breaking my trance. He scooped a ladle full of beef out of the pot and handed me a paper plate. He had been raving about her cooking for weeks.
He wanted to talk with her, I could see, but it was loud and she couldn’t hear very well. So he told her he would return when things died down, and he guided me back to the counter where I felt more comfortable with a plate of food to keep me occupied. I didn’t drink, but a plate served the same purpose, keeping hands busy to shield me from strangers.
It was a long weekend of visits, going from one cousin’s house to another, meeting people whose names I immediately forgot.
“Would you like a beer?” everyone asked me upon greeting.
“No, I don’t drink,” was my standard answer.
“How about whiskey?” they always offered instead.
I was puzzled. Didn’t they hear me say no? And why did this exchange happen with every single new interaction? Each push of a drink felt like a superficial gesture of welcome.
Except from Rebecca. She was the cousin I liked best. And so did MacGyver. She was the one he grew up with that seemed like a surrogate big sister. Even though he already had a big sister. He told me that he and Rebecca both went to their grandmother’s house in the afternoons after school. They were both latch-key kids from different homes, on their own to fend for themselves. MacGyver’s dad had left when he was around ten, and Rebecca’s mom had died around the same age. Neither ever really wanted to hang out with the other kids who pretended they were fine when they weren’t. It was like there was an unspoken understanding of loss and unbelonging…and not really wanting to join the options available. Rebecca had a sweetness about her that reminded me of their grandmother. She neither inserted herself in the conversations of boasting whose kid won which award, nor did she flock to the kitchen to bring out trays of food to pass out. Like MacGyver, she blended into the couch, quietly asking surface level questions to whomever happened to sit down. She felt more like home to me: unintrusive and unassuming. I relaxed next to her because she wasn’t trying to fit in. She just was.
MacGyver’s 85-year-old grandmother needed to rest, so we left for another house to return when she was available. It appeared that MacGyver hailed from immigrants that had settled a valley of pecan orchards. The family may not have built a wealthy empire, but the roots were well-established. Driving along highways from cousin to cousin, we followed an irrigation system known as acequias that fed the orchards.
We came upon a stately home, newly built and only partially moved-in, and I was given a grand tour of this cousin’s pride and joy. A pool and jacuzzi in the backyard was entered upon through a roll-up glass garage-door that I later learned was modeled after the way bars are designed for patio entertaining. Indeed, there was a couple of cabanas on the deck. I was more interested in the tour the next day of the orchard with his uncle whose business that cousin was set to inherit.
The day after Thanksgiving, we headed to another cousin’s home who also lived in a mansion-sized stone house. The living area was empty except for the blaring TV I noticed was on at every location we’d been to. There was also a clutter of toys and games, mostly lit up and battery operated. As little kids ran around, the women were clearing food and loading up trash in bins from the earlier party. Other women were sitting around folding tables with newspaper ads, ordering Christmas presents from their iPhones. The men stood around drinking beer, talking about their hunting trips, antlers decorating every inch of the walls.
Again, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but MacGyver guided me into the kitchen where one of the women took me under her wing and asked “wanna beer?”
“No, I don’t drink,” I said, looking at my boyfriend with imploring eyes. He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort, took a beer, and silently joined the huntsmen. I felt like a little girl dropped off at the babysitter’s.
“You just haven’t found something you like, hun,” the cousin insisted. This was going to be the sentence I heard for years to come every time I turned down a drink. The main hostess poured me something fruity but I never took a sip. Somehow, “no” just doesn’t compute.
I was grateful when I finally got to sit across from MacGyver’s grandmother, just the two of us with the most important person in his life. Even with the Wheel of Fortune on TV in the background threatening to distract me, I focused on her voiced as she told stories of her youth. MacGyver showed so much interest in her history and asked her lots of questions, his grandmother volunteering far more than I’d imagine someone her age would be able to remember. I was so in love with his love of her that I barely noticed his lack of noticing me.
***
Two years later, I was back in the state for Thanksgiving. This time, MacGyver brought his 7-yr-old son with him to reuinite with his 13-year-old nephew. His son was confident and outspoken while the nephew was timid and shutdown. MacGyver’s sister was visiting a friend in town and was to meet up with us so we could drive her and her son three hours north to where they lived.
I sat in the passenger seat of the truck while the two boys played on their devices in the backseat with MacGyver’s sister between them. She was a functional alcoholic, but she wasn’t very functional that night on the road home. She spoke really loud and gossiped about the friends she had visited, and then she started talking about the relatives I’d met, her conversation all one-sided and condescending. No one was responding to her, so she started making fun of the game MacGyver’s son was playing.
“Mindcraft is so mind-numbing. Why are you even messing with that?”
“It’s fun. You wanna try?”
He shoved his tablet at his aunt.
“Hell no!” she shouted. “Video games are retarded, especially blocky ones like that.”
“No they aren’t!” he yelled.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” the aunt said. “You need to respect me.”
“Shut up!” he yelled back.
“You little asshole!”
“Sister,” MacGyver said. “Don’t call my son an asshole. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to pull over and you can walk home.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she muttered, taking another swig.
MacGyver slammed on the breaks on the dark abandoned highway. He got out, went to her side of the truck and opened the door. I thought he was going to order her out. But instead, he took her thermos from her hands and threw it into the weeds, slammed the door, and got back in the truck. He kept driving, no one saying a word.
Five minutes later, she started up again.
“Hey, precious Girlfriend, what’s your name again?”
I stiffened in the front seat but didn’t say anything. She pulled my hair.
“Oh, you too good to talk to me? Or are you mute?”
I looked at my boyfriend but his eyes were staring ahead, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Julia Roberts, isn’t it? Like the whore in Pretty Woman?”
“My name is Julie, not Julia.”
“Whatever, whore.”
“Don’t call me a whore.”
“Oh, yeah, you aren’t a whore. You would never sleep with my brother, right? Cuz you’re Mormon and a church girl would never do that.”
I ignored her.
“You think you’re so righteous, huh? Betcha never had a drink in your life!”
She pulled my hair again. I moved further away in my seat. I looked over at MacGyver, but it was like he wasn’t paying any attention. My heart was pounding. I’d never encountered something like this before. Why wasn’t MacGyver doing anything.
I connected my phone to the truck and scrolled through my music to play something soothing. Maybe I could drown out her voice and calm myself down. But picking Sarah McLachlan only made the bullying worse.
There was a snort in the back seat.
“Of course you’d put on church music!”
The 7-year-old boy laughed.
I turned the music up.
“Turn off this trash,” the drunk woman said.
The little boy laughed again. “Yeah this music sucks,” he agreed.
My whole body went rigid. My lips tingled. I didn’t look over at my boyfriend. I think I forgot he was even there. I was all alone, trapped in a truck in the middle of nowhere, being bullied by a drunk woman and laughed at by a kindergartener. I quietly turned off my music and stuffed it in my jacket pocket, made myself as small and still as possible, crumpled up against the passenger side window, wishing the truck would go faster.
Faster it did. He must have been driving a hundred miles an hour because we made that three hour drive in an hour an a half. MacGyver slammed the breaks in the driveway, jolting me back to reality. He stomped into his sister’s house, his sister stumbling after him, cursing and blubbering about God knowns what. The nephew gingerly slunk out of the backseat, but as soon as he made it to the door, MacGyver grabbed his arm.
“You’re not staying here tonight. Get in the truck.”
That night, my boyfriend didn’t say a word to me. We drove to a hotel where he got the boys their own separate room, and he and I stayed in another. The next day, he took his nephew home, and we went on our way back to Texas.
He never spoke of that incident. And neither did I. It was like it had never happened. Except that the underlying feeling of shame was palpable whenever he mentioned his sister.
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