Ernie:. Ernest Borgnine
I was still a young man, my mother started having delusions that everybody was against her. She didn’t recognize family members from time to time. We understand this illness today; back then, we called it senility, even though she was only in her late fifties.
I think the worst of it was at the very beginning, when I didn’t know she was sick. My mother told me about my sister coming in late, that she must be running around like a whore.
I said, “Mom, you’re wrong. Evie has a job. She isn’t doing what you think.”
My mother would get angry and say, “No, no, believe me! I know what’s happening. I know what’s going on. She smoking, she’s running around.”
Well, I didn’t know what to do. My mother was so certain. When my sister came home that night—my father was still at work—I faced her. I repeated what our mother had said.
“She’s lying!” my sister said.
Hearing those words triggered something in me and—I’m ashamed, now, to say it—but I hit my sister. I really gave it to her, bad, slapping her around.
She cried “No, no, Ernie. I’m not a whore! Mom is wrong—she’s sick!”
That was the first time anyone had dared to say that, but some part of me knew it must be true. My sister was a good person. I felt sick about what I’d done and I held her close and begged her forgiveness—not just then, but many times since. She forgave me at once; she’s that kind of woman, generous to her bones.
That was the beginning of a long decline for my poor Mom. I can’t account for the onset of her illness at such a young age. I do know that her life had not been easy since our return to America. In addition to the hardships of the Depression and watching out that my Dad didn’t slip back into his old ways—his resolve was strong, but he was still only human—she had experienced great tragedies in her family.
Before we had gone to Chicago, Mom’s younger sister had married a gentleman in Hamden. I never knew his name. It was one of those situations back then when you had to get married. They had twins and then one more child. My mother worried openly to my Dad, at the time, that this was going to be a bad marriage and that something terrible would happen all through this family. She spoke of it almost like a curse was put on us. At the time, I had no idea what she meant, only that her voice and expression scared me.
Sure enough, the man that my mother’s sister married became violent, abusive, a real lunatic, and was put away by the courts. Feeling alone and hopeless, my aunt took her youngest child and committed suicide under a train. We had just returned to America and her two lovely, orphaned twins were left in the care of my mother.
One day, when they were about five, the twins wanted to go down and watch people ice-skate. My mother bundled them up nicely, gave them money to buy a snack on the way, and off they went. But there were no skaters to watch and, disappointed, they went onto the pond to skate themselves. The reason there were no skaters is that the ice was too thin, and they fell through. With nobody there to rescue them, they both drowned.
That tragedy weighed on my mother’s mind for the rest of her life. Shortly after the accident Mom came down with tuberculosis. She went to a Dr. Pakosta, a chiropractor, who was the only medical man we know. He actually kept her alive for a long, long time. But she was getting worse. She finally went to a doctor at New Haven hospital, a Dr. Posa. He told her she should pack up and go to somewhere warm like New Mexico or Arizona. Of course, she wouldn’t leave her family. She continued to work as hard as ever, on her garden, keeping the house white-glove clean, making sure her children were well cared for. She was sick on-and-off for sixteen years, her mental state deteriorating for a year or two before she finally passed away.
During that time, I often stayed with my Uncle Joe so that Mom would have one less person to look after. I remember my dad saying “Your Mom and I love you very much, but she’s sick and she’s got to have rest. She can’t take care of you the way that she wants to.”
I used to sleep in Uncle Joe’s attic, which I shared with a mouser that loved to cuddle alongside of me. Sometimes I’d find the cat asleep on top of my covers. One morning my Uncle Joe came to wake me and the place stunk to high heaven. You’d swear to God it was a skunk.
He said, “You peed the bed!”
Well, usually when you pee the bed it goes down. This was straight up. And my pajamas weren’t even wet. It didn’t make sense and I tried to explain that to him.
I said, “It must have been the cat!” But I couldn’t convince him and I got the reputation for being a thirteen-year-old bed wetter! I look back at it now and laugh, but it wasn’t a funny thing then because I had to go to the washtub and scrub everything till it was spotless and fresh-smelling.
One of the things that gave my mother a lot of pleasure during her waning years was her pet canary, Petie. She used to pull all the shades down and let the bird fly loose in the house. The canary would flit here and there and she just loved the sound of it. Unlike the cat, it always went back to the cage to do its business.
Anyway, one day the circus came to town and I was out bright and early. We used to earn some money in those days by helping to set up the grandstand seats under the seasoned eyes of the full-time roustabouts. I confess that more than once I thought about joining the circus and seeing the countryside. Does anyone do that anymore? I doubt it. Kids run away to the mall.
We carried all those heavy boards and, as in the old days on the farm, I was reminded about the importance of teamwork. When we were finished, we’d get two bits or so and free tickets to the afternoon show—never the sold-out evening performances.
I rushed home after doing all that hard work. I was tired, but I wanted to clean up real fast so I could get back and see the show. As I ran up the three steps leading to the porch, I could see my mother in the parlor, rocking back and forth on her chair. What I didn’t see was Petie hanging on the screen door looking out. As I hit the door and flung it in I heard a shrill, terrible “re-e-e-t.”
My mother jumped from the chair and screamed, “Petie!”
Without realizing it, I had dislodged her poor little bird and then stepped on it. I did not go to the circus that day. Maybe I should have blamed that on the cat, too.
One of the other activities that helped me become a man and reinforced the notion of teamwork was joining the Boy Scouts. I almost missed the boat on that one because—I kid you not—they couldn’t find a shirt that fit me. I only had a shirt that looked like a Boy Scout shirt, something my mother found and dyed. So I put my insignias on that and they let me get by with it. Joey joined, too, reinforcing the bond we felt.
I had thick fingers and I had a hard time making knots. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it. Score one for determination, another valuable life lesson.
I did pretty well in scouting. I was just one merit badge short of becoming an Eagle Scout. More than anything in my formative years, scouting taught me how to be a man—self-sufficient and observant. I used to pay very close attention to what the scout leaders told us about the stars, about nature, about survival. I learned how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together, I learned how to cook food in the wild and how to make a crude lean-to as shelter. After a year or so I became the Assistant Scoutmaster of the troop at St. Anne’s Church. It was wonderful. I’d take the new kids on twenty-mile hikes and share everything I’d been taught.
Scouting also changed my life in one very significant way. It happened when the Boy Scout circus came to town, the year after I had accidentally flattened poor Petie. My troop then, Longhouse Troop No. 12, was asked to participate as circus clowns. I came up with a different idea. I put on my father’s long winter underwear with a smudge of mustard on the backside. I had a big bottle and a bib around my neck and I ran around like a little baby, wailing, “I want my Momma!”
Well, when I did that in the center ring, it brought down the house. The next year they insisted that we do it again. This time, though, I changed the act. I sat in the lap of John Murphy, the mayor of New Haven, something I would never have done as “myself.”