That Time I Was a Child Bride…
Of my own volition, too, but that's scant comfort.
Twice, I was a wife. Well, one of the two was legally binding, anyway. Ironically enough, the first was both illicit and the most ceremonious and expensive. The time I married my brother's step-kid after roommates turned bedmates, there was no requirement for signed parental permission when applying for the official marriage license. Although, there ought to been; let's be honest! No guests were in attendance for that one, and there was no dress; just him and me, my seven-month-pregnant belly, and a hoagie-wielding Notary Public hunched behind the sales counter of a shopping mall UPS store.
A contractual obligation; that's what wedlock is, right? An agreement—a written and verbal covenant. Some folks claim marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper. Of course, any husband or wife referring to their betrothal as that is, undoubtedly, on the heels of an ugly divorce. Or, she's a sixteen-year-old bride who put the cart—a 50k dollar beachfront wedding bonanza before the horse—notarized parental consent forms.
Yeah, where the hell were her parents, anyway?
We've arrived at the point in the story, dear reader, where I tell you I was remarkably mature for my age—an emotionally intelligent, spiritually fit, bonafide old soul. But should you find yourself still wondering what my parents were smoking or whether an arranged marriage took place—religious beliefs, some redneck bullshit, all of the above—the short answer is this:
In February 2002, my mom and dad fancied me wise beyond my years. At least, their preparedness to relinquish guardianship rights told me so. Maybe they ran a loose ship, a guilt-driven party pontoon. I certainly believed I was grown enough to be a wife. And not just back then, but well into adulthood and my first real marriage—mid-thirties, to be exact. When my son transitioned from toddler to kid, it suddenly hit me: I was a dipshit at sixteen. I was a dipshit at age thirty, too—you know, when I let my brother's step-kid knock me up, then married him in a retail store.
I met my (sort of) first (almost) husband—let's call him Isaac—as a fifteen-year-old budding runway model; he was the band's frontman who performed after I walked. Nearly fourteen years my senior. Not an old soul, but a childlike spirit, instead. We became co-workers soon after—shop clerks at a vintage clothing store in Atlanta's eccentrically eclectic downtown neighborhood, Little 5 Points, where my mom and I lived in our first rented house, just the two of us.
Everything changed a few weeks after Mom and I moved in, and I met Isaac. A magistrate judge ordered my mother, who was more like a sister, to spend forty days in county jail on a probation violation. My father lived in a neighboring state where he willfully honored my wishes for non-compulsory visitation with me, which made it less complicated when I moved in with Isaac after the first week of Mom's incarceration saw me living alone. Lonely. A fifteen-year-old girl, two years removed from formal education, holding down a job, madly in love with a grown-ass man, and still secretly and sincerely missing her mom, who, upon her release, returned to my dad while I stayed put.
Six months later, while sorting costume jewelry with Isaac at the boutique, I palmed a gaudy zirconia before presenting it to myself but popping the question—more like barking an order—to my boyfriend; I slid the band onto my left ring finger and told Isaac we should get married.
"Okay, angel," he replied sweetly.
So that's what we did. On the first anniversary of our first date—eight hours of wandering around Fernbank Museum of Natural History, tripping our asses off on the magic mushrooms Isaac cooly pulled from his jeans pocket upon parking his Honda Civic hatchback in the museum lot—roughly one hundred of our closest friends and family witnessed us make promises to one another; promises I would inevitably break.
In the months leading up to the wedding, I remember thinking that if this man married me, it'd be the apex of my womanhood. If he does this, I thought, I'll have officially arrived at adulthood. He did it, alright, and I was still a callow child afterward. Despite sashaying confidently along a slim red carpet flanked by a galaxy of flashbulbs and smiling faces, I was still a kid. On the last Saturday of that February, as the music I selected for the nuptials droned in the background, all I could hear was the crashing of relentless waves kissing a shore of glistening sand. All I could hear was the sound of my innocence crumbling beneath my feet.
With my father's sweaty, nervous palm in mine, we made our way beneath a canopy festooned with foliage, flowers, sheer and flowing fabric. Fruitwood folding chairs, tied decoratively with ribbon, framed the final yards of the slim carpet—twenty seats for immediate family only and plenty of standing room. I was concernedly adamant about only two ceremony details: keeping the seat number minimum while tactfully assigning each guest to each center.
Secondly, I instructed everyone appointed a seat to don a predominantly green ensemble. I was giddy that I'd found just enough ideal fabric—one hundred percent silk and the color of pistachio pudding—to construct the floor-sweeper skirt my mother wore. The oversized headscarf I'd embellished by hand with emerald-hued sequins and beads of antique glass made a scant but striking cover for the boniness of her upper body. She looked stunning; sickly but stunning.
My wedding gown, stark white and strapless with a boned corset bodice, erupted from the waistline into an obnoxiously voluminous skirt made even more elaborate by horizontal rows of stitch-tacked gatherings of fabric in perfectly rounded arches, like garland on a Christmas tree. One of its kind, and the designer intended for the gown to hold the shape of a wedding cake—at least, that's the story I got from the woman who owned the quirky Virginia Highlands boutique to which I submitted weekly layaway payments until I could finally have my cake and dance down the aisle in it too. John Lennon's Imagine was my wedding march. A rhinestone embellished tiara crowned my tousled, ass-length hair, which I box-dyed with a drug-store shade called Cherry Cola.
Isaac replaced the faux diamond ring that day with a one-hundred-year-old heirloom his grandmother passed me. I danced and ate cake. I smiled at the flashbulbs and kissed rouge cheeks. My heart skipped a beat at the unexpected hiss of pyrotechnic propulsion before a fiery spectacle nearly quieted the merriment—all eyes on the twilit sky. I wanted fireworks. I got fireworks. I got a full moon, too.
Later, inside our honeymoon suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, a few blocks up Ocean Drive, I sat spread eagle on the floor, still dressed in the bridal costume, and ate slice after slice from a grease-stained pizza box. Between bottleneck swigs of champagne, I ripped open countless metallic-hued envelopes stuffed with congratulatory greeting cards stuffed with money we asked for in place of gifts. I became increasingly obsessed with the hunt for more cash with each piece of quality card stock I handled.
Isaac's mom footed the bill for the whole shindig and the plane fare on a flight scheduled to depart Miami International on the Monday after we wed. We were honeymoon-bound for a three-week trip to Amsterdam. Thanks to generous gifts, we left Miami approximately twelve thousand US dollars richer than before exchanging vows.
Still, one major problem lurked: the need to sign and file required documents with the court clerk, lest our fairytale wedding be illegitimate. The marriage license application required one signature from the groom and three signatures from his bride. The best I could do was two. My dad showed up, pen in hand, but my mom did not. She was missing in action and thus was her John Hancock.
I begged for the mercy of a government official seated behind a courthouse kiosk window, even complimenting her skin tone, though her dermis resembled rawhide leather. When the flattery failed, I cried. I rationalized, justified, reasoned, excused, explained. Then, I cried harder. But it didn't matter. The woman answered, "No!" A message loud, clear, hard, sharp, stiff, sour. If only she knew, my mom would have said, "Yes!" If only she knew, my mom would've been there if she could.
My first wedding was lovely, and the relationship was paramount for me developmentally. However, the contract never did exist; there was no paper trail. We never went back to the courthouse to apply, and we didn't even go once I turned eighteen. And the marriage? I ended it a few months before my nineteenth birthday. I left Isaac for someone my age—almost two years exactly from the day we said, "I do."
Is it naive to think that if a legally binding contractual agreement had been signed, stamped, delivered, perhaps the knot we tied wouldn’t have come unraveled?
If everything had gone off without a hitch that last Monday in February, and we did set off on our honeymoon as a real husband-and-wife team, would the marriage have still crumbled beneath my feet?
Of course, it would have; it's just a piece of paper!