Beverly Cleary Taught Me How to Share My Divorce Story

In the last six weeks of our marriage, a relationship that had been crumbling for years, my husband and I stopped speaking to each other entirely. Our apartment was shrouded in near silence, punctuated only by the asks and cries of our disoriented and stressed preschooler. We were American expatriates living in Singapore, and one night at the end of September 2016, I knew I had to leave. I met three friends at Singapore’s Changi Airport, the only people aside from my parents in the US who knew what was happening. In those final weeks, they had bought me an endless supply of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the only thing I could eat; accompanied me to lawyers’ offices; frequently texted.

I needed to make a hasty explanation to my four-year-old daughter. When we boarded the plane, I said, “We are going to visit Nani and Nanu”—her maternal grandparents. I didn’t know then how the next day, let alone the next months and years, would unfold.

The silence between my ex-husband and I continued over the next eighteen months. The only words we exchanged were through our attorneys. I was anxious all the time, dry heaving every morning upon waking. At home, I kept the details of my financial and legal negotiations from my parents. I didn’t speak of my separation, even with friends, and ignored questions from nosy aunties about why I was back in the States. Instead, I enrolled my daughter in a new preschool. I got a job. I kept myself busy.

Once our divorce was finalized, I tried to forget all that had passed, to pretend that I could erase a twenty-year relationship from my life. I never made space for my young daughter to ask questions, never initiated a conversation with her. I’d internalized the stigma of being a South Asian divorcée, even though my immediate family had been more supportive—materially, emotionally, spiritually—than I could have ever imagined. My feelings were irrational, but they were.

*

One evening, my kindergartener handed me Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary and asked me to read it to her. I was obsessed with Cleary’s Ramona series as a child and can remember scenes from those books with exacting clarity: Ramona and Beezus’s refusal to eat beef tongue, Beezus’s painting of a cotton candy–breathing dragon with lollipops down its back; Ramona’s toothpaste birthday cake, topped with toothpaste roses.

I’m sure I also read Dear Mr. Henshaw, even if I had no memory of it. I skimmed the flap copy—a divorce plot. I felt queasy. I had avoided even saying the word divorce. Why start now? I was hurt, ashamed. I felt guilty for not leaving an unhappy marriage earlier than I did, and also for leaving it at all. My emotional state often overwhelmed me, though I did my best to ignore it. I asked my daughter to choose another book, but when she asked why, I couldn’t lie outright. I began to read.

On page 16, in a letter to fictional author Boyd Henshaw, Leigh Botts, the protagonist, writes: “When Mom and Dad got divorced, they sold the mobile home, and Dad moved into a trailer.” And further down: “The truck is why my parents divorced.” I sped through those sentences, hoping that my daughter wouldn’t hear them, as if I could remove that word from her vocabulary and avoid her questions. I was being unfairly selfish—depriving her of a term, a definition, a narrative for my comfort. I wasn’t ready to sit with my feelings and have the difficult conversations I knew I needed to have with her.

Over the course of the following week, we read about the unromanticized and bittersweet childhood of a boy who is struggling with his parents’ divorce and the absence of his father. Leigh is lonely and wistful, but the book has moments of hope. Two-thirds of the way into Dear Mr. Henshaw, at its emotional climax, Leigh and his mother cry together on a rainy night, then drive to the ocean and eat fried chicken in the car. Cleary writes: “‘You know,’ said Mom, ‘Whenever I watch the waves, I always feel that no matter how bad things seem, life will still go on.’ That was how I felt too, only I wouldn’t have known how to say it, so I just said, ‘yeah.’ Then we drove home.” Leigh’s mom had been honest and vulnerable in that moment, and I wanted that too. I had tried to show the world that I was resilient, never fallible, but my unwillingness to deal with my sadness and anger was hurting me and my daughter.

I had tried to show the world that I was resilient, never fallible, but my unwillingness to deal with my sadness and anger was hurting me and my daughter.

Our mutual friends had reached out, sending me text after text. Not wanting to meet up, afraid of the memories such reunions might bring up, I either responded curtly—“Busy with work 🙃”—or not at all, shoving my phone under my pillow until the message was forgotten. I had responded unkindly to a romantic overture, nearly ghosting the person before sending a lengthy, self-absorbed message that ended what might have been a lovely friendship, if never a relationship. When my daughter shared her delight over a new book or a found object, I’d fake a smile or excitement—which she had to know, even if she couldn’t articulate the discomfort of these interactions.

I wasn’t the parent I wanted to be. No matter how bad things seem, life will still go on. Life would go on, but the life I had been living was in some ways only marginally better than the life I had left behind: isolated, lonely, disconnected.

*

Leigh’s story closes as it should. Though he once hoped there would be a reunion with his parents, it is not to be, and he has finally come to understand and accept that.

Like Leigh, I began writing my own story—first in my journal. One day, I woke up a few hours after midnight, made myself a cup of strong black tea, and wrote in a spiral-bound notebook until the sun began to illuminate the horizon. The writing helped quell the early-morning retching that I had been dealing with for the better part of two years. It was grounding, organizing, freeing. It allowed me to declutter my mind, to sift through my many emotions—to see them concretized, to almost touch them.

Months of journaling led me to realize that I could no longer live this half-concealed life. I began to write publicly on social media—a detail about my living situation, or a reference to a visit by my ex-husband—and, eventually, in newspapers and magazines. Essays gave me room to tell my story on the page, a place where I’d always felt comfortable. I pitched reported pieces that connected me to other single mothers, who provided both encouragement and a feeling of liberation.

When my daughter asked questions, similar to the ones Leigh asked of his mother (“Will we ever return to Singapore? Will you get married again? Do you love me?”), I could now answer (“No; I don’t know; a million times, yes”). Cleary’s words had helped prepare her, and she was now old enough to make greater sense of the world and her place in it. She knew these topics were no longer taboo. She had overheard me say, “Oh, we divorced some time ago,” to an aunty at the temple who asked me if my husband was traveling for work, and “I’m not sorry about my divorce; I’m very happy,” in response to a distant cousin’s insistence that I must have regrets. It was time and my writing practice that gave me the confidence to say those words, to help us both, to be a better parent.

Cleary’s words had helped prepare her, and she was now old enough to make greater sense of the world and her place in it.

I realized that my fear of this divorce narrative wasn’t entirely rooted in shame, after all, but in anger. I had so much rage. The divorce process had been emotionally and financially draining. My ex-husband’s family had cut contact with us entirely, and I missed the relationships I had nurtured over the years. Did they not feel the same way? Did they not miss me? The cultural values I’d been raised with had made me believe we were broken.

This anger was unexpected and depressing, but I had learned to name the thing. As I retold stories of strength and support—of navigating the unique hell of family courts to a friend, of my parents’ support to my therapist, of the challenges of single parenting to the public—the anger slowly fell away. It was time to repair. I finally responded to messages from friends: “Lots has gone on, and I’m trying to reconnect,” or “How’s the little girl?” And they wrote back, without voicing resentment or asking where I’d been. They knew I’d needed time.

I also understood that what I had perceived as indifference on the part of my ex’s family was perhaps awkwardness, since South Asians have few models for postdivorce family life. I decided I could be a model, though I hesitated at first. Would conversations be uncomfortable, full of awkward silences? Then I looked at my daughter and remembered this was for her too. I called and emailed some of his family—my daughter’s family—and they wrote back. I traded recipes with my former mother-in-law, as we often had, and made plans to meet my ex’s young niece, who lived nearby. I shook off the internalized stigma. Our family was intact and perfect.

*

My daughter, now a second grader and fluent reader, read all eight Ramona books over and over again during the pandemic. I also reread Beezus and Ramona, my favorite of all of Cleary’s works, to myself. I always identified with Beezus: sensible, industrious, responsible, reserved. As an adult, I admire—and aspire to be—the irrepressible force who is Ramona.

I learned that Clearly passed in March 2021 via a push notification. I gasped and clutched my phone, even though I shouldn’t have been surprised. She was 104 years old. “My favorites were/are Beezus and Ramona and Dear. Mr. Henshaw,” I wrote on social media, hoping friends would share their memories too. (“Dear. Mr. Henshaw was relatable, so clearly imagined as to what it meant to be a child, and so generous. Or at least, that is how I remember it,” said a friend; “You remember it correctly,” I replied.) Later that evening, I read the New York Times obituary aloud as my daughter and I cuddled on the couch after dinner. She scrolled on my phone to read the obituary herself, pausing at images of her favorite book covers and a 1955 photograph of Cleary as a young woman, and immediately became pensive and withdrawn.

I’d witnessed this before: Shortly before the pandemic stay-at-home orders, in January 2020, my paternal grandmother had passed in her sleep. My parents left for Atlanta while my daughter and I remained in New Jersey—in our family, it’s customary for young children not to attend funerals. My cousins sent me video texts from the funeral: the open casket; my eulogy, recited by my father; the post-cremation prayers. My daughter asked questions, processed, receded—and asked questions again.

I had cultural and literal scripts for such personal losses. But what of a child’s mourning of an artist whose work mattered to her so much? I wasn’t sure how to support her through this particular loss; it was a milestone that no parenting book or website had ever prepared me for. How could I be a guide in the grieving process, especially as I was processing my own grief? Our relationships to Cleary were different, but similar: Cleary gave us both art that was joyful and comforting. “Art is immortal,” I said to her. “Artists aren’t.” I told my daughter that the way I grieve such deaths, just as we grieve the deaths of people known to us, is to recall our best memories of them and to revisit their works.

My daughter has been an audiobook fan since she was a toddler. I downloaded all the Ramona titles. For eighteen hours that weekend—in the car as we ran errands, on our evening walk around our suburban neighborhood, in bed as she entwined her lanky legs with mine—we listened to all eight audiobooks. When we were done, we talked about our favorite characters: Ramona and Beezus, of course, but also Aunt Beatrice, the girls’ maternal aunt (my daughter’s favorite), and Susan, Ramona’s kindergarten nemesis (mine).

Some weeks later, I downloaded Dear Mr. Henshaw on audiobook for me. I was still in mourning. Celebrity deaths bring up my past losses in an intense way. As I listened, I grieved the end of my marriage; the death of my beloved grandmother; the ongoing, devastating losses of the pandemic. I was also reminded of the power of writing, of books, of this book specifically—so full of pathos and love.

“I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper,” Leigh writes at one point, encouraged by Mr. Henshaw and his mother and other adults around him.

I lamented that I’d never written a letter to Cleary about my experiences with this book. I’d like to think she would have been moved to hear that a story that was, on the surface, so different from our own—Cleary’s imagined worlds were very white—resonated so deeply. “Dear Ms. Cleary,” I would’ve started. It was a poignant reminder to not keep the words inside.

The next morning, I gave my daughter a blank journal. Inside, I inscribed: “To hold your stories.”

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