February, 1996
My husband drops me off. I'm going to be evaluated while he runs a few errands. He'll come pick me up when he's done. I walk up to the reception desk and introduce myself. "Oh yes. Someone is on their way to talk with you. You can wait in this room. Would you like a soda?" I accept the receptionist's offer and receive a Diet Coke as I'm led to a room to wait. Silent tears start to stream down my face as I replay the events of the day.
It started with an overseas call to my mother June. "I have to leave my family. All I do is cause damage." I had been in the grip of the Blue Meanies for months. I've been lying to my husband about what I do all day, which is hide and panic. He thinks I'm working full-time and making good money. Sadly, I've been dodging and scrambling. Working six hours a week at a law firm, writing myself check after check from their Trust Account, waiting to be caught. I unplug the phone so it doesn't ring off the hook from creditors. I have our mail put on vacation hold so I can weed out the NSF checks that are being returned with hideous fees. It's exhausting, smiling through the lies, waiting for it to all come crashing down. "I'm horrible, terrible. I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't stop. This isn't fair to my family. I'm toxic. I destroy everything I touch. The only way to save them is to remove myself." "Why do you do this?" asks June. "You're such a lovely girl."
I walk, haggard and makeupless to the law firm. I go into the office of the most compassionate attorney. "I'm a split personality." I tell him. "I thought I had this under control. I'm so sorry. I just realized I've stolen thousands of dollars from you." I'm not a split. Just out of my mind. The Blue Meanies have been running amok. I'm looking for an out.
While I am confessing, June is not getting an answer at the house. She calls my doctor's office and tells her I'm suicidal. I'm picking up my son from kindergarten when my doctor tries the house. She calls the police, who are on my front lawn talking to my completely-in-the-dark husband when I arrive home with my son. "Are you suicidal?" an Officer asks me. No. "Are you taking anything for depression?" Prozac. "Have you taken it today?" Yes. Satisfied, they leave. I tell my husband we need to talk and take my son to the daycare he went to the year before. "I'm having a breakdown." I say to the woman who runs the place. "Can you take him?" She does, no questions asked.
My husband is beside himself. He got a panicked call from June at work and rushed home only to find me gone and police standing at the door. He is concerned about my mental health, but not knowing of my recent exploits, thinks my mother may have overreacted to a bad phone call. If she isn't overreacting, he wants to know, why I'm reaching out to her instead of him. The phone rings and it's my doctor ordering me to 2 North for an evaluation. I tell her I'm fine but she says she will get a court order to commit me. She tells me it is much easier to get out of 2 North if I go in voluntarily than it is if I'm court ordered in.
So here I sit. In a small, white room. More like a cell than a room. And oh My God, it is actually padded. The walls are fucking padded. They think I'm a crazy person and have put me in a padded cell! The room is totally empty. Nothing to hurt myself with. The door is propped open, so everyone walking by can see me, Crazy Woman, sitting on a padded bench in a padded room, heaving silent sobs as the reality of my situation sinks in. Up until now I have been in Full Crisis Mode. Calmly picking up my son, assuring my husband and the police that everything is perfectly fine, my mother just blew things out of proportion. Now I have nothing to do but sit in an empty room and Think. Fuck! Finally the shrink arrives.
I hear myself talking. What am I saying? Better pay attention. "Please help me. My brain is breaking. I really believe my family would be better off without me. I would have had a better life if my father had left earlier or killed himself. I don't want my son to grow up with me. I want my husband to find a good wife." The shrink gives me a choice. I can commit myself to the Looney Bin voluntarily, or go home and the police will come to my house with a court order and put me in the back of a waiting ambulance for my child and his neighborhood pals to see. "My husband will be back soon to pick me up. Will you tell him where I am?"
I am escorted to the North wing on the hospital's second floor. We go through two sets of locked doors and I am deposited on another padded bench. This bench is not in a cell but in Crazy House Proper. I look around. To my right, a nurse behind a safety glass wall. To my left, a plastic table covered in crayons and coloring books. A large, white-trash looking guy comes at me. "I'm Bob." he says very loudly. "You having boyfriend problems?" he shouts when he sees I'm crying. A nurse comes to my rescue, "Bob, she's new here. She's scared. Go away and leave her alone." Bob assures me I'll get over the guy and asks the nurse to unlock the payphone. He wants to call Princess Diana.
How long do I have to sit on this bench? I hear muffled screams from some not-too-far-off room. It goes on and on. I am scared. Is this it? They leave me on a bench and walk away? I smell something. I look up to find an old man in a hospital gown, soiled diaper around his ankles. What the fuck am I doing here? Isn't there some middle ground? Something between out patient counseling and being locked up with people who call dead princesses? A nurse asks me if I want anything while I watch the old man being cajoled with a candy bar to go get his diaper changed. "You mean like a sandwich?" I ask. She laughs, "No, not a sandwich. Something to help relax you." YES PLEASE.
My husband comes and goes and I am drugged to the point of being oblivious. I am considered a threat to myself, and my overnight bag is searched. I'm shown a bed and introduced to my roommate who has just come out of a coma induced by the massive number of pills she swallowed trying to kill herself. No matter where I go in 2 North, I can't escape the screaming. It's constant. Each scream sounds more painful and full of anguish than the last. I have no desire to socialize, so I stay in my room and read. I go to the required group therapy sessions which are held in a room with a bulletin board. The board is dedicated to famous people who have battled mental illness, with 8" x 10" glossy head shots of Kurt Cobain, Judy Garland, Earnest Hemmingway, Vivian Leigh.... I find it cruel that they've chosen people who met such sad endings. They might as well just post a sign that says, "Don't expect to get better or live much longer." The screaming. The screaming. How can anyone stand this?
My husband surprises me on my second full day at 2 North with my son, and a pass to be let out for dinner. I am horrified that he has brought our boy this awful place. "You're his mother. He loves and misses you. He needs to see you and know you are ok." When I return from dinner, there is another roommate to meet. She's too hoarse to talk. She's been screaming for 72 hours straight.
The truth spills out. My husband is devastated. Spinning. Reeling. Working two jobs, going to school, caring for the house, pets, and of course, our son. Frantically trying to borrow enough money to pay back the lawyers so they don't press charges. He does not want me to leave the family. He wants me to come home and get better. It will be ugly, but we can put it back together. Start again. After three days full days in lock up he comes to me and says, "The doctors say you're not participating. Would you make a goddamned fucking lanyard or color in the lines so they will let you come home?" That night I help plan the Valentine's Day Dance, and they let me go the next morning. No follow up care, but a big fat prescription for Ativan which I am addicted to soon enough.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Story Begins
The Story begins this way.....
On a hot summer day in the 1890's, on the southern side of the California/Mexico boarder, a fifteen-year-old girl was sent into town to fetch supplies for her mother. Before she reached her destination, the girl was captured by a marauding group of Mexican Bandits. The leader of the group found the young Mexican girl beautiful and kept her for his woman. She never saw her family again and they never knew what became of her. Within a year of her capture, she bore the the bandit's leader a son. The new father died a violent death before the child could walk. The girl was kept on to pleasure the rest of the men, as well to cook and clean for them. Her child was alternately the gang’s mascot and whipping boy until he was old enough to run away to California. He never saw his mother again, and she never knew what became of him.
The boy raised by bandits moved to Alhambra and became a gardener. He married, or not, several women and sired twenty-odd children by the time he retired, late in life to Mexico. His first wife, my great-grandmother Elena, never referred to him as anything other than "Mr. Vega" or "That Bastard" after she divorced him. Before the divorce they had four children together. The first child was a son. The boy grew up to serve in the Navy during World War II where he met and married a pretty redheaded Navy nurse named Rosey who called herself Virginia. In their wedding portrait, they look like a young Lucy and Desi dressed in Navy whites. She was twenty, he was seventeen. The picture is faded and yellow now, but their sexual heat still jumps right off the page. There is my Grandfather, all movie star smile and sparkly eyes rimmed with impossibly thick lashes. Virginia’s New England skin, dark painted lips, piled-high hair, and hourglass figure make her look like she just stepped off the side of a B-52 bomber plane. "He was the love of my life," my thrice-married Grandma Virginia sighed as we looked through an old photo album, "but he drank too much and wouldn’t keep his pants zipped." They had three children before they divorced. The first child was a son named Michael.
In 1958 Michael was twelve, and Virginia was at the end of her rope with him. She was all too frequently being called home from work by the school, or by neighbors, to come and deal with her oldest boy. The last straw was a harried call from the city’s Parks and Rec. Department. On this particular summer day Michael had made a big show out of climbing the high-dive at the local pool. He hooted and hollered and gained everyone’s attention before he jumped. Immediately after he disappeared under the water, a bright red cloud started to spread from his entry point. Mothers screamed. Lifeguards jumped in. In seconds, two-thirds of the pool was stained red. Time and again lifeguards dove under only to pop back up empty handed, unable to find the boy who jumped off the high-dive. That is because Michael had swum out, unharmed, hidden by the red cloud made by the packet of strawberry Jell-O he had poured into his swim trunks moments before the dive. Now he sat on the side of the pool, laughing his ass off, a red stream trickling down his leg. The stunt got the desired results, all around chaos and the admiration of his peers, but it also got Michael banned from the pool for the summer. That was a problem. Virginia was a single mother of three who worked full-time but could not afford child care. Not that sitters ever came back for a second round anyway. The city pool had solved her dilemma - it was cheap, and she took comfort knowing the staff was trained in first aid. This solution was no longer an option for Michael. She couldn’t leave him unsupervised, and she could no longer spend her every ounce of energy keeping him out of serious trouble. She had nothing left to give to his younger brother and sister. Michael was sent to live with his father.
Vega family pictures from this period show the American Barrio in all it’s glory. The men lean on cinder block fences. The tiny, covered porches hang heavy with plants. There are lemon and avocado trees in every yard. I can smell the beans simmering in every kitchen and see the neighborhood mammas come to meet and gossip at the tortilla truck as it slowly winds its way through the barrio. There is my grandfather, his arms slung over the shoulders of his two younger brothers, Rudy, A Los Angeles County Deputy, and the youngest brother David, who managed a jewelry store. My grandfather is the tallest and the handsomest of the three. He is caramel colored, darker than David, who is almost white, and lighter than Rudy who is cinnamon-coffee colored. They stand in rolled up chinos and spit shined loafers in front of a new car riding low on its white walls. Rudy wears a white tank top, his brothers wear white t-shirts, cigarette packs rolled up in one sleeve. Their pompadours and their teeth gleam in the bright Southern California sun. The brothers on the ends hold cans of beer. Their father is behind them, his foot on the car’s running board. It is the only photo of my great-grandfather, the man who ran away from bandits, I have ever seen. He is dressed like his sons, but he wears wire-rimmed glasses and his pompadour is silver. They say he was a handsome man, but he looks fairly simian in this picture. Unfortunate thing - a whole generation of great-grandchildren thinking you looked like a monkey because of one bad snapshot. On occasion, when Michael was walking home from school, he would encounter his grandfather standing in a circle with a group of other old men betting on cock fights. Sometimes they weren’t circling cock fights, but Michael being pitted against older and larger boys. He was small but he was ruthless. If he won the fight his grandfather would cash in. If he lost the fight, his grandfather lost money, and drug him home to beat him again for losing.
My own grandfather had been the first Mexican Drug Enforcement Officer in L.A. County, but by the time his oldest son came to live with him, drinking had cost him his job and he was making his living spying on other men’s wives. He had married again, or not, and had a two-year-old son that everyone called Jr. Jr.'s mother had recently committed suicide and Michael was assigned to watch the young boy. My Grandfather would leave money, or not, and disappear for days on end. He left Jr. with his twelve-year-old half brother without consideration to missed school or meals. One night, a few years into this arrangement, when Virginia’s second son, Steve, was at the house visiting his brothers, their father got drunk. That was normal, and it was usually only an hour of hell or so before the old man passed out. Sometimes they could humor him and avoid any serious damage before they heaved him into his bed. But on this night, their father would not fall down. He was on an ugly drunk and had been pummeling Michael and Steve for hours. When he took a break to relieve himself, the boys locked themselves in Jr.’s bedroom. Michael passed Jr. to Steve who had crawled out the window. He sent his brothers to find a neighbor who would let them use their phone. Steve was to call Uncle Rudy and tell him Dad was worse than usual and to plead with him to come rescue them. After sending his brothers for help, Michael headed to the kitchen to hide the revolver his father kept in the junk drawer. He was too late. He heard the shot as he raced around the corner and watched bloody clumps of hair and bits of brain, flesh and skull smack against the refrigerator door and then slide down onto Jr.'s finger paintings, turning all the colors red.
At their father’s funeral, Michael stood at the edge of the freshly dug hole and said, "I’m glad the bastard’s dead." "Me too." Said his brother Steve. Afterwards, Steve went back home to his mother’s and legally took his stepfather’s last name. Jr., now an orphan of two suicides, was folded into Uncle Rudy’s three boys and raised (almost) as one of his own. Michael bounced from couch to couch, mostly fending for himself. He worked the graveyard dish washing shift at Denny’s and rented a room from one of his dad’s ex-girlfriends, who he lost his virginity to. He was a brilliant boy but had to repeat his senior year. It was this second go-round that he met June.
June was the second of five girls born to a sweet but passive mother. Her father never bothered hide how pissed off he was that Fate had given him five daughters and no sons. Dale Pickett was a vocally bigoted alcoholic and WWII vet who sold furniture at Levitz. His dreams of becoming a race horse trainer were dashed by the responsibilities of raising a family. His bitterness and disappointment at his life’s lot hung over him like a cloud. He kept horses in his dusty backyard that butted up against the Pasadena Freeway, and spent every moment and dime he could spare at the Santa Anita race track. June’s mother was named Ruby but went by Grace. Like my grandmother Virginia she had been given away during the depression to be a servant for a wealthy family in exchange for room and board. Grace was a gentle and strong woman guided by a True and Pure Heart. She stayed silent about her upbringing or what kind of life she had hoped for herself. When one of her adult daughters asked about her childhood, Grace turned on her heel, and for the only time in her life, slapped one of her children hard across the face. "Don’t ever ask me that again." she instructed. And that was that.
June couldn’t wait to escape her strict German father and his crowded house. She worked at Dunkin’ Donuts every morning before school. She planned, and she scrimped, and she saved, and she moved out almost before she took off her graduation cap and gown. She and a girlfriend found a tiny apartment in the summer of 1965. With giddy excitement June and her roommate painted colorful flowers on the walls and hung Beatles posters. They couldn’t imagine a better time to be heading out on their own - the whole world was changing into a magical place. June enrolled in junior college and dreamed of her future. But by the time school started, she was having trouble getting up at 4:00 a.m., and the grease smell of the donuts frying made her throw up. She had a sinking feeling and a doctor confirmed her worst fears. She and Michael had broken up three months earlier and hadn’t spoken since. It took her almost a week to track him down to tell him she was carrying his child. Michael said he couldn’t marry her right away because he had joined the Navy, but would come back to marry her on his first leave. They married in October, neither of the teenagers smiling for the black and white photo that was included in their $15.00 civil ceremony. Afterwards, Michael reported back to his ship, and June moved back in with her parents and four sisters, into the cramped three bedroom house, and waited for her baby to be born.
I was born on the last day of winter 1966, and despite being a girl, was named Michael. I was so skinny that after my first baby pictures reached his nuclear submarine, my father wrote a one sentence reply to my mother. "She looks like a skinned rabbit."
I was twelve when my parents separated, but I can’t conjure up a single memory of them together, or tell you what kind of relationship they had. It’s all blanked out. They must have been optimistic about their future in 1968 because they decided to have another child. June was a hippie who did not believe it was right to bring another child into the world when so many were already suffering. My father - now Mike to avoid confusion - had a firm belief that the oldest sibling in a family should be a boy. They killed two birds with one stone by deciding to adopt a four or five-year-old boy to be my older brother. The first child they were offered was black. That was fine with my father, but my mother couldn’t do it. She knew her father would never let her back in the house, or allow her to see her younger sisters again if she had a black child. The second child they were offered was mentally disabled. That was fine with my mother, but not for my father. He said if that’s the hand that’s dealt you, you get through it, but he could not choose it for himself. We were in Boise where the adoption hoops were minimal, but time was running out. Word was my father could be transferred any day. Then we got the call. There was a boy available right away. He was not four or five as my parents had requested, he was three weeks old. Did they want to see him anyway? We drive to a motel and meet the social worker in the designated room. I rest my chin on the bed's edge, entranced by the fat little brown baby lying there on a small soft blanket laid over the itchy nylon quilt. He is gurgling, and seems ridiculously happy. He has a perfectly round head and brown hair and eyes that exactly match mine. The next day I am a Big Sister. He was named Ignacio, but we called him Nacho.
A year later, Mike was discharged from the Navy. Both of my parents stopped cutting their hair, shaving and wearing deodorant. 8mm home movies of our Going Away party show lots of young people tripping hard and falling around our tiny apartment. We were going away, but to nowhere in particular. June made purple paisley curtains for our primer-spotted red VW van. Mike built a bed and storage spaces in the back. They sold the furniture and the stereo, and gave away my cat. Off we went to search for America.
On a hot summer day in the 1890's, on the southern side of the California/Mexico boarder, a fifteen-year-old girl was sent into town to fetch supplies for her mother. Before she reached her destination, the girl was captured by a marauding group of Mexican Bandits. The leader of the group found the young Mexican girl beautiful and kept her for his woman. She never saw her family again and they never knew what became of her. Within a year of her capture, she bore the the bandit's leader a son. The new father died a violent death before the child could walk. The girl was kept on to pleasure the rest of the men, as well to cook and clean for them. Her child was alternately the gang’s mascot and whipping boy until he was old enough to run away to California. He never saw his mother again, and she never knew what became of him.
The boy raised by bandits moved to Alhambra and became a gardener. He married, or not, several women and sired twenty-odd children by the time he retired, late in life to Mexico. His first wife, my great-grandmother Elena, never referred to him as anything other than "Mr. Vega" or "That Bastard" after she divorced him. Before the divorce they had four children together. The first child was a son. The boy grew up to serve in the Navy during World War II where he met and married a pretty redheaded Navy nurse named Rosey who called herself Virginia. In their wedding portrait, they look like a young Lucy and Desi dressed in Navy whites. She was twenty, he was seventeen. The picture is faded and yellow now, but their sexual heat still jumps right off the page. There is my Grandfather, all movie star smile and sparkly eyes rimmed with impossibly thick lashes. Virginia’s New England skin, dark painted lips, piled-high hair, and hourglass figure make her look like she just stepped off the side of a B-52 bomber plane. "He was the love of my life," my thrice-married Grandma Virginia sighed as we looked through an old photo album, "but he drank too much and wouldn’t keep his pants zipped." They had three children before they divorced. The first child was a son named Michael.
In 1958 Michael was twelve, and Virginia was at the end of her rope with him. She was all too frequently being called home from work by the school, or by neighbors, to come and deal with her oldest boy. The last straw was a harried call from the city’s Parks and Rec. Department. On this particular summer day Michael had made a big show out of climbing the high-dive at the local pool. He hooted and hollered and gained everyone’s attention before he jumped. Immediately after he disappeared under the water, a bright red cloud started to spread from his entry point. Mothers screamed. Lifeguards jumped in. In seconds, two-thirds of the pool was stained red. Time and again lifeguards dove under only to pop back up empty handed, unable to find the boy who jumped off the high-dive. That is because Michael had swum out, unharmed, hidden by the red cloud made by the packet of strawberry Jell-O he had poured into his swim trunks moments before the dive. Now he sat on the side of the pool, laughing his ass off, a red stream trickling down his leg. The stunt got the desired results, all around chaos and the admiration of his peers, but it also got Michael banned from the pool for the summer. That was a problem. Virginia was a single mother of three who worked full-time but could not afford child care. Not that sitters ever came back for a second round anyway. The city pool had solved her dilemma - it was cheap, and she took comfort knowing the staff was trained in first aid. This solution was no longer an option for Michael. She couldn’t leave him unsupervised, and she could no longer spend her every ounce of energy keeping him out of serious trouble. She had nothing left to give to his younger brother and sister. Michael was sent to live with his father.
Vega family pictures from this period show the American Barrio in all it’s glory. The men lean on cinder block fences. The tiny, covered porches hang heavy with plants. There are lemon and avocado trees in every yard. I can smell the beans simmering in every kitchen and see the neighborhood mammas come to meet and gossip at the tortilla truck as it slowly winds its way through the barrio. There is my grandfather, his arms slung over the shoulders of his two younger brothers, Rudy, A Los Angeles County Deputy, and the youngest brother David, who managed a jewelry store. My grandfather is the tallest and the handsomest of the three. He is caramel colored, darker than David, who is almost white, and lighter than Rudy who is cinnamon-coffee colored. They stand in rolled up chinos and spit shined loafers in front of a new car riding low on its white walls. Rudy wears a white tank top, his brothers wear white t-shirts, cigarette packs rolled up in one sleeve. Their pompadours and their teeth gleam in the bright Southern California sun. The brothers on the ends hold cans of beer. Their father is behind them, his foot on the car’s running board. It is the only photo of my great-grandfather, the man who ran away from bandits, I have ever seen. He is dressed like his sons, but he wears wire-rimmed glasses and his pompadour is silver. They say he was a handsome man, but he looks fairly simian in this picture. Unfortunate thing - a whole generation of great-grandchildren thinking you looked like a monkey because of one bad snapshot. On occasion, when Michael was walking home from school, he would encounter his grandfather standing in a circle with a group of other old men betting on cock fights. Sometimes they weren’t circling cock fights, but Michael being pitted against older and larger boys. He was small but he was ruthless. If he won the fight his grandfather would cash in. If he lost the fight, his grandfather lost money, and drug him home to beat him again for losing.
My own grandfather had been the first Mexican Drug Enforcement Officer in L.A. County, but by the time his oldest son came to live with him, drinking had cost him his job and he was making his living spying on other men’s wives. He had married again, or not, and had a two-year-old son that everyone called Jr. Jr.'s mother had recently committed suicide and Michael was assigned to watch the young boy. My Grandfather would leave money, or not, and disappear for days on end. He left Jr. with his twelve-year-old half brother without consideration to missed school or meals. One night, a few years into this arrangement, when Virginia’s second son, Steve, was at the house visiting his brothers, their father got drunk. That was normal, and it was usually only an hour of hell or so before the old man passed out. Sometimes they could humor him and avoid any serious damage before they heaved him into his bed. But on this night, their father would not fall down. He was on an ugly drunk and had been pummeling Michael and Steve for hours. When he took a break to relieve himself, the boys locked themselves in Jr.’s bedroom. Michael passed Jr. to Steve who had crawled out the window. He sent his brothers to find a neighbor who would let them use their phone. Steve was to call Uncle Rudy and tell him Dad was worse than usual and to plead with him to come rescue them. After sending his brothers for help, Michael headed to the kitchen to hide the revolver his father kept in the junk drawer. He was too late. He heard the shot as he raced around the corner and watched bloody clumps of hair and bits of brain, flesh and skull smack against the refrigerator door and then slide down onto Jr.'s finger paintings, turning all the colors red.
At their father’s funeral, Michael stood at the edge of the freshly dug hole and said, "I’m glad the bastard’s dead." "Me too." Said his brother Steve. Afterwards, Steve went back home to his mother’s and legally took his stepfather’s last name. Jr., now an orphan of two suicides, was folded into Uncle Rudy’s three boys and raised (almost) as one of his own. Michael bounced from couch to couch, mostly fending for himself. He worked the graveyard dish washing shift at Denny’s and rented a room from one of his dad’s ex-girlfriends, who he lost his virginity to. He was a brilliant boy but had to repeat his senior year. It was this second go-round that he met June.
June was the second of five girls born to a sweet but passive mother. Her father never bothered hide how pissed off he was that Fate had given him five daughters and no sons. Dale Pickett was a vocally bigoted alcoholic and WWII vet who sold furniture at Levitz. His dreams of becoming a race horse trainer were dashed by the responsibilities of raising a family. His bitterness and disappointment at his life’s lot hung over him like a cloud. He kept horses in his dusty backyard that butted up against the Pasadena Freeway, and spent every moment and dime he could spare at the Santa Anita race track. June’s mother was named Ruby but went by Grace. Like my grandmother Virginia she had been given away during the depression to be a servant for a wealthy family in exchange for room and board. Grace was a gentle and strong woman guided by a True and Pure Heart. She stayed silent about her upbringing or what kind of life she had hoped for herself. When one of her adult daughters asked about her childhood, Grace turned on her heel, and for the only time in her life, slapped one of her children hard across the face. "Don’t ever ask me that again." she instructed. And that was that.
June couldn’t wait to escape her strict German father and his crowded house. She worked at Dunkin’ Donuts every morning before school. She planned, and she scrimped, and she saved, and she moved out almost before she took off her graduation cap and gown. She and a girlfriend found a tiny apartment in the summer of 1965. With giddy excitement June and her roommate painted colorful flowers on the walls and hung Beatles posters. They couldn’t imagine a better time to be heading out on their own - the whole world was changing into a magical place. June enrolled in junior college and dreamed of her future. But by the time school started, she was having trouble getting up at 4:00 a.m., and the grease smell of the donuts frying made her throw up. She had a sinking feeling and a doctor confirmed her worst fears. She and Michael had broken up three months earlier and hadn’t spoken since. It took her almost a week to track him down to tell him she was carrying his child. Michael said he couldn’t marry her right away because he had joined the Navy, but would come back to marry her on his first leave. They married in October, neither of the teenagers smiling for the black and white photo that was included in their $15.00 civil ceremony. Afterwards, Michael reported back to his ship, and June moved back in with her parents and four sisters, into the cramped three bedroom house, and waited for her baby to be born.
I was born on the last day of winter 1966, and despite being a girl, was named Michael. I was so skinny that after my first baby pictures reached his nuclear submarine, my father wrote a one sentence reply to my mother. "She looks like a skinned rabbit."
I was twelve when my parents separated, but I can’t conjure up a single memory of them together, or tell you what kind of relationship they had. It’s all blanked out. They must have been optimistic about their future in 1968 because they decided to have another child. June was a hippie who did not believe it was right to bring another child into the world when so many were already suffering. My father - now Mike to avoid confusion - had a firm belief that the oldest sibling in a family should be a boy. They killed two birds with one stone by deciding to adopt a four or five-year-old boy to be my older brother. The first child they were offered was black. That was fine with my father, but my mother couldn’t do it. She knew her father would never let her back in the house, or allow her to see her younger sisters again if she had a black child. The second child they were offered was mentally disabled. That was fine with my mother, but not for my father. He said if that’s the hand that’s dealt you, you get through it, but he could not choose it for himself. We were in Boise where the adoption hoops were minimal, but time was running out. Word was my father could be transferred any day. Then we got the call. There was a boy available right away. He was not four or five as my parents had requested, he was three weeks old. Did they want to see him anyway? We drive to a motel and meet the social worker in the designated room. I rest my chin on the bed's edge, entranced by the fat little brown baby lying there on a small soft blanket laid over the itchy nylon quilt. He is gurgling, and seems ridiculously happy. He has a perfectly round head and brown hair and eyes that exactly match mine. The next day I am a Big Sister. He was named Ignacio, but we called him Nacho.
A year later, Mike was discharged from the Navy. Both of my parents stopped cutting their hair, shaving and wearing deodorant. 8mm home movies of our Going Away party show lots of young people tripping hard and falling around our tiny apartment. We were going away, but to nowhere in particular. June made purple paisley curtains for our primer-spotted red VW van. Mike built a bed and storage spaces in the back. They sold the furniture and the stereo, and gave away my cat. Off we went to search for America.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Sisters Weekend
May 2007
My Aunt Jan is dying of cancer. There are five Picket Girls. Cathie, June, Audrey, Karen, and the youngest, Jan. The Baby is dying first. The Sisters are flung across the globe, but every year they come together for a Sisters Weekend. Since Aunt Jan's been so ill, they've been doing Sisters Weekends every few months in her home city of Las Vegas. Two months ago, I called my mother and asked if it would be ok if I joined them for one night on their next gathering. I want to see my Aunt Jan before she passes. Now I'm on a plane to Vegas for an overnighter.
The timing is.... Ominous? Mmm.. Foreboding? Closer. The Universe trying to get my attention? Maybe. As it happens, I am waiting for my own breast cancer biopsy results. But not really.
Five Picket Girls. Aunt Audrey is in the middle. She got breast cancer in her 30's. No nonsense Audrey did not wallow. Mastectomy. Chemo. Radiation. No reconstruction and no shame! She walked proudly on a nude beach. She had the daughter she'd always dreamed of and breast fed! It came back. Repeat. Mastectomy. Chemo. Radiation. Head up. Get through. Upward and Onward! Almost a quarter century later she's the Assistant Super Attendant for an LA County School District, with a PhD to her credit. An amazing Survivor.
Five Picket Girls. Jan got it next. Lumpectomy. Chemo. Radiation. It came back. Repeat. Again. Repeat. "It's in her spine." "It's in her ovaries." "It's in her brain." God, how many brain surgeries did she have? Sometime in the middle of this years long horror a genetic marker, BRCA1, was discovered. Women with this genetic mutation have an 85% chance of getting breast and/or ovarian cancer by the time they hit 65.
Five Picket Girls, whose own paternal aunts died young, had the genetic testing.
Cathy - Negative - Her three girls can breathe a sigh of relief.
June - Positive - That's my mother. She'll get Cancer in 2008.
Audrey - Positive - Her daughter as well. Her son will have to be tested for his daughter.
Karen - Negative - Her kids are clear.
Jan - Positive - No surprise there. Her boys will be tested for their kids.
So..... I'm not really waiting for the results of my biopsy as I fly to Las Vegas. There were two lumps in my left breast that look like cancer to the doctors. What I'm really waiting for are the results of my genetic test. If I have the BRCA1 marker I'll have a double mastectomy and my ovaries removed in three weeks. I've already decided on reconstruction. If it's negative, we'll consider other options. But really, who are we kidding? I scheduled the surgery the day before. I know the answer already. I'm 41. I have Breast Cancer and some serious decisions to make.
I'm looking forward to seeing my aunts, my mother June, not so much. She agitates me. Aunt Audrey and I check in at the hotel. We catch up and I'm comforted and thrilled to see that she is in excellent health and spirits. When I see Jan it is a shock. She is ravaged. She is shaking. She is Dying. You'd know it if nobody told you. "I'm sorry." says June. "I should have warned you. It's been gradual, but you haven't seen her in so long...." Jan is in a wheelchair in baggy sweats in the heat. A scarf. A hat. Sunglasses. I want to run. To her and away from her at the same time. This is Cancer. I have Cancer. I bend down and hug her. She didn't know I was coming. "Seeing you is the best birthday present I could ever have." She turns 50 in five days.
The older sisters wait on Jan hand and foot. Their offers to fetch her things interupt and fall over each other. I teasingly call her a princess. She hates this. "I'm so fucking tired of being the sick one." She cried to me a couple of months ago over the phone. "I want to talk about something else. If one more person asks me how I feel it will be all I can do not to punch them." She's relieved that her sisters are being honest now. She felt like she was dissapointing them when they assured her she'd pull through and she knew she wouldn't. She was tired. She was pissed. She was scared. She was worried about what would happen to her youngest, in and out of jail, an alcoholic at age twenty-five.
We cook frozen pizzas in the room and Audrey makes Cosmos. The Picket Girls are lightweights. Everyone is tipsy. We play Password, the boardgame version of the old t.v. show. There is cheating and laughing and stories and memories. We discuss my surgery plans. No one's even pretending my tests will come back negative. Audrey and my mother are firmly of the belief that I should forgo reconstruction to avoid complications. (If only I'd listened!) The sisters are all flat chested. I am DDD. I cannot imagine myself without breasts. And now I can have perky boobs, small enough to wear cute clothes. Aunt Cathy thinks its good that I'm looking toward the future. At one point Audrey leans over and I see her flat chest and mastectomy scars. They horrify me. I break out in a sweat.
It gets late. There are two beds. Four sisters sleep in the beds. June and I sleep on the pull-out couch using hotel robes for blankets. June is about to retire from her job a teacher for army brats on a German military base. I made sure I scheduled my surgery before the end the school year so she couldn't be at the hospital. While we lay on the couch she tells me to to contact the Red Cross so they will pay for her to fly over for the surgery. "No. I don't want you to leave your students. You're moving back stateside the week after. You can help then." She scoffs at this. I say, "Seriously, I don't want you coming." "Well, I'm coming anyway." I take a deep breath and say firmly, "No. You're not coming to the hospital." Silence.
On my flight home I am resolved. No doubt in my mind. You Do Not Fuck With Cancer. Cut them off. Cut them out. No chances. Take it all. The tests, of course, all come back positive. We get the results ten minutes after finding out my husband's lifelong best friend has died. His neck was snapped in a car accident at the bottom of his parent's driveway the night before. The long drive to the funeral was more than surreal. My husband, our fifteen-year-old son, and I, all sitting in stunned silence.
I manage to keep June out of the country until after my surgery but it is ugly. "I can't have you here. I throw up for days before every one of your visits." My mother hangs up the phone on me, doesn't talk to me for days, lays on the guilt, but never asks why.
I cry for days when my Aunt Jan dies. I am too sick from chemo to go to her funeral.
My Aunt Jan is dying of cancer. There are five Picket Girls. Cathie, June, Audrey, Karen, and the youngest, Jan. The Baby is dying first. The Sisters are flung across the globe, but every year they come together for a Sisters Weekend. Since Aunt Jan's been so ill, they've been doing Sisters Weekends every few months in her home city of Las Vegas. Two months ago, I called my mother and asked if it would be ok if I joined them for one night on their next gathering. I want to see my Aunt Jan before she passes. Now I'm on a plane to Vegas for an overnighter.
The timing is.... Ominous? Mmm.. Foreboding? Closer. The Universe trying to get my attention? Maybe. As it happens, I am waiting for my own breast cancer biopsy results. But not really.
Five Picket Girls. Aunt Audrey is in the middle. She got breast cancer in her 30's. No nonsense Audrey did not wallow. Mastectomy. Chemo. Radiation. No reconstruction and no shame! She walked proudly on a nude beach. She had the daughter she'd always dreamed of and breast fed! It came back. Repeat. Mastectomy. Chemo. Radiation. Head up. Get through. Upward and Onward! Almost a quarter century later she's the Assistant Super Attendant for an LA County School District, with a PhD to her credit. An amazing Survivor.
Five Picket Girls. Jan got it next. Lumpectomy. Chemo. Radiation. It came back. Repeat. Again. Repeat. "It's in her spine." "It's in her ovaries." "It's in her brain." God, how many brain surgeries did she have? Sometime in the middle of this years long horror a genetic marker, BRCA1, was discovered. Women with this genetic mutation have an 85% chance of getting breast and/or ovarian cancer by the time they hit 65.
Five Picket Girls, whose own paternal aunts died young, had the genetic testing.
Cathy - Negative - Her three girls can breathe a sigh of relief.
June - Positive - That's my mother. She'll get Cancer in 2008.
Audrey - Positive - Her daughter as well. Her son will have to be tested for his daughter.
Karen - Negative - Her kids are clear.
Jan - Positive - No surprise there. Her boys will be tested for their kids.
So..... I'm not really waiting for the results of my biopsy as I fly to Las Vegas. There were two lumps in my left breast that look like cancer to the doctors. What I'm really waiting for are the results of my genetic test. If I have the BRCA1 marker I'll have a double mastectomy and my ovaries removed in three weeks. I've already decided on reconstruction. If it's negative, we'll consider other options. But really, who are we kidding? I scheduled the surgery the day before. I know the answer already. I'm 41. I have Breast Cancer and some serious decisions to make.
I'm looking forward to seeing my aunts, my mother June, not so much. She agitates me. Aunt Audrey and I check in at the hotel. We catch up and I'm comforted and thrilled to see that she is in excellent health and spirits. When I see Jan it is a shock. She is ravaged. She is shaking. She is Dying. You'd know it if nobody told you. "I'm sorry." says June. "I should have warned you. It's been gradual, but you haven't seen her in so long...." Jan is in a wheelchair in baggy sweats in the heat. A scarf. A hat. Sunglasses. I want to run. To her and away from her at the same time. This is Cancer. I have Cancer. I bend down and hug her. She didn't know I was coming. "Seeing you is the best birthday present I could ever have." She turns 50 in five days.
The older sisters wait on Jan hand and foot. Their offers to fetch her things interupt and fall over each other. I teasingly call her a princess. She hates this. "I'm so fucking tired of being the sick one." She cried to me a couple of months ago over the phone. "I want to talk about something else. If one more person asks me how I feel it will be all I can do not to punch them." She's relieved that her sisters are being honest now. She felt like she was dissapointing them when they assured her she'd pull through and she knew she wouldn't. She was tired. She was pissed. She was scared. She was worried about what would happen to her youngest, in and out of jail, an alcoholic at age twenty-five.
We cook frozen pizzas in the room and Audrey makes Cosmos. The Picket Girls are lightweights. Everyone is tipsy. We play Password, the boardgame version of the old t.v. show. There is cheating and laughing and stories and memories. We discuss my surgery plans. No one's even pretending my tests will come back negative. Audrey and my mother are firmly of the belief that I should forgo reconstruction to avoid complications. (If only I'd listened!) The sisters are all flat chested. I am DDD. I cannot imagine myself without breasts. And now I can have perky boobs, small enough to wear cute clothes. Aunt Cathy thinks its good that I'm looking toward the future. At one point Audrey leans over and I see her flat chest and mastectomy scars. They horrify me. I break out in a sweat.
It gets late. There are two beds. Four sisters sleep in the beds. June and I sleep on the pull-out couch using hotel robes for blankets. June is about to retire from her job a teacher for army brats on a German military base. I made sure I scheduled my surgery before the end the school year so she couldn't be at the hospital. While we lay on the couch she tells me to to contact the Red Cross so they will pay for her to fly over for the surgery. "No. I don't want you to leave your students. You're moving back stateside the week after. You can help then." She scoffs at this. I say, "Seriously, I don't want you coming." "Well, I'm coming anyway." I take a deep breath and say firmly, "No. You're not coming to the hospital." Silence.
On my flight home I am resolved. No doubt in my mind. You Do Not Fuck With Cancer. Cut them off. Cut them out. No chances. Take it all. The tests, of course, all come back positive. We get the results ten minutes after finding out my husband's lifelong best friend has died. His neck was snapped in a car accident at the bottom of his parent's driveway the night before. The long drive to the funeral was more than surreal. My husband, our fifteen-year-old son, and I, all sitting in stunned silence.
I manage to keep June out of the country until after my surgery but it is ugly. "I can't have you here. I throw up for days before every one of your visits." My mother hangs up the phone on me, doesn't talk to me for days, lays on the guilt, but never asks why.
I cry for days when my Aunt Jan dies. I am too sick from chemo to go to her funeral.
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