She came and went by the back door.
She came in high, bursting.
“I finally tried heroin,” she admitted.
“No,” we said, pleading.
“Don’t go,” we begged as she left for the last time.
Girls in prison
I’ve heard really good things about this new show, Orange is the New Black, and last night I finally got around to watching the first episode. Yeah, I liked it. I can see why I’ve heard so much about it. I’m drawn to the idea of prison as this sort of alternate reality where smartphones are obsolete and escapism is nearly impossible. I like that women get to be bad asses, drawing on their survival skills. I like the reverse-edginess, where the prison culture feels like it could break down into a knitting circle at any moment.
At one point, a male guard tells Chapman (the main character) not to make any friends. What? Don’t make any friends? Why not? Is is even possible for a group of women to live in close quarters without making friends? I say no. Ladies, making friends is our superpower. No wonder the male guard warned against it. It makes his job that much harder.
I did have one gripe, though. It bugged me how Chapman’s past and present are pointedly at odds with each other. Her decade-old lesbian relationship bought her a ticket to prison, forcing Chapman to put off her marriage to her nice-Jewish-boy fiance. Now, I’ve only watched one episode, so maybe the writers will redeem themselves. But really? The glaring stereotypes strike me as outdated.
Have you watched it? What did you think?
She slept in my bed
My Aunt Rose Ann used to call me Miss Piggy when I was a baby. She used to bring me toys every time she visited until my mom asked her to stop. My mom said that it would make me expect to get a present every time I saw her.
My Aunt Rose Ann was Catholic — converted like my mom — and I used to tell her about all the things that I learned about Jesus at school. I remember whispering to her in the back bedroom so my Bubbie wouldn’t overhear (she did not love Jesus).
Aunt Rose Ann used to take me places — to the bowling alley, the zoo, here and there. She was fun, and I always knew that she loved me a lot.
But Aunt Rose Ann wasn’t perfect. She was very sick. She was schizophrenic. She didn’t work, never married, never had kids of her own. She lived upstairs from my Bubbie, and later moved in with her.
My mom did not keep my aunt’s illness a secret from me, but she didn’t give me many details, either. I know that when my aunt first showed signs of mental illness, she was studying medicine at college. She had a breakdown and wandered outside, naked. Note that naked will always, on some level, equal crazy for me.
But the time I was on the scene, her symptoms were under control. I only remember one time that Aunt Rose Ann had a psychotic episode. Honestly, it was no biggie. She didn’t do anything scary in my presence. Except this: My mom offered her my room while she adjusted to her new meds. I was maybe four years old, and I remember it like it just happened. Fuck, I wanted my room back.
Days passed and my aunt didn’t emerge. She slept in my bed, haunting my room forever more. I cried to my mom, who did nothing. What could she do? She needed to look after her little sister. Finally, at long last, my aunt emerged from my room, adjusted and refreshed. I’m sure that she thanked me. I’m also sure that she had no idea how she had planted those seeds within me. I would never be crazy.
I never let anyone else sleep in my kids’ beds. Ever. Go ahead, call me superstitious.
You’re going to like this one
It dawns on me that I haven’t told you the story yet, at least not completely. I’m warning you, this is a good one. It’s a story like a train without brakes, taking everything in its path.
It started back in 1981 or so. I was four years old, so was Geoff. Our moms each shared a close friend, Maureen, a Carmelite nun. She’s my namesake. Each of our moms came to her during their pregnancies, each one a story of its own.
In 1981, Maureen left her monastery for a time and traveled far away. Knowing that she would be gone for a year, she introduced our moms. Geoff and I were four. He and his mom came over. While our moms got to know each other, we played outside. As the story goes, I pulled his hair. His mom got angry, defensive. Somehow or other, our moms patched things up and forged a friendship in Maureen’s absence. They spent lots of time together, and so did Geoff and I.
We were buddies. We went to camp together, I took trips with him and his parents. He cut up my food in restaurants. We had sleepovers where we shared each other’s beds.
When we were six, I told him that I loved him. He kissed me on the forehead and told me that he wanted to marry me when we grew up. We kept it a secret.
Two years later, our moms had a fight and split up. It felt like the fun parts of my life suddenly vanished. For the first time, I hated my mom’s control over me.
Ten years passed. Freshman year of college, I heard from Maureen that Geoff and I were in the same city. Weeks later, I got a call from a friend who had run into Geoff.
Listen. I was dating a guy. I loved that guy. I even thought he was the one. But I was wrong. From the moment that I knew Geoff was in my town, that other relationship was on the tracks. Six months passed and Geoff and I were dating. The train snatched us up and we’ve been aboard ever since. Next week we’ll celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary.
Now, what do you think? Does hearing the story make you believe in fate? If this were your story, wouldn’t you do anything to protect it, to preserve it?
Going braless
He liked the girl without the bra. I could sense it, could literally feel his animal attraction to her.  The three of us were standing around after class, waiting for the elevator. They were talking and laughing. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and opted to hike down the stairs.
I met him in grad school. We both studied American lit, neither of us had made the cut for the PhD program. We made due with our master’s studies.
I arrived ten minutes early to my first meeting with my advisor. I found her door closed, blurred voices escaping from inside the office. I sat outside, on the floor, reading a copy of the first book on the syllabus. I waited forty-five minutes before I worked up the nerve to knock.
He showed up thirty minutes in. He was hot. Tall, dark hair, nice smile. I did say hi, so at least there was that. I smiled. But, you know, I was already married. Year one. So I didn’t show interest. But he was perfect. He wore his button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a messenger bag slung across his chest.
Who knows what would have happened if I had not already been taken. But honestly, I had no clue. I was 24, and I was only beginning to invent myself. Going braless was not on my checklist. Marriage was, and so was grad school. I was new, awkward, and in a rush to get things right.
Finally I stuffed my book into my bag, stood up, and said, “I guess I should knock.†I didn’t laugh and I don’t remember properly introducing myself. I knocked on the professor’s door and interrupted her meeting. Afterwards, the tall guy and I glanced at each other as I held her door open for him.
Here’s the thing: Doing things right made me unhappy. I thought that I wanted to quit my job and start grad school. I thought that I wanted to rush home each night after class. I thought that I didn’t need to be all that friendly to my single schoolmates because I had my real married friends. I thought that one misstep would bring my whole life crumbling down. I thought that things that made me uncomfortable were bad.
But you know what? I was wrong. I wanted to flirt. I wanted to forget my bra. Have I ever mentioned how much I bombed at grad school? I did all of the assignments, but I completely missed out on the experience. I still graduated, though.
Is that weird?
When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend named Hippa Zakka. She lived in the wall under the dining room window.
I used to plan imaginary feasts with her as my guest. I’d set the table for the two of us and prepare our pretend meal. Hippa and I would set out on grand adventures in our Winnebago. We’d read together. She shared all of my toys.
Hippa Zakka was always ready to play with me. She was up for anything. I played with her for many years, even after I’d started school and had real friends.
Hippa never let me down. She never ignored me, never broke a promise. She was always fun, never mean. She was just right.
Hippa Zakka taught me a thing or two about how to be a good friend.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/daily-prompt-memento/
Mask
The soldiers came on a sunny day with red leaves falling on the grass outside. The soldiers asked for Mrs. Samuel Baylus and mother turned to us, her smile like a mask, and told us to go play outside.
I wanted to stay. “I hope your husband is dead,” I thought in angry not-words. “I hope the soldiers make you cry,” I thought. Then I went outside with Norman, sat down in the tree house, and cried because I knew that daddy would never come home.
Maybe I hated her, too
I was almost 18 when I knew for sure that my Bubbie hated me.
I was visiting her on a sunny Saturday at the end of summer, days before I started college. Earlier we had gone shopping for dorm room supplies: pillows, a trash can, a shower caddy, that sort of thing. The purchases sat by her door still in their bags.
We had just returned from lunch and my mom and my aunt were talking quietly in the kitchen.
“Come with me,” Bubbie said. “I have something to show you.”
“Okay,” I said and followed her as she shuffled into her bedroom. The bedspread laid smoothly over the bed, her knitted afghan over top. Her rocker sat in one corner. Sun streamed through the lace curtains.
“Sit here,” she said, motioning towards the bench at her vanity table.
I did. She opened her jewelry box sitting atop her vanity, her hands shaking slightly. “Look at these,” she said, lifting out a pair of gold earrings.
“They’re pretty,” I said. Bubbie loved jewelry almost more than she loved shopping. Ever since my grandfather died in World War II, she had saved carefully to buy herself rings, necklaces, earrings. At 82, her large collection was her pride.
I ran my fingers across the rows of pretty necklaces. I loved when Bubbie showed me her things like this; sneaking off felt secret and special.
“I like this one,” I said, lifting a large ring with a swirling pattern of diamonds out of the box. I smiled and looked up at Bubbie, expecting her agreement.
No. Suddenly something was wrong. Her face had turned stony.
“Don’t touch that,” she ordered. “That one belongs to your sister when I’m gone.”
Her words froze me. The ring dropped back into the jewelry box. For a long minute I tried to make sense of Bubbie’s words.
I didn’t want Bubbie to be gone. I never wanted any of her jewelry if it meant that she was dead. I hadn’t asked for the ring, I hadn’t even wanted it. But even if I had, why would she choose to reward my sister over me? Why reward a no-good drug addict who deserted her family and not me? I had always worked hard and received a scholarship to college. I visited her each Saturday, not Kim. I always did the right thing, unlike Kim. I loved my Bubbie.
All of a sudden, a blinding rage came over me. I jumped up, pushed over the bench, and ran out of the room. I ran to the front door and grabbed my new pillow and a few other shopping bags and slammed the front door behind me. I could hear my mom calling me from the kitchen, but I ignored her. I ran to the bus stop and sat, clutching my pillow, crying.
A few minutes later, my mom arrived. As we waited for the approaching bus, she told me, “Whatever you just did, Bubbie will never forgive you for it.” I looked at her in disbelief.
You know what? My mom was right. I apologized many times, but my Bubbie never did forgive me. You’d be surprised how old she was when she died.
I know a monster who lived in Scranton
When my sister, Kim, was about 13, if I remember correctly, she and my mom took a trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Now, this was five years before I arrived, a few years before my mom even met my father at the pawn shop where they both eventually worked.
By this point in her life, my mom, a divorcee and mental hospital survivor, was searching for redemption. She arranged the trip to meet with a priest, I think. She was working towards her conversion from Judaism, studying the New Testament and Catholic scriptures, as her story goes.
Scranton isn’t all that far from Baltimore, but for my mom it was a big trip. She was never much of a traveler. I’m not sure why she brought my sister along, and I can only imagine what a 13-year-old Jewish girl from a broken home would think of spending a week in a monastery. That’s another story itching to be told.
In any case, Kim was there when my mom received some kind of bad news. Was my Bubbie sick? My aunt? I can’t remember. Something happened that drove my mom to return to Baltimore, alone. Her friend the priest suggested that she leave my sister there with him while she went to sort out the emergency. At least, that’s how she told the story. So she left her 13-year-old daughter alone in a monastery in the care of a priest.  Today, the thought of doing such a think strikes me as almost comical.
It wasn’t. Something went wrong, of course. I’m hazy on the details, but my sister spent three days by herself at that monastery in Scranton. After my mom came to collect her, she was broken. Now, my mom used to say that Kim was always a difficult child. She struggled even when she was a baby. But whatever happened in Scranton set her on a downward spiral.
My mom never forgave herself. Her guilt ran so deep that she had another child – me – and dedicated nearly the rest of her life to keeping me safe. For my sister, whatever trauma she experienced in the care of the priest became a pivot point in her life. By the time I was born, she was receiving treatment for bipolar disorder. Later, when things began to get really bad, when she first began to have flashbacks and emerge from her room talking like a little girl or an angry truck driver, the first thing that came up in therapy was Scranton. Scranton. I remember overhearing so many horror stories about Scranton that I came to hate the entire state of Pennsylvania.
I have no idea what really happened there. Could the priest have molested my sister? Possibly. Yet I can’t help but wonder if all that really hurt my sister was fear. Fear – a cold, dark, mysterious monster that invaded a troubled girl at a crucial point in her life. Fear can do terrible things.
I should write this down
The baby, fastened with a jump rope tether to the door handle, wails while the kindergartener starts to loft a plastic apple at the crown on his golden-haired head. I burst out laughing.