In the beginning I was born in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a cold January night. I arrived unwanted and resented for my unexpected arrival. My biological father had tried to strangle my mother for putting too many pieces of bacon in the frying pan. My mother got the continual message from her parents that she needed to find a man and get married; so, she ran off with a handsome Italian man named Marco. He was a ski instructor. They got married by a justice of the peace in New Hampshire. Marco brought my mother back to Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. When he decided to paint their street-level apartment the smell of paint fumes made my mother sick to her stomach. Marco had serious rage management issues. He had spanked his first wife and she left. When he tried to kill my mother she was scared and she promptly called her mother, Baba, who then came racing down to rescue her: a crisis situation was always a huge priority in our house, the Manwaring house. Everyone huddled together and waited for the next big crisis to hit: these people lived for crisis. My mother claims that she hated skiing and I believe her; she hates to be cold. My grandmother, Baba, my aunts, Canda and Rozzie, and mother, Nancy, were all groomed to be skiers, like it or not: this was the only way my mother could get any attention from BaBa who was very athletic and spunky. There was a lot of drinking and socializing at the ski areas and clubs up north. Drinking was always a part of the family. Living with my grandparents was chaotic and often a drunken party: and it turned out that it was cute to give a two-year child sips of beer. I sipped, they cheered and I danced for the crowd. I thought that it was great; I was finally getting some special attention. I really enjoyed that and it became part of my MO for most of the rest of my life. Putting on a show whenever possible I made friends along the way. My grandmother retrieved her destroyed daughter and brought her back home to Needham, Massachusetts. My grandmother was in her element. My mother inherited this super-crisis gift as well. My mother was brought back to a truly dysfunctional and fabulous home environment. She had been trying to find a way to escape this house of horrors. The first try, running off with Marco, proved to be disastrous, but little did they know that, as well, my mother had become pregnant with an extremely lucky child that would end up to be me! When the news of my mother with child hit the family it was a huge crisis. Whaahoo!-A crisis to deal with: it was 1960 and women did not have abortions or God forbid give birth to a fatherless child. My grandfather, Grampy, came up with the ultimate and ingenious plan: he contacted his brother-in-law, Carl, a doctor who had some great ideas on how to deal with this: they decided on the abortion pill, Aminopterin, which supposedly stops the division of cells and therefore stops the fetus from forming into a person. It was administered in the third month of pregnancy. Everyone was sure that this would do the trick by stopping the pregnancy and doing away with me. Problem solved. Definitely spoken too soon; my mother went into labor January 10 after eating some yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting. She gave birth to me on January 11. I am reminded often that it was a horrific delivery; happiness all around at the house in Needham. My mother was now the unacceptable woman her father feared; a divorced woman with child and unmarried.I was born with serious problems: my eyes bulged out of my head and I threw up often and uncontrollably. I weighed five pounds. The hospital folks decided that something was really wrong with me so they kept me at the hospital for another three weeks. It was determined that I had craniosynostosis which could have accounted for the painful delivery my poor mother had to endure. My skull’s bony plates were fused together and it they were not surgically separated I would eventually die a slow and painful death; obviously as the brain grows the skull has to expand to accommodate it. Whahoo! More major problems or should I say another “crisis” this time created by my dear, loving, psychotic, scientist/inventor grandfather who administered those “abortion pills” to my poor unsuspecting mother. I was there and they would have to deal with the situation or should I say ‘crisis at hand.” I was lucky to have been born in Boston, Massachusetts; before 1961 no one lived with this condition. There were only two doctors on earth who knew how to deal with this problem. One of those doctors was on the staff at Children’s Hospital in Boston. I had the surgery when I was six-weeks old. All went well and I returned home to my grandparents’ house. I am told that I started getting all kinds of illnesses. I was a good baby, but I can’t remember who told me this. My grandparents attended to my basic needs; but I was left alone too much. I know this because the back of my head is flat as an ironing board from lying in my crib. I remember my crib vividly. It had a sheep and a duck and a cow at the foot of the crib. I stared at those animals for countless hours waiting for a human to come feed me, pick me up, change my diaper or anything. I felt sad and lonely. I did not have my own room. I somehow ended up sleeping in my aunt Rozzie’s room with her there. I annoyed my mother by having too many illnesses and keeping her awake at night.
I was left on my own when I started to crawl and loved crawling up the narrow steep stairs to the second floor. Usually I was discovered and brought back down stairs to my playpen. It looked and felt like a small wooden prison. I had one very special friend whose name was Bancroft, a majestic chocolate lab, who stood guard and remained by my side at all times. I was under the impression that Bancroft understood every word that I spoke to him. My aunt, Rozzie, was sixteen at the time and attended Dana Hall prep school treated Bancroft as though he were human as well. I assumed that he was. We spent hours dressing him up in costumes and taking pictures of him. Aunt Rozzie took quite a bit of interest in me, at least more than anyone else in the house and I waited for her daily arrival home from school. She was funny and loved to talk and make up stories to entertain me. Aunt Rozzie was, I believe, my saving grace. She gave me human contact-she spoke to me. I craved attention of any kind. At the same time, though, like everyone else in the family Aunt Rozzie was often cold and had a “no touch or affection” policy. My mother was not around much and I attached myself physically to Bancroft. I buried my nose in his fur: he smelled good, like a dog, I loved that smell; it made me feel loved, safe and peaceful. My dogs provide me with that same feeling today. Bancroft seemed to love the attention and adopted me as his own. I was honored to have such a noble beast treat me as one of his own.
My mother was still out looking for potential husbands per order of her father, my grandfather. I assume that he must have felt some kind of guilt for my being born with problems because he had basically tried to kill me but, no, he seemed to have a deep love for me: every Saturday I would lie on top of his stomach while he read the newspaper to me. He would talk to me about the Big Bang Theory, even though I was only a baby. I loved to listen to him talk endlessly about the government, science experiments and how the Russians were going to bomb us all and we should, as a country, be prepared. Later on in the day he would work in his big garden. He wore his usual weekend and weekday attire: black rubber flip-flops and boxer shorts. He would often take me to the grain store to stock up on supplies for our horse, sheep, six dogs, turtles, fish and garden. On those outings he always let me buy a plastic toy. The toys wrapped in plastic and cardboard were hung on a peg wall. One time I picked a plastic shaving kit. It was bright red and shiny. I loved sharing the mirror with my Grampy as we shaved our faces together. I adored my grandfather and knew that he felt the same way about me: Bancroft and I would sit in the bay window of the Victorian house everyday and wait for his arrival home from his company which he had founded after having invented equipment that heated materials. He took me to his company every so often. I loved seeing all the shiny nuts and bolts and liked to sit in his green leather chair and spin myself around and around until I felt like throwing up. We had a small round cement pond filled with green water. I was encouraged to strip naked and swim in the green algae, assorted fish and turtles. Free to do whatever I wanted-completely free-range-I played in the mud, investigated flowers and bugs and watched the turtles swim. I was free and happy with no one watching me; but all this happy, serene, freeness would soon come to a destructive and abrupt end: my grandmother who was overseeing my care decided that she needed to go back to work: I am sure that she was bored and needed excitement and, of course, another crisis. She got a job at Dana Hall teaching tennis, and perhaps was looking for men herself, since my grandfather was more interested in his work and pondering the universe than spending time with her. They had absolutely nothing in common: their union was a complete mystery to everyone. Someone in the family, I don’t know who, found a couple that lived down the street and around the corner from my grandparents’ house who agreed to look after me while everyone was at school or working. My mother was still nowhere to be found, apparently, looking for a husband had turned out to be a full-time job. She would, however, show up and drop me off at the new people’s house in the early morning. I hadn’t known other children or people. I had never seen a child like myself. I was about a year and a half old. I didn’t have a clue as to who these strangers were: they wanted to be called Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete. I was totally terrified. Each morning I would grip my mother’s leg and cry hysterically asking her not to Leave me, but my mother would rip me off her leg, scream and yell at me that “she had to go.” She would run for the car and tear out of the driveway leaving me crying and choking in the clouds of dust roiled up by the spinning wheels of her old beaten up car. Aunt Grace would then come out and holler at me “to get myself off the ground and into the house.” She would usher me up the stairs to the one and only bathroom and mutter nasty things under her breath about “how dirty I was.” “When was the last time you had a bath?” she barked; apparently I smelled badly. My clothes were old and miss matched. She complained about that, too. I realized that there was something quite unacceptable about myself. She would fill the bathtub–one of those old, big, iron-claw footed tubs–up to the very top and drop me in. I was very small. I thought that she might be trying to drown me. I could barely keep my head above the water. She would scrub me hard and it hurt: my skin turned red. She used Ivory Soap. I discovered later that I am allergic to Ivory Soap. She would then bring me down to the kitchen with her where she made wedding cakes on the side to supplement the measly income Uncle Pete made painting houses: I was extra income for them. They had three kids in their late teens and early twenties: Peter, Donna and Brian. Donna was in high school and clearly hated her parents. she was almost never home. I figured out finally that she was living down the street with her best friend’s family. On the rare occasion when she did show up a huge argument always erupted, and she would storm out of the house yelling that she “hoped that they would all die.” Each visit ended the same way: Donna screaming and swearing at her parents, slamming the door and then gone, until the next time. Peter was never around. I think that maybe he was in college somewhere far away. Brian showed up periodically: he was usually in trouble with the police or just hanging around looking for handouts. They had a dog and treated her badly. I would try to cuddle up next to her, but Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete would get angry and tell me that “it was disgusting!”, “I was not allowed to do that.” I hated being at their house. I knew that my grandparents were only a few minutes away. I would beg Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete to call them to come and get me. “Forget it” they said; they would have none of that. I was to be seen and not heard, plus, they didn’t want to lose the extra cash; I became quiet and hopeless. I didn’t know when my mother would come to pick me up. I had to sleep in the boys’ old room. It had grey wallpaper with cowboys and Indians on it. The floor was painted grey. It was a large room and I was a tiny child. I was terrified. Every night Aunt Grace, who was extremely religious, would have me pray with her in the dark. She would say a few prayers. The one that I remember the most terrified me the most; “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take; And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” I had not encountered religion yet, but I knew that God was huge and powerful and I was sure that if I did go to sleep I would probably not wake up. And in an instant I could be taken away never to see Grampy or Bancroft again. It took all my will power to not fall asleep. Sometimes I would spend all night watching the large streetlight outside the bedroom window. The house was on a busy street. The busy traffic swooshing by kept me awake. I would scanned the room for God and any other unearthly spirits that might “take my soul.” I was always exhausted. I remember Donna’s room: I had to pass by it every time I needed to go down the hall to use the bathroom. The room was small and pink filled with stuffed animals and dolls. I would stand at the threshold of the doorway and look longingly at the pink temptation. It was forbidden territory; I was told to never enter the room. It was not mine and Donna would be angry if I disrupted anything in her room. A couple of times I couldn’t help myself; I just had to touch and smell the pinkness of her frilly little girl’s room. I had never seen such a delicious thing before-a magical dazzling world. I cautiously entered the room: it was filled with nick-knacks and girlie possessions: there were perfume bottles that smelled like candy, figurines of dancing ballerinas, soft cuddly stuffed animals and beautiful dolls dressed up in perfect outfits, which Aunt Grace had sewn for Donna’s dolls. There was a fluffy soft pink comforter on the bed, lace curtains at the windows and pink wallpaper with roses on it; I was in heaven. Suddenly a loud boom startled me from behind. I jumped, my heart beating and thrumming in my tiny chest. The dream was over; it was Aunt Grace. I was caught. She grabbed my skinny arm and held it tight, her clenched fingers cutting off the circulation to my hand. It burned, but I was terrified more by her swollen red face and bulging eyes as she bellowed that “I would go to Hell for disobeying her orders to stay out of Donna’s room.” She shouted and huffed and puffed that “I should be ashamed of myself. I didn’t belong in her room. It’s not my room and I should be punished.” I was dragged down the long staircase to the enclosed porch where I was told to stay. The porch was attached to the kitchen. The door was glass. It was cold. There was no heat. I could see through the door to the kitchen where Aunt Grace was working on her wedding cakes-in her shirtsleeves and warm. I had to sit on a set of little cold metal steps. I wasn’t wearing a lot of clothes; I shivered and looked into the kitchen hoping that she would let me back in soon. She was stubborn and angry. She did not give in, no matter how much I implored with my puppy dog eyes. I shivered uncontrollably. After an hour when she let me back in she told me: “that should teach you a lesson about being obedient.” She made me a baloney sandwich on white Wonder bread and Miracle Whip. I ate it even though it tasted like a white greasy sponge. At my grandmother’s we ate whole grain bread, fresh vegetables and fresh meats. My grandmother was a good cook. I had never eaten no-flavor-plastic-textured food before. The sandwich made me want to throw up. I did and Aunt Grace threatened to make me eat the vomited food because, she said, “I was wasting good money.” The only good thing to eat at their house was the frosting that she made by hand for the wedding cakes. It was made of Crisco lard and food coloring. Every month Uncle Pete would have his drinking buddies over to play cards in the living room. The whole house was decorated in vile green carpet and brown furniture. The exception was the kitchen which was a neutral light-grey and white. There was a metal table with a white Formica top and a thin red strip around its edge. It was my duty to bring them peanuts and drinks from the kitchen. They smoked cigarettes and cigars and stunk the place up. Every time I brought them something to eat or drink they made crude comments and leered at me, looking me up and down. It made me feel creepy. They liked to touch me, not always in the right places, and tease me with their drunken blabbering. I hated to go into the living room to ask them “what I could get for them” but Aunt Grace made me. I was embarrassed and ashamed. It could be several days or a week before my mother showed up to bring me back to Grampy’s. I was blissfully happy there and believed that I would never be made to return to the other house. But I was always returned to Them. And I would always wrap myself around my mother’s legs and cry. And she would always leave. And the dust from her wheels would always turn to dirt that would be left on me. Donna did come home occasionally: I remember the time that she brought me up to her room and showed me her treasures. It seemed fine and she was nice to me. I realize now that Donna was sixteen and that her room and all its pink glory had been kept frozen in time, as if she were still five. I realized that it wasn’t Donna who didn’t want me to be in her room; it was her mother: Aunt Grace had lost Donna to another family. Donna had been disobedient. She had refused to comply with her mother’s commands and rules, including refusing to go to church with her. Aunt Grace had left the door open in hopes that her five-year old girl would return. I had to pass that magical room often. It was torture for me: I was not allowed to bring any toys with me to their house: no soft stuffed animal, no doll. Actually, I had never had or been given any of those things; I don’t know if they just forgotten or that no one had had the time, or that they just didn’t know. When Christmas came around I think that because no one had much money there was nothing: I never had a Christmas until my mother remarried. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete did have a decorated tree with lights and presents under the tree, but they were for her children-if they cared to show up. Often I would sit and watch them open gifts on Christmas day. I had nothing to open. They thought that my grandparents were providing Christmas for me and my grandparents thought that my mother was providing Christmas for me and I got lost in the different groups. I think that they thought I was too little to understand or care. They were wrong. I got my first gift from my grandfather when I was sixteen; it was a three-foot stuffed Sylvester. By that time my grandmother had left my grandfather. She lived in her car at the Dolly Copp Campground in New Hampshire before going to live with my aunt, Rozzie, in New Hampshire. Eventually my grandfather remarried a woman who was drooling alcoholic, but, who, in spite of her difficulties, had some knowledge of what was supposed to happen at celebratory times of the year: birthday, Halloween, Valentines Day and Christmas. Unfortunately it was too little too late. My mother and I went to live in an apartment in Needham. Her parents had wanted her gone. She worked at an advertising agency in Newton. She neglected me, and the apartment. The apartment was in shambles when she left. She was trying to keep men away from her, then one day, my stepfather, Mel, appeared: he came into our lives and took me and my mother away to Boston to live in an apartment on Beacon Street. The third-story apartment had a yellowy-brownish haze, the smoke vapors left behind by the previous tenant. It looked like the apartment was in a permanent state of depression. My new father was a dark scary shadowy stranger in the background of my life. When he showed up I asked myself: “who the Hell was this guy? No one told me a thing about the new man. He was going to be my new father. I followed like a sheep. I didn’t ask or protest because no one would have heard me. I was shell-shocked. He had no face back then which scared me. He was always pissed off and extremely serious. My new father wanted my mother to himself and he made me feel like I was in the way. No one had taken the time to introduce him to me. He had simply showed up: uptight and always in a rush. I think that he was trying to marry my mother before she changed her mind and run back to Needham. I wish. My mother had a dog, a smallish brown and white Jack Russell/Beagle mix. She named her Cleo. Cleo would be the closest thing I would have as a sister. Damn. I knew things were going to be creepy. And, I was right. The third floor apartment was dark and gloomy and they didn’t allow pets or children. I missed my grandfather, Bancroft, grandmother and my aunts and their dogs. It was the first time that I had felt a never-ending sadness, a sense that a dark roll of black fabric had draped itself over my already sad little life. I clung to Cleo’s furry neck and would not let go. She became the only warm living thing that I loved and that loved me back: we connected like twins. I would wrap my body around hers and engulf myself in her stinky good dog fur. It was the only thing that made me feel as if I existed. My mother was all about the No Touch Policy; she showed Cleo more affection than I had ever seen. When I would ask her if I could sit on her lap she would snap at me and say “No” all the while holding Cleo like a baby in her arms. My new dad hated Cleo. My mother got Cleo while she was pregnant with me which on some level was insulting. I was grateful that Cleo was there with me, otherwise, I might have jumped out of the third story window. They left me alone in that apartment with Cleo by my side. Thank you, God, for Cleo.
My new father took us on a camping trip: he planned that we would sleep in a field next to a stream in a tent at the base of Mt. Washington. Cleo came too. I was almost three years old. I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee. I tried to wake my mother; but she never woke up. I had to ask a stranger to take me out in the night to help me pee. He was impatient and then he became enraged with me; I felt scared and embarrassed. I was afraid to pull my underpants down. Who was this person? He kept flashing the light of the flashlight in my eyes. My bladder hurt. He hurried me to be done. Then he discovered that the raccoons had eaten the fish that he had caught that day. He went crazy yelling and screaming. I was terrified. Once again I tried to wake my mother, but she just mumbled something nasty, turned over and went back to sleep. I thought that everything that had happened that night was my fault. Later it would be discovered that I had had constant urinary tract infections due to a malformed tube to my bladder: I wasn’t diagnosed until I was nine when I had surgery. I was always in pain. After a few months the Beacon Street apartment landlord threw us out. My new father was angry at the dog and me for causing this. He had known that it was not allowed. We then moved to Belmont center, Massachusetts, to another apartment that was just as pretty as the first, but on the second floor with steeper stairs. I was not growing at a normal rate. I was barely growing: I was tiny, bones, height, everything. My stepfather believed that I should be treated like any other kid of regular stature. I was made fun of throughout my life for being too short. We lived in Belmont only briefly, but scary stuff was waiting around every corner. A retarded boy, David, lived above us. One day my parents left me in the care of David and his mother. I didn’t think that this was a great idea; but, of course, I had no choice. I suggested this to my parents but they didn’t hear me. David’s mother was inattentive. David was fourteen, tall and scary. He had severe Down Syndrome and I was on guard. When he tried to speak to me I couldn’t understand a thing that he said: he would get closer and closer to me, drooling, sputtering and spitting inaudible words. His thick glasses with the black frames became magnified and this sent me over the edge. I ran, heading back to my apartment. It was unlocked. I dove for the door, but not in time to keep David out. He pushed his way in and kept chasing me through the kitchen to the top of the dreaded steep stairs whose metal strips descended as far as my eye could see, down. All that I could remember is waking up at the bottom of the stairs, groggy and hurt. My parents were there finally. They helped me up the steep stairs and determined that I would live. Later in life when I went to the plastic surgeon to reduce the bump on my nose, after x-rays, the doctor questioned my mother as to when I might have broken my nose. She looked completely clueless. And then it hit me: David and the steep stairs. I also remember having a small blow-up pool at that time. I had no bathing suit, so I had to play naked and alone in my pool. There were two small boys who would watch me from behind the fence. Apparently they were getting some sort of perverse satisfaction from watching my naked body. Soon after Belmont we moved to a new house in Lincoln, a small town west of Boston. I called it Link-colon. It was a horrible little stucco box with two bedrooms. My mother was now pregnant with my half-brother–Oh, yeah, my mother and the oral surgeon got married somewhere along the way, but no one explained how or when that had happened. There was no room for a new baby in the stucco box. I used to wonder night after night where the Hell would the baby sleep after he was born. January again. My mother, Nancy, goes into labor. It’s really cold out. My parents rushed me into the light blue VW bug and off to Emerson Hospital in Concord. They parked the car in the parking lot of the hospital. At that time children were not allowed anywhere near the maternity ward; I was left in the wee hours of night car. I was alone and cold. It was so cold that my body could not relax. I drifted in and out of sleep, then woke up startled and confused. It was so cold that I thought that maybe I had stopped breathing and was dead. Meanwhile I kept an eye on the hospital doors waiting for any signs of life, but hours passed or somehow it felt that way, and somehow I got home. I can’t remember how. Now I waited to meet Adam, my new brother: he was cute with big blue eyes and blond hair: he was the complete opposite of myself. He got a lot of attention especially from my stepfather’s family. A boy! They were all so thrilled. My grandmother even graced him with a real silver spoon. Some one gave him towels with his initials on them Wow! I thought that he must be really special. He was special, but not in the way one might have expected. We would figure that out soon enough. I felt like I didn’t exist anymore. Everyone doted on Adam, my new brother. I didn’t know why because he threw up on everyone who held him, including me. He had crossed eyes and was a disturbing shade of yellow. After the initial excitement was over there was silence in the house. My mother spent her days in her tiny bedroom with the black wallpaper that had tiny faded orange and yellow flowers on it. I was left alone to tend to my brother. I was four and it was up to me to entertain him and to change his diapers. I was up for the challenge given that I had nothing better to do with my time and my mother didn’t seem particularly interested in me or in her new baby. She was busy sleeping. She did, however, get up in time to make some dinner for my father and me. We didn’t have much money. We had to eat things called drumsticks which were made of some kind of unidentifiable ground meat shaped and wrapped around a stick. It was supposed to look like a chicken leg. It was cheap. It didn’t taste like anything that one could clearly identify. It tasted bad. My brother was starting to display some bizarre behavior: he cringed and cried when there noises he didn’t like. He lied to watch things go round and round: my father’s stereo was big fun for Adam; he spent endless hours watching the records go round and round. He began singing as an infant especially during the night. This pissed my father off big time; the surgeon needed his rest so he could be the great oral surgeon that he wanted to be. To take care of him family. It was decided that Adam would sleep down in the basement next to the washer and dryer. Someone forgot to take the medieval masks down which loomed over his face. The mystery of where baby Adam was going to sleep was finally revealed: he was going to sleep in the BASEMENT? A few weeks passed and you could still hear Adam singing up a storm. One night as I lay awake listening to Adam’s songs–he was a pretty good singer, certainly better than me–I heard him begin to scream as if he were being killed. I ran down into the basement to see what was going on. Adam had thousands of red ants biting him all over his body and face. I yelled for help. My parents came down to discover me trying to pull him out of his crib. But I just couldn’t. He was a big baby now and I was only four and a half. After I asked my parents for a meeting to discuss the fate of Adam’s placement. I offered to share my room and then I began to plead with them insisting that he sleep in my room. I was turned down: the father must get his full night’s sleep in order to take care of just about everyone else on the planet, except us, his own family. I would cry every night hoping that Adam would be ok. My stepfather became obsessed with potty training me: I was very small and could only pee if I held on to the toilet seat and then held myself up with both arms stretched out straight as a board; I was
afraid that I would plunge into the depths of the blue aqueous toilet bowl. It took a lot of balancing and strength to do this. They finally got me a stool so that, at least, I could get on to the toilet. My stepfather decided that he would tuck me in at night. He played games that tested my intelligence. This made me nervous; I almost always failed at his games. He became pushy with me. I think that he thought that I was brain dead. He seemed to get some sort of satisfaction out of seeing me fail; in fact, he seemed to enjoy watching other people fail. He is still like this today. Then he decided that he would start taking pictures of me: he would make me put a dress on, then position me under the large weeping willow tree in the front yard. He was always unhappy with the results. He would tell me to smile and to stop pouting. I had no idea that I was pouting. I tried to please him, but nothing worked and finally he gave up. I was also told by other people not to smile because I had such huge buckteeth. One day my brother drank Ritz blue dye and was rushed to the hospital to have his stomach pumped out. My mother had one of her crisis moments screaming and yelling that he was going to die. I thought that he just might. Later in life I realized that my mother took great enjoyment in making anything small or moderate into a major crisis always trying to figure out the worst-case scenario. My mother was either morbidly depressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown or out of her mind with exciting ideas and ready to party; no one ever knew what would be coming next. I never had friends and was always alone. The most one could look forward to was going to the grocery store. My mother left us in the car a lot, in the summer and in the dead of winter. Not long after the white box we moved to another bigger grey house on the other side of Link-colon. The house was my father’s choice: barn/plank construction it had no insulation and there were cavernous gaps in the floorboards. The walls, stained greenish-brown grey, were like that as well. The house sat on top of a huge hill. During the winter the weather came blasting in the after burner of a jet engine. The forced hot air was like a hot blow dryer on your face shriveling everything up until you looked and felt like you were 98 years old-and itched like crazy. Whoo hoo! A really cozy home at long last. Didn’t last. Life got worse: my brother was clearly showing signs of serious emotional disturbance and my mother became obsessed with him. She began to investigate everything and anything that would explain his bizarre behavior. One of his eyes wandered and most of the time his eyes were crossed. He started speaking late for a kid, but the stuff that he said was strange. He made up his own language-not that that was that unusual for my family; we all liked to distort words and make new words and new meanings from old words. He focused on morbid stuff: he liked to pull the legs off spiders and then there was the time that he tried to vacuum out the toilet, or the time that he got pissed off at me and tried to cut my stereo wire which was still plugged in. I stopped him in the nick of time only because I didn’t want him to ruin my stereo. He also threw the cat out of the second story window just to see if the cat would live. She did, but had a limp for sometime. My parents realized that there was a real problem with Adam; they brought him to several doctors and he was prescribed Ritalin. My mother gave it to him daily and he got really freaky: he became obsessed with musicals, particularly God-Spell. He started drawing dots on the inside of his palms and the tops of his feet, and at any moment of the day you could turn around to find that Adam had plastered himself with his back to the wall, with his arms stretched out, feet crossed, head slumped to one side and a bizarre little grin on his face. We would ask him what he was doing. He would reply: “I’m Jesus nailed to the cross.” We would often find him in this position. No one needed to ask again what he was doing, we knew that it wasn’t right. He also liked to take my Barbie’s and nail them to sticks shaped like the cross. I usually got pissed off at him and he finally stopped. He also turned a strange shade of grey, got huge dark circles under his eyes and started talking about killing himself. He was getting scary-weird quickly; so my mother took him off the Ritalin. Then she reduced his intake of sugar and that seemed to have somewhat of a good effect, but it didn’t stop him from pulling down his pants in the grocery store, turning, patting his bare ass and saying “ egg in your block or pepper smells! He did this in all sorts of populated areas. My mother was at her wits end: Adam really knew how to get to her. I did find most of this behavior fairly entertaining. I, of course, was still a kid and this type of elevated humor still tickled my funny bone. Mum was mad at me for encouraging Adam by laughing at his highly inappropriate behavior, but our lives were seriously boring and Adam livened things up. In spite of the fact that he was yelled at, hit and punished it did nothing to deter him from doing more outrageous stuff. I decided that I wanted a sister so I decided to make one out of Adam. I dressed him up in fluffy pink frocks and plastic jewelry, applied bright red lipstick to his lips and called him little Susie .He seemed to really enjoy this. I presented little Susie to everyone; I was having a good time. Then he began to dress himself up as little Susie all on his own and would arrive at the dinner table smiling and jovial. I thought that it was cute. Of course, this was the beginning of what would become Adam’s true identity to my father’s dismay. Adam, too, would be sent to Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete’s house with me. Aunt Grace really didn’t enjoy him; he never listened to anyone and was impulsive. I knew that he really couldn’t help his behavior. Aunt Grace was would always say: “stop giving me grief!” I knew grief had something to do with death and I guessed that Adam was killing her. I thought: “well, ok, Adam. He was doing what I could never do. A year later when we lived in our first house in Lincoln they came at Christmas time and brought a present for me and for Adam. I opened mine: it was a beautiful doll dressed in a real velvet dress and matching hat. It had long, blond shiny that almost seemed like real hair. I smiled. I thanked them for the doll. I was now 7 years old and it was 1968. I skipped down the hall to my tiny blue room, whipped out my brother’s left over changing table, threw the doll down on the table and went to work. I viciously cut off all the doll’s hair. It looked crude and hideous. I was good with scissors. Then I took a knife and cut open her head just to make sure I was right-that she didn’t have a brain. I wanted to prove this to everyone. I could hear the happy chatter coming from the living room. I skipped back down the hall to the group and proudly showed them my handy work. The look of horror on their faces was not what I had expected. I knew that I was in big trouble. I tried to show them all how fantastic it was to be able to see inside the doll’s head, and how the hair had been attached at the factory. Hmmmm?? No one seemed interested. They looked angry. I was banished to my room. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete left and my parents came to punish me for being so cruel to our visitors. “How could I be so evil and hurt their feelings by destroying the special gift that they had brought for me?” I felt horribly guilty. How could I be so stupid? I only saw them again one more time, years later. We moved to another house in Lincoln. I was eleven. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete came to visit us in our new home. We sat in the living room. It was Christmas time again. They brought me earrings made of cheap, fake gold. When I wore them they turned my ear holes black and we had to throw them away. That was the last time that I saw them. I did speak to them forty years later and they confirmed my experience as completely true.
I was left on my own when I started to crawl and loved crawling up the narrow steep stairs to the second floor. Usually I was discovered and brought back down stairs to my playpen. It looked and felt like a small wooden prison. I had one very special friend whose name was Bancroft, a majestic chocolate lab, who stood guard and remained by my side at all times. I was under the impression that Bancroft understood every word that I spoke to him. My aunt, Rozzie, was sixteen at the time and attended Dana Hall prep school treated Bancroft as though he were human as well. I assumed that he was. We spent hours dressing him up in costumes and taking pictures of him. Aunt Rozzie took quite a bit of interest in me, at least more than anyone else in the house and I waited for her daily arrival home from school. She was funny and loved to talk and make up stories to entertain me. Aunt Rozzie was, I believe, my saving grace. She gave me human contact-she spoke to me. I craved attention of any kind. At the same time, though, like everyone else in the family Aunt Rozzie was often cold and had a “no touch or affection” policy. My mother was not around much and I attached myself physically to Bancroft. I buried my nose in his fur: he smelled good, like a dog, I loved that smell; it made me feel loved, safe and peaceful. My dogs provide me with that same feeling today. Bancroft seemed to love the attention and adopted me as his own. I was honored to have such a noble beast treat me as one of his own.
My mother was still out looking for potential husbands per order of her father, my grandfather. I assume that he must have felt some kind of guilt for my being born with problems because he had basically tried to kill me but, no, he seemed to have a deep love for me: every Saturday I would lie on top of his stomach while he read the newspaper to me. He would talk to me about the Big Bang Theory, even though I was only a baby. I loved to listen to him talk endlessly about the government, science experiments and how the Russians were going to bomb us all and we should, as a country, be prepared. Later on in the day he would work in his big garden. He wore his usual weekend and weekday attire: black rubber flip-flops and boxer shorts. He would often take me to the grain store to stock up on supplies for our horse, sheep, six dogs, turtles, fish and garden. On those outings he always let me buy a plastic toy. The toys wrapped in plastic and cardboard were hung on a peg wall. One time I picked a plastic shaving kit. It was bright red and shiny. I loved sharing the mirror with my Grampy as we shaved our faces together. I adored my grandfather and knew that he felt the same way about me: Bancroft and I would sit in the bay window of the Victorian house everyday and wait for his arrival home from his company which he had founded after having invented equipment that heated materials. He took me to his company every so often. I loved seeing all the shiny nuts and bolts and liked to sit in his green leather chair and spin myself around and around until I felt like throwing up. We had a small round cement pond filled with green water. I was encouraged to strip naked and swim in the green algae, assorted fish and turtles. Free to do whatever I wanted-completely free-range-I played in the mud, investigated flowers and bugs and watched the turtles swim. I was free and happy with no one watching me; but all this happy, serene, freeness would soon come to a destructive and abrupt end: my grandmother who was overseeing my care decided that she needed to go back to work: I am sure that she was bored and needed excitement and, of course, another crisis. She got a job at Dana Hall teaching tennis, and perhaps was looking for men herself, since my grandfather was more interested in his work and pondering the universe than spending time with her. They had absolutely nothing in common: their union was a complete mystery to everyone. Someone in the family, I don’t know who, found a couple that lived down the street and around the corner from my grandparents’ house who agreed to look after me while everyone was at school or working. My mother was still nowhere to be found, apparently, looking for a husband had turned out to be a full-time job. She would, however, show up and drop me off at the new people’s house in the early morning. I hadn’t known other children or people. I had never seen a child like myself. I was about a year and a half old. I didn’t have a clue as to who these strangers were: they wanted to be called Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete. I was totally terrified. Each morning I would grip my mother’s leg and cry hysterically asking her not to Leave me, but my mother would rip me off her leg, scream and yell at me that “she had to go.” She would run for the car and tear out of the driveway leaving me crying and choking in the clouds of dust roiled up by the spinning wheels of her old beaten up car. Aunt Grace would then come out and holler at me “to get myself off the ground and into the house.” She would usher me up the stairs to the one and only bathroom and mutter nasty things under her breath about “how dirty I was.” “When was the last time you had a bath?” she barked; apparently I smelled badly. My clothes were old and miss matched. She complained about that, too. I realized that there was something quite unacceptable about myself. She would fill the bathtub–one of those old, big, iron-claw footed tubs–up to the very top and drop me in. I was very small. I thought that she might be trying to drown me. I could barely keep my head above the water. She would scrub me hard and it hurt: my skin turned red. She used Ivory Soap. I discovered later that I am allergic to Ivory Soap. She would then bring me down to the kitchen with her where she made wedding cakes on the side to supplement the measly income Uncle Pete made painting houses: I was extra income for them. They had three kids in their late teens and early twenties: Peter, Donna and Brian. Donna was in high school and clearly hated her parents. she was almost never home. I figured out finally that she was living down the street with her best friend’s family. On the rare occasion when she did show up a huge argument always erupted, and she would storm out of the house yelling that she “hoped that they would all die.” Each visit ended the same way: Donna screaming and swearing at her parents, slamming the door and then gone, until the next time. Peter was never around. I think that maybe he was in college somewhere far away. Brian showed up periodically: he was usually in trouble with the police or just hanging around looking for handouts. They had a dog and treated her badly. I would try to cuddle up next to her, but Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete would get angry and tell me that “it was disgusting!”, “I was not allowed to do that.” I hated being at their house. I knew that my grandparents were only a few minutes away. I would beg Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete to call them to come and get me. “Forget it” they said; they would have none of that. I was to be seen and not heard, plus, they didn’t want to lose the extra cash; I became quiet and hopeless. I didn’t know when my mother would come to pick me up. I had to sleep in the boys’ old room. It had grey wallpaper with cowboys and Indians on it. The floor was painted grey. It was a large room and I was a tiny child. I was terrified. Every night Aunt Grace, who was extremely religious, would have me pray with her in the dark. She would say a few prayers. The one that I remember the most terrified me the most; “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take; And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” I had not encountered religion yet, but I knew that God was huge and powerful and I was sure that if I did go to sleep I would probably not wake up. And in an instant I could be taken away never to see Grampy or Bancroft again. It took all my will power to not fall asleep. Sometimes I would spend all night watching the large streetlight outside the bedroom window. The house was on a busy street. The busy traffic swooshing by kept me awake. I would scanned the room for God and any other unearthly spirits that might “take my soul.” I was always exhausted. I remember Donna’s room: I had to pass by it every time I needed to go down the hall to use the bathroom. The room was small and pink filled with stuffed animals and dolls. I would stand at the threshold of the doorway and look longingly at the pink temptation. It was forbidden territory; I was told to never enter the room. It was not mine and Donna would be angry if I disrupted anything in her room. A couple of times I couldn’t help myself; I just had to touch and smell the pinkness of her frilly little girl’s room. I had never seen such a delicious thing before-a magical dazzling world. I cautiously entered the room: it was filled with nick-knacks and girlie possessions: there were perfume bottles that smelled like candy, figurines of dancing ballerinas, soft cuddly stuffed animals and beautiful dolls dressed up in perfect outfits, which Aunt Grace had sewn for Donna’s dolls. There was a fluffy soft pink comforter on the bed, lace curtains at the windows and pink wallpaper with roses on it; I was in heaven. Suddenly a loud boom startled me from behind. I jumped, my heart beating and thrumming in my tiny chest. The dream was over; it was Aunt Grace. I was caught. She grabbed my skinny arm and held it tight, her clenched fingers cutting off the circulation to my hand. It burned, but I was terrified more by her swollen red face and bulging eyes as she bellowed that “I would go to Hell for disobeying her orders to stay out of Donna’s room.” She shouted and huffed and puffed that “I should be ashamed of myself. I didn’t belong in her room. It’s not my room and I should be punished.” I was dragged down the long staircase to the enclosed porch where I was told to stay. The porch was attached to the kitchen. The door was glass. It was cold. There was no heat. I could see through the door to the kitchen where Aunt Grace was working on her wedding cakes-in her shirtsleeves and warm. I had to sit on a set of little cold metal steps. I wasn’t wearing a lot of clothes; I shivered and looked into the kitchen hoping that she would let me back in soon. She was stubborn and angry. She did not give in, no matter how much I implored with my puppy dog eyes. I shivered uncontrollably. After an hour when she let me back in she told me: “that should teach you a lesson about being obedient.” She made me a baloney sandwich on white Wonder bread and Miracle Whip. I ate it even though it tasted like a white greasy sponge. At my grandmother’s we ate whole grain bread, fresh vegetables and fresh meats. My grandmother was a good cook. I had never eaten no-flavor-plastic-textured food before. The sandwich made me want to throw up. I did and Aunt Grace threatened to make me eat the vomited food because, she said, “I was wasting good money.” The only good thing to eat at their house was the frosting that she made by hand for the wedding cakes. It was made of Crisco lard and food coloring. Every month Uncle Pete would have his drinking buddies over to play cards in the living room. The whole house was decorated in vile green carpet and brown furniture. The exception was the kitchen which was a neutral light-grey and white. There was a metal table with a white Formica top and a thin red strip around its edge. It was my duty to bring them peanuts and drinks from the kitchen. They smoked cigarettes and cigars and stunk the place up. Every time I brought them something to eat or drink they made crude comments and leered at me, looking me up and down. It made me feel creepy. They liked to touch me, not always in the right places, and tease me with their drunken blabbering. I hated to go into the living room to ask them “what I could get for them” but Aunt Grace made me. I was embarrassed and ashamed. It could be several days or a week before my mother showed up to bring me back to Grampy’s. I was blissfully happy there and believed that I would never be made to return to the other house. But I was always returned to Them. And I would always wrap myself around my mother’s legs and cry. And she would always leave. And the dust from her wheels would always turn to dirt that would be left on me. Donna did come home occasionally: I remember the time that she brought me up to her room and showed me her treasures. It seemed fine and she was nice to me. I realize now that Donna was sixteen and that her room and all its pink glory had been kept frozen in time, as if she were still five. I realized that it wasn’t Donna who didn’t want me to be in her room; it was her mother: Aunt Grace had lost Donna to another family. Donna had been disobedient. She had refused to comply with her mother’s commands and rules, including refusing to go to church with her. Aunt Grace had left the door open in hopes that her five-year old girl would return. I had to pass that magical room often. It was torture for me: I was not allowed to bring any toys with me to their house: no soft stuffed animal, no doll. Actually, I had never had or been given any of those things; I don’t know if they just forgotten or that no one had had the time, or that they just didn’t know. When Christmas came around I think that because no one had much money there was nothing: I never had a Christmas until my mother remarried. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete did have a decorated tree with lights and presents under the tree, but they were for her children-if they cared to show up. Often I would sit and watch them open gifts on Christmas day. I had nothing to open. They thought that my grandparents were providing Christmas for me and my grandparents thought that my mother was providing Christmas for me and I got lost in the different groups. I think that they thought I was too little to understand or care. They were wrong. I got my first gift from my grandfather when I was sixteen; it was a three-foot stuffed Sylvester. By that time my grandmother had left my grandfather. She lived in her car at the Dolly Copp Campground in New Hampshire before going to live with my aunt, Rozzie, in New Hampshire. Eventually my grandfather remarried a woman who was drooling alcoholic, but, who, in spite of her difficulties, had some knowledge of what was supposed to happen at celebratory times of the year: birthday, Halloween, Valentines Day and Christmas. Unfortunately it was too little too late. My mother and I went to live in an apartment in Needham. Her parents had wanted her gone. She worked at an advertising agency in Newton. She neglected me, and the apartment. The apartment was in shambles when she left. She was trying to keep men away from her, then one day, my stepfather, Mel, appeared: he came into our lives and took me and my mother away to Boston to live in an apartment on Beacon Street. The third-story apartment had a yellowy-brownish haze, the smoke vapors left behind by the previous tenant. It looked like the apartment was in a permanent state of depression. My new father was a dark scary shadowy stranger in the background of my life. When he showed up I asked myself: “who the Hell was this guy? No one told me a thing about the new man. He was going to be my new father. I followed like a sheep. I didn’t ask or protest because no one would have heard me. I was shell-shocked. He had no face back then which scared me. He was always pissed off and extremely serious. My new father wanted my mother to himself and he made me feel like I was in the way. No one had taken the time to introduce him to me. He had simply showed up: uptight and always in a rush. I think that he was trying to marry my mother before she changed her mind and run back to Needham. I wish. My mother had a dog, a smallish brown and white Jack Russell/Beagle mix. She named her Cleo. Cleo would be the closest thing I would have as a sister. Damn. I knew things were going to be creepy. And, I was right. The third floor apartment was dark and gloomy and they didn’t allow pets or children. I missed my grandfather, Bancroft, grandmother and my aunts and their dogs. It was the first time that I had felt a never-ending sadness, a sense that a dark roll of black fabric had draped itself over my already sad little life. I clung to Cleo’s furry neck and would not let go. She became the only warm living thing that I loved and that loved me back: we connected like twins. I would wrap my body around hers and engulf myself in her stinky good dog fur. It was the only thing that made me feel as if I existed. My mother was all about the No Touch Policy; she showed Cleo more affection than I had ever seen. When I would ask her if I could sit on her lap she would snap at me and say “No” all the while holding Cleo like a baby in her arms. My new dad hated Cleo. My mother got Cleo while she was pregnant with me which on some level was insulting. I was grateful that Cleo was there with me, otherwise, I might have jumped out of the third story window. They left me alone in that apartment with Cleo by my side. Thank you, God, for Cleo.
My new father took us on a camping trip: he planned that we would sleep in a field next to a stream in a tent at the base of Mt. Washington. Cleo came too. I was almost three years old. I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee. I tried to wake my mother; but she never woke up. I had to ask a stranger to take me out in the night to help me pee. He was impatient and then he became enraged with me; I felt scared and embarrassed. I was afraid to pull my underpants down. Who was this person? He kept flashing the light of the flashlight in my eyes. My bladder hurt. He hurried me to be done. Then he discovered that the raccoons had eaten the fish that he had caught that day. He went crazy yelling and screaming. I was terrified. Once again I tried to wake my mother, but she just mumbled something nasty, turned over and went back to sleep. I thought that everything that had happened that night was my fault. Later it would be discovered that I had had constant urinary tract infections due to a malformed tube to my bladder: I wasn’t diagnosed until I was nine when I had surgery. I was always in pain. After a few months the Beacon Street apartment landlord threw us out. My new father was angry at the dog and me for causing this. He had known that it was not allowed. We then moved to Belmont center, Massachusetts, to another apartment that was just as pretty as the first, but on the second floor with steeper stairs. I was not growing at a normal rate. I was barely growing: I was tiny, bones, height, everything. My stepfather believed that I should be treated like any other kid of regular stature. I was made fun of throughout my life for being too short. We lived in Belmont only briefly, but scary stuff was waiting around every corner. A retarded boy, David, lived above us. One day my parents left me in the care of David and his mother. I didn’t think that this was a great idea; but, of course, I had no choice. I suggested this to my parents but they didn’t hear me. David’s mother was inattentive. David was fourteen, tall and scary. He had severe Down Syndrome and I was on guard. When he tried to speak to me I couldn’t understand a thing that he said: he would get closer and closer to me, drooling, sputtering and spitting inaudible words. His thick glasses with the black frames became magnified and this sent me over the edge. I ran, heading back to my apartment. It was unlocked. I dove for the door, but not in time to keep David out. He pushed his way in and kept chasing me through the kitchen to the top of the dreaded steep stairs whose metal strips descended as far as my eye could see, down. All that I could remember is waking up at the bottom of the stairs, groggy and hurt. My parents were there finally. They helped me up the steep stairs and determined that I would live. Later in life when I went to the plastic surgeon to reduce the bump on my nose, after x-rays, the doctor questioned my mother as to when I might have broken my nose. She looked completely clueless. And then it hit me: David and the steep stairs. I also remember having a small blow-up pool at that time. I had no bathing suit, so I had to play naked and alone in my pool. There were two small boys who would watch me from behind the fence. Apparently they were getting some sort of perverse satisfaction from watching my naked body. Soon after Belmont we moved to a new house in Lincoln, a small town west of Boston. I called it Link-colon. It was a horrible little stucco box with two bedrooms. My mother was now pregnant with my half-brother–Oh, yeah, my mother and the oral surgeon got married somewhere along the way, but no one explained how or when that had happened. There was no room for a new baby in the stucco box. I used to wonder night after night where the Hell would the baby sleep after he was born. January again. My mother, Nancy, goes into labor. It’s really cold out. My parents rushed me into the light blue VW bug and off to Emerson Hospital in Concord. They parked the car in the parking lot of the hospital. At that time children were not allowed anywhere near the maternity ward; I was left in the wee hours of night car. I was alone and cold. It was so cold that my body could not relax. I drifted in and out of sleep, then woke up startled and confused. It was so cold that I thought that maybe I had stopped breathing and was dead. Meanwhile I kept an eye on the hospital doors waiting for any signs of life, but hours passed or somehow it felt that way, and somehow I got home. I can’t remember how. Now I waited to meet Adam, my new brother: he was cute with big blue eyes and blond hair: he was the complete opposite of myself. He got a lot of attention especially from my stepfather’s family. A boy! They were all so thrilled. My grandmother even graced him with a real silver spoon. Some one gave him towels with his initials on them Wow! I thought that he must be really special. He was special, but not in the way one might have expected. We would figure that out soon enough. I felt like I didn’t exist anymore. Everyone doted on Adam, my new brother. I didn’t know why because he threw up on everyone who held him, including me. He had crossed eyes and was a disturbing shade of yellow. After the initial excitement was over there was silence in the house. My mother spent her days in her tiny bedroom with the black wallpaper that had tiny faded orange and yellow flowers on it. I was left alone to tend to my brother. I was four and it was up to me to entertain him and to change his diapers. I was up for the challenge given that I had nothing better to do with my time and my mother didn’t seem particularly interested in me or in her new baby. She was busy sleeping. She did, however, get up in time to make some dinner for my father and me. We didn’t have much money. We had to eat things called drumsticks which were made of some kind of unidentifiable ground meat shaped and wrapped around a stick. It was supposed to look like a chicken leg. It was cheap. It didn’t taste like anything that one could clearly identify. It tasted bad. My brother was starting to display some bizarre behavior: he cringed and cried when there noises he didn’t like. He lied to watch things go round and round: my father’s stereo was big fun for Adam; he spent endless hours watching the records go round and round. He began singing as an infant especially during the night. This pissed my father off big time; the surgeon needed his rest so he could be the great oral surgeon that he wanted to be. To take care of him family. It was decided that Adam would sleep down in the basement next to the washer and dryer. Someone forgot to take the medieval masks down which loomed over his face. The mystery of where baby Adam was going to sleep was finally revealed: he was going to sleep in the BASEMENT? A few weeks passed and you could still hear Adam singing up a storm. One night as I lay awake listening to Adam’s songs–he was a pretty good singer, certainly better than me–I heard him begin to scream as if he were being killed. I ran down into the basement to see what was going on. Adam had thousands of red ants biting him all over his body and face. I yelled for help. My parents came down to discover me trying to pull him out of his crib. But I just couldn’t. He was a big baby now and I was only four and a half. After I asked my parents for a meeting to discuss the fate of Adam’s placement. I offered to share my room and then I began to plead with them insisting that he sleep in my room. I was turned down: the father must get his full night’s sleep in order to take care of just about everyone else on the planet, except us, his own family. I would cry every night hoping that Adam would be ok. My stepfather became obsessed with potty training me: I was very small and could only pee if I held on to the toilet seat and then held myself up with both arms stretched out straight as a board; I was
afraid that I would plunge into the depths of the blue aqueous toilet bowl. It took a lot of balancing and strength to do this. They finally got me a stool so that, at least, I could get on to the toilet. My stepfather decided that he would tuck me in at night. He played games that tested my intelligence. This made me nervous; I almost always failed at his games. He became pushy with me. I think that he thought that I was brain dead. He seemed to get some sort of satisfaction out of seeing me fail; in fact, he seemed to enjoy watching other people fail. He is still like this today. Then he decided that he would start taking pictures of me: he would make me put a dress on, then position me under the large weeping willow tree in the front yard. He was always unhappy with the results. He would tell me to smile and to stop pouting. I had no idea that I was pouting. I tried to please him, but nothing worked and finally he gave up. I was also told by other people not to smile because I had such huge buckteeth. One day my brother drank Ritz blue dye and was rushed to the hospital to have his stomach pumped out. My mother had one of her crisis moments screaming and yelling that he was going to die. I thought that he just might. Later in life I realized that my mother took great enjoyment in making anything small or moderate into a major crisis always trying to figure out the worst-case scenario. My mother was either morbidly depressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown or out of her mind with exciting ideas and ready to party; no one ever knew what would be coming next. I never had friends and was always alone. The most one could look forward to was going to the grocery store. My mother left us in the car a lot, in the summer and in the dead of winter. Not long after the white box we moved to another bigger grey house on the other side of Link-colon. The house was my father’s choice: barn/plank construction it had no insulation and there were cavernous gaps in the floorboards. The walls, stained greenish-brown grey, were like that as well. The house sat on top of a huge hill. During the winter the weather came blasting in the after burner of a jet engine. The forced hot air was like a hot blow dryer on your face shriveling everything up until you looked and felt like you were 98 years old-and itched like crazy. Whoo hoo! A really cozy home at long last. Didn’t last. Life got worse: my brother was clearly showing signs of serious emotional disturbance and my mother became obsessed with him. She began to investigate everything and anything that would explain his bizarre behavior. One of his eyes wandered and most of the time his eyes were crossed. He started speaking late for a kid, but the stuff that he said was strange. He made up his own language-not that that was that unusual for my family; we all liked to distort words and make new words and new meanings from old words. He focused on morbid stuff: he liked to pull the legs off spiders and then there was the time that he tried to vacuum out the toilet, or the time that he got pissed off at me and tried to cut my stereo wire which was still plugged in. I stopped him in the nick of time only because I didn’t want him to ruin my stereo. He also threw the cat out of the second story window just to see if the cat would live. She did, but had a limp for sometime. My parents realized that there was a real problem with Adam; they brought him to several doctors and he was prescribed Ritalin. My mother gave it to him daily and he got really freaky: he became obsessed with musicals, particularly God-Spell. He started drawing dots on the inside of his palms and the tops of his feet, and at any moment of the day you could turn around to find that Adam had plastered himself with his back to the wall, with his arms stretched out, feet crossed, head slumped to one side and a bizarre little grin on his face. We would ask him what he was doing. He would reply: “I’m Jesus nailed to the cross.” We would often find him in this position. No one needed to ask again what he was doing, we knew that it wasn’t right. He also liked to take my Barbie’s and nail them to sticks shaped like the cross. I usually got pissed off at him and he finally stopped. He also turned a strange shade of grey, got huge dark circles under his eyes and started talking about killing himself. He was getting scary-weird quickly; so my mother took him off the Ritalin. Then she reduced his intake of sugar and that seemed to have somewhat of a good effect, but it didn’t stop him from pulling down his pants in the grocery store, turning, patting his bare ass and saying “ egg in your block or pepper smells! He did this in all sorts of populated areas. My mother was at her wits end: Adam really knew how to get to her. I did find most of this behavior fairly entertaining. I, of course, was still a kid and this type of elevated humor still tickled my funny bone. Mum was mad at me for encouraging Adam by laughing at his highly inappropriate behavior, but our lives were seriously boring and Adam livened things up. In spite of the fact that he was yelled at, hit and punished it did nothing to deter him from doing more outrageous stuff. I decided that I wanted a sister so I decided to make one out of Adam. I dressed him up in fluffy pink frocks and plastic jewelry, applied bright red lipstick to his lips and called him little Susie .He seemed to really enjoy this. I presented little Susie to everyone; I was having a good time. Then he began to dress himself up as little Susie all on his own and would arrive at the dinner table smiling and jovial. I thought that it was cute. Of course, this was the beginning of what would become Adam’s true identity to my father’s dismay. Adam, too, would be sent to Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete’s house with me. Aunt Grace really didn’t enjoy him; he never listened to anyone and was impulsive. I knew that he really couldn’t help his behavior. Aunt Grace was would always say: “stop giving me grief!” I knew grief had something to do with death and I guessed that Adam was killing her. I thought: “well, ok, Adam. He was doing what I could never do. A year later when we lived in our first house in Lincoln they came at Christmas time and brought a present for me and for Adam. I opened mine: it was a beautiful doll dressed in a real velvet dress and matching hat. It had long, blond shiny that almost seemed like real hair. I smiled. I thanked them for the doll. I was now 7 years old and it was 1968. I skipped down the hall to my tiny blue room, whipped out my brother’s left over changing table, threw the doll down on the table and went to work. I viciously cut off all the doll’s hair. It looked crude and hideous. I was good with scissors. Then I took a knife and cut open her head just to make sure I was right-that she didn’t have a brain. I wanted to prove this to everyone. I could hear the happy chatter coming from the living room. I skipped back down the hall to the group and proudly showed them my handy work. The look of horror on their faces was not what I had expected. I knew that I was in big trouble. I tried to show them all how fantastic it was to be able to see inside the doll’s head, and how the hair had been attached at the factory. Hmmmm?? No one seemed interested. They looked angry. I was banished to my room. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete left and my parents came to punish me for being so cruel to our visitors. “How could I be so evil and hurt their feelings by destroying the special gift that they had brought for me?” I felt horribly guilty. How could I be so stupid? I only saw them again one more time, years later. We moved to another house in Lincoln. I was eleven. Aunt Grace and Uncle Pete came to visit us in our new home. We sat in the living room. It was Christmas time again. They brought me earrings made of cheap, fake gold. When I wore them they turned my ear holes black and we had to throw them away. That was the last time that I saw them. I did speak to them forty years later and they confirmed my experience as completely true.
