May is 77 and her toileting consists of refreshing her wavy, silver-white pin-curled hair, gargling mouthwash, brushing her one top tooth, polishing her lavender-rimmed glasses, and smoothing on a berry-shade of lipstick.
Tolstoy is a favorite Russian author of hers. She's read War and Peace three times but doesn't like the last few chapters, "A big downer," she said. President Carter turned her onto it. "It took him three years to read it" she said, "and though I'm not educated, it didn't take me that long."
I thank her for the copy of Anna Karenina, a Christmas gift, along with the ornament-sized garden gnome. She thinks she's got me pegged with garden gnomes, and she might be right. I now own four, each from her, two outside and two inside. Though I want to know her thoughts on Anna Karenina, and why she had to buy a copy for me, instead of letting me borrow hers, she's launched into the cat report. It turns out Miss Kitty, who is two and a half, had to have some teeth pulled.
"I thought she was turning into an affectionate cat again," May said. "But no, it was her teeth. When she stopped eating, I knew it was a trip to the vet."
A few weeks before Christmas, I called May on the fly and invited her on a trip to Target. I'd promised at least five months before that I'd take her with me next time I went. I hate Target. But I hate Target less than I hate Walmart. This time it was Zhu Zhu Pet shopping for Christmas. Last time, my son had nothing to wear to the Colorado Ballet, so we bought a pink and white pinstripped shirt, with black dress pants, socks and shoes.
May, a consumate non-driver, swears that walking everywhere she goes maintains her girlish figure so she can keep wearing the dresses she loves, but Target is not within her usual range, and Target has affordable jarred yeast, superior to all the single-serve packets (they're ruined so easily) and essential for a fixed-income baker. May bakes cinnamon rolls, strawberry-butter cookies, peach pies and whatever else is in season. She's befriended many of the downtown Golden merchants by delivering homemade baked goods, especially merchants that might have items in her favorite shade of lavender, like Baby Doe's or Chelsea of London, a lingerie boutique.
If I had to confess one thing to May, it would be that I don't eat her food. It's not that I haven't, under pressure, but me and my stomach prefer not. May has a dim-dusty, cat-lady kind of place with German style, white lace curtains. Her bedroom is at the front of the house, and her bathroom is at the opposite end, through the hallway, living room and Pepto-pink kitchen. Not long ago, it was impossible to walk all the way through. Baby-dolls, boxed Barbie dolls, doll houses, plastic horses (like Secretariat, winner of the 1973 Triple Crown), and all the Disney Princesses are now stuffed, with care, into her collection of display cases and dark bookshelves. Her last broken hip, when she was on the floor, cats keeping her warm, reeking of urine and worse for three days, really changed her attitude about cleaning up. During the hospital stay she was pressured to give up her home. Her cats were blamed. It got ugly. So, she's really been working on it, vacuuming out the horse-sized, cat-hair, dust bunny in her ancient floor heating vent, for example.
Anna Karenina, it turns out, reads like a chaste soap opera laced with the minutia of Russian ruling class life during the late 1800's. Boring? Until now, frankly, yes. But it is masterfully written, and I find that I'm connected to the material in a few hard to ignore ways.
My interest in the ruling classes has been raised a few notches recently, say, from zero to seven. Betty Mays Lancaster, attorney-at-law, is the reason why. Betty seems to be on a bucket-list kick, though she wouldn't put it that way. She has thirty percent use of one lung and seventy percent use of the other (pleurisy), along with recent shoulder replacement surgery; though body parts are failing, her brain seems very much intact.
I met Betty eighteen years ago, in 1993, when my grandmother Assunta died. Betty was executrix of Assunta's estate and though I thought she was ancient then, she's more ancient now, and wants to write a book about my grandmother. She wants my help in writing a book, to be exact, and here I am, reading Anna Karenina, wondering truly, what that must have been like, a child member of the pampered, ruling class. And she was; my grandmother's title was Archduchess of Austria, (aka: Princess of Tuscany). She spent her early childhood, up to age seven, in Vienna. She was the Emperor's great neice, living in Schloss Wilhelminberg, with layers of servants, dedicated to her care. Her mother, the Infanta Blanca of Spain, dealt with her at a distance, through nannies, a governess, tutors and cooks not to mention the distance of of being the eighth child of ten. Assunta would disapprove of name dropping, but never-the -less, my maternal grandmother, Assunta Alice Ferdinandine Blanca Leopoldina Margaretha Beatrix Josepha Raphaela Michaela Philomena Hapsburg-Lothringen, grew up in an Austrian castle and died in a Texas convent, which at least partly explains how I came to grow up in central Texas foster care.
The second way in which I'm connected to Anna Karenina, the soap opera part, is the soap opera part. The story itself. Anna, it turns out, is an adulteress who throws herself in front of a train, a successful suicide, to escape the mess she'd made of her life.
I'm not an adulteress, but on bad days I want to be. To tell you the boring truth, in a non-original way, I'm a two-year old trapped in a thirty-eight year old body, with the episodic sex drive of an eighteen year old boy. (If we get drunk, you might refer to us as Texas Peach. That cute little drawl comes out, right along with her two-step, farm-girl sweetness.) It's a little crowded in here, humid even, like the inside of a fogged up car. So let me repeat, I'm not an adulteress, but on bad days, I want to throw myself under the fuck-train and get rammed into oblivion.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Where to Start? First Draft of First Chapter submitted to The Lighthouse Crowd
“Pathology comes from a story untold.” Carl Jung
I should have seen the postpartum thing coming, at least a mile away. I’m a social worker and it was a roiling storm front on the horizon, spiked with auditory and skin-prickling warnings of lightning to come. But I didn't see it, not because I hadn't considered the possibility, but exactly because I had. Ego said, “Considered it. Covered it”. As though mothering can be boiled down to a series of checklists.
The busyness of work and the excitement of checking doll-sized items off my arm-lengthed list entirely absorbed me. Pick up gently used crib from a stranger’s front porch. Check. Assemble crib. Check. And then it happened, labor. Slow starting really, on a Sunday morning. I had used a double electric breast pump to stimulate my nipples, because Dr. Jensen was threatening induction, and within hours of pumping, contractions eased their way into my consciousness. I went shopping at Whole Foods for the casserole ingredients, pausing with contractions, my hand on the zucchinis, pausing again beside the eggs. I baked my casserole through contractions, but then it was 2am, and they were coming two and three minutes apart, and nothing soothed me anymore. No bouncing ball, no tub of warm water, no back massages or stretching on the bed.
Outside, the early afternoon drizzle had turned into a world blanketed in white. The white showed no signs of stopping and we had half an hour of driving, on a good day, up two-lane Highway 93 to Boulder Community Hospital. Thank God for all-wheel drive. I begged my baby boy every 2 to 3 minutes, to please wait, just a little bit longer. Hans kept his eyes glued to what he thought was the road, wipers tracking back and forth across the windshield. From the back seat, Rigpa soothed, as best she could, with her voice and touch during contractions. “Run the red lights,” I said. My cervix was 8 centimeters dilated when we arrived and hour later it was at 10.
Through the first two hours of pushing I refused pain medication. Purist bullshit in some ways, but still I wanted to try. After five hours of pushing, in every humiliating position possible, vagina big as Texas, I had nothing left, I just wanted my baby out. During the C-section, tears trickling out of my eyes, Hans stroking my face, I joked with Dr. Jensen about monkey blood, a Texas term for iodine. Strange pressures in my nether regions, seven layers of cutting I’m told, and cone-headed Max came into the world. A railroad of staples one ker-krak at a time, closed the last layers of me. And then shivering in post-op recovery, buried under heated blankets, memories of my foster father began moving insistently out of my mouth and into the successive exhausted faces and ears of my doula, husband and friend. "He pulled me down on top of him", I kept saying, "and would've kissed me, if I hadn't jerked my face to the side." Then the trailing thought, as they brought my swaddled son to me, both of us dazed and squinting in florescent light, 'Why is this coming up for me now?'
If you believe that place makes a person, Hippy Hollow and Vernon, Texas might best begin to describe the dichotomy of my early childhood. It was 1976, and I was three going on four years old, insistently barefoot and following my mom on a pebbly-dirt path, noting the brief shade of scrubby trees that opened up to flat stretches of rock. We picked our way past a lounging walrus-man, a fist-full of newspaper shielding his eyes from the sun, his penis mercifully buried between belly and fur, then a woman leaning back on her elbows, with glaring-white triangular patches centered around the darkness of her nipples. Hippy Hollow smelled like baby oil and crackled with heat and conversation. Occasional shrieks, splashes and laughter pierced the lapping rhythm of the water. I remember thinking that Hippy Hollow wasn't really a place for kids. Not so much because of the nakedness spread out and sunning everywhere or my new Granny-induced aversion to resting my eyes on private parts, but because there was no beach. Adults could stand, one ledge down, chest high in the water. But chest-high for them was too high for me. Given the choice of frying on the rocks or freezing in the water and with much cajoling and promises of safety, I adjusted both of my yellow arm floaties and jumped in.
The first good parts I remember leaving out were in Kindergarten at Chillicothe Elementary. Any school paper that contained an A+ or 100 was hidden in the bottom drawer of my baby-blue desk or trashed. Somehow I had it my head that A pluses and hundreds were bad. Which means that really, I was trying to leave out bad parts, when in fact those bad parts were good.
Chillicothe, Texas is about as far north in North Texas as you can live, without bumping into Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle. Though we lived in Vernon, sixteen miles west, where my grandfather worked as a doctor, I commuted with Granny to her teaching job in Chillicothe, a commute whose highlight was the gas station, which contained a tiny rat in an equally tiny aquarium. I don't remember the faces of the nice white family who ran the place, just the rat. It impressed my five year old self greatly that they would wipe the rats tiny-little rat ass with a cotton ball. I remember the smear of shit contrasting with the pristine white, and wondered how else they spent their time.
In Austin, it never snowed, but in Vernon I made my first snow angel in the front yard of the unassuming house that accompanied my grandparent’s unassuming life. Except maybe, Granny was making a few assumptions. She had no idea, for example, that when Grandpa died of cirrhosis, she would be worse off than a pauper, she would be a debtor; up to her eyeballs in debt, she would say.
I made that snow angel in a blue parka with red furry edging around the hood and a red bow tied beneath my chin. Granny called it a parka and not a winter coat because she had lived in Alaska with Grandpa along with Daddy, Uncle Allen and Uncle Bill and Alaska was home to some real cold, requiring the purchase of real coats, called parkas.
Granny was a teacher, through and through. In the eight hour drive between Austin and Vernon, I learned how to count to 10 in Spanish. I learned about Disco Duck and John Denver, with his rocky mountain high. I learned that the smell of skunk meant immediate teasing that somebody had cut the cheese, and I learned to see noses and horses and make stories out of the clouds. Stories that would drift together, and inevitably drift apart.
I should have seen the postpartum thing coming, at least a mile away. I’m a social worker and it was a roiling storm front on the horizon, spiked with auditory and skin-prickling warnings of lightning to come. But I didn't see it, not because I hadn't considered the possibility, but exactly because I had. Ego said, “Considered it. Covered it”. As though mothering can be boiled down to a series of checklists.
The busyness of work and the excitement of checking doll-sized items off my arm-lengthed list entirely absorbed me. Pick up gently used crib from a stranger’s front porch. Check. Assemble crib. Check. And then it happened, labor. Slow starting really, on a Sunday morning. I had used a double electric breast pump to stimulate my nipples, because Dr. Jensen was threatening induction, and within hours of pumping, contractions eased their way into my consciousness. I went shopping at Whole Foods for the casserole ingredients, pausing with contractions, my hand on the zucchinis, pausing again beside the eggs. I baked my casserole through contractions, but then it was 2am, and they were coming two and three minutes apart, and nothing soothed me anymore. No bouncing ball, no tub of warm water, no back massages or stretching on the bed.
Outside, the early afternoon drizzle had turned into a world blanketed in white. The white showed no signs of stopping and we had half an hour of driving, on a good day, up two-lane Highway 93 to Boulder Community Hospital. Thank God for all-wheel drive. I begged my baby boy every 2 to 3 minutes, to please wait, just a little bit longer. Hans kept his eyes glued to what he thought was the road, wipers tracking back and forth across the windshield. From the back seat, Rigpa soothed, as best she could, with her voice and touch during contractions. “Run the red lights,” I said. My cervix was 8 centimeters dilated when we arrived and hour later it was at 10.
Through the first two hours of pushing I refused pain medication. Purist bullshit in some ways, but still I wanted to try. After five hours of pushing, in every humiliating position possible, vagina big as Texas, I had nothing left, I just wanted my baby out. During the C-section, tears trickling out of my eyes, Hans stroking my face, I joked with Dr. Jensen about monkey blood, a Texas term for iodine. Strange pressures in my nether regions, seven layers of cutting I’m told, and cone-headed Max came into the world. A railroad of staples one ker-krak at a time, closed the last layers of me. And then shivering in post-op recovery, buried under heated blankets, memories of my foster father began moving insistently out of my mouth and into the successive exhausted faces and ears of my doula, husband and friend. "He pulled me down on top of him", I kept saying, "and would've kissed me, if I hadn't jerked my face to the side." Then the trailing thought, as they brought my swaddled son to me, both of us dazed and squinting in florescent light, 'Why is this coming up for me now?'
If you believe that place makes a person, Hippy Hollow and Vernon, Texas might best begin to describe the dichotomy of my early childhood. It was 1976, and I was three going on four years old, insistently barefoot and following my mom on a pebbly-dirt path, noting the brief shade of scrubby trees that opened up to flat stretches of rock. We picked our way past a lounging walrus-man, a fist-full of newspaper shielding his eyes from the sun, his penis mercifully buried between belly and fur, then a woman leaning back on her elbows, with glaring-white triangular patches centered around the darkness of her nipples. Hippy Hollow smelled like baby oil and crackled with heat and conversation. Occasional shrieks, splashes and laughter pierced the lapping rhythm of the water. I remember thinking that Hippy Hollow wasn't really a place for kids. Not so much because of the nakedness spread out and sunning everywhere or my new Granny-induced aversion to resting my eyes on private parts, but because there was no beach. Adults could stand, one ledge down, chest high in the water. But chest-high for them was too high for me. Given the choice of frying on the rocks or freezing in the water and with much cajoling and promises of safety, I adjusted both of my yellow arm floaties and jumped in.
The first good parts I remember leaving out were in Kindergarten at Chillicothe Elementary. Any school paper that contained an A+ or 100 was hidden in the bottom drawer of my baby-blue desk or trashed. Somehow I had it my head that A pluses and hundreds were bad. Which means that really, I was trying to leave out bad parts, when in fact those bad parts were good.
Chillicothe, Texas is about as far north in North Texas as you can live, without bumping into Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle. Though we lived in Vernon, sixteen miles west, where my grandfather worked as a doctor, I commuted with Granny to her teaching job in Chillicothe, a commute whose highlight was the gas station, which contained a tiny rat in an equally tiny aquarium. I don't remember the faces of the nice white family who ran the place, just the rat. It impressed my five year old self greatly that they would wipe the rats tiny-little rat ass with a cotton ball. I remember the smear of shit contrasting with the pristine white, and wondered how else they spent their time.
In Austin, it never snowed, but in Vernon I made my first snow angel in the front yard of the unassuming house that accompanied my grandparent’s unassuming life. Except maybe, Granny was making a few assumptions. She had no idea, for example, that when Grandpa died of cirrhosis, she would be worse off than a pauper, she would be a debtor; up to her eyeballs in debt, she would say.
I made that snow angel in a blue parka with red furry edging around the hood and a red bow tied beneath my chin. Granny called it a parka and not a winter coat because she had lived in Alaska with Grandpa along with Daddy, Uncle Allen and Uncle Bill and Alaska was home to some real cold, requiring the purchase of real coats, called parkas.
Granny was a teacher, through and through. In the eight hour drive between Austin and Vernon, I learned how to count to 10 in Spanish. I learned about Disco Duck and John Denver, with his rocky mountain high. I learned that the smell of skunk meant immediate teasing that somebody had cut the cheese, and I learned to see noses and horses and make stories out of the clouds. Stories that would drift together, and inevitably drift apart.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
shrine reading
His pale blue feet, a color just this side of frostbite, are
bare. In both hands, drawn close to his chest, he holds an offering of
corn. He’s fallen and lost his face more than once, it’s been imperfectly
glued back on, much of his frontal lobe missing. The cardinal that once
perched on his shoulder, long gone.
I bought him for Uma and Balloo, my first pair of babies. His watchpost
on the sill faced out of the south picture window, out onto their favorite
barking spot. But that was then, at the old house. This is now, with my
second pair of babies, the human pair, in the new house. Saint Francis
has wandered, now standing in the middle of my bathroom shrine, my life in
two parts, divided by his feet. What am I to him?
Small. An inch tall to his twelve. I’m a glass screw top bottle, filled
with transparent almond oil, my lid a third of the spread of my base. The
words Dulcinea and LEIGH scripted in gold across my face. Dulcinea, the
deceptively real but imagined love of Hidalgo Don Quixote.
Saint Francis of the Missing Frontal Lobe, has morphed into my father and
towers in my family shrine. Imagine, born beneath that angry star.
Standing beneath his angry feet. My mother, the daughter of nuns, the wife
of an aspiring prophet, and the bearer of his evil progeny, me.
___
for Lighthouse Flash Forms Workshop
bare. In both hands, drawn close to his chest, he holds an offering of
corn. He’s fallen and lost his face more than once, it’s been imperfectly
glued back on, much of his frontal lobe missing. The cardinal that once
perched on his shoulder, long gone.
I bought him for Uma and Balloo, my first pair of babies. His watchpost
on the sill faced out of the south picture window, out onto their favorite
barking spot. But that was then, at the old house. This is now, with my
second pair of babies, the human pair, in the new house. Saint Francis
has wandered, now standing in the middle of my bathroom shrine, my life in
two parts, divided by his feet. What am I to him?
Small. An inch tall to his twelve. I’m a glass screw top bottle, filled
with transparent almond oil, my lid a third of the spread of my base. The
words Dulcinea and LEIGH scripted in gold across my face. Dulcinea, the
deceptively real but imagined love of Hidalgo Don Quixote.
Saint Francis of the Missing Frontal Lobe, has morphed into my father and
towers in my family shrine. Imagine, born beneath that angry star.
Standing beneath his angry feet. My mother, the daughter of nuns, the wife
of an aspiring prophet, and the bearer of his evil progeny, me.
___
for Lighthouse Flash Forms Workshop
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Incremental Improvements in GETTING FIXED, for Short Story Class
When I met her, Corina was bald. Not chemo-patient bald, but male-pattern-baldness-bald; as though a tidy, even line had been drawn around her skull, temple to temple, separating shiny, tan skin from coarse, shoulder-length brown hair.
"Leigh, this is Corina, and Corina, this is Leigh", said Prego, the tiny, pregnant houseparent.
Corina's dark lashless eyes looked me over and then away as I set my bags on the empty bed. She wore a nightgown, a baggy, long-sleeved purple thing and laceless fake Keds. The pale yellow room smelled of Windex and musty feet.
"It's too bad that you're arriving during shut-down", Prego said, "but that's how it goes." She moved toward the closet, jingling the keys that she wore on a rubbery spiral at her wrist. With my back to Prego and Corina, I stripped down to undies and pulled a men's extra large t-shirt over my head, my current version of a nightgown.
"Corina knows the rules,"Prego said. "No talking and no leaving your side of the room. You'll eat meals at your desk", which she indicated with her chin, "and ask permission to use the restroom", which she also pointed out; a single closed door across from the two closets.
Corina was looking at me again, eyes round and observant as she noted the clothes I stuffed back into my bag.
"Remember, no talking", said Prego as she locked my things into the closet with a click of the dead bolt and jingle of keys. Two locked closets, side by side. One full length mirror bolted to the wall. "We'll send a menu around soon, though. We're having Mexican take-out for lunch, since we can't go to the cafeteria."
Alone with Corina, I sat on the edge of my bed, bare feet planted on the brown linoleum floor. I gave the mattress a test bounce and then pulled back the thin girly comforter. If I fall asleep, maybe I'll wake up some place else. As my head hit the lone, flat pillow, a piercing screech snapped me back up.
“Corina! No talking allowed! You know that,” yelled Prego from down the hall.
I looked over at Corina, her shoulders and head visible above the desk. Her naked eyes blinking back at me, staring.
If Corina's disorder had a name, we didn't know it. If we had known it, we would have used it. There were eight of us, who became a variable version of we during our time on Nelson cottage. Eight residents, requiring a rotating staff of about eight. Not that we required a 1 to 1 ratio, it was a standard rezy ratio of 1 to 4, give or take.
Nelson Cottage was the younger girl's cottage, as opposed to Scarborough, the older girl's cottage (right next door) and Moody, the boy's cottage, (catty-corner from Scarborough). Inhabitants of all three cottages ate lunch and dinner in the cafeteria, each with their designated corner and designated six foot, family-style round table.
Corina was not alone in wearing her problems on the outside. We had cutters, eaters, pickers, washers, barfers, kleptos and those who loved to starve themselves. But Corina was my roommate, for awhile, and in the beginning, mesmerizing.
Her hand, usually the right one, would meander up to the dividing line on her head, finger a few strands of hair, select one and then pluck it out. She would study the hair, span its length with her fingers, check for split ends and then fixate on its minuscule white root, her eyes slightly crossed with concentration. Once satisfied, she would hold the hair root to her teeth, nibble it off and drop what remained to the floor.
I now understand that Corina was lucky, in one sense at least. Had she consumed the entire strand of hair, one hair at a time, instead of just its root, she might have developed a trichobezoar, which is a fancy word for hairball. Unlike cats and cows, humans don't have a natural mechanism for handling hairballs; cats barf them up and cow stomachs are numerous and big enough that the hairballs just accumulate until the cow dies of other, unrelated causes. Humans who develop hairballs usually need repeated surgeries to survive.
To end up in RT (rezy, or residential treatment) usually meant at least a dual diagnosis. Depressive and obsessive-compulsive or maybe oppositional-defiant and anorexic. Though staff tried not to focus on our labels, most kids who lived in rezy long enough eventually developed extensive, esoteric vocabularies. We practiced our vocabularies in daily group therapy, weekly individual therapy and as a source of perpetual peer support. Since four girls shared a bathroom, it wasn't uncommon to hear us jockey for the mirror, “You OCD-narcissist, let someone else have a turn."
"Trichotillomania, TTM or 'trich', is defined as "hair loss from a patient's repetitive self-pulling of hair"[2] and is characterized by the repeated urge to pull out scalp hair, eyelashes, facial hair,nose hair, pubic hair, eyebrows or other body hair, sometimes resulting in noticeable bald patches.[3]
Had I known the name of Corina's disorder, I would have enjoyed telling her that she would never, ever turn a real trick if she continued to be a 'trich'. Or , “Why don't you 'trich' like a magician and disappear?
needed: back story, astral projection scene w/Corina the more back story
Once, on a Saturday evening, my favorite house parent Mo, gathered those of us who were stuck at the cottage for the weekend. By this time Joy was my roomate, not Corina anymore. She led us to the bar, which divided the dining room and kitchen. It was just dark enough to notice candlelight flicker on the walls and ceiling as we passed through, but the flickers vanished in the florescent glare of the kitchen.
Mo, squat and squinting, stepped into the brightness and stood beside a stack of large stainless steel bowls. “This evening, we're going to play with food. No, she said, not a food fight. Listen, we've all eaten food", she started handing bowls around, "cooked food", serving spoons followed, "and cleaned up after making food, but what about healing with food?”
She turned to open the fridge and cabinets, poking and looking around. She found cereal, potato chips, coffee grounds, flour, coco, rice, mini-marshmallows and salt. With each find, she pulled out the package, handed it around and instructed each of us to pour some into our bowls . It was our job to feel, smell or taste each item- if we wanted to, only if.
We started with small dashes and tidy spoonfuls. Then Rosemary, standing next to me, took a huge, messy handful of flour, dusting and splotching me with her tailings. She plopped it into her bowl and giggled at the flour cloud exploding, then settling around her. Flour was soft and silky. Granola was tough to break up with it's sugary hardness; crunchy, but with your fingers. The coco went round and Corina tasted it first, expecting milk chocolately sweetness, getting bitter dustiness instead. Her face registered the surprise.
Then the wet stuff; first came the eggs. “Can you crack it without breaking the yolk?", Mo said. "Like this? Feel the yolk in your hand, squish, squeeze and pop it. You can also crack the whole thing in, eggshell and all.” Next came milk, then fake maple syrup, and peanut butter too. And last, the frozen stuff. Waffles, corn, ice cubes. All of it went into our bowls, and by the end we were squishing and mixing with our hands as Mo poured a little more here and little more there, all of us too messy to touch anything or help. It was a raspy concoction. Gooey, rough, sticky and cold. In the kitchen, along with everyone else, I rubbed the mixture from my hands up to my armpits; a glob of it stuck on my right cheek.
Mo gave us the option of taking the mixture back to the privacy of our rooms for a full body scrub; our legs, shoulders, feet, face, hair. Where ever and everywhere. It was the weekend, and the cottage was emptier than usual. My current roommate, Joy (of the pendulous breasts), was having a weekend visit with her mother, so I had the room to myself. So, why not? It was strange and naughty, a houseful of girls, collectively touching our houseful of bodies. I picked up the bowl from the counter feeling pleased and curious. Was this really therapeutic? Was this even good for my skin? I walked into my room, flipped on the light and then kicked the door shut behind me. I leaned against it, then set the bowl on the floor in front of the bolted, full-length mirror. Where to begin?
I laughed at myself and thought about my watcher, thought about Kelly (Moody Cottage boyfriend) peering into my bed room window. The weight of their observation made me suck in my belly, stand a little straighter, push out my breasts. What if there's a video tape running behind the mirror? Maybe this is just a test. Pass if you resist, fail if you don't.
With that, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and yanked it over my head. Bits of granola and rice hit the brown, linoleum floor in a spray. I unbuttoned and unzipped my shorts, let them fall to the floor and kicked them over into a pile. White cotton panties and a bra. A bra that fits and is stuffed with me now, not toilet paper. Hips that jut out of a waist, now beginning to curve. A summer tan just on the verge. I stepped out of the panties, and then unhooked the clasp of my bra, pulling first the right and then the left strap off. Nakedness and a bowl of slimy, crunchy goop. I picked up the bowl, swirled its contents, set it back down and reached in with both hands. With chin stretched up, I smeared, crushed and rubbed the mixture from my neck all down my body, trilling, stooping for more to cover my butt, then legs and feet. This handful is for my watcher, my ever-present companion. At least I'm never alone, I thought, as I circled and scrubbed each of my breasts, gently pinching and staring at each of my hard nipples in turn. I smiled and mashed some of the mixture into my hair, shellacking it away from my face. The space between my legs was the only spot left, so I scraped the the bowl clean and spread it there too. Touching, but not touching.
I looked down at my body and back into the mirror. Now what do I see? A squinting and naked mud wrestler? Yes, a wrestler, but with textured, formerly edible mud covering my entire body, nothing like the smooth stuff you see on TV. What I really need right now is a long, hot shower. But first, exercise. Arms out to the side, parallel to the floor, fingers lightly touching the temples, I moved my elbows open and shut, back and forth as I repeated, mantra-style: “I must, I must, I must. I must increase my bust.
needed: more back story
Being female in foster care, in addition to hitting puberty made touch really touchy. Apparently everyone who works with girls knows they will cry rape or sex abuse or something if a proper hug is given. So instead of regular hugs, I spent years getting side hugs, where you stand side by side and give a quick squeeze. Or hollow hugs, where you bend at the waist, and hug front on, but the only things touching are your cheeks and hands which rabidly pat on shoulders and back.
Skin hunger. Who doesn't need to be held or hugged? It's important to experience our bodies sensually, without sensuality always being tied to sexuality. For most of us on Nelson Cottage, our bodies were not places of happiness or fun; our bodies stored histories of abuse, hunger and fear. We were all 'over-sexualized', whatever that meant exactly. Maybe boy-crazy was the age appropriate term. Most of us were menstruating, having hormonal shifts and cravings. Cravings which weren't bad or unnatural. But cravings which were still somehow taboo and not talked about helpfully, even in residential treatment.
That summer each of the three cottages were supposed to pick theme songs. The song had to be something we all agreed on and something we felt represented us. We talked it over in group, brought up names of a few songs, and unanimously agreed on George Michael's I Want Your Sex. The house parents argued with our choice, but in the end passed it along to Helen the cottage supervisor and therapist. We loved that song, blasting it while we vacuumed and polished our way through chores. Helen announced in our next group therapy session that our official cottage song was Greatest Love of All, by Whitney Houston.
Group eye-roll. Group groan.
_____________________________________________
Compare this short story with the October 2009 post: first day of residential treatment.
I'm working to piece scenes and exposition together in an understandable way and do a better job integrating dialogue with action. Didn't deal with tense issues this time around. Next draft.
Some questions that came up for people in class:
Where is Corina's voice, was she terrified of the place?
"If I fall asleep, maybe I'll wake up someplace else." Where does this attitude go? Do they change, grow stronger? Did the experience teach a lesson, provide strength?
Why was Leigh there? What happens to Leigh? Where did Corina go? The watcher appears suddenly. Why resentment for the watcher? Are the houseparents the same as the watcher?
"Leigh, this is Corina, and Corina, this is Leigh", said Prego, the tiny, pregnant houseparent.
Corina's dark lashless eyes looked me over and then away as I set my bags on the empty bed. She wore a nightgown, a baggy, long-sleeved purple thing and laceless fake Keds. The pale yellow room smelled of Windex and musty feet.
"It's too bad that you're arriving during shut-down", Prego said, "but that's how it goes." She moved toward the closet, jingling the keys that she wore on a rubbery spiral at her wrist. With my back to Prego and Corina, I stripped down to undies and pulled a men's extra large t-shirt over my head, my current version of a nightgown.
"Corina knows the rules,"Prego said. "No talking and no leaving your side of the room. You'll eat meals at your desk", which she indicated with her chin, "and ask permission to use the restroom", which she also pointed out; a single closed door across from the two closets.
Corina was looking at me again, eyes round and observant as she noted the clothes I stuffed back into my bag.
"Remember, no talking", said Prego as she locked my things into the closet with a click of the dead bolt and jingle of keys. Two locked closets, side by side. One full length mirror bolted to the wall. "We'll send a menu around soon, though. We're having Mexican take-out for lunch, since we can't go to the cafeteria."
Alone with Corina, I sat on the edge of my bed, bare feet planted on the brown linoleum floor. I gave the mattress a test bounce and then pulled back the thin girly comforter. If I fall asleep, maybe I'll wake up some place else. As my head hit the lone, flat pillow, a piercing screech snapped me back up.
“Corina! No talking allowed! You know that,” yelled Prego from down the hall.
I looked over at Corina, her shoulders and head visible above the desk. Her naked eyes blinking back at me, staring.
If Corina's disorder had a name, we didn't know it. If we had known it, we would have used it. There were eight of us, who became a variable version of we during our time on Nelson cottage. Eight residents, requiring a rotating staff of about eight. Not that we required a 1 to 1 ratio, it was a standard rezy ratio of 1 to 4, give or take.
Nelson Cottage was the younger girl's cottage, as opposed to Scarborough, the older girl's cottage (right next door) and Moody, the boy's cottage, (catty-corner from Scarborough). Inhabitants of all three cottages ate lunch and dinner in the cafeteria, each with their designated corner and designated six foot, family-style round table.
Corina was not alone in wearing her problems on the outside. We had cutters, eaters, pickers, washers, barfers, kleptos and those who loved to starve themselves. But Corina was my roommate, for awhile, and in the beginning, mesmerizing.
Her hand, usually the right one, would meander up to the dividing line on her head, finger a few strands of hair, select one and then pluck it out. She would study the hair, span its length with her fingers, check for split ends and then fixate on its minuscule white root, her eyes slightly crossed with concentration. Once satisfied, she would hold the hair root to her teeth, nibble it off and drop what remained to the floor.
I now understand that Corina was lucky, in one sense at least. Had she consumed the entire strand of hair, one hair at a time, instead of just its root, she might have developed a trichobezoar, which is a fancy word for hairball. Unlike cats and cows, humans don't have a natural mechanism for handling hairballs; cats barf them up and cow stomachs are numerous and big enough that the hairballs just accumulate until the cow dies of other, unrelated causes. Humans who develop hairballs usually need repeated surgeries to survive.
To end up in RT (rezy, or residential treatment) usually meant at least a dual diagnosis. Depressive and obsessive-compulsive or maybe oppositional-defiant and anorexic. Though staff tried not to focus on our labels, most kids who lived in rezy long enough eventually developed extensive, esoteric vocabularies. We practiced our vocabularies in daily group therapy, weekly individual therapy and as a source of perpetual peer support. Since four girls shared a bathroom, it wasn't uncommon to hear us jockey for the mirror, “You OCD-narcissist, let someone else have a turn."
"Trichotillomania, TTM or 'trich', is defined as "hair loss from a patient's repetitive self-pulling of hair"[2] and is characterized by the repeated urge to pull out scalp hair, eyelashes, facial hair,nose hair, pubic hair, eyebrows or other body hair, sometimes resulting in noticeable bald patches.[3]
Had I known the name of Corina's disorder, I would have enjoyed telling her that she would never, ever turn a real trick if she continued to be a 'trich'. Or , “Why don't you 'trich' like a magician and disappear?
needed: back story, astral projection scene w/Corina the more back story
Once, on a Saturday evening, my favorite house parent Mo, gathered those of us who were stuck at the cottage for the weekend. By this time Joy was my roomate, not Corina anymore. She led us to the bar, which divided the dining room and kitchen. It was just dark enough to notice candlelight flicker on the walls and ceiling as we passed through, but the flickers vanished in the florescent glare of the kitchen.
Mo, squat and squinting, stepped into the brightness and stood beside a stack of large stainless steel bowls. “This evening, we're going to play with food. No, she said, not a food fight. Listen, we've all eaten food", she started handing bowls around, "cooked food", serving spoons followed, "and cleaned up after making food, but what about healing with food?”
She turned to open the fridge and cabinets, poking and looking around. She found cereal, potato chips, coffee grounds, flour, coco, rice, mini-marshmallows and salt. With each find, she pulled out the package, handed it around and instructed each of us to pour some into our bowls . It was our job to feel, smell or taste each item- if we wanted to, only if.
We started with small dashes and tidy spoonfuls. Then Rosemary, standing next to me, took a huge, messy handful of flour, dusting and splotching me with her tailings. She plopped it into her bowl and giggled at the flour cloud exploding, then settling around her. Flour was soft and silky. Granola was tough to break up with it's sugary hardness; crunchy, but with your fingers. The coco went round and Corina tasted it first, expecting milk chocolately sweetness, getting bitter dustiness instead. Her face registered the surprise.
Then the wet stuff; first came the eggs. “Can you crack it without breaking the yolk?", Mo said. "Like this? Feel the yolk in your hand, squish, squeeze and pop it. You can also crack the whole thing in, eggshell and all.” Next came milk, then fake maple syrup, and peanut butter too. And last, the frozen stuff. Waffles, corn, ice cubes. All of it went into our bowls, and by the end we were squishing and mixing with our hands as Mo poured a little more here and little more there, all of us too messy to touch anything or help. It was a raspy concoction. Gooey, rough, sticky and cold. In the kitchen, along with everyone else, I rubbed the mixture from my hands up to my armpits; a glob of it stuck on my right cheek.
Mo gave us the option of taking the mixture back to the privacy of our rooms for a full body scrub; our legs, shoulders, feet, face, hair. Where ever and everywhere. It was the weekend, and the cottage was emptier than usual. My current roommate, Joy (of the pendulous breasts), was having a weekend visit with her mother, so I had the room to myself. So, why not? It was strange and naughty, a houseful of girls, collectively touching our houseful of bodies. I picked up the bowl from the counter feeling pleased and curious. Was this really therapeutic? Was this even good for my skin? I walked into my room, flipped on the light and then kicked the door shut behind me. I leaned against it, then set the bowl on the floor in front of the bolted, full-length mirror. Where to begin?
I laughed at myself and thought about my watcher, thought about Kelly (Moody Cottage boyfriend) peering into my bed room window. The weight of their observation made me suck in my belly, stand a little straighter, push out my breasts. What if there's a video tape running behind the mirror? Maybe this is just a test. Pass if you resist, fail if you don't.
With that, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and yanked it over my head. Bits of granola and rice hit the brown, linoleum floor in a spray. I unbuttoned and unzipped my shorts, let them fall to the floor and kicked them over into a pile. White cotton panties and a bra. A bra that fits and is stuffed with me now, not toilet paper. Hips that jut out of a waist, now beginning to curve. A summer tan just on the verge. I stepped out of the panties, and then unhooked the clasp of my bra, pulling first the right and then the left strap off. Nakedness and a bowl of slimy, crunchy goop. I picked up the bowl, swirled its contents, set it back down and reached in with both hands. With chin stretched up, I smeared, crushed and rubbed the mixture from my neck all down my body, trilling, stooping for more to cover my butt, then legs and feet. This handful is for my watcher, my ever-present companion. At least I'm never alone, I thought, as I circled and scrubbed each of my breasts, gently pinching and staring at each of my hard nipples in turn. I smiled and mashed some of the mixture into my hair, shellacking it away from my face. The space between my legs was the only spot left, so I scraped the the bowl clean and spread it there too. Touching, but not touching.
I looked down at my body and back into the mirror. Now what do I see? A squinting and naked mud wrestler? Yes, a wrestler, but with textured, formerly edible mud covering my entire body, nothing like the smooth stuff you see on TV. What I really need right now is a long, hot shower. But first, exercise. Arms out to the side, parallel to the floor, fingers lightly touching the temples, I moved my elbows open and shut, back and forth as I repeated, mantra-style: “I must, I must, I must. I must increase my bust.
needed: more back story
Being female in foster care, in addition to hitting puberty made touch really touchy. Apparently everyone who works with girls knows they will cry rape or sex abuse or something if a proper hug is given. So instead of regular hugs, I spent years getting side hugs, where you stand side by side and give a quick squeeze. Or hollow hugs, where you bend at the waist, and hug front on, but the only things touching are your cheeks and hands which rabidly pat on shoulders and back.
Skin hunger. Who doesn't need to be held or hugged? It's important to experience our bodies sensually, without sensuality always being tied to sexuality. For most of us on Nelson Cottage, our bodies were not places of happiness or fun; our bodies stored histories of abuse, hunger and fear. We were all 'over-sexualized', whatever that meant exactly. Maybe boy-crazy was the age appropriate term. Most of us were menstruating, having hormonal shifts and cravings. Cravings which weren't bad or unnatural. But cravings which were still somehow taboo and not talked about helpfully, even in residential treatment.
That summer each of the three cottages were supposed to pick theme songs. The song had to be something we all agreed on and something we felt represented us. We talked it over in group, brought up names of a few songs, and unanimously agreed on George Michael's I Want Your Sex. The house parents argued with our choice, but in the end passed it along to Helen the cottage supervisor and therapist. We loved that song, blasting it while we vacuumed and polished our way through chores. Helen announced in our next group therapy session that our official cottage song was Greatest Love of All, by Whitney Houston.
Group eye-roll. Group groan.
_____________________________________________
Compare this short story with the October 2009 post: first day of residential treatment.
I'm working to piece scenes and exposition together in an understandable way and do a better job integrating dialogue with action. Didn't deal with tense issues this time around. Next draft.
Some questions that came up for people in class:
Where is Corina's voice, was she terrified of the place?
"If I fall asleep, maybe I'll wake up someplace else." Where does this attitude go? Do they change, grow stronger? Did the experience teach a lesson, provide strength?
Why was Leigh there? What happens to Leigh? Where did Corina go? The watcher appears suddenly. Why resentment for the watcher? Are the houseparents the same as the watcher?
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