Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness (3 page)

For a while, my mother didn’t have a car. She walked to the grocery store, walked back and unloaded the groceries from the shopping cart, then walked the cart back to the store. She took a six-week class in medical procedures (walking to and from school, about a mile away) and did well enough to qualify for a job in a local po
diatrist’s office. Dad took a course in night school; he says now that it’s because I corrected the spelling in a note he’d left me, and he thought he’d better get back to school so that he could keep up. Dad got me into Little League, too; we even collected baseball cards for a while. He didn’t want me to be that girly girl who yelps, “Oh, no, a ball is coming at me—what should I do?” When we played catch, he fired the ball at me like crazy, hollering, “You better learn to catch it, Mary, or you’re gonna get hit!” Wise words.

Mom was the queen of coupons and a master of strategy: she knew how to squeeze a nickel to the squeaking point, and could plan a menu for a month at a time and never bend the budget. When we got to the market, she’d pull out her list, give me a handful of coupons, give my brother, Johnny, another handful, and the three of us would fan out, then go through separate checkout lines to get even more discounted multiple boxes of Wheaties and Cheerios.

There was a point when I insisted we take the food stamps and coupons to grocery stores far away from where we lived, so I wouldn’t see anybody I went to school with. One day, the government cheese line was very long, stretching out into the parking lot under the hot summer sun. “I can’t believe we have to do this,” I whined.

“Be glad that we can,” said my mother calmly. “We don’t waste money; we don’t waste food.”

I may still have the coupon-clipping habit, but I cannot go near a box of Wheaties, and I would rather mix rat poison with water than ever again drink powdered milk. Whenever there’s a food drive in my neighborhood, I buy and donate the best vegetables, the best sauces, the top-brand fruits and juices. When I think of someone who’s poor, struggling, or sad because they have to eat generic crap and Day-Glo cheese, it just makes me angry.

In spite of their hardships
, my parents had music playing all the time: in the house, in the car—the radio was free. On my fifth birthday, they gave me the coolest fold-up portable record player that played 45s. The label on the inside read,
DEJAY HAPPY TUNES/PHONOGRAPH PLAYER
. It was covered in a denim print, and when you flipped it open, a little cord came out of a hole in the back and plugged into the wall. Along with this beautiful piece of art came three records—“Pac-Man Fever,” “867–5309/Jenny” (Tommy Tutone!), and my favorite song ever, Joan Jett’s version of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” That song had me playing air guitar and flying off my bed like Eddie Van Halen.

A few years ago, I actually met Joan Jett. Despite that I was well into adulthood, I thought I’d pass out from excitement. I managed to hold it together and blurt, in a super-fan kind of way, “‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’ was my first record!” She smiled and looked at me with that pleasant but safe-distance expression that most celebrities wear when someone’s blurting at them. It’s the “Hmm, she’s just a little bit bananas, isn’t she?” look.

No artist was safe from me and my little denim record machine. Madonna, New Edition, the Cure. Yes, I know these artists don’t belong together—even now, my iPod looks like some kind of cyber malfunction downloaded the history of all music but in no particular order. It’s not my fault that I have no musical boundaries: My father’s favorite record is still David Bowie’s
Diamond Dogs
; my stepdad’s is Prince’s
Purple Rain
. Most nights, I fall asleep with headphones on, and before my eyes are 100 percent open in the morning, I’ve already inhaled at least three songs, the majority of them ridiculously
loud rock. I require large amounts of caffeine and an earthquake of music to get going, and I am filled with gratitude every day for all the artists who get me out of bed and back into the world.

I never played dress-up when I was a kid, except for the times Mom and I played rock star, taking turns wearing her special Saturday-night outfit, the burgundy wrap skirt with the matching long-sleeved leotard. We’d put on layers of her mascara and the pink cheek stain from the little pot she carried in her purse, then stand in front of the mirror and wail like Stevie Nicks into our hairbrushes. My air guitar was, in fact, all air. I would’ve played with a tennis racket if I’d had a tennis racket, but I didn’t; I had a hairbrush and Joan Jett.

Accessing memories is so much easier when there’s a soundtrack attached—for example, I recall riding in the back of an old van (not only were there no seat belts, there were no seats), with Blondie cranked on the radio. I can’t remember where we were going, but even now, Debbie Harry’s voice makes me think something fun is going to happen.

Second example: I was riding on the freeway in a station wagon, the kind where the last seat faced backward, and you can wave at the car behind you. We were on a family road trip that day, and a song about kissing came on the radio. For some reason, I decided in my head that the song was about sex. I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t listen. My face was hot, I knew it was red. All I could think of, was: Don’t look at me, nobody better look at me. I was being a prude and didn’t even know why. When you’re a kid, you’re convinced everybody knows what you’re thinking, when in fact, they’re distracted and busy with their own lives, trying to keep their eyes on the road.

Third example: Guns N’ Roses’
Appetite for Destruction
, specifi
cally “It’s So Easy.” I hear the opening chords, and my blood races—it’s about a wild ride I took for years, all twisted up in love and heroin and destruction and waste. And yet I’ll listen to that song every time. It’s like that stupid old joke about why the guy keeps hitting himself with the hammer—because it feels so good when he stops.

In 1978 my parents divorced
. Then, true to form, they reunited, remarrying in 1984, this time in a formal Catholic Church ceremony presumably meant to lock it down. In 1986, when I was eleven, my little sister Julie was born, and that was the end of my mom’s office work for a while. She began to run a licensed daycare center in our house and suddenly, there were babies and toddlers everywhere. Aunties and cousins dropped in and out, the TV was always on, the voices of people coming and going went on for hours. In 1989, after another long separation, my parents divorced for the second—and final—time. Mom packed us up again, and moved us to Coronado Island, one of San Diego’s most affluent neighborhoods. Because of this, it was also home to a very good public school system. “This is going to be our chance,” Mom said. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Coronado Island is separated from San Diego by a long blue-and-white bridge that has five lanes of traffic and is high enough so that huge aircraft carriers can go under it. I think it’s meant to blend into the sky, but for anyone with a height phobia, the journey across the water is an invitation for a full-blown panic attack. Even today, driving over that bridge freaks me out. I say a prayer every time I do it. I wasn’t surprised years later to learn that it was the third-deadliest
suicide bridge in the United States. I couldn’t know then that once we crossed over it, everything I knew was nothing; my childhood was coming to an end, and not in a nice way.

The island is about seven square miles in size, ringed by beaches, mansions, a naval base, and the Hotel del Coronado. When you come off the bridge, San Diego Bay is on your right, the Pacific Ocean is right in front of you, and a massive, perfectly manicured golf course is on your left. There is no unbeautiful view, from any direction.

When we first moved to Coronado, you had to pay a dollar to cross over the bridge. The tollbooths are abandoned now, but when I was a kid, I was convinced that was why everyone on the island was rich—once a month, everybody lined up at the mayor’s office for their share of the cash. That first day, Johnny, Julie, and I sat squashed together in the back of the little Corolla, peering through the windows, waiting for our new home to reveal itself. Our tiny house was on El Chico Lane, almost in the shadow of the bridge. Just because it had an actual name doesn’t mean it was a street; it was an alley. But it was a house, and it was on an island. It was a start.

Thanks to the domestic adventures of Mom and Dad, Coronado Middle School was my seventh transfer since first grade. Vista La Mesa Elementary, Baldwin Park Elementary, Rosebank Elementary, Vista La Mesa again, San Miguel Elementary, Lemon Grove Middle School, La Mesa Middle School. I should’ve been an old hand at being the new kid, but it was agony. And the seventh grade is its own kind of weird: you’re not quite a teenager, but you’re not a little kid anymore, either.

The next morning, as my mother drove me to school, chatting
about “Oh, isn’t this exciting,” “Isn’t everything pretty here,” “It’s going to be great!” I felt only growing dread: Everybody would be rich. Later, I found out that many students were from military families, far from wealthy, and that there were a lot of middle-class kids as well. But that first day, I knew in my heart that my mother was about to drop me into a scene right out of
Heathers
.

I’d carefully chosen an ensemble I was certain would win me new friends and influence new people: a mint green sweater under mint green overall shorts, and black high-top Reeboks with yellow laces. My hair was long and dark, the top half pulled back leaving just my bangs, which hung down to my chin. I spent a good ten minutes each morning leaning upside down with a curling iron, shaping my bangs so that they would resemble a wave (in fact, they more closely resembled the Nike “swoosh”). Upside down, I teased it at the roots, coated it with Aqua Net, and blew it dry with a hot hair dryer. When I stood back up, so did my hair. Hard as a rock, too—it wouldn’t have moved if I’d run straight ahead at warp speed. The look was a dead giveaway: poor Mexican kid from a crap neighborhood which, more or less, is what I was.

The school was a short walk from the beach, and the main building was two stories high. I’d never been to a two-story school. Mom took me to the guidance counselor’s office, wished me luck, then took Johnny to his school. The counselor, a soft-spoken woman who seemed not much older than my mother, walked me to my first class, already in session when I arrived. After an introduction—you know the script, right? “Boys and girls, may I have your attention? This is Mary Forsberg, who’s just moved to Coronado. I’m sure you’ll all give her a warm welcome, answer any questions she may have, and help her be a part of our community! Right? Okay? Have a nice
day!”—I was assigned a “buddy” to show me around school and get me from class to class.

As I walked to my desk, I heard the giggles and the tittering; I guess, had I been them, I might’ve laughed, too. This was a room full of kids with a laid-back California beach vibe—Esprit khakis, sun-faded Izod polo shirts—and I looked like a circus clown.

During the break before my next class, a few girls came up and introduced themselves. One girl gave me a hug. Oh, that’s nice, I thought—at which point she yanked the back of my sweater, revealing the tag inside the neck: fake Guess that my mother bought in Tijuana. Even my Reeboks were fake, also from Mexico. All the girls were laughing. Red-faced and nauseated, I couldn’t decide whether to deal out a beat-down or sprint for home. My faux-bok’ed feet wouldn’t cooperate with either option. My helpful new “buddy” then escorted me to my next class, where I sat barely able to concentrate, making eye contact only with the chalkboard. Up until then, lunch was always my favorite part of the school day. At every previous school, I lined up with everyone else in the free-lunch line. Your family has to make next to nothing to qualify for free lunch, and nearly everybody I knew made the cut. No one was ashamed; we were all in the same boat. But here? The free-lunch line was out of the question. I will starve before I go stand in that line, I thought, and that’s what I did. It may have been the first time in my life that I turned down food. The rest of the day, my stomach growled in stereo in every silent classroom. One more reason to laugh at the new girl. When the bell rang at the end of the day, I flew home to inform my mother that she had ruined my life and that I would not be returning to school the following day or, for that matter, ever again.

Even now, my mother still believes that PMS is responsible for all of our fighting when I was a teen; whatever the cause (nature, nurture, screwed-up biochemistry, or genetics), I really think it was that first day of school in Coronado that kicked off the chaos that soon followed. Later that night, once I’d calmed down a little, she gave me the earnest “Mary, you’re not a quitter, we are not quitters” speech, and then promised to buy me something from the Gap (if we could find something on sale). This was of no comfort. I spent that entire first night wide awake and stressing—how could I revamp myself in less than twelve hours?

The next morning, I let my hair dry into natural waves, then put on jeans, a white T-shirt, and flip-flops. I packed a lunch so I wouldn’t have to stand in the free-lunch line, and before I walked out the door, I threw up. I threw up nearly every morning for almost a month.

I was so mad at my mother. It took me a long time to understand why she had brought us to this place. Every day our conversation was the same: “How could you do this to me? Can’t we please move back?” Her response was consistent: “Don’t be ridiculous.” Every night I called friends in Lemon Grove to see whose parents might let me come back and live with them. No one volunteered.

One thing that became immediately clear was how far behind I was in class. Until Coronado, I thought you went to school because you had to; you passed, you got out, you got a job. College was something other people did, to become doctors or lawyers or teachers, professions I was pretty sure were out of my reach. Learning for its own sake never entered anyone’s conversation. I didn’t like being behind. I didn’t like not having the answers. I didn’t like that I was surrounded by kids who had actual plans for their lives. I have to make a plan, I thought.