Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) (23 page)

I remember one of the girls trying to tell me off, saying that I thought I was special. Man, I was getting tired of this shortsightedness. I answered, “Yes. I do. And why don’t you? ’Cause you should too.” That ended that.

Work took me farther away from the house too. Because of President Carter’s CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) program, I got my first real paying job on a kids’ talk show at a local cable television station as the special effects generator operator, then was promoted to one of the hosts because of my
“undeniable personality”—that’s what my boss told me. What can I say? Holla!

Speaking of government, I took to the U.S. Constitution like crazy, just as I did with political science later in high school. I was fascinated by it all. I thought how great America was, how we all have a chance to rise above the situation we’re born into, and that we have a government that helps give those less fortunate a fighting chance. Not all the girls appreciated CETA as much as I did and quit the program after their first paycheck, but me, I went whole hog and stayed with it to the end. I’ve always felt different—not better than, but different. Even at an early age I felt and knew I was supposed to contribute something important to the world. Seriously. Maybe this is what the girls in the GH misconstrued. Maybe they couldn’t see or understand that I had an agenda. My Mary Tyler Moore aspirations were still intact and I wanted to be as ready as possible.

I WAS twelve now—yes, twelve—and still in the Group Home. Most of my half-siblings were back at home with my mother. I knew not to ask why I wasn’t included because it was understood that you had to wait for an official invitation from your parent to go home. You’d think I wouldn’t care. Even though I didn’t want to live with her at this point, I wanted to know that she wanted me. However, I did ask the Home if I could skip her house altogether during home visits and go directly to Tia’s instead. They of course had to pass the request through Lydia. Her reaction probably wasn’t a good one, because it took a while, but she eventually said yes, as long as I promised to visit her house at least for a night and that she’d retain her parental rights over me. That whole process angered me. Giving so much power to someone they all knew was mentally ill and had suspected of physical abuse seemed crazy to me.

Yes, they knew she was crazy but never told us. And they did in fact suspect the physical abuse. How? I really don’t know, but speaking for myself, I think it could be from the bruises I would come back with from her freakin’ punching me or slapping me or almost ripping my arm out of its socket. No, I never told them that she did it, but come on, people! And when I found out myself about Lydia’s mental issues, it was a difficult pill to swallow.

I used to think that my mother was just intense—ha! But seriously, I did. I thought she had a violent temper and was extreme about everything. Like when she would say something funny, she
would repeat the joke over and over for an hour or more, and climax into this laughing frenzy. Or how she carried her gun with her just to get a carton of eggs from the corner store. But I started to suspect her mental illness when I caught her talking to the kitchen wall—no lie.

I had woken up early, like around six o’clock in the morning, and had to use the bathroom. I tiptoed so that I wouldn’t wake my mother up. She didn’t like us using the bathroom so she would put a pot in the middle of the bedroom floor for all of us to piss in. I know. And yes, I found it to be so disgusting. So, I walk into the kitchen where the bathroom was and froze when I saw her carrying on a conversation with the freaking wall. She was actually having an argument with it. “Oh, so you think I did that to her? No? It wasn’t me!… What? How can you say that?!” Not kidding, folks.

I never told anyone about it. It scared me, and believe it or not, I didn’t want to embarrass her. But then, on a home visit, when I was ten, I arrived at my mother’s to find she wasn’t there. My older half-siblings were laughing, telling me, “She’ll be back. They took her again to the crazy hospital for a couple of weeks. You know Mom’s crazy, right? She’s schizophrenic. You never saw her talking to the wall or to the benches on the subway?” I guess being kids, possessing all that information was too much, and all they could do was laugh about it.

Schizophrenic?

I’d sit in the school library looking up the meaning in countless books, worrying constantly if I could be schizophrenic too. By the time I was twelve, I had asked Dr. Tisby during our sessions, in what I thought was a coy manner, if mental illness was hereditary since the mother of my “friend” was nuts. When he raised his eyebrow at me, I finally just came straight with him. He returned the gesture—very delicately, I might add—and admitted that my mother was in fact mentally ill, asking me how I felt about it. I remember trying to act all grown-up, saying I was more concerned
about her, which I honestly was, and that I was okay with it, which I wasn’t. Leaving his office, I felt sad and powerless. I didn’t understand why they still allowed her to maintain her parental rights. Why didn’t they let my aunt or my father gain custody? Was Lydia that good at fooling them into thinking she was a great parent? I guess so.

I remember this one time when Mrs. Vasquez called me into a meeting at the Home with Lydia. She wanted to discuss my relationship with my mother, ask me why I wanted to skip the home visits with her. It was all a sham, and I knew it. It was my mother’s ego—she didn’t want anyone thinking ill of her, and mostly, she didn’t want to lose any potential government assistance that she would’ve gotten for me if and when I’d go to live with her. Trust. She knew my father and Tia were still trying to get me out of the Home.

Lydia started things off by saying she was hurt—I was her favorite, she loved me more than any of the other kids. Say what? My mouth dropped on the floor, and when the waterworks came, my eyes went rolling. Then the trickling of tears, followed by sniffles of snot. I mean … and the Oscar goes to …! Mrs. Vasquez asked if I wanted to sit “on Mommie’s lap.” I’m freaking twelve, I never sat on my mother’s lap, ever! Barely even got a hug from her. After much unrelenting pressure from Mrs. Vasquez, I sat on the edge of Lydia’s knees. Talk about awkward! “Now, doesn’t that feel good to sit on Mommie’s lap?” That was it! I slid off and asked to be excused to go to the bathroom and purposely took forever, knowing that by the time I got back, her train would be coming and it’d be time for Lydia to go.

But I digress.

Things were way tense between Lydia and me. I would still stay the first night at her house, but now I wouldn’t wait for her okay to be sent over to Tia’s. Sometimes I would stay the night because there was a good card game of Spades being played, or there was a
party going down, or just to hang with Terry and Kathy. But most of the time I would walk in, say hello to everyone, hang for a bit, and then come up with a batch of lies, saying, “Tia needs me, sorry,” or anything to get me over there quick fast. And Lydia wouldn’t stop me or walk me over either. Yep, I would walk all twelve blocks by myself, day or night, through the dangerous streets of Bushwick that scared the hell out of me. And talk about lies … I was becoming an expert.

This one time, on the Metro down into the city, a girl who went to my school was on the train with her parents.

“Rosie! Rosie! Hi! Going to Brooklyn? [I never lied about being from Brooklyn!] Is your father here? I would love to meet him!”

“No. I’m actually going alone. Father couldn’t send the car. The divorce, you know, it’s been tough … but please don’t tell anyone. It’s so embarrassing and …”

Before I could finish, she grabbed my hand and led me over to her parents. Gosh dag it! She whispered to her mother the details about the “divorce.” My mother had placed me with the Catholic Church until the proceedings were over, much to my father’s chagrin, and he was spending a lot of money to get me out, and blah, blah, blah. The fake tears came streaming—not too much, mind you, and on cue! I was panicked the rest of the train ride, wondering if they really fell for my crock of shit.

When I got back to school after that summer, everyone was asking if I was okay, and many were offering their homes to me until the divorce was over. The girls from the GH were pissed at me and called me a liar, which I was, saying I was ashamed to be in the system (true again), which meant that I must be ashamed of them too (not true at all). But it didn’t matter at this point. The lying was horrible—period. It made me feel low, but being a kid, I kept on lying because I couldn’t see a way of stopping and coming clean.

So things were bad between my mother and me.

The subways were hot as hell, packed, and on constant delay.
It took me forever to get to my mother’s house, anxiety attack the whole way knowing she would be pissed because she hated if I was late, which meant I’d have to stay longer and calm her down so that she wouldn’t prevent me from going over to Tia’s. (I know, fucking exhausting!)

I walked into an empty house.
Oh good, everyone’s out
, I thought. Ugh! All I wanted to do was take a shower. I turned around and found Lydia sitting in the kitchen looking tight. Dag it.

“
Bendición
, Mommie.”

I kissed her extended cheek.

“You’re late. (
A long-ass awkward pause
) You got a little fatter, huh. (
She sucks her teeth
) God, look at your hair, just like your father’s.”

“Sorry, Ma.”

“Why are you sorry? Get the food stamps from my bag and go get meat and two cans of beans from Key Food.”

“Now?”

She cocked her head to one side with a smirk as if to say,
I know you didn’t just ask me that
. I turned to put my suitcase away. Lydia pounded her fist on the kitchen table.

“Where are you going?”

“To put my bag away.”

“Did I say you could do that? Go get the food stamps. And make sure you get me the right meat.”

“What kind do you want?”

“Oh my God! This girl! I’m making stew, so what kind of fucking meat do you think I want?”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know. You want cubed beef?”

“Fucking genius over here!”

God, she makes me so freakin’ nervous.

I returned with the groceries. As I started for the bathroom, hoping to finally take a shower, Lydia pulled out the package of meat.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God. You see this! See it? This says seventy-two
cents per pound. I told you I wanted to only spend less than three dollars on this meat.”

“But you didn’t tell me …”

Smack! Right across my face! She hit me so fucking hard that my cheek instantly welted up in the shape of her hand!

“I didn’t tell you what? What? Seventy-two cents times four pounds is what?”

“Um …”

“Two eighty-eight! I wanted the sixty-nine cents per pound, which would cost what? Two seventy-six! Two seventy-six!”

I went back to the store, frantically checked the math on the meat over and over, and headed back.

When I walked in, Lydia was sitting at the table with the cans of beans looking tight. She took a deep sigh and said …

“These. Cans. Have. Dents.”

“I know, but I was trying to save you money. See, Tia buys them all the time ’cause the dented ones are half-priced and are usually still good, so you get over. Genius, right?”

She grabbed both cheeks, squeezing hard. My face was throbbing like crazy, especially the side that was still swelling from the previous smack.

“Don’t you fucking patronize me.”

She kept squeezing. I stood stoic, took it like a pro, knowing it would piss her off more but I didn’t give two shits at this point. She stared me right back in my eyes with a devilish grin and said, “You think you’re slick, Rosie.”

I went back to the store, came back with undented cans of beans. She didn’t even look in the bag, and then she casually asked me to season the meat and asked how school was going—freaking crazy and exhausting.

The next morning I got up extra early to sneak out to Tia’s. Lydia was already up, finishing covering her face with makeup. She was surprised when she saw the bruising on my cheeks.

“
Ay
my God. What happened to your face?”

“You hit me last night.”

“What? No. I didn’t hit you. Why would I do that?”

I just shrugged my shoulders. She did that a lot, denying the abuse the next day, even with the rest of her kids. So what would be the point to further the discussion? Then the kitchen light blew out.

“Fuck! Come with me to the store.”

Lydia got her pistol, wrapped it in a plastic shopping bag, then placed it in a large brown paper shopping bag. Inside the store, she told me to keep watch.

“For what?”

“For the fucking store owner!” she loudly whispered. “Grab a couple of circular lightbulbs,” she continued as she held open the paper bag. Scared out of my wits and mortified, I shook my head no, refusing.

“That’s wrong, Ma.”

“You think you’re better than me? Huh? You rather us sit in the fucking dark? Put it in! Now!” I did so—feeling so ashamed. “This fucking girl. Let’s go! Act normal!”

Back at her house, she became pleasant again, laughing at our supposed caper. I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, got my suitcase, and headed for the door. “See you later, Ma.”

“Oh! Okay, see you. Tell Minguita I said hello.”

Tia gasped at the bruising on my cheek. I told her that a fly ball hit me in the face during a softball game back at the Group Home. I always lied to Tia too, but only about the abuse by my mother and Sister Renata.

The incident was easily pushed down inside when I went to see John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
at the movie theater in Ridgewood on Myrtle Avenue. Loved it! First time I screamed out loud at the big screen. I had such a crush on John—I had daydreams of the two of us getting married. I know, I know, all the rumors, but who gives a shit, really. He’s an actor who can act his ass off,
and that’s all I care about; his personal life is his business to worry about.

•   •   •

Another home visit in Bushwick had come. I went to my mother’s house first to do my usual hellos and good-byes. Lydia wasn’t there. She had disappeared for that entire first weekend to hang with her sisters—who I’d only met one time, mind you, she did that a lot too—I decided to stay because my half-brothers were getting ready for a “pot” party!