Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) (25 page)

As I was dabbing calamine lotion on Carmen’s numerous bumblebee stings, she noticed the big-ass hickey on my neck. Oh my goodness! We both knew if Dad saw this he would be pissed! She told me she was an expert in hickey removal: she heated a spoon on the stove and pressed it into my monkey bite. Shit blew up and blistered on the spot.

“Just put some Cover Girl on it,” Carmen said.

We did. It didn’t work. Then we heard Dad come in.

“Oh my goodness! Get me a Band-Aid, please, and my white button-down collar from my suitcase!”

I buttoned the shirt all the way up and turned up the collar. Talk about not being obvious.

“Why you got that hot shirt on?” Dad later asked.

I just shrugged.

“Come out to the balcony with me.”

I went out. It was a blazing summer night. I was sweating to death. He looked at me, paused for a moment, then started to chuckle a bit. I rolled my eyes back at him, which only made him laugh more.

“So … anyway, you know, it’s your life, Rose, and you can do what you want, but you know, I just want you to respect yourself and me, ’kay?”

“What? What are you talking about?” I answered, all snotty and paranoid and shit.

“Nothing.… This is a small town, you know?”

Awkward pause.

“Remember when I told you I’d be so proud if you married in white?”

“Oh my goodness, Dad! I didn’t do anything! I swear!”

“That’s good.… No, I’m just saying.… It would be nice, for me … and for you too, to be respectful in the things you do.”

I looked down at the cemented courtyard, feeling weirdly happy, proud even, that my pops was setting me straight.

“Come on. I traded one of my Sarah Vaughans for Dinah Washington for you! She got a Grammy for this album!” Dad said excitedly. He was part of a record/social club where albums were traded and no money exchange was allowed. “ ‘What a difference a day makes.…’ Oh, I love how she interprets that song. I’ll get the record to wash!”

“Can I wash it, Pop?”

Carmen was sitting at the dining-room table in front of the tiny kitchenette, desperately wanting to know the bochinche. I covertly smiled, letting her know all was copacetic. Dad poured the dishwashing soap in a circle over the record, and I very gently washed it in a circular motion, making sure not to scratch it, just as he had taught me. He then started to laugh. “Please forgive me, but please take that shirt off. You look so silly in that hot thing.”

We all cracked up with that one.

That night he kissed me good night for the first time, and before he left the room he turned and said, “I like that. ‘Pop.’ Thank you, baby. ’Night.”

Oh happy-joy-joy!

I TOLD my aunt that I didn’t want to go back to the Group Home, I had to leave and live with her or something bad was going to happen. The tensions between the girls and me were escalating, and I didn’t want to go live with my mother either—besides, she still wasn’t exactly offering. Tia and Titi called the main offices at Saint Joseph’s late that night. The nuns told her I was lying about the friction in the house and that was that. Say what? I had to come back or they were going to call the authorities. I’ve always had great disdain for the system, but now it was at its all-time peak of contempt. Why not give me to my aunt? She had a home, constant employment, never had an incident of abuse or neglect, loved me, would do anything for me. Seriously!

I don’t know if it was conscious or not, but when I got back upstate I got into a fistfight with one of the girls from the Group Home the next morning on the school bus in front of the house. It was a bad one. She bit my breast during the fight, and I went so crazy that I blacked out during the actual brawl; when I snapped out of it, I found myself on top of her, banging her head against the pavement. I didn’t even know how we got off the bus and onto the street!

I couldn’t fathom or connect that I was the same person who would do that to someone. After an interrogation, punishment, and blah, blah, blah, it was decided that I needed to be transferred out and live permanently with Tia. My mother agreed later after it was decided that she would retain legal rights and that I would
spend at least two weekends a month at her house—which also meant that Lydia was the one to receive the welfare compensation for me. I was glad that it was all finally happening, but I was also hurt that my mother didn’t insist that I live with her, even though I didn’t want to.

A month before I was to leave the Group Home for good, I was called down to Saint Joseph’s to talk to Crazy Cindy. She’d had a mental and emotional breakdown, and no one could reach her.

Cindy had started to hang out with a bad group of girls, getting into a lot of trouble. Also, she began to go on home visits. I heard through rumors that she would come back in disturbed moods and ready for a fight. She had gotten into an argument with this counselor who shouldn’t have been working with emotionally disturbed kids. The fight escalated into a brawl, and Cindy proceeded to stomp, literally stomp, this woman’s face in. The nuns sent her to Graceland, and the rumor was that she had received shock therapy. I didn’t know if it was true or not, since she was still underage. But the rumors began because, when she returned, her eyebrows were shaved off, her eyelashes were plucked out, and she had stopped talking, except for asking to see me. I was kind of surprised, since we hadn’t spoken since our first fight a year before—but not really.

Ours was not the only Group Home that Saint Joseph’s had. There was another one for boys and an additional one of girls. The other girls’ Group Home was about a thirty-minute drive from our GH, and fly compared to ours. First of all, they had a pool. Second, they had more than one TV! Third, and most important, they had liberal GH parents who were very supportive and lenient. Cindy was friends with this girl, from that other GH, who was pretty and popular. I had found out that Cindy was going up to visit her somewhat regularly. Say what? I didn’t even know kids from the Home were allowed to visit! And if so, how come Cindy didn’t want to come see me?

One weekend our Group Home had gone over for a visit to
swim in their pool. Cindy was there. I was hurt. She tried her hardest to make me feel better, acting silly, making jokes, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. She began to play-fight with me to bring me around. It turned into something more serious, and I really started to pound her. Everyone knew that Cindy could beat me up easily, she was a great fighter, but she didn’t fight back. She just let me hit her until I started crying and stopped, apologizing in between my sobs. We hugged it out by the end of the day, but I knew we would never be the same after that.

As the van pulled into the Home, I began to wonder how Cindy was going to receive me even though she had asked for me. I also worried how far gone she was mentally and emotionally.

Walking back into the girls’ dormitory gave me a feeling of disgust and fear, yet I felt above it, like I had survived. And of course I bumped into Sister Renata.

“Hello, Rosemary … I said, hello, Rosemary. And what may I ask are you doing here?”

“I have permission. And my name isn’t Rosemary, sister.”

“Nice to see that temper of yours hasn’t changed.”

“Thank you, sister. Nice to see yours hasn’t either.”

“You’re lucky you’re not here anymore, or I’d give you a good crack right across that smart mouth of yours.”

“You’re not allowed to hit us anymore, sister. Didn’t you know about the new child protection laws?” I said beguilingly, blinking my eyelashes up and down.

She gave me a contemptuous look and left. Yay! I know it sounds horrible of me, but it felt so good.

I found Cindy sitting alone on her bed in Group Two. I sat down on the bed next to her. I didn’t say anything at first. I tried not to stare; she looked so strange and sad.

“What happened to your eyebrows?” I eventually asked.

“I shaved them, stupid.” She chuckled.

“Oh. Your eyelashes too?”

“I plucked them out,” she said with a shrug.

“Why?”

“…  Don’t know. Just felt like it.… It looks stupid?”

“No … yes … only a little bit.”

We both laughed. Then we both got quiet, looking away for a moment.

“Remember when we pulled off Sister Renata’s veil and she was bald?” Cindy weirdly said, as if she were continuing a long-ass conversation.

“Yeah!”

“She really beat the shit outta us that time. You know, it’s ’cause they can’t have sex. Their pussy gets dried up and makes them go insane.”

Although it was an old joke of hers, we both laughed.

“What happened?” I sincerely asked.

“…  The counselor. She called us trash and told me I was crazy and ignorant. When she pointed her finger in my face … I didn’t mean to do it … but …”

“I know you didn’t. I understand.”

I did understand. No, I wouldn’t have gone so far as stomping her face in, but I got it. Cindy offered a faint smile, then pulled out a Polaroid picture of her and a guy wearing an orderly’s uniform.

“He works at the nuthouse. We did it.”

“No way! Really? Did it hurt?”

“No. Not really. You did it yet?”

I shook my head no.

“Of course not, corny,” she said. “You know everyone calls me Fish Eyes now?”

I busted out laughing. She laughed too. Then we hugged each other as she cried quietly on my shoulder.

An hour or so had passed as we spoke about stupid things like her new inappropriate boyfriend and César trying to fuck me down in Puerto Rico.

“You look different,” she said all out of the blue.

“It’s the bangs,” I explained. “No more big forehead sticking out,” I added.

She laughed.

“No. You do look different, like an ‘outside’ girl. You’re gonna make it. I always knew it.”

Tears fell heavy from her bald eyes. I cried too. Why didn’t they pick her too? Why did they leave her here to end up like this?

“Hey, Cindy, don’t get into any more trouble, please. Or they win. Remember?”

She nodded. Then she grabbed my hand and told me I was still her best friend.

On the way back to the Group Home, I kept telling myself that I had to keep it together and not lose it again or I might snap like Cindy did.

I never saw Cindy again after that visit. I had tried for a time to stay in touch. We had spoken a couple of times on the phone, but when she was released from the Home, I never heard from her again. But I never stopped asking for her and surely never forgot her, ever.

•   •   •

I think I was fourteen by the time all the paperwork was done. I’m not sure. Nigel, our counselor, was waiting for me inside the van to take me on my final ride to the Metro train station.

I thought I’d be doing cartwheels. This was the end of a life that I’d wanted desperately to leave for years, but the sadness from the other girls, who I thought hated my guts, threw me. Especially when the girl I had the big fight with started crying as she waved good-bye, mouthing,
I’m sorry
. I waved back, apologizing too.

I jumped in the van.

“How’s life working out for you, Rosie?”

“My life’s a black hole, Nigel. But thanks for asking.”

We both sort of laughed.

He looked at me and then asked me what I wanted out of life. I told him that I wanted to go to college, get a job as a legal secretary to pay the bills, then try to get a job at a marine-life study lab as an assistant and eventually get a nice apartment of my own and bring home groceries in a brown paper bag like Mary Tyler Moore and Marlo Thomas.

“Why limit yourself? Why be the legal secretary and not the head of the firm? Why be an assistant and not the head scientist? Why not shoot for a house instead of renting from someone else?”

I stared back at him. I always thought that I was imagining and expecting the best for myself. I was challenged and also perplexed by my own low expectations. Maybe it stemmed from constantly hearing my school guidance counselors and other adults always cautioning me not to dream too high. Say that to a kid a hundred million times and they just might begin to believe it.

“Yeah, well, ‘when your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.’ That’s Bogart,
Key Largo
.”

He liked that one, sort of smiled back at me.

“Life dealt you a shitty hand, Rosie. There’s no doubt about that.”

“Gee, thanks. Cheer me right up, why don’tcha?”

He shook his head with a laugh.

“You can always ask for new cards.”

“Yeah, right.… How?”

“Just by asking. You’ll figure it out. Especially when you get tired of holding on to that hand.”

Whoa.

As the train took me toward my new beginning, I wanted to purge all those years stuck in the system through screams and tears. All that came was a big lump of some kind of emotion that hung silently heavy in my throat.

•   •   •

Tia was quietly giddy as she pushed her plump body up to the third floor. She opened the door and gestured with her hand, drawing my attention to the small hallway that separated the tiny kitchen from the back two bedrooms.

“Look, Rosie! For you.”

I didn’t know what to say, how to respond. Tia had turned the little hallway into my own bedroom—a small bed pushed to one side and a small dresser to the other. This was the first time I’d had my own room—seriously. Okay, so it was in a hallway, but you’ve gotta start somewhere. (Sorry. That’s so sad, it cracks me up.)

“This is for me?”

“
Jes
, all for you. I’m so happy you’re here. I hope you’ll be happy with us again.”

It was too much. I didn’t know how to take in that amount of joy. I sat quietly on the bed for a moment.

“Thank you, Tia,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears.

“But why you cry? You’re here now! Don’t cry. Please.”

I WAS quiet for most of the first several weeks back. I stayed in a lot, close to Tia. When she was at work, my days were spent listening to Burt Bacharach, featuring Dionne Warwick, and my
Romeo and Juliet
album, the 1968 movie version starring Olivia Hussey (love!), moping about for hours longing for Freckles, or sitting still on my bed, not knowing what to do or where to go, waiting for Tia to come home, just like Freckles probably did with me. And when I did get up, I cleaned obsessively! Imagine that! I thought I’d love not being forced to clean, but I couldn’t help myself, the messiness freaked me out. Yep, those penguins got inside.