Dirt

(This happened during a time in my life when everything seemed hopeless. I had been trying to get sober for 15 years, and had once again thrown my clean time out the window. I had decided that smoking pot would save me: that decision led me to withdraw from everyone who loved me, because I didn't want anyone to know my secret. And there were other secrets, too. I was sleeping with a knife under my side of the mattress, and I wasn't sure whether it was to use on myself or on him. Lance's abuse had gradually gotten worse and we had grown in sickness together, slowly by slowly, inch by inch, blow by blow, until I had become one of the women I had never understood: a woman who allows herself to be beaten and believes it is her fault. So that's where I was at.)

I lived in the rough part of town, but I was too restless to be still so I decided to walk. It was high noon under a Texas summer sun, and I walked and walked, and noticed  all the small things I normally missed on my hurried drive home. The houses were small, the windows were barred, and the front gates were padlocked: but the tiny yards were impeccably groomed and dressed in greens and gardens and benches. The grass was mowed. The houses were painted. There were colorful rocks, small fountains, and of course statues of the Virgin Mary. The pride these people took in their small plots of land touched me deeply. I walked more slowly now, finally able to see something besides my own fear and pain.

And that's when I saw her. In between a few of these sweet little homes, there was a small sad structure. It looked like a shack, windows open to the stifling heat, rough paint badly applied: and the yard! There was a tree, and nothing else. Not even grass. All she had was dirt. And she was sweeping her dirt. She picked up sticks and rocks and put them in her pockets as she worked. In the white-hot afternoon, she tended her garden of nothing and made it as beautiful as she could. I slowed my pace, but did not want to be caught staring: we nodded at each other as I passed, and I walked on with sudden tears pricking the corners of my eyes. I had seen nothing but hopelessness in her yard, but she saw her home, and she was going to do her best to tend it. What she was doing looked like love to me, a careful and patient love that would eventually lead her to the vision she had in her heart, of grass and new paint and a bench or two. She simply bowed her head and went forward. I knew that she would get there.

The beauty and courage of her gesture set my heart on fire. I wanted to be like her.

And in that moment I knew that I could. All I had to do was believe that it was possible, and take a tiny step forward, no matter how futile it seemed. And then another. What she could do, maybe I could too.

(My tiny steps gained momentum rapidly. I left Lance within the month and never looked back. I barely remember the girl I used to be: that was 20 years and many lifetimes ago. I still think about that woman sometimes. She will never know that she changed my life.)

Healing the Broken Bits

(There was an article being passed around on Facebook recently, about how children should behave and how parents let their kids run wild. this was also the day of the Casey Anthony verdict: and I don't know exactly why, but it brought back a memory, maybe the idea of children being inconvenient. Don't read this if you're prone to getting triggered, 'cause it ain't pretty.)

I don't remember what she was mad about. I had done something I wasn't supposed to do, again, and I would pay the price. She was so calm when she delivered her punishments: my father would get crazy angry, but her stern steady verdicts were somehow more terrifying.

She told me to put out my hand, flat on the table, so I did. I didn't know what was coming, maybe the flyswatter again, or maybe a slap or two without my hands to involuntarily interfere. But she smashed down on my fingers, hard, with nothing but her closed fist, powered by muscle that had pushed a wheelchair for decades. I started screaming. I couldn't stop. The shock of the pain was breathtaking: nothing else existed right then. She told me to calm down but I couldn't. She finally looked, and her lips pressed together in annoyance. She came back with emery boards and tape, and splinted my two broken fingers. I was quiet by then, shaking and breathing erratically: but I could still hear just fine. She told me that we couldn't run to the doctor for every little foolish thing I did, and told me how I would explain my injuries this time. I absorbed my cover story and nodded numbly. I knew that somehow this was my fault: and the anger that should have been settled into a sick leaden lump in my stomach. I believed everything she told me back then: that I was everything that was wrong in our family, that I was fat and graceless, that it was my job to take care of everyone. I don't believe now, but I remember how it felt. I wanted to earn her love with my silent acceptance of her abuse, by taking her place in ways I never should have so that she would be off the hook, by absorbing all the abuse for myself to protect my brother and sister: but I failed utterly. I wanted to keep them safe. I could not. Of course I couldn't, I was a kid, but I still feel the indescribable weight of my failure. I loved them all so much: and my brother loved me back. Without him, I don't know if I could have survived any of it.

The worst part of those moments was never the physical pain: it was the belief that life was horror, and the knowledge that I was utterly powerless to save any of us. I left home at 16. It has taken me years of wandering through the land of addiction to finally come to the other side and put the horror to bed. It does not control my life anymore, because I have the power today that I didn't have then. I no longer expect bad things to happen. I have discover a sense of outrage that was lost to me for so many years.

...but the weight of my past, the sorrow, the fact that I couldn't protect them, and most of all the hunger to be loved - these things persist. Healing is a slow and painful process. With every tear I shed, I get a little more free. With every memory I share, I am less ashamed. And with every bit of love that comes my way, I am healed. It feels like having my heart pried open with a crowbar: but I am finally learning how to let people love me. And I am grateful for every kind word, every gesture of affection, every little bit. I know how to treasure it. That is my silver lining: I never take it for granted. Not any of it.

The Smell

I remember the day I came from from school and noticed, for the first time, the smell of the house we lived in. It wasn't the cigarette smoke that caught my attention, nor the smell of last night's dinner, or too many bodies in a space where no one was allowed to open windows: it was another smell, something that made me feel sick. I finally found it by the baseboards near the kitchen trash. Rotting food lined the floor, a gooey pile of ick that stretched over a foot along the wall and onto the floor. I wrestled my rising gorge back down and cleaned it up: and that small spot suddenly glowed bright against the other old, gray filth ground into the cracked linoleum. Thus I began to learn how to clean. And on the strength of my effort a small dent was slowly made in the indifferent filth we lived in: but it was never enough. I could not fix the screen door, or encourage my father to put his teeth in or his pants on: he sat in his ripped t-shirt and boxers, scratching himself and smoking into the night. I did not invite my friends over.

But life found me anyway, and life is not always a gentle teacher. It was the other children who noticed this smell, my smell, and laughed at me behind my back: I had no idea. How could I? Who the hell was going to teach me that I needed to bathe more than once every week or two? I must have been 11 or 12, just before puberty, and I finally heard what the girl said to her friend: her hair is so oily it looks like it's wet. I realized with sudden hot shame that they were talking about me.

I went to the library and checked out books about personal hygiene. They were books for young children: no one wrote books for girls my age explaining how to bathe: it was assumed that someone would have taught me that. I read them and told my mother I wanted to take a shower every day. She laughed tersely and told me it would cost too much money for me to use all that extra hot water. I finally offered to pay her with my babysitting money, and we struck a deal. I was allowed to get clean, within limitations. And those girls at school stopped laughing at me, although I would clearly never be one of them. They couldn't see that I wasn't a freak, or disgusting, or societally retarded. They came from homes with clean sheets and bedtime snacks and a sure knowledge that someone would kiss their booboos. Just as their world was beyond my comprehension, so mine was beyond theirs: but theirs was a world I could see, whereas mine, mine was hidden. I kept the secrets. Who would have believed me, anyway?

My son complained about the requirement of daily showers when he was younger: he called me "anal". When his socks had holes, I threw them away and bought new.He never dressed out for gym class in old grayed hand-me-down underwear, and I didn't make him pay cash for the privilege of washing his sheets. I hope that he will never know what it is like, to be treated with such casual cruelty, such coldness. And I wonder if the pain of being so unloved will ever really go away.

The Dream

I can date the memory by the house we were living in: I was 10. I woke up from a nightmare, a recurring theme of being kidnapped in view of my mother and of her turning her back, tight-lipped, not wanting to see. But when I awoke from this particular dream I just could not shake the horror. I surrounded myself with stuffed animals, listened to my sister breathing peacefully in the next bed, said my prayers like a good Catholic girl: but the fear kept pounding through me. I just didn't know what to do. I finally got up and went to my mother's room.

My father could sleep through a tornado, but my mother was a very light sleeper, so I stood in the doorway of their room and whispered, Mom. She instantly raised her head and said, what's wrong? I explained that I didn't know what to do to shake off the nightmare so I could go back to sleep, that I had tried and that it just wouldn't stop. She sat up and patted the bed in front of her, and said, come here.

My stomach sank. I knew she would slap me for waking her over something so trivial, and that she wanted me to get closer so that she didn't have to lunge for me: if her legs had not been paralyzed by polio, she probably would have stood, but she could not and so she relied on our obedience. There was nowhere to run that wouldn't make it worse anyway: better to just get it over with. I closed half the distance between us and stopped, hopefully, but she patted the bed again. Come HERE, she whispered loudly.

I sat down in the spot she had indicated, shoulders tensed and eyes down, waiting. Then she did something I have never forgotten: she put her arms around me, and held me.

She had not done that since before I could remember. I was overwhelmed. The only way she had touched me for years was to smack me. I still hugged my brother, who was young enough to hug me back: but no one had touched me like this for years. Everything in me relaxed. It was such a powerful magic.

She stopped after about 30 seconds, and asked if it was better. And it was. The fear that had shaken me for the better part of an hour was gone without a trace, and I felt the most lovely peace flowing all through my veins. I said yes, and thank you, and went back to bed: but I couldn't sleep for a while. The feeling of being held like that had been unbearably sweet, and I was drunk on it, unwilling to let it go until sleep finally took me anyway. 37 years later, I still remember what a miracle that moment was to me: and it breaks my heart that my childhood was so impoverished of even the simplest affection. I know she loved me as much as she could, that she just wasn't capable of more: but Mom, it was not enough! I am still so hungry after all these years: and the mark of it will always be with me, every day, every day.

(My son is 16. He casually puts his feet in my lap when we watch TV, and I rub them: I hug him often, and he still hugs back, even in front of his friends. He will never know this particular sorrow. He will never wonder if he was loved.)

RIP Mary

I want to write about a woman I met the first time I was in jail. I was inside twice, neither time for a lengthy sentence: but the experience was profound in ways you might not imagine. I could write about facing down the head Latina King there, Ray-Ray: about how she stepped to me, and how I stood up to her with a firm dignity that I didn't know I had in me: about how she attempted to avenge herself on me, and how it backfired on her: I get a chuckle out of that one still. Ray-Ray was a thug, and one of the women who belonged there. She is probably still there.

But most of us didn't belong there. I picked up two misdemeanor charges at the age of 43. I had never been in trouble before outside of high school detention: I was new to the justice system, and believed that the guys in the white hats were mostly honest and fair. I was wrong. I was put on probation for my offenses, and was incarcerated both times for going to my probation officer in tears and admitting that I had used drugs again. Upon hearing my story, the other inmates assured me that I was criminally stupid, and they were right. I was told to ask for their help: instead I received their punishment. I was so, so naive. I watched these officers of the law blatantly lie in court, and I was stunned. I learned that justice and the law are not always related.

The first time I was in jail, I was terrified. I kept my mouth shut and my head up: I stayed to myself, nodded at people here and there, and took my time letting everyone size me up. It was hard to have no money when everyone brought out their commissary goods, candy and chips and coffee: I was starving, having gone days smoking rock instead of eating, and they don't feed you much there. But I knew better than to ask, because showing weakness is not a good plan. That much I knew. I knew not to admit that I had a suicide plan in place: their treatment would have been to put me in a straitjacket, diaper me, and put me in isolation. Think I'm joking? I saw it happen. I learned. I saw a woman have a series of mini-strokes: they put her in isolation, where we could not help her. When I left a month later, she had still not seen a doctor. Need to take a leak? Too bad. You can wait until the guard feels like getting up, and begging won't help. You are nothing in jail. You have no rights other than what they choose to give you.

There are so many other horrors I could delineate, but I want to talk about one of the women I met there. She was one of the women who taught me what it means to be a hero. Her name was Mary. She walked the pod like I did, round and round until it was time to lock down, or eat: killing time. She was in jail for taking her son to Burger King, with her ex's permission: he called the police and she was charged with kidnapping. She had a record of small drug offenses, so she was locked up with no bail. She was looking at spending the rest of her life in prison for nothing. NOTHING. She had spent her childhood being abused and gone on to make a series of remarkably bad choices in men. She had used drugs to alleviate the horror: she tried to get help, but there isn't much out there, and that's no excuse, that's the truth in the state of Massachusetts. As a crack addict, she was not eligible for detox: there are no rehabs available for less than an initial investment of $8000: and a mental hospital will not keep you for more than a week or so, even if you beg. So there she was, looking at life without: she had just been officially charged. It's fair to say that she was a little upset.

She and I were both walking our circles, as I said, and in time our circles synced up. And you know what she did with her fear and her pain, this woman? She asked me how I was doing. She was kind. She listened, and encouraged me to talk about me: she gave me some advice: but most of all, she just cared. I was amazed. In this descent into hell, I knew I was witnessing greatness. She gave me back my hope. And she showed me who I wanted to be when I grew up. She was my angel that day.

Mary died not long ago. She was 2 years older than me. This is when I start wondering, why me? Why not her? I have no answer. All I know is, she taught me something: I learned that love happens in the giving, not the taking. RIP Mary. You gave me the gift of hope when it seemed you had nothing to give, and I hold that hope to this day. I will never forget you.

Destiny's Cousin (or, how I learned to cry)

"It is such a secret place, the land of tears." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In my family, there was just no room for the children to have feelings: our tears were an unbearable accusation, and we were punished for causing pain. "Go to your room, no one wants to see you like that" was on a good day: mostly the punishment for crying was physical. I learned to cry without making any noise: and then I learned not to cry at all. It was a hard lesson to learn: the blows of his belt and his fists tattooed it into my bones. It became part of who I was. Life without tears was also life without joy: it was like living in a mausoleum. I didn't think about it, because I never imagined that it could be different.

I began to think about it after my son was born. When I was telling him that it was okay to cry, it dawned on me that he would learn more from my actions than my words: and I did not want to pass on this terrible lesson. I didn't know where to start, but I finally realized that if I didn't seek some kind of recovery from my past, then with all the best intentions in the world I would still pass on my damage. That horrified me. I became willing to wade back into the pain and seek healing. I started going to counseling.


When my son was 3, I got clean and sober for the first time. I had been addicted to prescription drugs. It took about 3 months before the shaking stopped enough that I could write my name legibly, and that's when I got my very first sober job. I had sober days here and there at other jobs, but not too many, so this was new territory. Hell, everything was new territory then, raw and terrifying and wondrous. It was like taking a hit of life every day: I never knew where it would take me, but I was beginning to believe that I would find my way.

I took a job as a cashier at a local grocery store, and to my amazement, I was good at it. I liked dealing with people: I had a facility for easing the temper of the worst customer. Even if all I could give was a smile and a moment of kindness, I was grateful to have anything to give back to life, anything at all. I was so wide open then. I had no defense any more against feelings: letting go of drugs initially left me with no walls at all. I surrounded myself with positive thoughts and positive people as a protection. But then it happened: life came calling.

There they were, the three of them: a girl of about 8, a defiantly shirtless man and an old woman with no teeth. The closer they got to the front of my line, the tenser I got: I could how they spoke to the girl, the casual cruelty, and I could not shut it out. It was finally their turn. All I could do was look at her and smile. I wanted her to know that I SAW her. She held out a plastic cup for me to ring up, and said, "It's for Destiny. She's my cousin."

The grandmother whacked the girl's arm and said, "She's nothing to you!" and immediately returned her attention to the young man as he scowled at the girl. Then they both turned their attention back to their private war with each other. I kept smiling at the girl. She stared at me, and it started: big tears rolling down her face, but no sound at all: she was crying without making any noise. I had no more power to save her than I had had to save myself, all those years ago. I remember that I started shaking: I rang them up as fast as I could, hurried through the rest of my customers, and left to go on break.

I went back to the employee bathroom and fell to my knees. I tried to pray but all I could say was, why? Why did You make me see this when I can't help her? I began to beat a slow rhythm on the wall with my closed fist, the bass line to an unbearable pain. Tears squeezed through the sides of my clenched eyes. It took a while to compose myself, but I had to go back to work, so I did. I felt sick and hollow. I could not find my way back to anything that felt like home inside of my own skin. I finished my shift quietly, and walked home.

I was halfway home when it dawned on me: she had given me back my tears. I had to stop and lean against a tree. I wept again, for joy: I knew then. I knew that she had been sent to me. And because she had taught me how to cry again, maybe my son wouldn't have to learn. There was hope of healing after all, even for me.

I have never forgotten her. I never will.

Learning His Language

(I remember once when my brother was 3, he wiped out on his Big Wheel at the end of our driveway, and ended up with gravel pushed deep into his gums. It was bad, bad enough to go to the doctor, which was only for emergencies: one of the many costs of poverty. Of course my brother started crying. And my father was furious with him for crying, spitting cussing scary-mad: he would have swung if I wasn't standing in front of him. I mention this so you can understand some of how we learned not to cry. The tears got beat and scared clean out of us: but they never go away until you can finally cry them. I know that now.)

I think my brother Charlie must have been 6 when this happened, which means I was 12. We were back in my room talking: it was after dinner, all our chores were done, and we were leaning peacefully against each other and wandering through ideas. Charlie suddenly stiffened up, and I felt him clamp down hard on his emotions, clamp down iron-hard and belly-tight. I said, what's wrong? He shook his head, still struggling to master himself. I felt a terrible fear rise in me: see, I KNEW what was happening, and I didn't want him to learn that. I don't know what I thought I could teach him, since I didn't know how to cry anymore either, but I could see the scars as they were being laid on his soul and I wanted to fight against it somehow. I tried to tell him that it was safe to cry in front of me and that no one would ever know: but he understood better than I did, that to give in at all was to risk losing control later, and losing control could lead to one of those beatings where you wondered if he would kill you, this time. I finally stopped trying to help and let him compose himself: but the mood was lost, and he went to bed then, alone with his darkness.

My father was in his bedroom, and I marched in, quivering with fury. I tried to explain, what it was doing to this brother I loved, to be poisoned by his unshed tears. My father thought about it, and he started telling me a story.

When my father was young, he was very smart, and he was moved up a few grades. Teachers loved him, which did not endear him to his fellow classmates, who were much larger than him. There he was, this smart skinny kid with the ears that stuck out,: a fierce sharp boy who knew the sting of every lash you can imagine, and who had the crazy quiet defiance that enabled him to survive his own schizophrenic father. In Texas, football is compulsory: even the girls play it. So my father's classmates took their revenge on the football field. There was a move called the nutcracker, which is what it sounds like, y'all: standing at the front of the line, facing your opponent, when that whistle blows you raise your locked hands together and smash the testicles of the boy in front of you.

How was he going to fight back against that? Tell the teacher - not fucking likely. Physically he was more than outmatched. So he came up with a plan. He learned to look them right in the eye while he was waiting for that whistle, and when they swung, he smiled. HE SMILED. I cannot imagine the effort of will that took, but it was the only way he had left to hang onto his dignity. And it worked. As  matter of fact, he scared the crap out of them, and they left him alone after the first few times. He learned that swallowing his pain, never showing any weakness, was what allowed you to retain your place in life, maybe even your soul.

When he told me that last part, he had a strange gleam in his eye, a look I had never seen. He was still lost in that horrible past, recalling a moment of victory: he was smiling to himself. He had forgotten that I was there. I finally understood that he had been trying to save us somehow, teaching us the only lessons that he knew. My stomach twisted in pity and sorrow for this man with the big ears whose only defense against pain was to fight. I knew he would never escape his past: it would haunt him every day of his life, and he would never know it. But I also knew then that he loved us, no matter how twisted it was: and that knowledge opened a new world to me. It had never once occurred to me that he loved us. It was tragic, yes, but love is beautiful for all that. I cherish that memory: I have so few clues left, to know that I was loved.

But it matters. I am glad to have these clues. Love is love. And he loved me.