CHAPTER 2
No Room for Daddy
I was three years old the first time my dad left us. We were living in Clairemont, a community in San Diego, California. I don’t remember much from back then, so as far as I know there wasn’t tons of fighting or anger within our house. But my dad wanted out.
My mom, Patti, says that my dad and I were really close when I was a baby. He would take me to the beach and spend lots of time with me. Then, when my mom got pregnant with my younger brother, Colin, my dad wanted no part of it. He just walked out on my pregnant mother and me.
My mom packed our bags and took us to New Jersey to live with my grandmother. My mom says I missed my dad and was old enough to recognize that he wasn’t there anymore. I was sad, but she kept me busy. We would go to the boardwalk in Ocean City, and she signed me up for dance classes at the same place she went when she was a kid. I guess she thought it would be cute if I followed in her footsteps. Even then, though, I think I knew I wasn’t the ballerina type.
If my mom wasn’t sure, she definitely got the message at my first recital. My classmates and I practiced for weeks for the big performance, but when it was finally showtime I walked out with the group and plopped my ass down on the front of the stage. I refused to dance.
“Get up! Get up!” my mom instructed.
No response.
“Come on, honey . . .”
Nothing.
Then she got angry. “If you don’t get up right now . . .”
Her threats had no effect on me. I didn’t want to perform in front of all those people, and there was nothing anyone could do to convince me. The only show they got from me was when my mom finally gave up and I stuck my finger up my nose. I was up there pretty good, so I’m sure the crowd appreciated it. My mom didn’t, however, and that was the end of dance class for me.
Shortly after my less than stellar performance, my dad decided he wanted us back. Colin was an infant, and taking care of two kids was an even larger task than just dealing with me, so my mom decided to give the relationship another shot. Plus, she still loved him. So we said good-bye to Grandma and moved back west to Clairemont.
To me, the time in Jersey felt like a vacation, but I’m sure for my mom it was anything but. Then, when we got back to California, life became even less fun for her. She and my dad bought a town house and had plans to buy a house shortly after, and for a while my dad made an effort to make this family work. But then, according to my mom, he started acting strange. He would stay out late partying and sometimes not come home at all. A year after we moved back to Clairmont, he was ready to take off again.
This time when he left, although I was young, I remember being put right in the middle of the split. Looking back, it was pretty intense stuff for a child. My dad asked me to go with him and my mom wanted me to stay with her. I knew I wanted to be with my mom but, being a kid, I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. My heart just wouldn’t let me be honest. I couldn’t say, “Daddy, I like Mommy more than you.” So instead, when it came time to make the big decision, I balanced on a crack in the sidewalk and said, “I’m going to step on this crack and close my eyes and if I fall toward Mom I will go with her and if I fall toward Dad I will go with him.”
I left it up to the gods to tilt the Earth in a way that made me fall in one direction. It was no longer up to me. No one could be upset.
I fell toward my mom and my dad took off.
After he left my brother and I were crying, so my mom took us down to the bay and we went to 7-Eleven and got Martinelli’s apple juice (my favorite). We were walking down by the bay, sipping Martinelli’s and still feeling sad, when a ladybug landed on my hand. I looked down and saw a thousand of them running around on the ground. I got really excited and sat down and started counting them as high as I could count, and before I knew it I started feeling better. From that day forward, ladybugs would be a symbol of happiness for me because on what was a terrible day, they provided a small amount of joy.
Throughout my childhood, my dad would pop in and out. My mom says I used to get upset about his absence and say, “Where’s daddy?” and “How come daddy doesn’t want to see me?”
My mom was always there for us. She worked at a doctor’s office doing the payroll and organizational work, and with two kids, a husband who made her life more difficult, and a job that kept her busy all day, she was pretty stressed out. She always found time for us, though, and she always wanted the best for us kids. She knew we needed happy memories, and she did her best to provide them for us. A little help arrived in the form of my grandmother, who moved in right next door when I was about six years old. My grandfather moved to town, too, even though he and my grandmother were separated, and helped raise us. My mom made sure we had a family.
My dad, on the other hand, never excelled at parenting. During one Super Bowl Sunday, when I was about seven years old, Colin and I went to his house for the day. Sometimes my mom would go with us when we spent a day with him because he wasn’t great at taking care of us.
This time, though, he was on his own and he failed miserably.
He didn’t want to ruin his fun or have his children wreck his opportunity to watch the big game, so instead of letting us play inside he set us to play in the backyard while he had a big party in the house.
I snuck inside and called my mom and said, “Daddy is leaving us in the backyard. We’re not allowed in the house.”
She was pissed. My mom came and got us, and that was that. Over the next few years she would put up with his antics, but he was never going to be the father she wanted him to be. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure he wanted us, or any sort of family at all. Every now and then he would get a second or third or fourth chance, but then one day he just gave up and disappeared for good.
Even with my dad coming and going, I had a pretty normal childhood. My mom kept signing me up for activities (though she never tried to get me to take ballet classes again) and helping me find interests. But while she wanted me to get involved in the activities, she was good about letting me explore a little and find what I was really interested in doing with my free time.
At one point when I was still really young she started putting me in beauty pageants. All the little girls’ faces were caked with makeup, but that wasn’t me and my mom wasn’t going to make me look like a Barbie if I didn’t want to. I made it to the finals makeup-free but lost. Even at an early age, it was obvious that I was more the sporty type.
Later I took gymnastics, but I never figured out how to do a flip. I was afraid of heights and always felt like my leotard was riding up my crotch, so I knew that wasn’t for me.
Then I tried Girl Scouts. Camping was awesome—I loved spending a weekend in the woods, telling ghost stories and eating junk food—but Girl Scouts wasn’t really for me, either. I couldn’t be around too many girls for long without getting annoyed. Also, the shoes we had to wear hurt my feet, and most of the activities were a pain in the ass. The worst part came when it was time to sell Girl Scout Cookies. I scarfed down all of them—the Thin Mints were the first to go—and forced my mom to pay for all the boxes. She didn’t like that, so that was the end of my career as a Girl Scout.
In elementary school I finally started to find my niche. During recess all the girls would jump rope, and I was fascinated by it. This one girl, Jackie, was the best in the whole school. She was lightning fast and a pro at double Dutch. Someone would have a stopwatch and time her jumps per minute. She was out-of-control good, and I was impressed. I practiced my skills and worked to become Jackie-like on the playground. I never beat her, but one time I came really close, and that was good enough for me; it was such a great feeling just to be in her league.
But there’s just so much time you can spend jumping rope before you start to lose your mind. I needed more excitement.
One day I was over at my best friend’s house and she had to leave to go play in her soccer game at a field down the street from where I lived. I went, too,
just to watch, but her team was short one person so they asked me to play. My friend, who maybe wasn’t all that nice, was quick to point out that it was an organized league and you had to pay to be on the team.
I wanted to play so bad. I ran home and begged my mom to get me on that team. She agreed, and I immediately poured my heart and soul into soccer. Once I stepped on the field, I knew that this was the sport for me. With gymnastics, jumping rope, and dance something was missing. Turns out I just needed to play with balls. Who knew?
I loved soccer, and I was really good at it. I was in shorts, not a leotard, and I was kicking ass out there. I got really into kickball, too. All the kids at school played both sports, and I was the best of the girls and able to keep up with the boys. We played both soccer and kickball as often as possible after school and during PE and recess.
I also started playing softball. I loved getting down and dirty and coming home with scraped knees. I earned the nickname “Dodger” because I was so fast that I would dodge all the tags as I rounded the bases and come in safe every time. I wrote “Dodger” on the side of my helmet and played whenever I could.
Every month my elementary school held an assembly during which the teachers would give out awards. I always won for best athlete. It was great to be given a plaque in front of the whole school. My mom would beg me to wear a dress for the assembly, so I would leave the house all dressed up and then change into jeans when I got to school. Then, of course, my mom would show up at the assembly, see me not wearing the pretty dress I was wearing when I left the house, and get pissed off. But when the teacher handed me the award she’d forget all about my clothes.
My mom let me explore my options in life beginning at a young age, and when I found something I was good at she was very proud. Sometimes, though, that freedom backfired. Maybe having a father who wasn’t around and a mother who worked long hours to put food on the table forced me to miss a few important conversations as a child. Maybe so much freedom to explore was too much for any child to handle. Either way, my exploratory side did get me in trouble every now and then.
Once, when I was around seven years old, I was playing with another little girl in my bedroom after school. A babysitter, who was probably in high school, was watching us. We were curious kids, so we often turned to this babysitter when we had a question about anything in life. Well, that day we decided to ask her about sex.
She had no problem opening up.
“First the mother and father take off all of their clothes . . .”
Our eyes lit up.
“Then the mommy and the daddy . . .”
Well, I probably don’t need to tell you how it’s done.
I always felt like I was more mature and advanced than other kids my age, but the kinds of details the babysitter provided were still pretty shocking for a seven-year-old.
My friend and I couldn’t wait to put our new knowledge to the test. The next day she came over and we went upstairs and did as we’d been told.
We built a little house inside my closet and stripped down like Mommy and Daddy would. I was the mom and she was the dad (I wasn’t really sure how a dad was supposed to act, so being the mom seemed more up my alley). Turned out, it didn’t really matter which role I was playing, because when my mom walked in and found two naked little girls humping in the closet she freaked out and started screaming at us. It was really embarrassing.
My mom started blaming everyone in the world for us ending up in the buff. She blamed my friend. She blamed herself. She blamed the babysitter. She didn’t really blame me, though. I was a good girl in her eyes, so it definitely wasn’t my fault. (Her words, not mine.) The truth is, I didn’t know what sex was and I didn’t know any better, but I did know I had a rebellious streak somewhere inside me. I just hadn’t unleashed it quite yet. That afternoon of nude humping wasn’t my fault, but it was certainly the start of something that my mom knew she had to put a stop to.
That evening we had a humiliating sit-down meeting with all the parents. My friend got sent away to an all-girls school, and I was stuck playing house all by myself.
CHAPTER 3
A Friend in Need
Even though I was good at sports and had an amazing ability to get girls to take their clothes off, I struggled at a young age to find a group where I really fit in.
Don’t get me wrong—people liked me. I’d have a roller-skating party for my birthday and everyone would show up to watch me do the limbo. I was competitive and always had to be the best, uh, limbo-er, but still, the other girls thought I was cool. In fact, I had two friends in elementary school who would actually fight over who got to be my best friend. I told one that she could be my Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday friend and the other that she could be a Thursday-Friday-Saturday friend. Problem solved. That solution was short-lived, though, because girls are crazy at that age. Well, girls are crazy at any age, but young, insecure girls are especially crazy. Ultimately, elementary school girls hate other girls and it’s only a matter of time before you go from having two girls fight over you to them deciding that instead of sharing time with you, they can just become each other’s every-day friend.
At the end of the day, I was always searching for friends and looking for my place in this world.
Growing up, I got bullied a little bit by some of the boys. Maybe they just liked me but, flirty or not, I was not going to take it. I was tough and didn’t let anyone push me around. One time a kid was messing with me, calling me “horsehair” and “freckle face” and getting all the kids to laugh at me. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I picked up a handful of sand and threw it right in the boy’s eyes. He chased me around, yelling and screaming, but I outran him and he learned his lesson.
The girls weren’t much friendlier. One girl in my neighborhood who was at least three or four years older than I was (that’s a lot when you’re in elementary school) picked on me all the time. One day she took a bamboo stick and just kept hitting me with it over and over. I didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of knowing she was hurting me so I kept saying it didn’t hurt. She kept hitting and I just stood there and stared back at her. Once she gave up and went home, I ran to my room and cried my eyes out. Another time she stomped on my toe so hard it bled, but I stood my ground.
That’s just how I was. I never backed down. Even though people judged me and called me names, I was always open to being friends with anyone. It was always the popular kids who were giving me a hard time, so when it came to finding real friends I tended to drift toward the kids who were less accepted—the nerds, the kids in wheelchairs, and the loners of the school. I felt more comfortable with them. I was never ashamed to be seen with a certain kind of person; if they were nice, I wanted to be their friend.
I grew up in a diverse neighborhood, so I didn’t see race or ethnicity at all. My mom taught me that everyone is equal and beautiful in his or her own way. But there are walls and divisions in our society, and sometimes discovering them is hard for a kid.
When I was eight years old my mom took me to Target to buy a birthday present for my friend Lisa, a black girl who was one of my good friends from the neighborhood. We walked down the aisle with all the Barbie dolls, and there was Malibu Barbie, and all sorts of blonde dolls that looked a lot like me—but not so much like Lisa. I knew the company made a black Barbie, but that particular store didn’t have it. I didn’t even know if Lisa cared about that sort of thing, but I started to cry because there were no black Barbies. It was so sad to see that something as great as Barbie was only available in white, when I wanted to buy a black Barbie for my friend. Now, of course, the Barbie people have a wide variety of dolls that are available at almost any store. Walk into your local Target and there’s probably a Tramp Stamp Barbie and an Obama Barbie and an Octo-Barbie with eight kids running around. But at the time, it was very disturbing to only see one face on the shelf.
As I got a little older the racial divisions at my elementary school became so obvious that I was act
ually ashamed to be white. I hated the white kids, so I started telling people I was black. Whether they believed me—with my blonde hair and blue eyes—or not didn’t really matter. I just didn’t want to associate with the white kids.
Another good friend of mine at the time was a Mexican boy named Chris. I think I was probably his only friend. He sort of just blended in and went unnoticed by most of the other kids, but I thought he was the greatest. He would come over and call my mom Ms. Wilkinson with his little accent and I thought it was so cute.
I took him skating for the first time and loved getting him to do all sorts of fun things that he’d never done before. He was very religious and sheltered, so I felt I needed to open his eyes to other important things in the world—like Ouija boards.
The whole concept of Ouija boards scared the shit out of him because of his religious background; he wanted to stay away from this devil game. But I convinced him to give it a shot, of course. We went to my room, sat down, and turned the lights out. With the Ouija board balanced on our laps, we asked it our important questions.
“Will Kendra have big boobs?”
The dial slowly inched its way to spell out Y-E-S. (Damn right!)
“Will Target ever sell black Barbies?”
Y-E-S. (Good to know.)
Then it was Chris’s turn. I didn’t really believe in the powers of the Ouija, but sometimes it seemed like odd things happened when we started playing with it.
“Will Chris die?”
It seemed like a perfectly good question for a little kid to ask.
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