As soon as we returned from Colorado, Chris headed out of town for his summer adventure in the Datsun. He said he would be back just in time to repack and get to college at Emory. When we said good-bye, he hugged me for a long time before looking me in the eyes.
“Be careful,” he said. Then he drove away.
CHRIS’S ABSENCE WAS SURREAL AT FIRST. When I walked in the front door after he’d left, everything looked just the same. The couch pillows were still set up just so, and Buck still dozed in the same corner. But everything felt different. A dynamic had shifted between me and my parents, and the change was as palpable to me as if all the walls and furniture had been painted red. But at least I had Jimmy—and I didn’t have to worry about Chris’s annoying jokes about how I’d fallen in love too fast or his skepticism about what Jimmy wanted to gain out of the relationship.
Jimmy was a motorhead. A smart one. He drove a black 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo that he had been restoring himself. My dad—who had a love of cars himself, having owned an old GTO convertible when we were younger—appreciated Jimmy’s industriousness as a mechanic. But he warned me repeatedly that I would never have a successful life if I did not marry a man of a proper profession that earned him a large paycheck. During one of his cool-dad moments, though, my father helped Jimmy and me finance a project that we all took on together.
Jimmy had found a 1969 Stingray convertible suffering inside a ramshackle shed, and we came together as its savior. It was cheap to obtain the Corvette because it didn’t run and needed excessive body-and paintwork. Jimmy and I worked on the car every day during the summer, in the garage at his house, disassembling and rejuvenating her 350 engine, rebuilding her 411 rear end and four-speed transmission. He tested me on the parts, taught me how they went together, and thought I was a cool chick for wanting to get my hands dirty. While my interest in cars began as a way to spend time with him, as we got further into restoring the ’vette, I fell in love with the process of taking something that had been broken and abused and making it come to life again. And the actual mechanics of it just seemed to click for me. Watching a machine be put together was like my two favorite subjects in school—math and music—joining together in tangible form.
One day late in the summer I stayed at Jimmy’s house into the early evening, tinkering with a rear differential. It was almost dark when Jimmy drove me home, but as soon as we came over the hill on Willet Drive, I saw the old yellow Datsun sitting in the driveway.
“Oh my God! Chris is home!” Jimmy had barely come to a stop before I hopped out of the car. I ran inside and up the stairs to Chris’s room and busted through his bedroom door. There he was—and in such a deep sleep that he didn’t even flinch. I walked over to his bed quietly. He was so extremely thin, with a full beard and haggard appearance. It made me wonder if this was what Jesus might have looked like after hanging on the cross.
Later that night, he told me about his adventures as he unpacked his backpack. He placed cans with generic black and white labels onto the table as he told me about his long drive out west, his hikes along the Pacific coast, his final trek through the Mojave Desert, taking food to people who didn’t have enough to eat—exactly who these people were or how he came to feed them, I didn’t know and was too preoccupied by the cans to ask. I had never seen anything like them before. There was nothing commercial about the containers, no catchy sales pitches or luring pictures. It was just . . . food.
The trip was not one I would have taken or any of his friends would have wanted to go on—drinking margaritas on a beach in Florida was more the graduation trip ideal. But I didn’t think it was strange at all for Chris to trek alone across the Mojave bringing food to people who needed it. That was just Chris. Our parents didn’t get it. Though Mom immediately took to the kitchen to cook everything she could think of to fatten up her son, I didn’t hear “We were so worried.” Instead, Chris had to listen to a lecture rehashing the argument he and Dad had had before he left: “Who do you think you are to leave without telling us exactly where you were going? You said you would call and you didn’t. You said you would be back on this day and you weren’t.”
I knew Chris was irritated with them, but I also knew there was something else bothering him. The toll on his mind was as visible to me as the weight that had fallen from his frame. I didn’t push him on what it was, though. He’d tell me when and if he wanted to.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “How did it go over the summer?”
“It was good,” I said, and I meant it. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve figured them out. I’ll just spend most of my time with Jimmy until band camp starts. When I’m home, it’s pretty easy to just stay out of the way these days.” He looked relieved.
I didn’t get his usual intense hug when he left with our parents for Emory. It was an unfulfilling good-bye in their presence, but as always, we understood each other. The summer alone with my parents had gone well. Yet both Chris and I also knew that I was their last chance to either succeed or fail as parents, and the pressure was on.
CHAPTER 4
OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS, strange periods of tranquility among the usual dysfunction lulled me into believing I was finally earning my parents’ approval. I didn’t know at the time that the reprieves were simply because I was playing my part right. I was selected for gifted programs and my grades were good. I excelled in music and marching band, becoming drum major my senior year, and won lots of awards. I had no partners to strategize with, no detectives to investigate with who might make my parents feel insecure or equally matched.
Chris was mostly absent from our daily lives. After his first year at Emory, he’d opted for a monkish existence focused on study and a definite exit date from college. His apartment had no phone to call. Letters were infrequent. I missed him, but I understood why he wasn’t in touch. Then, when I did get a letter, he would say everything that was just right to say, and it usually arrived on a day when I needed to hear it. There was one letter that I would reread whenever I was feeling particularly lost:
I don’t know why it is, but our parents have two-sided split personalities, and for some reason they have reserved [the very worst part of themselves] solely for you and I alone. You are the only one who I could ever truly communicate with on this subject, because like me you have seen that other side and experienced the trauma, frustration, and pain of having to be subservient to such oppressive personalities for so many years of our lives. The events that we suffered are so outlandish in their proportion that it is useless to try to explain them to anybody, because they will never believe you. They will think you are some kind of freak, some kind of outrageous liar and exaggerator. They [will] think that you simply couldn’t handle the normal conflicts which all teenagers and their parents go through.
I agreed with Chris in that it was hard to talk to anybody except him about our parents. But I did confide in one of my best friends, a boy named Giti Khalsa. Although Jimmy and I were very close, I was more insecure around him and thus hesitated to share too much about my home life that might drive him away. But Giti was different; I always felt confident that his friendship was unconditional and without ulterior motive. Somehow he saw past my always-animated demeanor and sensed there was something brewing underneath. Giti would sit and have long discussions with me about what drove irrational behavior in people. We would try to wrap our minds around how to exist with it while not allowing it to negatively influence who we wanted to be. When I finally opened up and began telling him—although still to a limited extent—about my troubles at home, I knew I could trust him not to tell anyone else. His summation of my parents existed somewhere between Chris’s view that they were completely hopeless and my view that they couldn’t possibly be beyond hope.
I sensed Giti’s optimistic side came from his own home life. Whenever I walked into Giti’s house, his parents were incredibly welcoming and I felt what I can only describe as a peaceful balance of energy. His family was from India, and in t
he early years of our friendship I thought it was just a cultural thing—as tangible as the turban Giti was required to wear, the indigenous décor on their walls, or the aromas of his mother’s cooking emanating from their kitchen. At that time, there wasn’t a lot of cultural diversity in the neighborhoods around Woodson High, but Giti was quite social and had a lot of friends. He was an excellent student and a talented musician—a good rule follower like me, for the most part. But he had experienced his own resistance to playing an expected part. He informed his parents, after much consideration, that he wanted to break from Sikh tradition and choose his own wife when the time was right for him to marry. Then one day he came to school clean-shaven and without his turban on. Even I had never seen his hair before. It was a lustrous wavy black mane that fell down well below the waistline of his blue jeans. About a year later, he had his hair cut short. Some members of his extended family thought his parents should disown him. While his parents’ beliefs in following the traditions of their heritage remained strong, perhaps the deep-rooted spiritual meaning of those same beliefs, combined with their unconditional love for Giti, simply proved to be stronger. The development of their family dynamic was beautiful to watch. I suppose I must have been envious. It was hard to find the right balance with my own parents, especially when their actions were often so confusing.
Noticing that Jimmy and I had become inseparable, Mom and Dad had several, surprisingly rational conversations with me about sex, both together and separately. They said they remembered being our age. They assumed that Jimmy was pressuring me to do it, and they doubted that I was against the idea, considering we had already been together for so long and how often I attested to being head over heels in love with him. I was absolutely positive that we were going to marry, and Jimmy had sealed the deal with a promise ring. My parents assured me that while they wanted me to wait to have sex, they accepted it was probably unrealistic. They requested that I come to them if it did happen and implored me to have faith that they wouldn’t get mad. They just wanted to ensure I could take the necessary precautions to protect myself from getting pregnant. I felt grateful for their sincerity, proud of their approach.
I lost my virginity to Jimmy three years into our relationship, when I was sixteen.
Still so hopeful and bargaining that my parents would be true to their word, I went to my mother after my special night. I lied about where it happened (their sailboat) but was honest about everything else, including that we had used a condom for protection.
I had expected her to say “Thank you for coming to me.” I thought she’d hug me, I would likely cry a little, and we’d have this bonding moment.
“You did What? How could you!” she screeched.
I looked at her, confused. “You told me to trust you,” I said. “You said you’d be cool with it.”
She stormed up the stairs to her bedroom and presumably told my father, because he boomed at me to come upstairs. As I walked up the staircase, my legs felt leaden, like I was going to have to pick out my belt of choice, but this time I was all alone. When I walked into their room, I saw my mom sitting on the toilet in their en suite bathroom—not using it but slouching on it with her head tucked down to her knees, her hands covering her eyes. She looked like she’d just been told about a tragic car accident. She looked up at me, face flushed, with this expression of utter devastation.
Dad stood next to her, his eyes flashing. “You’ve completely disgraced this family,” he said. “You’re a whore. Who do you think you are? You think you’re so pretty. You think you’re a woman? You’re not a woman. You look like a hooker with your makeup and long hair.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m going to cut your hair off while you sleep.”
I sat on their bed, dumbfounded, and said, “But you guys said to come to you. You said it would all be okay. That the only thing that mattered was that I be honest with you.”
“We can’t even look at you anymore,” said my dad.
“Just go away,” cried Mom.
I walked numbly to my room and called Jimmy.
“You told them what?” Jimmy shrieked through the phone. “Carine, why in the world would you do that?”
“But they said it would be okay! They said they wouldn’t get mad!” I tried to explain it to him through the tears that were now coming on strong. I also broke the news that it was extremely likely I’d never be let out of the house again.
“Oh geez!” Jimmy cringed on the other end of the line. “What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I cried, then I heard my parents’ footsteps approaching. “I’ve got to hang up. They’re coming! At least we can still hang out at school.”
I didn’t get out much after that. I stayed home while friends spent sunny days at Burke Lake, and I was rarely allowed to join them for nights at the movies. But, thankfully and surprisingly, my parents still let me date Jimmy. Perhaps they feared losing credibility in the face of my inevitable rebellion from such an edict. Or perhaps Chris had worn them down by his withdrawal from their lives and there was a twinge of fear that if they pushed too far, they’d lose me. Or perhaps they just thought it more suitable that if I had done the most abominable thing by having premarital sex, at least I was still seeing the guy. They made the whole situation as uncomfortable as possible, though, with my dad taking me to the gynecologist to get a prescription for the pill (my mom was the one who took me to every other doctor appointment in memory) and then to the pharmacy to pick it up. He asked the pharmacist detailed questions about side effects as I stood beside him, grateful yet mortified.
Jimmy and I spent most of our time at his house after that. His mother was “cool,” which meant he could tell her not to disturb us in their basement and she would comply. I went to church with his family. We went to the school dances. Mom bought me nice dresses for the events and tried to convince me, unsuccessfully, to tone down my excess makeup and over-teased hair. Dad documented our automotive endeavors by taking pictures as we swapped the 454 in our 1973 Suburban with the 402 in Jimmy’s 1972 Monte Carlo. It was a pure example of blind love when I willingly parted with that monster big block. But we could still get the Suburban, even with the smaller engine, to chirp second gear with its automatic trans, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Meanwhile, the Stingray’s exterior had evolved from a three-tone flat primer to a beautiful Chevy Autumn Maple with gold metallic that sparkled in the sunlight. To my dismay, the classic restoration outlived our romance. Jimmy and I broke up. I was in love with him, but I was feeling confused and perhaps a bit like Julie had with Chris. Then I found out Jimmy had lied to me and had kissed another girl while we were together. Still immature in matters of love, and seeing an out, I refused to forgive him. So much of me wanted—badly—to still be with him, but I felt like I had been made a fool of, so I decided not to make reconciliation an option.
I immediately started hanging out with a guy from another school. Jimmy lost interest in me and in the Corvette, which was now almost in complete working order. My dad and I finished it together.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1988, my parents completed a custom-built waterfront vacation townhome in the Windward Key community in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. Mom’s youngest brother, Travis—a drunk who was often in debt to Mom and Dad for one bailout after another—was in town, paying off his debt in trade labor, as was the customary resolution. He was adding a sauna room in the lower level. If Uncle Travis didn’t have a beer in his hand, his hand was shaking. His words were always slurred, his eyes lazy. But he was a good carpenter and handyman, and Mom’s brother, so they always let him stay.
My room at the beach house was a top-floor loft with a foldout couch, a deck, and a full bath. When I was just one month shy of seventeen, I woke up to Uncle Travis in my bed with his hands up my nightshirt and his beer tongue in my mouth. I’d worn a long thermal oversize nightshirt to bed with nothing underneath.
Travis was very drunk, and his movements were loose and clumsy, so it wasn�
��t difficult to get him off me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yelled, scrambling out of bed.
“I jus’ thought ya might wanna ’ave sex wimme,” he slurred, not meanly but confused.
I ran down to my parents’ room, where they were sound asleep. I woke them up and tried to keep my voice calm as I told them what had happened, but I was shaking. Mom got Travis back downstairs. Dad stayed in bed.
The next morning I came down from the loft and heard Travis working away on the relaxation room. “What’s going on?” I asked my mom. “Why is he still here?”
She looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What do you mean? He owes us money, and the sauna’s not done.” She suggested that I ward off future advances by not wearing my bikini in from the beach. Later, I saw my dad bringing more beer down to Travis to keep his hands steady while he worked.
I missed Chris more than ever. If he had been there, I would have gone to him and not my parents. He would have never, ever let Travis get away with this. And if Travis hadn’t been forced to leave, Chris would have taken me out of there instead. But since Chris wasn’t there, I spent my summer nights sleeping on the bathroom floor behind the only lockable door in the loft, until the sauna room was complete and Travis returned to Illinois.
DESPITE TRAVIS’S PRESENCE over the summer, the Windward Key house was a blessing because it gave my parents space from one another. During most of my senior year, they alternated between the beach house and the Annandale house on Willet Drive, living and working separately. Though I didn’t know who, I knew only one of them would be there when I came home from school each day. Without my dad, Mom looked more like the woman she had been on those apartment-hunting drives: lighter, stronger, more content. Without my mom present, my dad was more rational, kinder. I told him I was proud that he was controlling his drinking and his temper.
The Wild Truth Page 7
