Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales (3 page)

Chapter Three

Just a Spoon Full of Something

M
y mother can juggle more plates in the air than the androgynous clown in Cirque du Soleil. When I was between the ages of five and twelve, she was particularly industrious. Her second husband, whom she married four years after she and my father divorced, was a British foreign correspondent who was so steeped in the Washington scene there was no getting him out, like blood on silk. He was covering the JFK, LBJ, and Nixon administrations, so access to the inner sanctum was crucial. Consequently, our home became soiree central.

I recall clutching the back of Henry Kissinger’s neck as he hauled me around the deep end of the pool. Only in Washington could a man paddle around like a tortoise in a heated swimming pool with a giggling five-year-old while he was simultaneously bombing Cambodia. But what did I know, he had a wide back.

T
here were grandiose cocktail parties where my little sister and I, adorned in matching nightgowns, would pass peanuts that our sticky fingers had played with in the kitchen. There were always the same hors d’oeuvres, which I still crave from time to time—a round piece of white toast with a pastry squirt of baked mayonnaise and Parmesan cheese. A fistful of those, and we’d call it dinner. There’s a fine line between WASP victuals and white-trash cuisine.

When a government official was a guest, he would be accompanied by a band of humorless Secret Service agents in dark suits. When I was eight, I had a miniature dachshund named Max who was my soul mate, my guru, my captain, and my priest. My political prejudice toward the Nixon administration was not brought about by Watergate, illegal wiretaps, or the Vietnam War—no, it was their conduct toward my dog. (And by the way, this is by and large how I still judge people today.) One night when the Secretary of State was over for a leg of lamb and heated discussion about the Soviet Union and North Korea, he had the audacity to have Max locked in a cage. I fumed: He was one of the leaders of the free world, surrounded by enemies and potential assassins, and he chose to imprison a puppy the size of an evening clutch and as cunning as a melon ball? And if that wasn’t appalling enough, a Secret Service man was posted outside my bedroom door. I can understand securing the exits and blocking basement doors, but an eight-year-old girl’s room with matching blush pink tulip wallpaper and curtains? What was I going to do? Leap out of bed in my nightgown and stab the Secretary of State with my Snoopy toothbrush?

My stepfather’s sixtieth birthday party was an extravaganza, complete with diaphanous white tent and multitudinous candles. Max was in a cage, per usual, and I had spent most of the afternoon with Betsy, a zaftig cook hired for special occasions, who was making individual apricot soufflés. I loved Betsy not just because she was a comforting butterball of a woman, but because she had no filter; she would just say what she thought at the exact moment she thought it. If my mother ran by in curlers, fretting about the seating, Betsy would mumble, “She’s running around so much like a crazy, I should have her whip these egg whites instead of this beater.” Betsy would sit on a stool all night, sticking her fingers in every bowl, plate, and platter. And she was always disgusted with everything and everyone. “Who are all those people out there with too much perfume?” She would pick up a chop. “This ain’t cooked! This poor animal’s going to get up and walk off the table.”

I had rehearsed my endearing rendition of “Animal Crackers” to perform that evening. I assumed if Shirley Temple could steal people’s hearts by singing and tap-dancing, then I could seduce my stepfather into accepting me as his own flesh and blood even without the curls. Or the talent. The tables were one big blur of glowing lights, and I couldn’t make out any faces, with one exception. Henry Kissinger watched me chasse, grand jeté, and pas de bourrée my needy little butt off without even the hint of a smile. He stared me down with an expression borrowed from the evil child catcher in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. I ended with a ta-da pose: arms in the air, back arched, an all-teeth smile. There was enthusiastic applause from the crowd and erratic clapping from Kissinger (it looked more like he was trying to kill a mosquito). I moved in for an encore, but was led back into the kitchen with Betsy. She mumbled something about me making an ass out of myself as she ran her finger around the icing of the gargantuan white chocolate cake.

I
f there wasn’t a fete at our house, there was definitely a fete somewhere else. My mother and stepfather were elegantly coiffed and bejeweled most nights of the week. They also traveled a fair amount. As a result of their rigorous social schedule, we were awarded a live-in babysitter. We started with Jessica, a Brandeis student with a pixie haircut and enormous breasts, so enormous she told me she could never find a bathing suit that fit, which became very clear during my sailing lessons. Jessica stayed with us the summer I was seven at our house in Plymouth, Massachusetts, while my mother and stepfather were in China for a few months. I spent my time hitting a tennis ball against a cracked backboard and anticipating the chimes of the ice cream truck. It was a blissful summer, but for two things: I missed my mom, and there was an overpopulation of sand flies. In the fall Jessica had to return to college, but not without an irreplaceable going-away gift. My older brother confessed to us, years later, that one sultry summer night Jessica crawled into bed with him, pulled off his race car pajamas, and stole his virginity. He was fourteen, and the size of one of her boobs. In retrospect it made sense; Jessica and my brother spent hours behind locked doors while she “tutored him” in algebra. He should have been Bill Gates today, given all the hours they logged studying algorithms and polynomials. He still failed algebra twice.

When Fiona was born, my mother chose an authentic British nanny named Julia from an agency in London that still serviced in uniforms and little crisp hats. I was always amused because as my sister learned to talk, she did so with a strong British accent: water was “wattah” and Mommy was “Mummy.” Julia was the kind of disciplinarian who believed in a tight schedule, clean clothes, and brisk walks no matter what the temperature. Fiona was indoctrinated into an important work ethic during the potty-training years, which is why she went on to Brown University and I to Bard College. Julia was our Mary Poppins, until one day she turned in her resignation. She was marrying a successful financial adviser, not the chimney sweep. And she was off to have babies she wouldn’t be paid to love.

Greta was German. Never hire a German woman to care for your kids. You wouldn’t want an Italian working on your car or an Irish lass cooking your meal. I’ve never admired the German language, least of all when it’s screamed at me from a foot away. When she ordered us to do our homework, it felt like we were going to invade Latvia. Greta was eventually fired for her undemonstrative outlook and tyrannical views toward punishment (to her,
Triumph of the Will
was a Disney movie), but the real reason she was discharged had to do with a Thanksgiving incident in which she tore a leg off the turkey before it was set on the table, and continued eating it as, like an SS captain, she yelled at us to wash our hands. It wasn’t so much that she had destroyed the symbol of the holiday by ripping off its limb as it was a chilling metaphor for what she was capable of when it came to child care.

My stepfather was a notorious bachelor before he married my mother in his early fifties. He’d had his share of the ladies; on the wall of his study he hung a photo of Marilyn Monroe in a leotard eyeing him lasciviously as if he were a six-carat diamond or a bottle of pills. During his bachelorhood, he was looked after by Elizabeth Morrison, who cleaned for him, collected mail for him, and gave disapproving looks to women searching for their heels in the dawn light. Elizabeth was a hefty African American woman who wore a white nurse’s uniform. In her younger days she had been a nurse, and she found it easier to simply stick with the same outfit week in, week out than go through the imbecilic routine of trying to decide what to wear every day. Even in the summer when she would take us to the beach, she wore the nurse uniform, black support hose, and white shoes. She hated the beach and used to mutter, “Look at everybody just sitting in the sun. Black people want to be white, white people want to be black.” I loved her gravelly voice, the result of fifty years of bourbon and cigarettes. And Elizabeth loved poker. She refused to get down on the carpet with a box of Barbies or create collages with rubber stamps; in fact, she didn’t like to do much, least of all crafts, but if you flashed a deck of cards, within seconds you’d be at the kitchen table with a bowl of Chex mix, watching her inhale Pall Malls like a desperado for hours on end.

Elizabeth gave off an aura of fortitude, perhaps the byproduct of a tough childhood or some hard knocks along the way. One afternoon when I came home from school, expecting the usual tongue bath from my beloved Max, I was instead greeted by a deathly quiet house and Elizabeth solemnly standing in the doorway. She fixed me with a stern look. “Max is dead. It doesn’t matter how [he’d been hit by a car], he dead. You can cry and cry, which ain’t going to bring him back, or just move on now.” I spent the afternoon playing seven-card stud and biting my lower lip. If I missed my mom, Elizabeth would say, “She’s coming back! But if you keep moping around like that, why would she want to?” And when she tucked me into bed, she would turn out the light with a simple, “All right. Good night.” When my brother was giving her lip, she would twist a wet towel and try to thwack his thighs; she wouldn’t take shit from anybody, especially not an awkwardly tall, long-haired teenage boy with acne and doped-up eyes. I loved Elizabeth. She lived with our family on and off until I was ten and then went off to live with a relative; she had gotten too old for the antics of a family of obstreperous kids, incontinent dogs, and itinerant parents. I hope for her sake that relative resided in Vegas.

I think my mother hired each babysitter as a reaction to the predecessor. If one was too loose, the next one was too strict, and so on. One of the most baffling decisions my mother ever made (besides working in a Republican White House) was hiring Brandelyn, a three-hundred-pound Mormon from Utah. My mother must have found her in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints Craigslist. I’m not a fatist, but somebody who is caring for young children should be able to at least walk. And not wear powder blue polyester pantsuits while battling a body odor problem. Brandelyn would bathe my little sister and me every night, scrubbing our bodies with loofahs. “You have to get the dirt out of your bodies and your minds,” she would say as she scoured our necks raw. And there was never enough talk about the Lord. “The Lord wouldn’t like it if you ate that cookie before dinner, the Lord doesn’t like children that scream, the Lord damns people to hell if they don’t floss. . . .” She did a horrific job of selling us on Jesus; he was more didactic and ominous than any parent I knew, including Mrs. Williams, the Chinese mother who hit my classmate Adele with a stick while she practiced violin. Brandelyn’s fate was sealed when she flushed my gerbil, Bubbles, down the toilet because she decided it was rabid. Bubbles was from a reputable pet store, but apparently the Lord deemed it so. We draw the line when you start killing family.

And then there was Summer. She looked like the Joan Armatrading album cover she was always playing. She was skinny, had a huge Afro, and wore bell-bottom jeans and crocheted sweaters. And she was beyond cool. There was no bedtime, dinner was craving-based, and undergarments were strictly optional. Summer was popular and beloved; the doorbell rang at all hours of the day and night. I thought we had finally found a staple in our life, a surrogate mom, friend, and confidant, all embodied in a woman who looked like she jumped off a
Mod Squad
lunch box. But six months into the job, Summer was abruptly fired; she had been (allegedly) dealing heroin out of the house. Yup, just another nanny hustling junk, selling pie, flipp’n sack from behind an Easy-Bake Oven.

And then there were none. I think my mother decided, before our home became a crack den, that we would no longer have babysitters live in. She threw in the towel and decided to just raise us herself.

I
had my eldest daughter in a heat wave in Washington, D.C., the summer of 2002. She was a few weeks old when I started the search for the babysitter. I tried word of mouth, referrals, and the local paper. I decided to cover all my bases and pulled a phone number tab off a self-made nanny advertisement at the corner pharmacy. I hired Lala the day I called, mostly because I felt like a hen flapping around in the “I don’t know how to do this” motherhood pen. She was from the Philippines, legal, and had raised six children herself; I thought I had struck goo-goo-ga-ga gold.

That afternoon Lala pulled the baby off my nipple and said, “Oh Mommmmyyyyy . . . I take baby to the park.”

Naturally, I thought she knew much more than me when it came to child rearing, the Pacific ring of fire, and how to cook milkfish. “Um, okay,” I timidly answered, buttoning my blouse, “but be back in thirty minutes, because I think she’s still hungry and it’s ninety degrees out.” She nodded and laughed, exposing a mouth full of dental mishaps. The amazing thing about women from the Philippines is they’re ageless. Lala could have been eighteen or eighty, there was no way of telling: their skin stays the same, their silky hair—the only clue is the teeth. When a Filipino woman takes her teeth out and puts them in a cup of water, she’s over forty.

An hour went by . . . then two . . . then three. I called my husband in a panic. “She’s been kidnapped!” I ran sweating up and down the stairs, balancing a breast pump and the phone. Like a Vietnam vet who hears a car backfire, I flashed back to the many babysitters from my youth and feared I was starting my own line of adventures in babysitting hell.