Seductive Poison (7 page)

I also began to write stories, poems, and letters to my distant parents. In 1966, I wrote:

…
Dark unsympathetic clouds gather in the sky
A heavy wind begins to blow. Away from the
land where he is able to survive the scarlet bird,
alone now, falls to his death under the bleeding tree.

As I tried to connect with Mama, I developed a strong compassion for people unable to fend for themselves. I wanted to become one with the real people, the honest people, people who showed their anger, like the Hell’s Angels, the poor, the working class, people from whom Papa tried to keep me safe. I wanted to commune with those who had experienced grief and misfortune. At fifteen, I felt akin to the underclass and was comfortable only with my nineteen-year-old Filipino boyfriend who was a high school dropout, poor, and lived in a nearby working-class community. He thought I was pretty, he thought I was funny, he thought I had something to offer, and thus he replaced the father I could no longer please or amuse. I liked when he was firm with me, when he told me I was drinking too much, or when he grabbed my arm a little too tightly in order to make me listen. I thought his toughness demonstrated his love for me.

But I was vigilant and careful about remaining chaste; I knew that only really bad girls had sex before marriage and that deep inside I was good—my parents and other outsiders simply did not see through my facade.

At school I often felt out of control. I went to battle for students I felt had been unfairly treated. On one occasion, I threw a desk at a teacher who accused my best friend of not having written her own term paper. I passionately wanted and needed to correct all the wrongs that had been perpetrated in my world. I was fighting the demons who ate at me and who were trying to hurt my mother. But I became incensed toward Mama because she remained distant and would not let me fight for her. Again and again, I felt betrayed by her. Why, I wondered, when she knew, deep inside, that we were made of the same material, had the same spirit—why did she silence her self, her essence, and always side with Papa?

My intuition was calling to her, begging her to “Come away, child, and play.” I was willing her to join me, like the gnomies in the poem in my Childcraft book. I was outside in the dark, like they were. I was lonely and knew she wanted to join me, but I could not understand the greater forces that held her back. Sadly, I misinterpreted her fear of stepping out from her cocoon. I saw her reluctance
as a sign she didn’t care for me, the aching fifteen-year-old, haunted by the truth untold.

Yet I never gave up and continued to speak to her through my innocent letters.

1968

Dear Mom and Dad,

I once stated in a poem I wrote, “Love is the key to serenity.” I have changed my viewpoint completely. Although love has a great role to play in the human race I feel love is not the true key to serenity. I feel it is the knowledge of one’s self. To know yourself as you know a song. With true understanding, meaning, fearlessness and the ability to compensate for those losses which meant a great deal to one’s self…. I’m not sure if that meant anything to you or even if you understood what I just wrote, but I think if you think about it, it will bring a new light to your eyes.

Was I rebelling for the mother who was entangled in her own web and growing visibly exhausted from the years of deceit and sorrow?

Now, when I intruded on Mama alone, I interrogated her. What was she doing? I ridiculed her for asking my piano teacher to dinner. I found him ugly and stupid, and I hated him, but she brightened perceptibly when they talked about music. I resented her making treats, even sandwiches, for the graduate students who spent so many hours doing research in the library where she worked because it seemed that she was searching for camaraderie through students hardly older than I. She made friends with them and knew each one by name. I sensed that they were taking Tommy’s place. I felt jealous.
Why
couldn’t I be the one?

On the few occasions I had to steal money from her purse, I would first unpack her satchel. She always had a book buried inside,
The Brothers Karamazov, The Plague, The Feminine Mystique,
and often
Waiting for Godot.
While Mama seemed to be searching for meaning and answers through strangers and books with strange names, I was busily trying to attract her—or anyone’s—attention with dangerous acts of defiance. Some of my signals of distress fell into my parents’ hands. Perhaps they nabbed my letters from the post box at our front door.

I was grounded for three months one summer after they intercepted the following letter:

JUNE 12, 1969

Dear Eddy,

Well … for the past month I have been on drugs constantly and they are heavy drugs—not weed. Last Friday night I took some mescaline, I went to a coffee house off Telegraph Ave. It really started to hit me hard and when I left at 11:00 P.M. I was totaled. The next morning I went downstairs. I was still really messed-up (I hadn’t slept for 36 hours). My dad told me he knew about everything …

Life in the mansion in the hills came to a halt. My parents were constantly upset with me, I knew from their puffy eyes and closed-door meetings that I was being discussed and argued about. They were both at their wits’ end and afraid. So was I.

Private school in eighth grade hadn’t worked. Spending tenth grade in Davis, California, with the family of Larry’s wife, Carolyn Moore Layton, hadn’t worked either. Carolyn had married my brother, Larry, after their junior year at the University of California at Davis. Larry’s parents-in-law and my tenth-grade guardians, were kind, good people. I had had a tough year in ninth grade when my parents decided that Berkeley was too unstable an environment for me. Carolyn suggested I come live with her parents in Davis and attend high school there. My parents could not have found a finer family to help with the raising of their wayward daughter. Dr. John Moore was the Methodist minister for the college community. Barbara, his doting, handsome wife, was a perfect mother and an enthusiastic participant in their congregation’s activities. The Moore’s had three daughters: Carolyn, Rebecca, and Annie.

I’d grown very fond of Carolyn’s little sister, Sweet Annie, for her goodness and companionship. Annie was a year younger than I and quite different. She was quiet, studious, and loved school. We were intrigued by each other; I by her soft academic manner, and she by my rebelliousness. At night, while she studied in her room, I was writing dramatically desperate letters to the friends from whom my parents had separated me.

Annie wasn’t interested in boys, nor was she self-conscious about her tall, willowy body. She was more of a hippie than I. She wore long, floating tie-dyed skirts and white T-shirts, while I tugged on my tight black pegged pants each morning. Annie had the most beautiful long, thick, straight blond hair I had ever seen in my life. She had and was everything I wasn’t.

Every night while Annie brushed her hair, I stood next to her in
the bathroom, looking into the same mirror, slopping on Dippity-Doo, a “guaranteed hair straightener.” While she pulled her brush down and through her voluminous mane, I doused mine with the gooey gel, wrapped the congealed strands of hair around my head, placed a bobby pin every inch or so to secure the potpourri, then tied a bandanna around my forehead to hold everything in place for the night.

After Annie was done preening and I engineering, we would conspiratorially dash into my room and dim the lights. Annie would light her favorite incense to create the right ambiance while I lowered the sound of some heartbreaking song drifting out from the record player and began reciting the latest rendition of my mostly somber poetry. The next morning, I would head straight for my English teacher’s office and show her the pieces Sweet Annie had oohed and oohed over the loudest.

But even with Annie’s friendship, I was still unable to stay out of trouble. In the middle of my tenth-grade school year in Davis, I dropped acid in class. Days later it was decided I should come back home to Berkeley, to a new school with different kids.

The only times I was successfully brought into line were on the long walks Papa would take with me. We’d usually stop at Indian Rock in the evenings, climb up and watch the sunset. From on top of the world, Papa would tell me how I was killing him and ruining his marriage. I was always deeply troubled by how much I was hurting him with my bad behavior and I was actually relieved when for the first and only time, Papa hit me with a belt because I’d shrugged and rolled my eyes when he asked me how I had managed to get an F in PE. Afterward I saw him crying and I was glad that someone had finally shown such outward emotion and anger at my recklessness.

But nothing lasted long enough. I was always able to deceive and snivel my way out of each punishment. By 1969, there remained two options for me: reform school or boarding school for eleventh grade. Mama’s mother had gone to school in England once … Why not me?

I do not remember being afraid of leaving, although the prospect of abandoning all my friends and going to boarding school overseas was a little daunting. I was relieved to be sent away, as relieved as my parents were to have me gone. I was tired of drinking a fifth of
vodka to impress my friends—they weren’t the ones who got sick. I had been truly frightened when I had dropped acid and started to hallucinate an hour later in my English class. I needed strict limits, rules that were impossible to sneak around. I always brought a sliver of rebellion and cunning into any equation. The prospect of being taken from my hopelessness to a place where I could flourish excited me. At last, I was about to become a good person. And I was glad.

Mama had researched various boarding schools. She spoke with Friends at the Meeting House in Berkeley and brought home a large book with descriptions and photographs of possible schools. Mom called a family whose child had attended a Quaker school in Yorkshire, England, and was told it was a fine, very strict Quaker prep school. My father wanted me to go to Greenbrier Finishing School in Virginia, but England responded immediately and the plans were made.

The night before I left for England my father sat down with me and told me Mama was Jewish. I was stunned. The world I barely occupied was being ripped out from under me.

“That can’t be,” I explained. “She would have told me!” I was incredulous and shaken as Papa explained how Tom, Annalisa, and Larry had been proud to learn the news after graduating from college. I wondered what there was to be proud of? Mama hadn’t been proud of it. Surely she wasn’t happy about this mark upon the family or she would have told me long ago.

The following morning Mama’s eyes were swollen as she double checked my luggage for the last time. I was too embarrassed to say anything about my conversation with Papa the night before. I felt as though we had violated some secret space within her. When the car pulled out from the driveway I waved good-bye to Mama, small and frail at the window. I thought I saw her put her palm to her lips and blow me a kiss. I fought the tears.

Papa walked me onto the plane and made sure I was comfortable and the strap was secured tightly around my lap. As he kissed me, I wondered if Mama had wanted to tell me who she was, but Papa, without asking her, had thought it best if he did. Was Mama too embarrassed or afraid I would yell at her? Was she so mad at me for being bad that she couldn’t even face me? Perhaps she felt betrayed by Papa’s actions. Perhaps she had been planning all along to tell me about our heritage. I had seen her crying earlier that morning. I
wished she had come to the airport with me but maybe she feared she would break down in the car and her tears would upset me even more. Papa knelt down to hug me and reminded me that my mother’s cousin, the author Ruth Borchard, would be meeting me at Heathrow Airport in London.

“Honey, they are Orthodox Jews,” Papa was saying. “Ruth is an author and is working at becoming the first female rabbi in England. Their home in Reigate, Surrey, is large and beautiful. They have offered to be your guardians for the duration of your stay. Your mother and I have decided that you will not come home for visits, but travel through Europe on your term breaks.”

I listened to him in a fog of denial. A rabbi? Cousins in London whom Mama had never talked about? I was confused and hurting inside. Not come home for visits? Was I that awful … that miserable? What in the world was an Orthodox?

I watched as my father paused near the front of the plane and spoke with the captain. Then he turned one last time, sadly waved, and left.

It was only then that I began to cry.