Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Monthly Archives: November 2014


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My Woods

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Of all the things I am thankful for, I must include that safe space of my teenage years in Kansas City, a small woods hidden less than a mile from my home. We had lived on Belvedere Parkway over a year before I found them, and I wouldn’t have found them at all if it hadn’t been for the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed. My mom had eventually handed her album down to me along with her old record player from when we were in California, and I listened to music in my room for hours – like any teenager.

“Something calls to me.

“The trees are drawing me near.

“I’ve got to find out why.

“Those gentle voices I hear,

“Explain it all with a sigh.”

I don’t know why those song lines always move me when I hear them, but they especially did so when I was a young, imaginable teen who played Dungeons & Dragons and read Tolkien over and over. I liked to imagine that the trees could talk to me, that I could understand what the leaves were whispering. I would go on long walks in the neighborhood at twilight, when the lowering sky and lengthening shadows added an air of mystery to the familiar streets and houses.

On one of those walks, I found a stretch of trees, a small woods, that developers had not yet torn down. There was a small creek that ran in front of it, with a high embankment that stood about three feet above the ground. I would scramble up the dusty embankment, finding footholds in the exposed roots from all the trees reaching toward the scurrying trail of water.

With dirty knees and fingernails, I would sit with an arm draped around a slender tree trunk, my scruffy sneakers dangling over the creek. It felt good to sit there, feeling the rough bark against my arm and torso through my thin t-shirt; listening to the birds chattering above; watching the sunlight dance to and fro across the water through the moving leaves.

The view was not that great. I was facing the houses where I came from, the very thing I was trying to escape. I didn’t want to look back, so I got up and walked deeper into the woods. The trees were spaced far enough apart that it was easy walking. There was no clear path, but I could see where other kids had been here before me. There were even bike tracks. There were dried leaves and pine needles crunching underfoot, and the breeze flowed easily through the trunks and underbrush.

I only walked about ten minutes before reaching the other end of the woods, which abruptly stopped at the edge of an expanse of meadow. One of the trees at the edge had sturdy, low branches, so I swung up into it and settled myself comfortably, leaning back into the trunk and filling my eyes with all those tall grasses and swinging wildflowers. Most of them were tiny purple things, dotted with Queen Anne’s lace and honeysuckle. It was the end of summer, and already a few leaves were starting to turn in the woods, but that sunny meadow looked like winter could never touch it.

I remember closing my eyes and smelling the warm, earthy air. I was still for so long that the squirrels came back out, climbing the tree next to me, and pausing every time I shifted my weight on that uncomfortable hard branch. I listened to every tiny rustle in the leaves and on the ground, every creak in the swaying branches, every call of each crow and sparrow. I felt far away from civilization, far away from modern times. I could imagine an elf peering at me from behind a tree, or a druid gathering stones for a mysterious circle. For those few, wonderful moments, magic was possible. I was a changeling, and my real mother – some magical being – would soon appear and take me to live with her in a far-away land.

I visited those woods often, and even stopped there to say goodbye the night I ran away from home at 17. I was so happy there, in that world where anything was possible, any dream could come true. They are gone now, developers finally built suburban homes over most of them, but I will always be thankful for the time that I was a child of those magical woods.


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Losing Bill Cosby

November 20, 2014

Bill Cosby is all over news and social media for alleged sexual assaults. Alan Chartock asked this morning, on WAMC, what is the thing that draws people to this story, making it go viral?

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, he was an icon that represented the good in my childhood. My mom had his Wonderfulness album, and we listened to that record over and over until we knew the stories by heart. We would laugh together, as a family, and it was – well – wonderfulness.

I saved my pennies and when he came to Albany, NY, I bought a ticket and went to see him at the Palace Theatre as a birthday present to myself. It felt great to sit in the same room with this man who could make my mother laugh, who unknowingly brought motherly hugs and kisses and tickles to girls who were desperate for their beautiful mother’s love, this woman whose smile could light the Empire State Building.

Even today, just thinking about Tonsils or the Chicken Heart, I feel that happy warmth of those very rare, loving hugs from Mom. But if the news about Bill Cosby is true, then a part of me will know I’m listening to the work of a rapist. My heart and prayers go out to his family and his victim(s).

I know, I know. Whatever he may have done, it doesn’t change the fact that those happy childhood moments did happen; they were real. I’ll probably get over this feeling that those memories are now tainted. But today, my visceral reaction is to wish I could punch this man in the nose for being unable to control his baser instincts. He’s a national family-man icon. He has a responsibility to behave like one, and if he can’t do that, to at least not do anything criminal.

My answer to Chartock’s question is that I’m drawn to the story because I feel betrayed by a public figure I trusted, that the little girl inside of me trusted. It is very hard to lose a childhood hero.


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Erase, Start Over – Second Time in Six Months

October was domestic violence awareness month, so I guess I’m a bit late for talking about my first husband. He so rarely crosses my mind anymore. It was so long ago, and I was so very young. But it’s a part of my journey, and there was one wonderful thing that came from it – my daughter, Demi. And Gigi, wherever you are, thank you for being there when I needed you. I hope life is treating you well.

Here’s the beginning of a tumultuous, sometimes violent relationship.

Summer 1983, I was 18

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I met Dell when I interviewed for a job selling magazines door-to-door. He was short, but had a wiry build, Luke Skywalker hair and cleft chin, and bright blue eyes that were always kidding around. He was seven years older than me, and I thought he was cute. I knew during the interview that it was an awful job and I would never make any real money, but they paid for travel and we’d be touring the country and staying in hotels, which seemed like luxury to me. I used to sell Girl Scout cookies door-to-door, so why not magazines? Plus, I didn’t want to dance anymore (I never called it stripping back then – I was a dancer, thank you very much). Selling magazines was way better than dancing.

So I quit the Pink Garter, told my worried roommate that she could sell my stereo for rent money if I wasn’t able to send it to her, and took off to Wichita with Dell and the magazine troupe. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Dell had a thing for me. How empowering it felt having this older man, one of the team leaders, flirt with me, choosing me over all the other pretty girls on the team. I ended up in his bed and then on the best door-to-door leads.

I spent my days sitting with stay-at-home moms and lonely elderly people, convincing them to buy magazines (often unsuccessfully). I spent my nights wandering cities I’d never seen before, hand-in-hand with this good-looking man (not boy!) who made me feel like the most special person in the world. He was so incredibly charming, putting his coat around my shoulders, helping me circumvent puddles, opening doors for me. My high-school boyfriends kinda treated me like a buddy. Teasing, punching my shoulder, asking me to wait on them when we made snacks at their houses. I had never seen anything wrong with that kind of friendly banter before, but with Dell I couldn’t help but think this was the difference between friendship and love. To treat me so nicely must mean he was in love with me, true love, right?

We made it all the way to Seattle when I realized that there was no way I would have that month’s rent, so I called my roommate to tell her to sell the stereo, and the phone went dead part way through because I didn’t have enough change for the payphone. It never occurred to me to call her back collect – who does that? I wasn’t going to be that rude. Besides, I was sure she understood that I would call her back when I could, and the stereo was worth nearly three times what I owed her, so no big deal.

Dell decided to quit, too. The boss gave us a bus ticket back to our homes, which is what the job guaranteed. Dell went to Wisconsin, promising to travel to K.C. within a day of getting to Madison.

I remember sitting in a bus transfer station in Wichita, smoking a clove cigarette. I had taken them up at the Garter because all the girls were smoking pot, and although it smelled kinda nice – like incense and a warm fireplace – I just couldn’t stand the idea of doing something illegal. God forbid I should get caught. I was pretty scared of any authority figure in those days. Anyway, I took up clove cigarettes because they smelled nice and I could fake smoking them pretty easy. The smoke just gathered in my mouth and I blew it out, without actually inhaling the nasty burning stuff.

So I’m sitting there with this cigarette, thinking I looked so cool and grown up (at 18 years old, out of high school all of eight weeks), when I see a woman in a suit directing a bunch of security guards to check out bathrooms and dark corners. I could hear her muttering something about being able to “smell it”. I looked at my cigarette, looked at her, and realized it would be better if I spoke up first than if they came over to check me out. I was completely mortified to have to stand before this woman and apologize for scaring her and her officers with my sweet-smelling cigarette. She looked down her nose at me, like I was a troublesome child, and walked away without saying a word, dismissing her guards as she went. I had clearly just wasted her time. I was pretty glad when the announcement came that my bus was loading.

When I arrived in the Kansas City depot, I called my roommate. Her boyfriend answered the phone and I asked if they could pick me up, and he said no, that I didn’t live with them anymore. Then she got on the phone and told me she had sold everything I owned and it still didn’t cover what I owed her.

I stood there with my bags at my feet, in that dingy bus station, grasping a greasy pay phone at 10 p.m. at night, horrified to hear that everything I owned was gone. I sputtered about my stereo, and how it should have been plenty. She said no one would buy it, so she was keeping it, and that as far as she was concerned, I had skipped out on the rent and was not welcome back. I asked her about all the stuff no one would buy, like my dresser drawer filled with years of my half-written stories. She said she threw away anything that didn’t sell. There was nothing left.

I hung up the phone, my mind racing. I had only been gone on this magazine gig for four weeks. How could I lose everything in four weeks? I looked around the bus station, thinking hard. No fare for a taxi. I couldn’t sleep here. There were no diners or fast food joints around, and I didn’t even have money for the vending machine that looked like it had hundred-year-old cupcakes in it. Who could help me?

I stepped out of the phone booth, pacing back and forth with my thoughts. It never crossed my mind to call my mother. She was a “you made the mess, you clean it up” person. My sisters were still in high school, no wheels between them. I thought of my various high school friends, but realized I had lost touch with most of them when I ran away from home. I saw them at school, sure, but I was always working, so I kinda dropped out of sight. My SCA friends were also my roommate’s friends – she probably bragged to them about selling all my stuff, just like she bragged that she had a dancer for a roommate. They would take her side. Maybe she did this to get back at me for not taking her advice and keeping the dancing job.

Then I remembered Gigi. I went back to the phone and made my first and last collect call in my life. I was relieved to hear her voice accepting the charges, and almost cried when she exclaimed “that bitch!” after I told her what my roommate had done. I hung up the phone knowing there was someone on my side, that I wouldn’t have to curl up in one of those hard, plastic bus station chairs for the night.

I was going to have to tell Dell that we didn’t have a place to stay. He was taking the bus from Madison to K.C. tomorrow. I let him down. I wished I could tell him just to stay in Madison, but he was doing well at the magazine job. He left that job for me. It wouldn’t be fair to tell him I’d changed my mind just because I was nervous to have him find out we had no place to live.

I gathered my last remaining belongings and sat down. One large suitcase of clothes. One smaller case with makeup, curlers and hairdryer. And my purse. And my keys. Good God – I didn’t think to ask if she had sold my car! Could she even do that without the keys? The big, empty bus station was cold this late at night. One of the overhead lights was flickering, and went dark. I wrapped my arms around myself tightly, holding the fear and tears as deep inside as I could. Gigi was coming. I had a place to sleep. The rest would have to wait until morning.


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Meeting My Birth Father

I always cringe a little when I think of my behavior in Kansas City. I was not the person I am today. Add my unhealthy behavior to culture shock, and the result is that this poor man never received the reunion he hoped for when meeting his long-lost children. Mom not only took me from that side of my family, but she took me from our cultural heritage. My father will never have the Puerto Rican father-daughter relationship he imagined, and I’ll never know what it is to grow up Puerto Rican. It’s a real loss.

November 1986, I was 21

The organza was so slippery, and all I was doing was trying to make a neat hem. I stopped the machine and cut the thread, thinking I’d have better luck on the serger, when the overhead announced I had a call on line 2. I sighed and left the sewing room for the laundry area, where the phone was, expecting another pre-booking for a Santa costume. “Jo speaking, may I help you?”

“Your name is not Dumont, it is Bautista and your father is looking for you,” said a heavily Spanish-accented frantic voice.

“Um, what?”

“Your name! You’ve been lied to. Your real name is Bautista and your father is trying to find you!”

I didn’t appreciate the dramatic tone in her voice and began to suspect a prank. “Well, I’m married now, so it’s neither. Who is this?”

Something in my own tone must have tipped her off that she wasn’t handling herself professionally. With more calm she said, “This is the Red Cross. The man you think is your father is not your father. You are a missing child. We’ve been helping your father look for you for 18 years. He is anxious to meet you.”

Well, I had already found my real birth certificate years ago, and knew my birth father’s last name was Bautista, but I was married with a toddler and another light blinking on line 3. There was nothing life-or-death in this call and my boss frowned on personal use of the phone. And not for a minute did I believe I was a missing child. I was right here in Kansas City for over a decade. It was a bit of a surprise to learn my real father was alive, but why he was bothering to look me up now, after all these years, was beyond me. Whatever, I thought, it’d be nice to know the family medical history.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll meet him. Can you call me at home tonight? I really have to get back to work.”

She took my number, clearly disappointed with my anti-climatic reaction, but what did she expect? She was practically hysterical, unlike any Red Cross person I had ever heard of, she had nothing much new to say and I had work to do. She said she was calling from New York, so maybe that’s just how they talk out there. I picked up line 3.

“Jo, it’s Meg. Did you get a call from the Red Cross?”

Good grief, that crazy woman called my sister, too. We talked about how frantic she sounded, and how we both agreed that she was very unprofessional. If the whole missing-child story was real, why weren’t the police calling us? Or why not our real father? If I had a missing child and knew where she was, I’d be on that phone lickety-split myself, not leave it to some crazy person. Meg said that mom had called her yesterday, warning her that she might get this call. Astonished, I asked how mom got the heads-up, and why Meg hadn’t called to tell me. She said that somehow mom’s brother had found out, and told mom, and Meg wasn’t sure whether it would be fair to call me and possibly prejudice me. Mom had told her not to listen to anything he had to say. But Meg had a son, and I had Demi, so we both agreed that a medical history was an important enough reason to meet this guy. It’s not like mom was able to give us any decent information about her side of the family. The biggest drawback of meeting him, though, was that neither of us felt any need for a parent at our age. We’d had enough of those.

A few days later, I was sitting in a Waffle House facing the man who claimed to be my father. He had dark hair, worn a little on the short side. His skin was smooth and a darker olive than mine. He had a neat mustache. Other than his coloring, he didn’t look like me at all. He was – well – compact. Taller than me, but average height for a man. He appeared muscular but lean, an average build but well-shaped and probably stronger than he looked. I felt overblown and blousy next to him. His face and features were smaller than mine. I had big, brown eyes, unlike either of my parents. He was clearly fastidious, also unlike me. I was willing to just accept the diner’s dirt with a shrug and surreptitiously wipe my silverware on a paper napkin. Not he. In a Spanish accent with an educated and well-modulated tone, he politely asked for a clean fork, charming the waitress as if it were his fault that the fork wasn’t cleaned properly.

I didn’t know what to think. He told me this fantastic story about my mother taking me and Meg out for ice cream when one of my uncles was babysitting us, and never coming back. That he called the police, went to the courts, and even reported us to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Surprised, I asked him if our pictures were on milk cartons, and he said no, that by that time we were too old and he only had baby pictures of us. Then the pictures came out.

He was the oldest of eight boys. My grandparents were still living. I was the first girl in the family, and my grandfather had my baby picture on his nightstand this whole time, waiting for me to come home. I listened to Papa Bautista tell me about how his whole family missed me and my sister, how delighted and surprised he was to learn about Amy and how he wanted to bring the three of us home to New York. Apparently, mom was pregnant with Amy when she abducted us. I stared at the baby pictures, all younger than the ones mom had, and tried to see myself in them. There were pictures of him with mom, whom I had no trouble recognizing despite how young she looked. It must be true – but how did I turn out so big and curvy compared to everyone else on his side of the family?

He reached his hand across the table to stroke mine, and I pulled it away. He was 20 years older than me, but he looked young for his age, and I have had way too many older men put their hands on me. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but I didn’t know who this guy was. His story rang true, but he was so different from anyone I had ever known. There was a restrained passion about him that made me a bit nervous, and I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I tried to bring a little coolness to the conversation, and asked him about our medical history.

He sat back, easily able to sense that he needed to back off, and said I came from a very healthy family. I had a great uncle who had lived to 115 years old. My grandparents were as healthy as could be. No heart disease, no cancer, no arthritis – nothing for me to worry about.

He apologized for not finding us sooner. He explained that the courts all felt that girls belonged with a mother, and flat refused to help him. That he had broken his leg at one point, and was in long months of physical rehabilitation. That as soon as he got word from the Kansas City sheriff’s office as to where we were, he hopped into a car and drove through a Pennsylvanian snow storm to get here. He wanted to know everything about me, and was surprised that I wasn’t in college. He said I come from a very intelligent family and must know that I’m very smart. He was certainly charming.

After about an hour of talking, I felt comfortable enough to invite him to my home the next evening to meet Dell and Demi. He took care of the bill, just as charming as ever to the waitress, and we paused outside before separating to our cars. He reached both his hands toward my face, respectfully asking if he could touch me. I nodded and felt his two warm, dry hands resting on each of my cheeks. His face was very close, and he pulled my head down and gently kissed my forehead. As he pulled away, there were tears in his eyes, but he was smiling and said he looked forward to meeting my family tomorrow. Then he quickly stepped away.

Embarrassed, I went quickly to my own car, but hesitated with the key in the ignition. There was something so sad about him. Almost as if he were disappointed that I was too old to call him daddy, to sit on his lap and play patty-cake. I turned the key. I had plenty of problems of my own. Eighteen years were a long time, and there was nothing I could do about that. I couldn’t be his child, but perhaps we could be friends. Right now, I had to figure out how I was going to tell my husband that I had agreed to bring this man into our home without his permission.


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Checking In – La Parte Dos

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TRIGGER WARNING

Monday  June 2, 2014 12:30 p.m.

I was trembling from the time I left my office, through the cell phone calls from my car trying to find help, to the time I pulled into the garage of the medical office park. I felt physically sick and lightheaded, and my emotions were swinging from anger to trepidation to relief and back. I was going to get to talk to someone and get this all out of me, and everything would be back to normal tomorrow. I locked up the car and headed to where I thought the entrance was for the Capital District Psychiatric Center. Every step was a struggle. I wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and just cry. But I made it to the building and, after a little confusion, found the right entrance. The door was locked, so I pressed the buzzer and waited, wishing there was a bench to sit on.

The unprepossessing entrance was opened by a wary face who only let me in as far as the vestibule, his eyes looking me up and down as if I could be hiding a weapon. I lifted my eyebrows, a bit surprised, and he explained that they had to be very careful about what went past those doors. He asked my purpose, and made sure I understood that if I admitted myself, I couldn’t leave until the doctors gave permission for me to leave.

I didn’t see a problem with that – I knew I wasn’t a danger to myself or anyone else, I just needed to talk to someone and I couldn’t wait six weeks for a regular therapist to be available. I was sure I’d be out in a few hours, so I signed the book and let him look through my purse, and then he unlocked the next door and let me in, locking the door behind me.

I had never been in an emergency room like this one. Being locked in made me apprehensive enough, but the place was dingy. An old box T.V. was attached up high in one corner. The wood and cloth chairs were bolted together and to the floor. There was only one wooden table with rounded corners, also bolted to the floor. The dull fabric looked stained. The glass door behind me had small lines running through it – some kind of security glass, I guess. It was cloudy with greasy fingerprints and smudges. I wouldn’t want to touch that door handle unless I was wearing gloves. There was another door to the left, locked with a small window at eye level, and a third door just like it straight in front of me. To the right was a reception area, with a staff person sitting behind more security glass. There was a long hallway to the right, with several gray metal doors with small windows.

Everything looked grubby, and there was an occasional waft of unwashed human bodies floating in the cold air-conditioned space. Curled up on a chair near the reception desk was a woman with unkempt hair, covered in a blanket up to her chin, sleeping. There was a litter of small brown paper bags on the chair next to her, and a half-eaten apple.

The staff person who admitted me regained my attention and took me through the door straight ahead. On the other side was a row of three closet-sized rooms, each with a table and a couple chairs. He gestured to one and explained that I would begin with some paperwork, and then there would be an initial intake interview. Then he left me alone with a pen and clipboard.

I pushed back my regret as I reached for the paperwork. Finally, something that made this place feel a little more like a legitimate hospital. Of course they’d get the money-part right. I filled in my insurance, took emergency contact numbers out of my cell phone, and was just finishing up the last form when a man and a woman walked in, smiling their welcomes.

I shook their hands and they walked me through the next steps. One was a social worker, the other a staff member trained in peer counseling and emergency aid. They were both kind and intelligent, so I relaxed a bit, ready to trust the process. The relief started to outweigh the trepidation.

When they asked why I was here, I gave them the short version first as background. I was abducted by a parent at 3; we were always on the run – went to 5 elementary schools; she beat the hell out of us with a metal cooking spoon and whatever else she got her hands on; I was a teenage runaway; I got pregnant and married at 19; that marriage ended with me in the hospital and him in jail; and my real father found me when I was 21; that I’d been having nightmares my whole life.

Then I told them what was new that brought me in here: that my step-father had died the week before, and I went to visit my estranged mother at my sisters’ request. That my sisters and I had gotten to talking, and that one sister revealed she had been raped – in our mother’s presence – when she was 9 years old. And after that I began having memories I had never had before. That I was afraid I might have been there when it happened. That I was so angry and had all these emotions I was struggling to control. I told them I just needed to talk to someone and get it all out because I felt completely wrong, like I would explode if I didn’t do something, anything.

They asked me if I had ever contemplated suicide, and I told them of course, just like anyone else, but I wouldn’t do it because I have two children I’m responsible for. That worried them at first, but once I explained that Demi was 29 and Daisy would be 16 in a few days, and that Demi and my ex-husband could take care of Daisy in my absence, then they were reassured. I did say that sometimes I thought that if I could just hang on for two more years, until Daisy went to college, then I could go away, perhaps forever. And that was partly why I was here, so I could make it the next two years, because the way I had been feeling and acting this past weekend, since Meg’s revelation, I wasn’t sure I could make it two weeks, much less two years.

As I’m writing this, I realize how dramatic that sounds, but when I was facing those two people, I didn’t want to hide anything. I wanted help, real help, so I quietly told them the truth. I tried not to cry, but I did reach for a tissue and did my best to keep my cheeks dry and speak calmly. I wished ruefully that someone else would take care of me for awhile. I have been taking care of someone else since I was six years old. I was just so tired, too tired to be a strong, normal, responsible person anymore.

They took plenty of notes but still managed to give me their full attention. They made me feel like they really heard me and they cared. I felt like I was finally going to get help. They said I would need to wait in the waiting room for a little bit, while they reached out to my primary care physician. They also took my purse and cell phone, apologizing and explaining that they would be locked up safe and that they couldn’t have those things in with other patients. They would try not to be too long and would come back to me with some next steps.

So I went back out to the waiting room, relieved and obedient. An hour later, I was a little impatient but amused. Just like a hospital, the wait is always longer than the doctor visit. I watched other patients come and go, some staying with me waiting. A couple of them spoke with me, freely telling me their stories. I have a neon sign on my forehead that says “I want to hear your life story” and often people obey that sign, even if all I want to do is crawl under a rock and deal with my own problems.

I was surprised to still be in that small room with people who were quietly rocking or walking and talking to themselves at 5 p.m., when they handed out brown paper bags of cheese sandwiches and applesauce. I asked if I could call my daughters at that point, because they were expecting me home from work soon. They let me get the numbers off my cell phone, but I had to wait while someone fetched it, then I had to keep my hands and cell phone inside the tiny window on the receptionist’s desk. No cells allowed for a single second in the waiting room. I used the landline provided for patients to call my girls and explain where I was. I promised I’d call them as soon as I knew anything further.

I went to use the bathroom and immediately knew I had made a mistake. No way did I belong in this place. This wasn’t a hospital, it was a minimum security prison. There was a shower in there with a torn black curtain and a floor that was too grimy for bare feet. There was toilet paper but no trash can and no paper towels and no mirror and – what was worse – no lock on the door. I went back to the receptionist to explain I was on my period but there was no trash can, and he told me I had to wrap my ladies things in toilet paper and put it in the cardboard box of trash under the TV in the waiting room, the worst place for privately throwing something away because the whole room was facing that direction. He handed me a tiny bar of soap, like what you’d get in a hotel, and a rough white washcloth he said I could use to dry my hands. He said to just leave it in the bathroom.

I was in that waiting room a total of seven hours before one of the intake staffers spoke to me again. By then, my anxiety was higher than it was when I had walked in.