It might have been hours or days before I went home after the purple flavor. I honestly do not know. One bright morning, my hazy eyes opened and I was in a hospital bed, with orderlies and nurses bustling about. My parents weren’t there. My hospital bed had crunchy sheets and the bed was in a big room all alone. Looking back, there could have been 10 more beds in there, but it was this vast expanse of space, just empty with tons of light and linoleum. I was likely placed in the room alone for a reason. Regardless, it served me well because I liked flying solo. As an only child, I was used to it. It was my safe. The door to the room was wide open and there were nurses and doctors at a station just across the hall. The soundtrack of hospital noises played on a muted loop in the background. Oddly enough, this specific memory is all rather soothing.
The hospital people brought me pancakes, juice, and two sausage links. My food sat next to my bed on a beat-to-hell hospital trolley. I had crayons, coloring books, and endless papers to doodle on and they were front and center. All over my bed; it was grand. This kind of creative mess wasn’t allowed in my home. Someone gave me round edged scissors to use…in the hospital. It’s laughable. I cannot imagine that happening today. Nevertheless, I cut bits of paper to my heart’s content, of every shape and size, and it speckled the crappy linoleum floor and my covers. I kept trying to fold the paper and cut out the shape of a person; you know, the kind you unfold and then 10 people cut-outs mysteriously identical in shape and size are holding hands. I think it’s called a people chain, which is cacophonous to my ears, plural people, singular chain. Anyway, it never happened. A hospital housekeeper came in (I think that’s the term for them back in those days), saw my scissoring struggles, and made a cutout star for me that folded a million different ways. She was a petite Asian woman, probably someone’s grandmother; in retrospect, I think she was likely Chinese based on the emigration patterns in my hometown. She had very nimble fingers and folded lightening fast. The end result was a very detailed twinklie. I know now that it was called origami, it was symmetrical and very cool. This star was going in my room.
There was a shelf to the right of my bed with games, playing cards, comic books that I couldn’t read but loved the pictures, and jacks, which I learned can’t be played while sitting on a hospital bed. But it was fun as hell to try. Despite how I actually arrived at the hospital, this experience wasn’t actually that bad. It felt like I was in my own 1970s version of a Heavenly Bed commercial for the Westin, only my bed was a brick and this was no vacation. Sausage bite, sip of juice, draw random and useless pictures, repeat. Insert bite of a dry pancake. It was swell. These weren’t Pearl’s melted gooeyness pancakes, but whatever. Despite the raw skin on my crotch and the searing burning sensation, this was alright. Peeing hurt like hell. But, it was quiet, there was no yelling, and the knotted feeling wasn’t in my belly. Everyone was so happy.
My tranquil hospital sojourn screeched to a halt when I saw my parents walk into the room. I actually heard them first, my mom snarking something at my dad and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention almost immediately. The twisty-gut feeling returned instantly and with a vengeance, like it had never left. I told my mom I felt sick the instant I saw her. It was like a compulsion…get it out. Tell mommy you feel sick. Looking back, it’s all rather comical because that sinking feeling is with me to this day, and my parents are dead. But they were the sinking feeling, still are. Then, I didn’t know what it was. Now? Well, that sinking feeling and trying to find out what the hell it was is the entire reason for this…this memoir that is blessing and curse.
My carefree, pancake eating, cartoon reading, doodle extravaganza was over. I was being discharged and though I didn’t know why at the time, I was terrified. Going home sent me into what would be my first panic attack. Or maybe it wasn’t, I just can’t remember any others beforehand. I was crying, not out of sadness but pure fear. But I couldn’t articulate it. I didn’t know why I was scared…I just was. My stomach churned and my skin had chicken bumps all over. My Julia Childs nurse had come to visit me, I don’t think she knew I was being discharged, but I know she could see fear all over my face. She just stood there and told me to be brave. Brave. An odd choice of words for a defenseless child.
My mom had a fresh pair of clothes for me and helped me out of my hospital gown. My dad was angry that he was asked to leave the room when I changed. In typical Mick fashion, he flexed elsewhere…insisting that he carry me as we left the hospital because I couldn’t walk. I wanted to ride in a wheelchair, that was some cool shit. It was simply too painful to walk, so I let him carry me. I use the term, “let” very loosely here. As we made our way down the corridors towards the exit, I can remember eyes. Everyone was watching us leave. Every last person. It felt strange. Why were people staring at me?
In retrospect, I know why. The pity, the disgust, the wondering. All of those people knew I had been violated in a most perverted, evil, and brutal way. And not one of them did a goddamned thing to protect me. I was leaving a rather large hospital, in a well-developed metropolitan area, and nobody stopped it. Not the doctors, not the nurses, nobody. In fairness, I cannot make that claim with absolute certainty. Who knows, maybe they tried and maybe someone did call the 1970s version of DFCS only to have my mother and father lie about what happened. Anyway, they, the authorities charged with my care and wellbeing, were fucking stupid. Liquid superglue, gravity, none on my hands you stupid motherfuckers. Many of my caregivers from that experience are likely dead; I hope they rest in coffins of nails.
This is all my way of saying, things, my parents, were back to normal. We all piled in my dad’s Dodge Charger, it was blue and he loved it more than anything on the planet, and I laid down in the back seat. Remember, these were the days before car seats and seatbelts. If my crotch wasn’t on fire, I’d have been propped up in the back seat with my face pressed against the back window soaking up the sights while Crosby, Stills, and Nash played on the crappy car radio and my parents smoked. Pearl would want her right hand out the window for her cigarette “to breathe” and Mick would have protested. Ensued fighting. After 5 minutes, Pearl would acquiesce and scoot over. He must have his hand on her leg while driving. Women were possessions to him. Including me.
The abuse, neglect, and torment that defined my childhood officially began that day. At least that’s how I believed it began; some 40 years later I would learn that it started when I was barely 2.
We pulled out of the parking lot and I held back tears as I saw the origami star Mick tossed in the trash as we made our way out of the way out of the hospital.
