July 2009
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by Sylvia M. DeSantis
2nd Place Winner, 2008 Essay Competition
The front door slams. I stay tense until fading footsteps lead to the bang of a car door. I release my breath when the motor catches. Still, maybe he’s forgotten something…no, he’s pulling away. My shoulders sag and my stomach unclenches. He’s gone. I tiptoe to his recliner and climb up carefully, trying not to spill my soda, careful to avoid the hideous green chair’s ripped arm. Innocent-looking white fluff bulges from the tear, secretly camouflaging jagged metal staples that have torn my leg before. I rip open the bag of cheese curls, relax into the assault of the bright orange smell, and begin eating. On Friday nights I sit in his chair because I’ve earned the right. I mute the TV and wait, just in case, but all I hear is soft quiet and my own beating heart. This must be how normal families live. He’s gone for the whole night. I breathe.
I know it’s been tough for him because he’s a veteran. My father served in some war a long time ago, one that’s long forgotten and out of style. Although it’s been decades since he returned, he still uses words he found there. When he gets mad, they rise up and tumble out of his mouth like a body coming back from the dead. When my father’s voice booms gook, moo moo and nigger throughout the house, my mother judiciously points out to me that ugly words shouldn’t be repeated. As if I’d say them anyway—they taste like dirt in my mouth. Mom makes excuses, says he went through a lot and doesn’t know any better. I nod as though I understand, but I really just think he’s crazy.
He’ll eventually crawl out from under the bed, but only if she pleads for a long time. He holds his head. Moaning, he cries of the time he stopped an ambush by killing enemy soldiers pretending to be dead. Sharp-witted North Korean soldiers quickly learned that playing dead provided excellent opportunity to mow down clueless GIs passing by without a second glance, whistling a tune, reminiscing of home cooking and pretty girls left behind.
I killed them, he cries, all of them, one after another! Suddenly, his eyes turn liquid and I’m looking at a young man, utterly terrified, not yet 23-years-old. Babies! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…I even killed babies! He then twists his arms high, throwing away his imaginary gun. The litany of horror feels never-ending. There’s more, but I stop listening. Moving carefully, I avoid the squeaky third step and tiptoe back to bed, pulling the covers up to my ears before I let myself wonder about those babies and if they had names.
Mom braces herself against the familiar stories, again and again, letting my father sob. The whole thing makes her sick but she pretends to be fine. He chokes on his cries like a child and she rocks him, careful not to rub the fresh bruises on her arms. Later, she’ll call her sister and wonder how he can remember all that horror and still be human. I can’t believe she doesn’t know. He can’t. Somehow, his abuse isn’t enough to convince her. Love and marriage, I learn, involve screams, tortuous abuse, and washing dust bunnies from disheveled clothing that’s been worn under the bed. In the movies love is soft and whisper quiet, like sleeping kittens, or passionately vivid, like a storm-tossed sky full of sharp, tangy ozone. Nowhere do I see black eyes or smashed dishes. I am so confused.
The sound is high and loud, like some baby animal being killed. I’m paralyzed in my bed. I’m so scared I pee myself. It takes me a minute to understand.
My mother is screaming.
The crack of breaking furniture and shattering glass rattle the house but then I hear another sound—footsteps. They beat a steady rhythm towards my bedroom door, reminding me of thunder. In school, they tell us to count. Count between the lightning strikes and the thunder to see how far away the storm is. To figure out if it’s coming. To find safety so the lightning doesn’t strike you. I feel crazy, insane. The thunder comes closer. I want to count, to be a good girl, but I can’t remember how. This is it. I am going to die.
No, she’s in the doorway instead. Pale. Shaking. Scratching at the light switch with one hand, clutching a laundry basket with the other. The light spreads a watery stain across the room.
“I thought I’d fold some clothes.” Her face is already turning colors. A pale, sky blue surrounds one eye like a demonic halo while an angry red welt cuts across her papery cheek. It’s the middle of the night and the whole world feels dead.
“Mommy…” I whisper. I want to tell her the secret: to count. If we count, we’ll be safe. “Mommy,“ I try again, but then he’s in the doorway behind her.
Eyes crazy. Breath wild. Fists clenched.
So I sit in his chair. Gorging on salty-plastic cheese curls and too-sweet soda, I sit in his chair and make myself forget. The relief at hearing the car door and knowing he’s driving away feels so incredible, I celebrate, cramming food into my mouth until I’m utterly exhausted, until one more mouthful will make me sick. I can’t stop. The sensation astounds me with its confusing goodness. I don’t even know this girl. I no longer taste. I eat until there’s nothing left of me.
Mom sits on the couch, watching TV, watching me desperately try to fill the gaping hole made from the slow burn of hate and fear. I’m so full: of his fury, of my fear, of emptiness.
The fear, the hunger, the shame, the gaping hole…is me. Me.
Tonight, Friday, as he leaves for his weekly poker game, I choose food. I sit in his green chair, enveloped in his smell, and stuff myself. As I get older, I’ll choose other things. On good days, I gather books as my arsenal and I read myself out of the pain. The librarian smiles and thinks she knows who I am. She never sees the little girl inside, counting. On bad days I wait for the thunder and give pieces of myself away to people who flick their lizard eyes at me and know how hungry I am. I know they understand by the way they devour me. We’re all so hungry.
But not tonight. Right now, I’m full. I’m in his cracked green chair, the wishing chair. I wish he was gone and he is. Gone. Maybe just until tomorrow, but still.
The knowing tastes delicious.
by Frances Grote
1st Place Winner, 2008 Essay Competition
It is 5:30 AM. We are racing south on Route 1 toward Philly, averaging 60 miles an hour. I speed up at yellow lights. I could stop if I wanted to. I just don’t feel like it. I am in control.
Pink Floyd, The Wall is roaring from the speakers. I play it as loud as I can, all the time. I don’t sleep much anymore. And did I mention I am happy? Very, very happy. Wait. Happy is not good enough. Elated. Ecstatic. Chock full of glee. Sharp, sharp glee. Only nobody else gets it. My daughter, for instance, teetering on the cusp of early adolescence, tracks me from a distance with a stare as intense as a laser beam. When I demand to know what her problem is, she accuses me of being mad. Years later, when she is a writer, it will finally dawn on me her choice of words was not merely childish vernacular.
I need to be on time for my surgery. That’s why I’m driving. We were late getting out of the house. I couldn’t remember where I left the keys. Or my glasses. If I let my husband drive, he would go too slow. I look to my right. He is curled up against the passenger door in a fetal crouch, staring straight ahead. What is his problem? I wonder, annoyed.
Does a “tumor” officially start the moment that first malevolent seed fools the body’s vast network of defensive resources? Or is a collection of wayward cells not a Tumor until your feet swell up like baseball mitts and muscle wasting makes your arms and legs so spindly you resemble an avocado pit supported by toothpicks? Is it a Tumor when you’re still not diagnosed after you give up brushing your hair because the gentlest strokes leave bald spots and your brush looks like a mohair sweater? Who cares if it’s a Tumor when you bleed through your clothing every time some stranger bumps into you?
I know something is very, very wrong. I just can’t prove it. I belong to an HMO. My coverage offers a pleasant pediatrician, affordable prescriptions, good maternity care. And a very literal interpretation of health insurance. Diagnosis and treatment of serious illness are outside the system’s standard functions, which are designed to manage costs, not illness. Expensively unhealthy people don’t fit in. I don’t know this until I become one. Doctor visits are only allowed once a month. Corporate exceptions are required to see a specialist. Given an alternative, most seriously ill people choose to switch. I have no alternatives, except for wishing my body’s means of taking care of itself were as efficient as the HMO’s.
***
How have I become the victim of substandard healthcare? I am insured. I am a professional in the pharmaceutical industry. I know how the system works. In the end, all this guarantees only that I will know, with painful and helpless certainty, when things being done to me, about me, over my head and behind my back have, if not the outright intent, then certainly the full force and effect of doing me harm.
***
After months of fighting to get help while I watch myself disintegrate, I am finally “capitated” to a specialist, an endocrinologist. The HMO contracts with him to treat me, for less than market rate. Later, when I can finally laugh about some of this, a doctor friend will joke that all endocrinologists, thanks to their rigorous training, become psychotic. I suspect the one who works for my HMO didn’t need medical school to get that way. Stacked against his office walls, in every corner of the examining room, sliding off his receptionist’s desk are stuffed folders, unopened mail, paper leaking out of piles like sap from violated trees. If I were visiting him on behalf of my employer, I would not allow him to do research on our drugs. Now my life is in his hands.
This doctor moves like a whirlwind, chases his thoughts around like a butterfly in a field of coneflowers. At our first visit I start by describing my most obvious symptom, the inexplicable weight gain. He listens a little bit, then demands that I tell the truth, admit I am a glutton, a gorger, a closet eater, for how else could I be gaining over ten pounds a month? I insist I have been living on a handful of Cheerios in the morning and nothing but black coffee for the rest of the day. He tells me I am a liar. I begin to cry. He writes me a prescription for vitamins, and says next time, if I am ready to face my problems, maybe we will do some blood work. Only after he leaves the room do I understand he’s serious. I have to wait weeks for my next appointment. Symptoms continue to accumulate. At my second visit, I describe fantasies of opulent indulgence, stories about all the things I have been craving to the point of obsession while depriving myself into malnutrition in my efforts not to gain weight. He is pleased, and rewards me by ordering some tests. Here is the worst part. I don’t blame him for treating me this way. I despise me too. I have become a repulsive creature, my jaw buried in the ruff of my neck, my eyes beady slits. People stare at me with open distaste. And it’s not just appearances. I can’t walk upstairs without pausing to catch my breath. I can’t lift a bag of groceries, or remember what the sentence I am reading is about by the time I get to its end. I am ready to accept anything this man does. I want to be well.
We do a few tests each month. While we wait for results, I develop high blood pressure, diabetes. Finally he announces that I have Cushing’s. All these things are happening to me because my body is producing too much adrenaline. Then he tells me he is very excited. He has never had a chance to treat Cushing’s before. He doesn’t offer the option of referring me to somebody who has treated Cushing’s before. He tells me he will begin my treatment by “sucking some tissue” out of my brain. He describes how he will insert little vacuums through the arteries in my neck. I envision the creature I will become as he destroys the core of my brain, learning what he shouldn’t have done as he goes. I consider my choices, death by gradual system failure or death by crazy endocrinologist.
There is a road near my house, a four-lane highway, and in the middle is a huge old tree, as wide and solid as a small truck, left there by someone with a quirky sense of aesthetics. If I come at the right time of day, I can start a mile back, run my car’s engine flat out and hit that tree, head-on. I make my plans. On the way, I do something I didn’t expect. I stop at a pay phone on a noisy street corner and call an old friend who has not seen me in a long time. In his mind’s eye I am still beautiful and worth saving. I am crying, screaming, telling him what I plan to do, and why. When I finally stop, he says quietly, “I can’t help you.” His words are as unexpected as a dousing with ice water. I stand mute, sweat and cry. Finally he speaks again. He says it’s time to ask one of the doctors at work for help. I tell him my insurance won’t pay. He says I can’t worry about that, not now. First I must worry about how I will manage to live. Why didn’t I see that myself? Ask Pavlov’s dogs why they slobbered every time they heard that bell.
So I am driving to the hospital to have the tumor removed, the real one on my adrenal gland. It’s bigger than a ripe walnut. Anybody who looked for it would have found it right away. I am happy, because I’m going to be all better. Nobody has told me any different. I still believe in the system, that its default position is to take care of me.
***
There can be total recovery from this kind of tumor, but mine went untreated too long. Two years after surgery, I am “discharged from treatment” a euphemism for ‘this is as good as you’re going to get’. I have finally learned to refuse any judgment but my own. It will be a decade of hard work and nasty setbacks before there is nothing left to give me away but a premature aging of the skin, an occasional slurring of my speech or loss of balance. There’s a big ugly scar on my back, but it only hurts if I twist the wrong way. It’s the one in my mind that’s a constant dull ache.
Tuesday’s theme is Against the Rules, hosted by our very own Tre Rials. You may remember his story in our “On My Street” Slam back in March:
Check out the Slam this week and give us your juiciest stories of rebellion…
When: Tuesday July 28th, doors at 7:30, Slam at 8:30
Where: L’Etage, 6th & Bainbridge (above Beau Monde)
Cost: $8
21+
See you there!
We have our upcoming Salon lineup set: Buy tickets in advance HERE.
Featured artists:
Jennifer Baker
Jennifer is a painter who has been documenting over 20 years of her life in Northern Liberties. She will talk about the life, death and rebirth of a city neighborhood as she experienced it during 2 decades as an artist living and working there. These are images from about 1990 to the present: her personal impression of the area’s evolution from a small manufacturing center with breweries, tanneries, and meat packing plants, to a lost and partially abandoned neighborhood friendly to arsonists, short dumpers, and artists looking for cheap space. She is now examining Northern Liberties’ newest incarnation as a neighborhood of hip young people moving into old working class houses and the numerous new developments (many of which are now in bankruptcy). Her paintings and monoprints present her personal experience of this process.
Jennifer is currently in a show called “Summer in the City” at Projects Gallery in Northern Liberties. She was a recipient of a PA Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and a finalist for a Pew Fellowship for the Arts.
Check out her work at a Brooklyn Gallery HERE, and locally at the Projects Gallery HERE
Shareef Hadid Jenkins
Shareef is an actor and playwright from Philadelphia who will be excerpting his recent work from the Philly Fringe, “Getting Your Life”. The play is adapted from journals he kept while living with a transsexual Crystal-meth dealer. “Getting Your Life” deals with drug abuse and the desire to stop using, while being powerless to addiction. Shareef’s most recent play, “The Three Mothers of Zachary”, was featured in Festivus, Philadelphia’s first LGBT Artist Festival. He will be showing “Getting Your Life” at the Philly Fringe Festival this September.
Music and Motion Dance
Music and Motion Dance, voted 2008 My Fox Philly Best for Dance, will be presenting 2 excerpts from their work “The 9 Muses”. Drawing from their own muses, each company member created new choreography, both individually and as part of a group, seeking to answer the question – What inspires you? Music and Motion Dance Troupe has participated in Live Arts and Philly Fringe for the past 5 years. “The 9 Muses” will be performed in its entirety on September 5th for the Philly Fringe.
Damon Reaves
Damon Reaves, a Philadelphia native, is a performance and conceptual artist exploring issues of identity. He completed his MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and has also studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York and The Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, The Netherlands. In 2008 Reaves was awarded The Locks Foundation Post-Graduate Fellowship. He recently joined Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art and currently serves as a Mural Corps Instructor for The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.
Damon will be presenting the audio from a work-in-progress premiering as part of the Shelter exhibition at the Painted Bride this November. Combined with physical action, the piece explores the way individuals balance self-identity with cultural/social identity and questions what it means to be sheltered in both.
Date: August 12
Time: 7:30-9:30pm
Location: Laurie Beechman Cabaret, 601 S. Broad St.
Cost: $8
All Ages!
Check out her website HERE
