The first person who noticed me to be withdrawn and socially inept was my kindergarten teacher. In fact, she suggested my parents hold me back, giving me time to mature another year, a suggestion they chose to ignore. But I still wonder why they did not question what had led an experienced teacher to notice that their admittedly dreamy but previously fairly content youngest child into a world of her own- socially isolated, fearful, and unable to keep up with the peers she’d blended in with just a year before? What did my teacher see that my parents did not? And why didn’t they see it?
I have only one answer for my personality shift at such a tender age. Sometime before kindergarten, we took a family trip to sunny California. My father had business in San Francisco, and they decided to combine business with family. My father had grown up in a suburb of Los Angeles, then promptly moved away following college, to the everlasting sorrow of his mother, who never forgave my own mother for stealing her son. My grandfather was an alcoholic with emphysema who spent most of his time in a home, but was brought to the house each day of our visit. We also spent time with my father’s sister, Gay, her alcoholic husband Leonard, and my California cousins, Carla, Darlene, Lesa, and Christina. Playing with my cousins was fun–I’d never met them before, and Christina was only a year my junior. But then my parents left my siblings and me with my grandparents and went up to the Bay area for Dad’s convention, and the nightmare began.
It took me until well into adulthood to understand why and how it happened. The house was by no means large, and there were three extra people in it. But my sister tells me she spent the majority of her time hiding out in the back bedroom, writing lengthy letters about how miserable the trip was to her boyfriend, Johnny, and my brother was likely off with my two oldest cousins, Carla and Darlene, who could drive. This left me on my own with my grandparents, and my grandmother, miserable with having to put up with my grandfather, stayed away from him when he was in the house.
I remember the day with vivid clarity. To my delight, I had discovered a lemon tree in the backyard, something I had never seen before. The California sky seemed like an endless blue arc overhead–maybe the smog hadn’t drifted to Rosemead that day. I remember my bare feet in the grass, and collecting the fallen lemons for my grandmother, who patiently pretended to be thrilled, and oohed and ahhed over them, while her cigarette ashes fell into the sink where she had been washing dishes. And I remember entering the darkened living room, with its blinds closed to the brightness outside. Grandad always sat in the same chair, his breath and the oxygen machine rattling away. Despite the machine, he still smoked, and drank from a flask. He seemed pleased to see me, and encouraged me to climb into his lap. I felt no impending sense of danger. I can still feel the confusion as his papery hand slid into my shorts. And my mind goes blank and black and there is nothing else to remember.
I did not leave California the same child as I arrived.
I did not tell anyone.
No one ever knew.
He died in 1982.
I broke my silence in 2005.
I don’t think my father believes me.
I wouldn’t want to either.
Posted on March 24, 2007