Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater (7 page)

What was I supposed to say? “Well, Tina, actually your mother is in a coma, she’s barely alive, and even though her throat is cut from ear to ear, apparently her vocal chords are still intact because she keeps whispering ‘Somebody please help me!’ Nobody is really sure if she’s going to make it.” Genetically, Tina was my niece. But in reality, she was my baby sister and, without even being aware of it, I loved her as such. Here she was, eight years old, lying in a hospital bed barely able to move, separated from her family–from her entire life, everything she knows–trying to sort all of this out in her young mind and probably not being able to make sense of most of it. You think I was going to be the one to tell her the truth? No way! Let the friggin’ grown-ups deal with that mess!

Tina never let on if she believed me or not.

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

About a month after the accident, the doctors informed my parents that there was not much that could be done for Annette. It was a miracle that she had survived at all, and although there had been a slight overall improvement in her condition, the doctors didn’t hold out much hope for long-term survival. They said that her injuries were far too serious for her to ever recover from. So, she was released from the hospital, “released to die” as one of the doctors put it. They said that it didn’t make sense to keep her in the hospital, and they suggested placing her in some sort of rehabilitation facility, a prognosis that my mother refused to accept. Instead she made the decision to bring Annette to our home and care for her herself. She knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but she was determined to see that her only daughter made it through this ordeal.

Luckily, one of our cars at the time was a station wagon. It came in handy on the day that we brought Annette home from the hospital. We put a long reclining lounge chair that we kept on the front porch in the back of the car. My mother placed empty cardboard boxes around the chair to keep it from rolling around because it was on wheels. She also brought blankets and sheets to cover both the plastic chair cushions and to cover Annette, to keep her warm. Even though it was summer and the weather was nice, Annette had lost so much blood, and so much weight for one who was already thin, that my mother wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be susceptible to catching a cold or, worse, pneumonia.

Annette was brought down on a stretcher and the orderlies lifted her from the stretcher and into the lounge chair and then loaded her into the back of our station wagon. Martin and Marlyn had been released from their respective hospitals and were now staying with us. They were back at our house eagerly awaiting the homecoming of their mommy in Rahway. Tina was still in the hospital. She was no longer in traction, but she was now in a body cast that went all the way from her upper chest to the bottom of her right foot.

Back at home my father unloaded Annette from the car, up the four small front steps to our front door, and into the house. He sat her in the first chair that they came to. Immediately, her kids were all over her; they were so glad to see their mother again after all this time. Meanwhile, on my mother’s face I remember worry lines surfacing. She was happy to see Annette and her children reunited, but she was afraid that in their excitement and their desire to get close to her, craving her attention, that they might hurt her. She did finally ask them to “Be careful with your mommy. She’s still not real well yet.” As for Annette, it was obvious from the confused look in her eyes that she wasn’t sure what all the commotion was about. She seemed a bit uncomfortable with what was happening around her.

I guess I inherited my mother’s gene for zeroing in on the humor in any given situation. Martin and Marlyn were talking a mile a minute, overlapping each other and fighting for Annette’s attention. In the midst of all the chattering, one thing I remember quite vividly is something that Martin, who was seven years old at the time, blurted out. Apparently, he had overheard the adults talking about the car accident over the past few weeks despite their hushed tones when any of the children were around. Many of the details of what happened had stuck in Martin’s head and, at last, he was getting the chance to verbalize them. “Mommy, you flew through the window!” he exclaimed, immediately catching Annette’s attention. “I did what?” she asked. “You flew through the car window!” he repeated, and added, “And then you laid on the ground and it rained on you!” Smiling, Annette looked at him and said, “I did? Well, that’s nice.”

When everything had settled down and the kids, including me, were back in the den in front of the television, my father went out to the store leaving my mother and Annette alone in the quiet living room. With no one around to overhear her, it was then that Annette turned to my mother and whispered, “Who are those children that keep calling me ‘Mommy’?”

THE GOOD DOCTOR

I had always seen my mother as a strong woman. That was one of the things that I admired about her. After all, this was a woman who, at the age of twenty-three, and with three small children and very little money, found the courage to walk away from an abusive husband and a marriage that she was miserable in. Taking with her only what she could carry, and moving miles away, she succeeded against all odds in making a new life for herself. This situation molded rather unique relationships between her and the three children from that first marriage, especially Annette, her only daughter. Having gone through such difficult times together, and with my mother being so young herself at the time, their relationships were more like that of best friends than mother and child. Which explains why all three called her by her first name, “Ruth.”

After the accident, I saw something in my mother that I had never seen in her before: vulnerability. It was the first time that I sensed fear in her; the first time that I had seen her wearing her emotions on her sleeve; the first time that I had seen her so desperate! My mother was determined to find someone–anyone –who could help Annette. (Another medical doctor was out of the question, since they had already given up on Annette.) Somehow my mother found her way to Dr. Kirby, a short, stout, light-skinned black woman who was what is commonly referred to as a “faith healer”–or, as my father referred to her for years afterwards, “that witch doctor.” Actually, Dr. Kirby was a real doctor, as my mother explained to me years later. The story she told me was that when Dr. Kirby’s parents discovered that their young daughter possessed the ability to heal simply through the laying on of hands, they insisted that she get a medical degree so that she would be able to do what it was that she did without being mocked and ridiculed.

Dr. Kirby’s office was in an old, large Victorian house that, I believe, was also her home. I was in her office once or twice, although never when she administered treatments to Annette. She dressed in a white lab coat, wore white stockings and white nurse’s shoes, and her office contained all the instruments found in a regular doctor’s office, but all of this was merely a formality. Who it was that led my mother to Dr. Kirby, and what transpired during her sessions with Annette, remain among the great unanswered questions of my life. If I remember correctly, there were two or three visits a week to see Dr. Kirby over the next couple of months.

Whether one chooses to believe in this kind of thing or not, Annette began to improve drastically after she began seeing Dr. Kirby and, in less than five months, she made improvements that none of us could quite believe. A week or so after she began her visits to Dr. Kirby, Annette made the first of many breakthroughs. At this point, she still had difficulty getting around, so she would spend hours sitting comfortably in one place. My mother waited on her hand and foot. Cooked for her, fed her, helped her get from place to place, took her to the bathroom. One of her favorite spots to sit was our screened-in front porch. One day all of us kids were in front of the house playing as Annette sat quietly on the porch staring into the distance. Tina, now out of her body cast and trying to return to a normal childhood, was with us. One of the neighborhood boys that Tina had a crush on ran over and tickled her. Unable to get up and run, she let out a playful scream. On the porch, Annette suddenly sat up, as if being snapped from a daze. A moment passed and then Annette began calling frantically for my mother who was inside the house cooking.

“Ruth! Ruth! Come here! Hurry up!”

Needless to say, my mother went running out to the front porch, fearing the worst.

“I remember! I remember it!

“Remember what?” my mother asked.

“The accident! I heard Tina scream and I remembered it!”

Apparently, Tina’s playful scream had triggered something in Annette’s brain and the memory of that night came rushing back.

“Did Tina scream that night?” my mother asked.

Replying as if this was the most ridiculous question she had ever been asked, Annette answered, “We all screamed.”

Annette then recounted to my mother all that she remembered and, except for the part about running head-on into a truck–she thought it was a bus –she was right about every detail. She remembered the visit to our house that day, heading back home that rainy night, who was sitting where in the car–she was in the back seat with her two kids, while her husband and his cousin were in the front seat–the conversations that transpired, trying to pass the other car in the pouring rain, hitting the car and then jumping the divider into the oncoming traffic. The last thing she remembered was her husband’s cousin yelling “step on it!” in hopes of speeding up to avoid running head-on into the huge headlights rushing toward them.

Having now remembered this much, my mother decided to fill in the blanks for Annette, hoping that she would be able to handle it. Annette sat and attentively listened. After taking a moment to digest this information, she quietly asked, “So, I’m lucky to be here at all?” All my mother could do was nod in the affirmative. If she had attempted to speak at that point, she would have started to cry, which she was not about to let Annette see her do. Instead, she simply got up and went back into the house, leaving Annette alone on the porch to process her newfound memories.

Annette’s improvement continued to be nothing short of miraculous. After that day on the porch, more and more memories returned to her on a daily basis. Who she was, who her children were, things that we feared had been totally wiped from her consciousness as a result of the accident. And though she never did remember the weeks immediately following the accident, the time she was hospitalized and so close to death, memories from all of the other stages of her life began resurfacing. More than that, her physical health improved drastically as each day went by too. By November, less than six months after the accident, she was well enough to return home. Not just to her family, but to her job as well. She became, once again, a wife, mother, and full-time secretary at the position that her former employer had held open for her since the accident. She still made weekly visits to New Jersey to see Dr. Kirby.

Soon after Annette returned to her old life, another curve was thrown her way–the unexpected death of Dr. Kirby. Whether it was real or psychological, Annette had developed an intense dependency on Dr. Kirby, and she was convinced that the sessions with her were responsible for the improvements she had made, and was still making. The day after my mother told her of Dr. Kirby’s death, Annette called and confessed that she hadn’t slept very well the night before. She also complained of a constant headache ever since getting the news.

NATIONAL TRAGEDY / PERSONAL TRAGEDY

Recently I was lying in bed reading the Sunday newspaper and came across an article titled “America Beyond The Color Line.” The article began with the line “Last April – 35 years after Martin Luther King was assassinated – Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. set out to explore what had changed for African-Americans socially, politically and economically since then.” Had it really been thirty-five years since Dr. King had been assassinated?

I have a vague memory of the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And that, of course, is the defining “where were you” moment for most Americans. I was in the first grade and I remember something going on, although our teacher made no attempt to explain anything to us. Maybe she thought we were too young to understand, or maybe she was simply too upset herself. Walking home from school that day, an older boy who lived on my block filled me in on what had happened. Having just turned seven years old, I didn’t grasp the full impact of the events of that November day in 1963, and went happily about the business of being a kid as the rest of the world mourned. However, the day of Martin Luther King’s assassination is quite a different story.

It was April 4th, 1968. I was eleven-and-a-half years old. It was two days after my mother’s forty-ninth birthday. It had been nine months and two days since the horrible car accident that altered all of our lives. We were in Philadelphia at Annette’s house, or what had been Annette’s house. She no longer lived there. Hours earlier we had laid her to rest in Merion Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. If it had been two months later, we might have been there celebrating her thirtieth birthday. Instead, here we were gathered in grief, trying to find some sense of purpose in this loss. In the background, a television set was on. Out of nowhere, a woman yelled out, “Oh my God!” Everyone within earshot turned to see what had happened. This same woman, in a voice full of shock and disbelief, shouted, “Martin Luther King just got shot!”