October 1971, The month I became a Grown Up.

When Dad died, things suddenly changed at 4071 Eagle Street. Dad was the one person who kept Mom under control to a certain extent.  We all felt grounded and safe with Dad in spite of the weird unexplained undercurrents swirling just beneath the surface,   Without Dad, it seemed as though we were walking on shifting sand.

School was starting up.  I was going into 6th grade at St Vincent's Catholic school, and had spent the summer dreading the return to school. The 6th grade homeroom teacher, Mrs Anderson, was a horrible bully who did not like me and let me know at the church rummage sale last spring that she couldn't wait until I was in her class so she could make an example out of me.  I woke up on the first day of school with a horrid stomach ache and told Mom I was afraid to go to school.  Mom was preoccupied with everything grownups deal with when people die.  She told me to just go up to my teacher and tell her that Dad died last week, and she would probably feel sorry for me and lay off the abuse, then she shooed me out of the house. After the pledge of allegiance and the morning prayer, I made my way up to Mrs Anderson's desk, summoned up my courage, and told her my Dad died last week.  Mrs Anderson just said, "Oh, that's too bad.  I will tell the priest to say a Mass for him tomorrow," and then went back to looking at her lesson plan. She had no mercy; from day one, she fulfilled her threat to make an example out of me.  When I got home and told Mom, her reply was, "Oh shit, now I have to go to the goddamned mass tomorrow!"

October came, and it seemed like Mom was keeping herself busy.  She had just bred her Poodles Gidget and Collette to a tiny white Poodle whose owners briefly rented an apartment across the street.  She was looking at new cars and was focusing on a Volvo station wagon. But she also was acting a bit strangely too. We were taking nightly trips to El Cajon Blvd, which back then used to have lots of fancy furniture stores.  In those days, the furniture stores set out cookies on a silver platter for the customers, and while mom was looking at couches and bookshelves, we three kids were helping ourselves to the goodies.  Back at home, she would be constantly digging out old photos and reminiscing about earlier times.

One night, after Jeff and Tabatha were put to bed, Mom told me that I was not a kid anymore, and that I needed to know some things that a kid would not understand.  She said she needed to tell me some secrets that I could never tell to anyone and that I was going to have to act grown up now and help her take care of the kids.

First, she told me a long story about how she met Dad. This is what Mom told me when I was 10 years old, one month after Dad died:

Years before I was born,  she was a young widow with 5 children. Her first husband was an abusive crazy man who killed himself.  She had a boyfriend named Jack Goodman ( I think that was his last name) who was crazy about her and the kids.  And the kids loved him too, especially Patty and Susan.  Jack was always pursuing get rich quick schemes, and spent a lot of time in Alaska.  Mom met Darwin S Warriner when she went to get her 5 kids photographs taken.  She said he used to babysit the kids when she went out with Jack. It became obvious that Darwin S was in love with Mom too, but he was unattractive and no woman wanted him.

Mom was hoping that she and Jack would soon marry, but then one time when he returned from a long trip to Alaska, his backpack fell over and a prescription tube fell out.  She picked it up and saw that it was a medicine for crab lice.  She figured out that he probably had picked up a whore. She was turned off.  Then she told me what crab lice were and what they did if you caught them.

Returning to her story,  she said that after Jack left town again, she started going out with Darwin S, but didn't want to get serious with him. He was just a stand-in during Jack's absences. Then one day, Darwin S came to her and asked her to marry him.  She said he had already bragged to his co-workers and family that he had this gorgeous girlfriend and was engaged to her.  She said she would think about it.  Then Jack came back  from Alaska with a marriage proposal too.  Now she was conflicted.  Who to choose? A handsome adventurer, who was probably a lice-infested philanderer, or an unattractive guy who was safe, solid, and dependable.  She was in love with Jack, and told Darwin S. she wanted Jack instead.  He made a deal with her.  To allow him to save face with his friends and family, they would get married, and after a little time, they would divorce and then she could go and marry Jack if she wanted to.    She agreed to the temporary marriage.  Mom then told me that there are two kinds of love:  Just regular love that you feel for family and friends, and being in love, which is what you feel for the person you want to get married to.  She said she was never in love with Dad, even though he was in love with her. The only reason baby Darwin was born was because she finally felt sorry for her husband and slept with him, and became pregnant.

That was a complicated story for a little girl to hear and it made me uncomfortable.

 Then she told me two more things:

Tabatha and Jeff were not her biological children.  She then proceeded to tell me that Lynda was Tabatha's real mother, and that she adopted the baby to save Lynda from embarrassment.  Jeff, she told me, was Dad's son from an adulterous affair that he had with a Dutch woman he picked up in a bar after work. When the Dutch woman told him about the pregnancy, and that her husband was going to have her deported, Dad confessed to Mom, and she, out of the goodness of her heart, offered to take the baby in when it was born.

I was stunned.

But what also went through my mind was, where did I come from? I always had a weird feeling about us three kids.  So I asked Mom, "What about me, where did I come from?"  She said, " Oh, you are mine.  You came right from here," pointing to her stomach. I instantly knew she was not telling me the truth, but did not feel like I had the right to question her about it, so I stayed quiet, but pondered the question of my parentage from that day forward.

So, when I was 10, I learned that my mom never really loved my dad and thought he was ugly, that my older siblings had a different dad who was crazy and cruel, that my two younger siblings came from other mothers, that people catch crab lice from whores and that these lice cause horrible itching in your crotch, and that Mom was probably lying to me about my own origins.

Knowing all of Mom's confusing and salacious stories somehow transformed me into a "Grown Up."

A few days later I was again woken up in the middle night.  I found myself in the arms of a very large fireman, who had pulled me out of my bed and was running down the hallway, into the living room, and outside into the cold, dewy night. There was a big firetruck with flashing red lights out front. Two other fireman were right behind us, carrying Jeff and Tabatha.  They sat us down on the concrete steps and checked to make sure we were breathing properly.  Mom was talking to another fireman, telling him she had no idea how the gas line to the stove came undone.  They believed her.  She promised to go out and buy an electric stove. Then some fans were set up and the windows and back door opened and the house was aired out.  The fire truck and the big strong men in yellow and black coats left.  Mom made me go to school that morning, and I fell asleep in class all day long, which got me into even more trouble with Mrs Anderson.  I didn't bother telling her we were almost gassed to death in our beds the night before.  She wouldn't have cared.

Within days after we were almost killed, Mom dropped the dogs off at Lynda's house and the four of us were on an airplane to Ephrata, Washington to visit Aunt Amy.