Distant Observer

photo credit: Frodrig

He watched the family on the mall with a detached joy, a rare bubble of melancholic desire that welled up from someplace within him he’d forgotten existed. He watched as the father placed a hand on the small of his wife’s back, her upturned face smiling and aglow as the children frolicked beneath them, their shrill laughter floating up to the balcony where he stood in silence. He noted the way the gentleman’s head bent to speak to his wife, their conversation hushed and earnest, the way the wife’s smile was for him and him alone. They had fallen into that rhythm he had once known so well, in step with the march only long married couples could hear. Theirs was an easy interaction, punctuated by unaffected expressions of interest and contentment.

Had he stood on that same mall not so long ago, in a world not so very different from this, and been looked down upon by another balcony dweller lost in his own reverie? Had he once, in a moment of unadulterated completion, looked on his wife with eyes that saw only her good? Was there ever a time for him as whole as the moment he now witnessed? And did the man he watched know at all how lucky, how undeservedly, goddamned lucky, he truly was?

He never realized he’d been rubbing the place on his finger where his wedding band used to be.

Thanksgiving Reveries

Thanksgiving is a bit of a mixed bag for me.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was definitely the little Christmas. We always did Thanksgiving with tons of family, each nuclear family congealing in some central house, bringing at least one of their own prized dishes. The house always smelled amazing as everyone put their stuffings, casseroles, potatoes, pies, cakes, macaronis on the counter, and the parents spooned out platefuls of goo and yum for the gaggle of children at their own special kids’ table. One year, I was about 14, and we had Thanksgiving at my fake-Aunt Yolande’s house. My fake-Aunt Yolande is a special kind of crazy, the kind of crazy that is endearing and wonderful, never maddening. That was the year she tried to bake a cake using my mother’s baby formula because she was out of milk. I don’t know if I need to tell you that it didn’t turn out, but it didn’t. (She claimed it would have worked fine if it weren’t for the iron in the baby formula. Me, I think the fact that baby formula stinks and in no way resembles cow milk by any stretch of the imagination might have had something to do with it.)

That Thanksgiving was my first spent with fake family, and it was awesome. And by fake family, I mean a blend of my immediate family, friends of my immediate family, my stepfather and his brother and his kids and fake kids (and I’m not even sure in which way these kids were fake. Most black families I know have a tendency to call people by familial relations that don’t, in fact, truly exist, and good luck trying to sort it all out.) At any rate, there was food for days. My fake-Uncle owned a barbecue restaurant, so there was barbecue along with turkey, about eleventy billion side-dishes, and enough dessert to give all of south Los Angeles type 2 diabetes. We ate until we could hardly move, at which point the grownups commenced to drinking Chivas Regal and being overly loud, and the teenagers…

Well, ostensibly we were going for a drive to look for something to do. And we weren’t all teenagers. The oldest of us was in his early twenties, and the youngest of us was about eleven. If I recall correctly, the true objective of our mission was to find a store selling wine coolers so even us littles could partake in the fun of the day. We drove around for about an hour before giving up. Every shop was closed. That’s the lame part about holidays — once the holiday part is over, there’s nothing to do, and in our case, no alcohol to drink.

Another year, my father decided he wanted to take me and my brother to visit his family for Thanksgiving. This was a first for us — my brother and I scarcely knew our paternal relatives, and the idea of flying to St. Louis to have Thanksgiving in a hotel appealed to us. To our mother, not so much, but to her credit she did nothing to dampen our excitement. We packed bags and got on a plane and made our first (and last) trip to St. Louis.

Here’s another thing about Thanksgiving. It’s in November. You probably know that, but see, I’m from Los Angeles. Not much difference in Los Angeles between September, October, and November. It’s all pretty much the same, which is to say it’s pretty damn warm.

It’s not warm in St. Louis in November. In fact, it was snowing. And in further fact, I had packed a suitcase full of mini skirts and not a single jacket to my name. When my Dad found out, he was furious, and had to take me and my brother shopping for coats, which of course was fine by us. Getting to go shopping is what makes having divorced parents kind of worth it.

We arrived at the hotel in a taxi, and upon arrival my grandfather pushed a box of chocolates into my hands. “Here, take these,” he says, as he struggles to pull luggage out from the cab. The box is white and glossy, wrapped with a red ribbon. Fancy chocolates! My brother and I look each other over with glee.

Up in our room, we tear open the box of chocolates and start to devour them, only to discover that they are the nastiest chocolates on the face of the earth. “Yuck,” my brother says, spitting the caramel into the trash. “Where did he get these chocolates from?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shuffling through the box. I pulled out a round chocolate with pink stripes. “Let’s try these.”

Nope. Nasty, too. How about the light brown ones with the crunchy things on top? Okay, the dark brown with the green drizzles?

We tried them all before giving up.

When my grandfather returned later and asked us for his candies, were were dumbfounded. His candies? You mean they weren’t intended for us?

“You destroyed $100 worth of diabetic candy!” My grandfather raged. We didn’t feel bad, because we didn’t know they weren’t ours. And what kind of person hands a box of chocolates to two young kids and expects them to hold onto it for safe keeping? I thought that was stupid then, and I think it’s stupid now, and I can say that, because the grandfather in question is dead so he probably doesn’t remember this incident, anyway. 

That Thanksgiving, I learned to french kiss (with the one kid there that wasn’t a relative. At least, I don’t think he was a relative. I think he was someone’s step-son. I guess I’ll never know, and yeah, that’s kind of gross, but I was in junior high. If I walked around regretting every stupid thing I ever did in junior high I wouldn’t get a hell of a lot done.) I also saw Alzheimer’s up close and personal for the first time. My father’s grandmother, who raised him, was at the table, frail and oblivious to everyone and everything. She couldn’t control her body well, and she ate with her mouth open. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She seemed sad. Everyone seemed sad. They seemed to both want her there and not. But I guess that such conflicting emotions are probably very common in these circumstances.

Dad never asked us to Thanksgiving with his extended family again. Honestly, I don’t think he went either. I think that particular trip down memory lane was enough for him.

I mention these two particular Thanksgivings to illustrate a larger point: that my childhood holidays were bustling, filled with adventure, people, misadventure, laughter, turmoil, and joy. And so while I harbor a soft spot in my heart for this holiday, a part of me is sad, too. My adult Thanksgivings are spent with my husband and two children. That’s it. We have no family close, and all our friends have other places to go, other family to visit. We have each other. And while yes, I am very grateful for that, I do miss the extended huggings and kissings, the trading of boisterous stories, the passing of plates down the tables rows, and the drama. I do miss the drama. I miss all the things I’ve come to associate with family holidays.

And so this year, as I’m standing in my kitchen baking buttermilk pie or kneading the bread dough for the stuffing — everything from scratch for Thanksgiving! — I will think not only about how grateful I am for the people in my life now, but also for the people that were in my life then, who gave me such wonderful memories, who filled me with joy and laughter that I can draw from now, in the quiet contentedness of a drama-free Thanksgiving household. I will toast to them and think of them, and hope that in some way I have and will continue to fill someone else’s life with the same images, warm feelings and sacred stories that everyone needs to live a full, happy life.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

This Is My Children’s America

photo credit: b_d_solis

My grandfather is 12 years old. He is the illegitimate son of a wealthy, white plantation owner and a black house servant. His father passes away, and his will indicates that the plantation shall go to his only son. But my grandfather is black, and his white half-siblings take their claim to court. The court does not grant the illegitimate, half-breed child his rightful home.

My mother is 18 years old. She is standing before the Dean of the School of Engineering where she has applied. She wants to be a draftsman. She’s smart; her grades are good. She’s skilled at what she does. “Quite frankly, Miss, I already have two women in my department, and I am trying have them thrown out. I am disinclined to accept another woman into this school.” My mother walks away, ashamed of her hips, her breasts, her uterus, of being female. 

My stepfather is 46 years old. He is a successful Los Angeles lawyer with his own firm and impressive client portfolio. He is trying to buy a new home for his new wife and three children. The neighborhood is upscale, conservative, in a good school district. His initial application is approved. Then the homeowners, and the neighbors, meet him, with his dark, black skin. And suddenly the house is not available. This neighborhood is not for him. Black skin does not go with their carefully manicured lawns.

I am 11 years old. I am watching Dangerous Liaisons. I am enthralled by Glenn Close in her fabulous makeup and beautiful period clothing. When I grow up, I want to be an actress like Glenn Close and wear such fabulous outfits. But I look at my brown skin, and I remember that I cannot play a French aristocrat. I will have to settle for a Creole maidservant, like Thandie Newton in Interview with the Vampire. Hollywood doesn’t make beautiful movies about people who look like me.

My son is 6 years old. He is watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He is watching his mother cry, but he doesn’t understand why she is crying. He watches his father, who is white, come into the room and embrace his mother. He hears his father say, “On behalf of my people, I congratulate your people.” He doesn’t know what that means, or why his mother says “Thank you.” He is watching Barack Obama, and watching the crowds, and he wants to be President of the United States some day. And though he is black, though he is descended from a long line of black mothers and fathers, today we know that my son can.

Today we have done right by my people, and by my son, America. Now we need to do right by our daughters. Let’s keep taking the bricks down. One block at a time.

God bless America.

Technicolor Bandits

I always thought it was strange the way he closed his eyes right before he asked a question. It was like he was seeing the question in his mind, seeing where to use inflection, how to curl his lips, whether and how to use his hands for emphasis. But when he opened his eyes and began to speak, I was moved by the ferocity of his words, the tenderness of his sentiment. It was too bad, I suppose, that I was expected to hate him with all my heart for all the things he did to my mother before I was born.

Even so, as I watched this man, this man with the magnetic personality and the clear, blue eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder what he could have done, what this man, this sparkling, wondrous man, could possibly have done to earn my mother’s ire. And, if I’m being honest, I found myself wondering how he, drawn in wild colors and with such broad strokes, could be part of my mother’s monochrome at all. How could her life ever have encompassed his? Was she once brilliant and bright, all technicolor and enchantment, or was he once tranquil and subdued, hiding behind everyone else’s – anyone else’s – glory? I couldn’t picture it, though. I couldn’t picture it for either of them, not her in full color nor him in restraint. They were incompatible figures, and though miraculous in their own ways, it was a study in futility to attempt to imagine them existing in the same palette.

Not My Daughter

My gorgeous daughter after her concert, still in makeup.

I’ve always believed that words have power. One of my favorite euphemisms for putting a curse on someone is “to put words” on someone – to bind them by the finality and imperviousness of actual words, of letters, the actual building blocks of the universe. And owing to my deep loyalty to this belief, I won’t allow people to say things in my presence that I really don’t want to come true.

Nevertheless, my midwife cursed my daughter and me on the day of her birth. As she slid into this world covered in goo and screaming her slimy pink head off, my midwife stared at her white skin, her slender nose, the almond shape of her eyes, the dark blonde hair. And the midwife looked from the newborn baby to me, her newborn mother, and put words on us both with, “If I didn’t just take this baby out of you I’d never believe she was yours.”

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Geometry of the Nintendo Wii (Or, Why My 5 Year Old Kicks My Ass at Wii Sports)

I am competitive by nature. Even at stuff I don’t care that much about and know I’m not very good at. I once knocked over a little girl at a wedding reception so I could catch the bouquet, even though I was, for all intents and purposes, already engaged. So you can imagine my extreme frustration and annoyance by the fact that my son, a tiny little hobbledehoy, creams me at both Wii bowling and Wii boxing. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to play with him, especially because he seems to have mastered the art of excessive celebration; if this were the NFL, he’d be fined for the shit he pulls when he licks me in a match. He cackles with glee as dances about the living room chanting, “Uh huh! I’m awesome! You suck!” He gyrates those hips and pulls faces, all the while maintaining eye contact for the rub. It’s maddening.

And what’s even more aggravating is that he’s so freaking cute when he does it, I simultaneously want to hug him and rip his head right off his bony, little shoulders.
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The Left Hand of the Father:Kindergarten

Photo by: Melanie Burger

Most adults were amused and bewildered by my precocious ways at only four years old, but by September 1st, 1981, my mother had enough of my constant questions and demands for explanations and decided it was high time I went to kindergarten so she could have a break. Trouble was, most schools required that children be five years old by September 1st to begin kindergarten. But one local Catholic school had a cut-off date of December 1st.

Seeing as how my birthday wasn’t until the 16th, you’d think that would have posed a problem. But my mother was a resourceful woman, and she simply got a hold of my birth certificate and erased that 6 in 16 right off the page, making my birthday effectively December 1st. That’s probably the first thing I really remember learning: forgery.

And that’s how I came to be enrolled at St. Francis de Sales Catholic elementary school under the tutelage of Mrs. Parker and Sister Conrad.

Sister Conrad was about a hundred years old and as mad at the world as a blind man at a wet t-shirt contest. Her favorite pastimes were whapping kids with a ruler and praying loudly for our everlasting souls whenever we dared behave like children. I was terrified of her and avoided her as much as possible, which I’m sure she appreciated. Nevertheless, as fate would have it, Sister Conrad and I were to be together engraved in the annals of time and St. Francis de Sales, because she believed in torment and I believed in personal assault.

My parents and I played a game every schoolday morning; as soon as I was out of the car, I’d race my father’s black Cadillac down the street. I’d run with all my might alongside the chain link fence that separated my school from the street while my father drove as slowly as he could so I could beat him to my classroom door. I didn’t know that at the time of course. I pumped my little legs like all the demons in Hell were chasing me, and all I knew was that I was the swiftest girl in the world; I could outrun the fastest slug and my daddy’s black Cadillac. And when I arrived at my classroom door, once again the champion, I’d be out of breath and full of confidence because if I could outrun a car, I could do anything.

This particular morning, however, Sister Conrad was standing at the classroom door when I got there. She fetched me by the ear and dragged me into the room scolding me, for there was no running allowed in school! Trecherous! Horrible! Disobedient girl! There is nothing worse to an old, Irish Catholic nun than disobedience, and breaking school rules was just about the most brazen thing one could imagine.

Only, there is one thing the Irish Catholic nuns at St. Francis de Sales hated worse than disobedience, and that was left-handedness. Being left-handed was a mark of Satan; we weren’t supposed to use our left hands for anything at all if we could help it. I wasn’t left-handed, thank the Lord, but the smallest boy in my class, Clippy was, and boy did he ever catch Hell for it.

Every time Sister Conrad saw Clippy writing with his left hand, she’d sneak up on him and smack his hand with a ruler. Humiliated, Clippy would switch the pencil to his right hand, head ducked low, and try pitifully to write. After a little while, though, he’d always switch back to his dominant hand. Learning to write was hard enough when we were five; I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Clippy to have to learn to write with his off hand.

The same day as my unfortunate morning run-in with Sister Conrad, I forgot my lunch at home. Kindergarteners did not go to the cafeteria, and if we forgot our lunch, we were shit outta luck. Luckily for me, my best friend Jaimie offered to save the day and share her peanut butter sandwich with me. We sat next to each other, happy as clams, munching on our sandwich halves.

Clippy appeared from the classroom with a mischievous grin on his face. “Hey Amber,” he said, “you wanna see what I can do?”

The answer to that question is always yes. “Sure,” I said, mouth full of peanut butter.

Clippy pulled from his brown lunch sac a plastic sandwich baggy, to which he had tied a GI Joe figurine. Eyes wide as saucers, he threw the sandwich bag into the air and we watched in rapt joy as the sandwich bag magically ballooned into a parachute, gently floating the GI Joe to the ground.

It was probably the coolest thing I had seen in all my five years of life on Earth, and Clippy was absolutely beaming he was so proud. I was about to clap when Sister Conrad snatched Clippy by the ear. “Clippy, what do you think you’re doing? Is that garbage you just threw on the ground?”

“No ma’am!” Clippy pleaded. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s — ”

“I know perfectly well what it is, boy! Should we add lying to your list of offense for the day? Shall we?” And she swatted him with her ruler, accusing him of littering.

“Now you pick that up and throw it in the trash where it belongs,” she said, eyes hard as stones. “And don’t ever let me catch you littering again.”

“But Sister Conrad — ”

She swatted him again for interrupting her and for general insolence. Defeated and on the verge of tears, Clippy picked up his GI Joe figurine and makeshift parachute and deposited them into the trash.

“And what is going on over here?” she asked, turning to Jaimie and me. “Are you eating Jaimie’s food?” she asked me, incredulous.

I knew better than to argue or explain; I’d seen Clippy get hit enough to know how useless it was. I merely nodded. “Yes.”

“Horrible little girl!” she cried. “Get out of here! Give Jaimie back her sandwich! Go out to the playground; I can’t even look at you! Stealing other people’s food. I won’t have it!”

I handed Jaime back her sandwich; I couldn’t look her in the eye. I had only taken three bites of sandwich, and I was so hungry. I turned and walked off toward the playground, my mind filled with thoughts of Clippy and his poor toy in the garbage, and my ears filled with the sounds of my stomach rumbling.

I hated Sister Conrad. I hated her, and wished she would die. As I walked out to the playground, I found myself praying with all my heart for the good Lord to snatch Sister Conrad from the surly bonds of earth and whisk her off to Heaven where she could sit at the LEFT hand of God the Father Almighty (just because that would have burned her up real good) and to keep her far away from Clippy and his wickedness and glorious friends who share their peanut butter sandwiches.

But apparently it wasn’t enough for Sister Conrad to embarrass me and send me off to the playground half starving; I was no more than twenty paces away when I heard her behind me, following me, yelling at me in her horrible, raspy, old hag voice.

“Back in my day we’d have gotten a good spanking for stealing other people’s food! Thou shalt not steal the Bible says! And don’t think I didn’t seeing you encouraging that horrible Clippy to litter our beautiful school! I just don’t know what is wrong with children today. Nothing a good paddling wouldn’t cure, I tell you what, you spoiled brat!”

And at that, I’d had it. I’d had enough of Sister Conrad. I’d had enough of her ear-pulling, hand-swatting, garbage-spewing, torturous, hateful ways. I was so angry, so humiliated, so hungry that I did what any hot-blooded little five-year-old child would do.

I turned around and punched the living daylights out of her. I got her right in her gut with all the strength my tiny little body could muster.

And a week later, Sister Conrad up and died of a heart attack.

We found out at chapel, and when my classmates heard the news, several of them turned to me and made choking sounds, or drew their index fingers across their throats in a slicing motion. “You killed Sister Conrad,” boy whispered to me.

The idea that I killed Sister Conrad left me in a tizzy. Could I really have killed her? Was it possible? For days on end kids came up to me on the playground and called me the witch-killer, the nun-slayer. I could get no relief. I was marked.

My mother noticed something strange about my manner and after a few days she asked me about it. When I could hide my question no longer I blurted out, “Mom, did I kill Sister Conrad because I punched her?”

My mother drew me to her chest, stroking my hair, shaking her head. “No, baby,” she assured me, her voice soothing. “Sister Conrad was an old woman, and it was just her time to go. Now, you shouldn’t have punched her; that was a very bad thing to do. But you had nothing to do with her dying.”

I pulled away and looked up at my mother. “I didn’t?” She shook her head. Crestfallen, I turned away. “Darn.”

Drowning For Jesus: part 3 of a childhood memoir

Photo by: Kafka Pie

My inner ears are deformed, preventing water from draining out of them properly, causing many ear infections as a little girl. Swimming therefore terrified me, because a stint at the pool usually ended in pain and two weeks of amoxicillin.

If swimming frightened me, you can surely imagine what I thought of the idea of full body immersion baptism. I put my foot down.

“But I don’t wanna be baptized!” I cried. Even saying the words, I felt slightly like a traitor. Jesus, after all, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried, and I was throwing a tantrum over spending five minutes in a holy wading pool. But traitorous or not, I held my ground: Jesus did not have to suffer two weeks of amoxicillin.

“Don’t you want to be born again, baby? Like in the Bible?” My mother’s eyes were pleading.

“I don’t like swimming,” I whimpered.

“It won’t be like going swimming,” my mother explained for the hundredth time. “You’ll plug your nose, fold your arms over your chest, and the minister will dunk you under for just a few seconds and then we’ll be done. I promise you it won’t hurt your ears.”

I sniveled and shook my head defiantly.

“You can explain it til your blue in the face,” LaVerne said reasonably. “but it won’t make any difference. If you want to hear the end of it, offer a B-R-I-B-E.”

Cutting my eyes sideways, I asked, “What’s a ‘bribe’?” mostly to remind LaVerne that I was 8, not 4, and perfectly capable of spelling single-syllable words.

My mother heaved a sigh. “After the baptism,” she said slowly, “I’ll buy you a Cabbage Patch doll, okay?”

After a moment’s consideration, I nodded, satisfied. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for a Cabbage Patch doll. My mother considered the matter closed and we didn’t discuss the upcoming ordeal any further.

Years later, when asked why she didn’t bother to discuss the baptism with my brother, my mother would recount a story from when he was three years old. We were at a public pool with some of my mother’s friends, I in the shallow end playing with little kids, my mom and her friend dangling their feet in the deep end, my brother somewhere in the background playing with toys.

At the far end of the pool, a large man cannon balled into the water, causing an enormous splash: women screamed for fear of the ruin of their carefully coiffed ’dos, and children broke out in uproarious laughter and applauds. I suppose it was this reaction that my brother simply couldn’t resist.

My mother says that as she sat on the edge of the pool, she saw a shadow on the water, and noticed something flying over the top of her head. Next thing she knew, my brother was flapping wildly in the pool, heading bobbing dangerously under the water’s surface. He couldn’t swim of course — he just hadn’t known that at the time. My mother jumped into the water to save him, dragging him out coughing and gasping. He threw his arms around her neck and said, “Let’s do that again!” My brother, it seemed, had no fear of water.

The baptism was held on a Tuesday night. My mother was all nerves and excitement, as all three of us were to be baptized in the pool together. “Hurry up and get dressed you guys,” she said. “We have to be at Church on the Way in thirty minutes.”

My brother tugged on my shirt. “On the way to where?” he asked.

I shrugged. I had often wondered the same thing. “On the way to Toys R Us, I guess,” I said. “Mom said she’d buy me a Cabbage Patch afterwards.”

“What?” The unfairness of the situation did not escape his five-year-old mind. “She didn’t promise me anything!”

“That’s because you didn’t have to be bribed,” I said smugly, pleased to be able to use my new word.

My brother turned angrily to our mother. “I want to be bribed!” But she ignored him and shuffled us to our rooms to finish dressing.

An hour later, we were dressed in our white baptismal garments, standing on the edge of the water. Hundreds of people sat in the pews watching the ceremony. The minister led the three of us into the tank of warm water. I felt calm. My mother was right: there was nothing to be afraid of.

In fact, we were so comfortable in the water that my brother started dog paddling around the baptismal tank. Several people in the front rows snickered. My mother, mortified, trailed after my brother and yanked him to her side. “This is Jesus’s water,” she said sharply under her breath. He scowled, but stood still. We both knew better than to incur our mother’s wrath.

My mother was dunked first. I went second: it was quick, just like I’d been promised. But when my brother’s turn came, my mother paid for not having explained the process to him, for no sooner did the minister dunk my brother under water that he started flapping his arms and kicking wildly, splashing water everywhere.

His little head broke to the surface and he gasped loudly, “I’M DROWNING! I’M DROWNING! HELP! HELP!” He was crying and screaming, little body thrashing about in the water. In his terror, he’d forgotten that the water only came to his shoulders: if he’d just put his feet down he would have been just fine.

My mother collected my brother in her arms, too embarrassed to look at the minister. I thought she was going to fall through the floor when my brother wailed, “I don’t wanna be born again! I was born just fine the first time! That’s why babies cry when they’re born, you drown them! I don’t want to drown for Jesus!”

We left the church that night in sobriety, but we arrived home with a Cabbage Patch doll and a bagful of Transformers in tow. As we sat on the living room floor ripping open our bribes, my brother proclaimed, “I love Church on the Way to Toys r Us.” My mother sighed, withdrawn and defeated. I don’t think it was the experience she had hoped for.

{Note: As it turns out, Church on the Way is so named because it is on Sherman Way in Van Nuys, California, not because it is on the way to Toys R Us though, to my mother’s shame, it often happened that the one followed the other.) 

Speaking In Tongues: part 2 of a childhood memoir

photo credit: cmd-p.com

My mother was a deeply religious woman. She was what most people would call a fundamentalist Christian. She believed in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord.

And how.

But she especially believed in Hell, and she even more especially believed that my brother and I were headed straight for it because of our latest shenanigans. So she decided to call an intervention, and for an intervention, she required the assistance of her best friend, LaVerne. She dialed her number on the kitchen phone.

“LaVerne? Oh, I’m so glad you’re home. It’s Shirley,” my mother said, phone cord wrapped around her fingers. My mother’s name is Shirley. Anybody familiar with lat 1970’s TV sitcoms can understand why my brother and I found their friendship particularly amusing “You’ll never believe what Amber and Carleton were doing. Last night, I found them outside worshipping idols.”

She didn’t bother to mention that we were only pretending to worship idols. I guess it was all the same to her.

“I’m bringing them over to your place,” she said after a few moments. “You said you wanted Hassan to be baptized; well I think my kids need it, too. They can all receive the Lord together, praise God. What do you think?”

After exchanging quick looks at each other, my brother and I ran to the back of the house to pack up our things as quickly as possible. Hassan had a Nintendo.

It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at LaVerne’s house. She was standing on the porch waiting for us, her long black hair tied in a dramatic ponytail away from her face. She had slender cat eyes, and dark skin. I always thought she looked very exotic, and not at all like a crazy fundamentalist Christian, which just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover. Her little boy, Hassan, was playing with a Tonka trunk at her feet. He was my brother’s age.

The women went inside, and my brother and I knelt down on the porch with Hassan. “What kind of candy did your mom get?” I asked. LaVerne always bought huge bags of candy when my brother and I came over. I think it was a bribe of some sort, though I was never sure what she was getting out of the deal.

“Skittles,”he said, throwing the Tonka truck into the dirt. “We have to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, and tomorrow we’ll all go get baptized.”

I sighed, stretching my legs out in front of me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior; I went to a Lutheran school and I believed in God and everything. But if we had to do all this tonight, it meant we wouldn’t have time to play Kid Nicky on the Nintendo, and I was really hoping to make it to the next level. ““What do we have to do to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior?” I asked.

“I accept!” my brother said. He stood up and opened the screen door. Sticking his head inside and taking a deep breath, he shouted, “I ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS MY SAVIOR CAN WE PLAY KID NICKY NOW AND EAT THE SKITTLES?”

Two voices boomed back at us simultaneously. “NO!”

My brother let the screen door slam shut, and Hassan patted him on the shoulder. “I already tried that before you got here,” he said. “Let’s get started on the Skittles.”

LaVerne and Hassan lived alone in a big house in East Los Angeles. His father was a musician of some sort, though he wasn’t around much now that he and LaVerne were divorced. Hassan had a big room with lots of toys and a television. For some reason, he wasn’t allowed to keep the Nintendo in his room; it was hooked up to the TV in his mother’s room, where our moms were currently holed up, plotting the salvation of our eternal souls. But we managed to get hold of the bag of Skittles.

We poured the candy into a huge plastic bowl, and began shoveling the colorful taffy pieces into our mouths. We weren’t sure how much time we had before our indoctrination, so we had to use our time wisely.

Half the bowl of Skittles was gone when LaVerne and Shirley called us into the living room. We brought the candy with us.

Our moms were seating cross legged on either side of an open King James Bible, wearing very solemn but peaceful expressions. Following suit, we sat in a semicircle around the Bible. My brother and I guarded the bowl of candy between us.

“Hassan,” LaVerne said, “I want to help you accept Jesus as your personal savior. Part of that means learning a special language that only you and God know. It’s a language that you can use in your prayers, a language that you might not understand when you speak it, but which will fill you with a sense of peace and joy when the words come out of your mouth. Are you ready to receive the words of the Lord, Hassan?”

She was talking about speaking in tongues. I knew what that was because although my mother’s church didn’t take to such nonsense, my father was known to start speaking in tongues involuntarily in the car on the way to school some mornings. His whole body would break out in goosebumps, and he’d start prattling, “Ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicarinamm hosaiah.” As creepy and completely insane as it was, it was actually very pretty, not unlike poetry. The words were melodic, and my father seemed so enlightened when the spirit came over him.

Unfortunately, the spirit came over him one day when a Jewish friend of mine was in the car with us. She never rode in the car with my dad again.

Hassan shrugged his shoulder. “Sure, I love Jesus,” he said, standing up. LaVerne stood up as well, and placed her hands on Hassan’s head.

“Oh Father,” she said, her body swaying, “this your earthly son calls to you, to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He requests the words of the spirit be given to him, oh Lord. Lord, speak to your child. Give him your words!”

LaVerne looked down at Hassan, and after a moment said, “Did the Lord speak to you, baby?”

Hassan looked up at his mother and nodded. ““Yes.”

Tears sprang to LaVerne’s eyes. “What did He say, baby? What did He say?”

After a moment’s pause, Hassan answered, “Skittelia.”

“Skittelia?” LaVerne repeated. Hassan nodded.

My brother and I exchanged glances at each other, trying very hard not to laugh. The Lord, like Hassan, apparently very much liked candy coated taffy bites, and had chosen the name of the candy to be his secret language of the spirit.

Skillelia sounded nothing like ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicarinamm hosaiah. Either my dad or Hassan was lying, and somehow, I didn’t think it was my dad.

The Egypt Game: a childhood memory

Photo credit: Danuv

When I was in elementary school, I read a wonderful novel called The Egypt Game. It was about five children who decided to recreate ancient Egypt on a piece of abandoned property, and how the gods of the game integrated themselves into the children’s everyday lives in spooky and entertaining ways.

I fell in love with the book, and knew immediately that I wanted to create ancient Egypt for myself, because I would certainly be a very fetching priestess for Isis. I looked very good in sparkly gold eyeshadow.

My baby brother and I were deeply imaginative. In fact, my brother was so imaginative that my mother wasn’t always entirely sure that he was altogether sane. He went through a phase of his life where he would gather very small objects of roughly equal size, such as pebbles or pennies, and would confine himself to a corner, cross legged, tossing the objects around on the floor, rocking back and forth, and making strange sound effects. If a kid did that kind of thing today, doctors would call him autistic or somesuch nonsense and dope him up with drugs until that silliness was knocked right out of him. But in those days, folks just figured it was kids being kids. My mother thought it was strange, and it was, but eventually my brother grew out of it and that was that.

I say all that to say that the fact my brother and I owned nothing at all that even remotely resembled idols from ancient Egypt did nothing at all to deter us from our steadfast determination to blaspheme against Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior right there in my mother’s backyard.

“We don’t have any statues of Isis or Anubis,” I pointed out thoughtfully, pretending I knew what I was talking about. The foreign names felt good on my tongue, and made me sound intelligent. “But we got those two empty water cooler jugs and some art supplies in the garage. We could paint ‘em up and stick some jewels on them, and then we could just pretend they’re ancient gods from Egypt, okay?”

My brother was two and half years younger than I, which made him about five at the time, and he did just about anything I told him. He nodded his head, having absolutely no idea what I was saying, and helped me lug the oversized plastic containers into the backyard.

We must have painted and glued for hours before I was satisfied with how our makeshift gods looked. Painstakingly, we draped our mother’s red, silk Christmas tree skirt over a couple of overturned cardboard boxes for an altar, and set the freshly decorated five gallon jugs on top.

“Those look great!” I exclaimed, stepping back to admire our handiwork. My brother silently agreed, lifting up the crocheted afghan he held in his left hand.

“Oh, right,” I said, turning him around and draping the blanket over his shoulders. I took a safety pin from my pocket and secured the blanket in a cape-like fashion around his neck. I don’t know why we decided that ancient Egyptians wore capes like Superman, but it seemed right at the time. And, really, if you can use a painted water cooler jug for the goddess Isis, I suppose nothing is completely out of the question.

We arranged ourselves around the altar, and I raised my hands to the sky, throwing my head back melodramatically. I summoned all the serious I had at my disposal, along with the biggest, most impressive words in my vocabulary. I had forgotten the gold eye glitter; fancy words would have to suffice.

“O wondrous and inimitable lady Isis! We are your humble servants, born to honor and serve thee!”Ancient Egyptians certainly spoke in Elizabethan English. If it was good enough for the Hebrews, it was definitely good enough for a priestess of Isis, even if I didn’t have any idea what “inimitable” meant.

My little brother raised his arms, too, and said, “Amen!” I didn’t think it was right to say “amen”to an Egyptian god, but I didn’t know what else to say, so I repeated him. “Amen!”

We got down on our knees and began prostrating ourselves before these plastic water bottle idols. We managed a few “hallelujahs” and quite a few “amens” before my mother appeared before us, arms crossed angrily across her chest, face twisted in a fury.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Common sense fled me. I knew what I was about to say was the wrong answer, but I couldn’t help myself. A good, believable lie escaped me. My only option was the truth.

“We’re worshiping Isis and Anubis like the ancient Egyptians did,” I said.

My mother breathed in deeply, trying to keep her voice level. My mother could be quite a spectacle when she got angry. “We are Christians,”she hissed. “And you know that! Thou shalt have no other gods before me, remember? What are you thinking? And bringing your baby brother into your heathenry? Get your ass in the house and don’t let me ever catch you worshiping idols again! Really! What’s gotten into you lately?”

Forlorn, I unclasped my brother’s cape and followed him into the house. The paint hadn’t even dried on our idols before we were forced to abandon them to the twilight. The next morning, they were gone.

It was about that time my mother decided my brother and I needed to be baptized.