Pink Tootsie: Portrait of a Drug Addict

CHAPTER 1

THE FUNDAMENTAL YEARS

Born on March 23, 1967, I am the third child of a twenty-six-year-old woman and a twenty-two-year-old man who met in California on Spring Break 1958. When I was ten months old, my mother and father divorced due to my father’s drug addiction and my mother’s inability to handle her own emotional problems.

My story begins with my first memories, which depict the prevailing mood of my upbringing. My earliest impressions of wildlife were of a group of pigeons owned by a man in the apartment above us. Although, the pigeon I remember most was the one which had been smashed by a car in the alleyway, its guts and blood oozing from its flattened body. I still remember the smell of rancid decay as I went to see it up close. I was angry with the man upstairs for not caring for his dead bird. He let it stay there, rotting for weeks, until its remains became a part of the asphalt.

Chaos was a constant in this small, inner city town just outside of Chicago. We lived in an apartment building, on Rockwell, which was full of low-income tenants and single women with children. Across the alley from our apartment was convalescent home. On hot summer nights, when our windows were kept open, moans and occasional screams could be heard as clearly as if they were coming from the other room. If the sweltering heat didn’t keep me awake, my imagination of what was happening next door would.

One afternoon, there was a commotion, and I was drawn to the window facing the front of our building. Looking down, I saw one of the neighborhood boys had put his arm through the plate glass door of our building.

Blood. Screaming. He received over one hundred stitches, inside and out. The next day, when he went out to ride his Big Wheel, he busted them open and had to be rushed back to the hospital.

My mother worked every day to provide for us, hence we had to be watched by babysitters. Numerous incidents happened while we were at various babysitters’ houses. My mother went through at least seven of them. Number one was when my mom came by to find my sister playing in the middle of the street. Number two hit me for pulling on their dog’s wiener. Number three moved away, leaving number four, who we discovered after the first interview, lived in utter filth. Number five was our depressed, alcoholic neighbor. Number six was the mother of a little boy named Wolfie. She was a German immigrant’s wife.

While with babysitter number two, I was playing with all the other children until, suddenly, everyone was in a frenzy, flocking around me. A toy box lid had fallen onto my index finger, crushing the tip beyond recognition. I was rushed to the hospital, where my mother met us. The surgeon decided to put three stitches on the tip of my tiny finger to close the hole. As I got older, my finger became disfigured due to the utter disregard the doctor had for the aesthetic quality of his work. I now lovingly refer to it as my boo-boo finger.

Another vivid memory I have of our time in the small Chicago apartment was of the afternoon my older sister fell directly on top of a sharp stick, which impaled her kneecap. Screaming, blood, chaos, and then my mother’s boyfriend picked her up and carried her away.

My final babysitter was my mother’s live-in boyfriend, who had ulterior motives for wanting to babysit me. For the first four years of my life, I was plagued by a nightmare of a hand reaching over the bars of my crib to touch me. It was much later in life when I learned this hand was attached to my mother’s live-in boyfriend. He would restrain my arms by my sides and force an object in my tiny mouth, causing it to spread beyond capacity. I learned to detach my mind and my senses, so it was only happening to my body. This experience was the catalyst of my downward spiral.

At two and a half, I decided I’d had enough and declared to my mother that I was running away from home. My mother, thinking this was cute, asked me where I was running away to. I replied that I was going to go to Wolfie’s house.

Thinking I was joking, my mother let me go just to see what I would do. I got my coat and shoes, opened the apartment door, walked down three flights of stairs to the building’s main entrance, and headed out the door. One direction was a quiet, neighborhood residential street. The other was a very busy main street, which so happened to be the direction of Wolfie’s house. As my mother watched, I headed out to start anew. Seeing I had, in fact, gone in the right direction to Wolfie’s house, toward the main street, my mother ran after me and brought me back home. I somehow knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

These are the memories and experiences in which my foundation was built on, the precious, formative, toddler years, a time of molding, emulating, learning, and observing. Some say they are the most important years in a child’s life. I tend to agree with them.

When I was four and a half, my mom decided she’d had enough of our rough life in Chicago. She packed up our little apartment, and with the help of my uncle, we drove back to her hometown. Having grown up in the small mountain town, my mother was ready to return to where her family had lived for decades.

Uncle Jo showed up in an oversized U-Haul truck, packed all our belongings into it, and we left Chicago forever. I remember feeling a sense of bewilderment mixed with a sense of relief and adventure. We stopped along the way and took snapshots of the gigantic sign which read: WELCOME TO OUR COLORFUL STATE.

I was filled with hope by that sign.

CHAPTER 2

RUDE AWAKENINGS

My mother quickly found a new apartment, and we moved in almost immediately. It was a two-bedroom, one bath, on the first floor of the building. It had a large eat-in kitchen, and a back door which lead to the parking lot. I was thrilled to be able to walk out my door and be outside.

Most of the buildings surrounding us were two-story apartments. There were children of all ages, and I quickly befriended a girl in the next apartment building over. She and I would play and scheme. We would play a game where we would take turns getting into the drying machine in the laundry room and the other one would pretend to get the other’s mother. One day, when it was her turn to get into the dryer, I really did go get her mother. Consequently, my friend was punished and not allowed to go out and play or even leave her room for a week.

The next day, she called me over to her bedroom window, which was located on the bottom level of the building. When I looked in, she was sprawled out naked on her bed and wanted me to see. Seeing her naked excited me. It fed a hunger which I was unaware of until that experience. She would pose for me, and it made me feel powerful. Although I wanted to see her, I thought she was pathetic for doing it. I played along until I had my fill. Eventually, I went to get her mother, and she was punished again.

These sorts of experiences were common in my life. I was consumed with controlling things. I would catch neighborhood dogs, lure them into a play yard, and leave them there for hours. I would trap insects in glass jars and keep them there until they died. I would only play with kids I could control, that I felt were weaker than me. I would allow them to color in my coloring books using the colors I chose for the pictures.

At the apartment complex, I befriended a Saint Bernard named Bernice. She belonged to one of our neighbors. I spent hours with the dog to get her to trust me. When Bernice finally did, I took enormous pride in being the only one who could get near her. That spring, her owners bred her and she had a litter of puppies. I spent days on end with them.

One afternoon, I was feeling mischievous, and to prove my superiority, I allowed a neighborhood boy in the yard with the dog and her puppies. I assured him it was okay, knowing she would bite him. The boy, trusting what I’d said, reached out to pet one of the pups and, of course, Bernice bit him. Terrified, the boy ran screaming out of the yard and back home. Feeling quite pleased with my show of superiority over the boy, I didn’t give a second thought to his well-being.

The manager of our apartment building also had a dog named Luke. Luke was a beautiful border collie who was kept penned up all day in the fenced play area in the backyard. He had a terrible habit of jumping over the four- foot- high chain-link fence and getting his leash caught there. The whole day, Luke would be dangling by his hind feet, barely touching the grass on the other side. I would constantly have to unlatch his collar, guide him back around into the pen, and reattach his chain to his collar.

One afternoon, I came home from school to find Luke hanging himself over the fence once again. I went over to him and started to release his collar when I heard our manager yell, Hey, what are you doing?

I just kind of looked at him, dumbfounded, not really knowing what to say because, after all, he was the manager and this was his dog. I guess that technically I wasn’t supposed to be with Luke without permission.

He stormed over to me and said, Don’t unleash him! He has to learn his lesson not to jump the fence anymore!

As he was yelling at me to stop, he unlatched Luke, picked him up by the choke chain, raised him two feet off the ground, and began to carry him. Luke frantically kicked and gasped for air. Terror wildly ran through his eyes as he convulsed and whirled around in midair. The manager slowly walked around the entire length of the yard, Luke dangling from his hands. Then he walked all the way to where Luke’s chain had been staked into the ground before releasing his choke hold on the defenseless dog’s throat.

He dropped him, hit him, scolded him, and re-chained him in the same spot where I knew he would jump over again tomorrow.

I was beyond repulsion, beyond hatred, I felt homicidal. Exasperated, the only thing I could do was scream, I HATE YOU! with all my might. Then, I ran inside to my room and cried myself into oblivion. Later in the evening, the manager came to my mom’s apartment to explain what had happened. He tried to get me to listen to his apology about what was best for his dog, even though it seemed harsh.

I couldn’t even look at him; I just wanted him to die.

Most evenings, my mom, sister, and I would wind down for the day in front of the television, which became our nightly ritual. Before that though, Mom always made sure we had dinner as a family. After dinner, my sister and I would do the dishes, Mom would put away the leftovers, and then we had about an hour before we had to get ready for bed.

During this family time, I subconsciously began to cry for help. I stopped eating. No matter what my mom put in front of me, nothing would make it past my lips. In the beginning, my mom just thought I had a stomach ache. However, after the first week, she started becoming desperate. She tried everything she could think of to get me to eat, from playing airplane to forcing me to sit at the table until ten o’clock at night.

Nothing worked. I was losing weight rapidly, and my mom was powerless to do anything about it. Eventually, I did decide to eat, but it had nothing to do with my mother’s coercion. It had more to do with the fact I felt like I was being punished for not eating as opposed to being cared for.

One warm, summer evening, we were disturbed by a man dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. He was in his mid-twenties and had dark, shaggy hair. He looked scruffy and unkempt, and he walked right into our apartment. My mom, in utter shock, asked, What are you doing in here?

The man just sort of laughed and said, Oh, I’m sorry. I must have come into the wrong apartment. He looked at all of us and turned around and walked back out.

Not more than fifteen minutes later, the man came back and tried to open the door. My mother had locked the screen after he left, but left the front door open to allow what little breeze there was to blow through the apartment. He spoke through the screen, saying, Look, I’m really sorry, but can I use your phone? I can’t find my friend’s apartment. My mom informed the man she didn’t have a phone, and sat paralyzed in her chair. He replied, Okay, thanks anyway. Sorry to bother you again.

When my mom was certain the man was gone, she got up from her chair, closed the front door, despite the heat, and put a chair under the door handle to brace it in place. She shut off the television and asked us kids to go to bed. I had never quite witnessed my mom in such a state of alarm. Vulnerable, so unsure of herself, so scared. It frightened me. I was used to a sort of iron maiden mother, one not prone to weakness. We never saw her cry. We never saw her fail. We never saw her as anything but our leader and our boss. She was the kind of woman who didn’t need a man. She made us feel protected, and she wore a condescending half-smile anytime she spoke to less superior people, which turned out to be almost everyone. She was the breadwinner, the dictator, and the artist all in one.

At that moment, I became aware of how unguarded we really were, how exposed my mother really was. It became apparent to me how much my father’s presence would have defused the situation. Here we were three females, completely without armor, protection, or camouflage. My guard went up that day. A special sixth sense was born. I learned later that my mother’s reaction was due to her many personal experiences of abuse, and this man’s actions had brought them all back to the surface.

It turns out I inherited her predisposition to attract abuse. All our lives, my mom and I were both assaulted by countless strange men with sick, sexual tendencies.

The evenings were my mother’s time of solitude. She now had a great job with a prestigious company. She also had begun taking night classes at the state college. Quite often she would stay up until the wee hours of the morning painting, drawing, or reading. My mother was an innately talented artist. She once drew a picture of a rhinoceros using only pencil dots. I would stare at that piece of art and wonder how tiny little dots up close could look exactly like a wild beast from two steps back. She painted a watercolor series of two young girls sitting on a hillside covered in wild flowers. The two girls symbolized my sister and me, and the fields of flowers were from my mom’s childhood.

Often, I would wake up in the middle of the night and stand in the doorway, watching her. I could hear Joan Baez playing softly on the stereo, my mother consumed by her painting, while smoke from her cigarette wafted up, creating a melancholy fog all around her.

This was the image of my mother I fell in love with. This was the woman I wanted to be. Unfortunately, I could never meet this woman, because the instant she knew I was there, she would morph back into mother/father/boss, and the magic would all but disappear.

CHAPTER 3

THE FAMILY FACTOR

The move brought us close to my mother’s side of the family. Within a few blocks of each other lived my Uncle Jo, Aunt Jan, and their three children. Then there was Aunt Verna, Uncle Mick, as they were not married, and Aunt Verna’s two children from her first marriage, Bev and Mary.

Bev and I were one week apart in age, and we became thick as thieves. We did everything together. We were in the same class at school. We shared our birthday parties. We even dressed the same. We were together all the time.

One year, Aunt Verna and my mom decided to let us take tap dance lessons together. I felt so special. Not only had I gotten a shiny, brand-new pair of patent leather tap shoes, but I also received extra attention from the adults around me, especially my mother.

Bev’s home life was much worse than mine. We were always afraid of Uncle Mick. He had a terrible temper, and we avoided him at all costs. He never laid a hand on me, although I knew he regularly beat my cousins. He kept a collection of snakes down in the basement where the girls slept. Often, he fed puppies and kittens to his snakes right in front of the girls.

He was a live wire, and we were hypersensitive not to make too much noise when we spent the night. In the mornings, we would play in the basement, and fear would grip us when we’d hear him descending the steps. He would ask us if we’d heard my aunt walking on the kitchen floor above us. If we answered, No, he would say it was because we were being so loud we couldn’t hear her. If we said, Yes, he would say it was because she was stomping on it to shut us up. Either way, the girls got beat. I think he didn’t beat my sister and me because he knew we would tell our mother, and he didn’t want to alarm the rest of the family as to what was going on inside their house.

Uncle Mick always hid behind the word of God, quoting from the Bible, making us read verses before bed. He and Aunt Verna made Bev and I go door to door, asking people if they had been saved, and as we got older, the mental abuse became unbearable. He preached, we were putting God on the shelf if we watched a scary movie or forgot to do our readings. Bev and her sister were continuously abused by Uncle Mick, and Aunt Verna turned a blind eye. She herself had many psychological issues herself, and was obviously being abused by him as well. Throughout our childhood, Bev and I partook in inappropriate sexual behavior together. Perpetuated by my abuse from my mother’s ex-boyfriend and Bev’s abuse by her stepfather, we acted out many sexual scenarios. My need for sexual attention went far beyond the normal five-year-old childhood experimentation. I became obsessed with wanting to take role-playing further and further.

I could not be with Bev without needing her sexually. No matter how bad and ashamed I felt afterwards, my need to do it was more powerful. Our sex acts filled a deviant need in me which stemmed from my experiences with mother’s ex-boyfriend.

One afternoon, at my grandmother’s house, when we were no older than five or six, Bev and I were in the garage role-playing. My mother came in looking for us. We were both completely naked and doing inappropriate things. My mother remained perfectly calm, explaining how this behavior was inappropriate for children our age and we should not do it anymore. The severity of the situation was, obviously, completely lost on her. We were acting out sexually because we had been, or were being, sexually abused.

Bev eventually did put an end to the behavior between us. Somehow, she was strong enough to stop and would reject me. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I felt horrendous grief and guilt about it, but, somehow, it also validated me. When Bev refused it, I was not only invalidated, I was rejected by the most important person in my life. She made me feel dirty, naughty, and wrong. She made me feel that it was entirely my fault and that something was very wrong with me because I couldn’t stop.

I carried that weight around on my shoulders until I was an adult. As a child, I would wake up in the morning and have a moment of peace. Then I would remember what I was and what I had done. These thoughts of my indiscretions would come crashing down on me, weighing down my heart, my spirit, and my worth, into nothingness. I was bad. I was dirty. I was unclean, unwanted, and undeserving.

Bev and I could hold on to our friendship throughout our preteens, although being around her amplified my feelings of worthlessness. I still loved and cared about her greatly. Eventually, Bev and her family moved out of the neighborhood. After that, I only saw them at family functions.

In her early teens, Bev was remanded into the custody of the judicial system. The abuse in Bev’s home had been reported to child services. The system put Bev into a foster family. Aunt Verna eventually gave up custody of her children. However, she stayed with Uncle Mick, and remains with him to this very day.

The emotional scars left by my relationship with my aunt, uncle, and cousins haunted me throughout my teens and twenties. I was unable to experience life without guilt, without shame, without remorse. I searched for things and people to make me forget, if even for a moment.

Desolate Corridors

Meek Vibrations

Prone to Love

And to Hate

Wake to Realize

The only Answer

Is Faith

(Year unknown)

The heart is a

Fragile organ

Only to be tossed

Around by instability

7/14/1985

CHAPTER 4

KEEPING UP WITH

THE JONES’

Amid my struggle, at age nine, my mom moved us to a new apartment closer to where she worked. I felt the possibility that the change might grant me some relief.

I was wrong.

Here I searched for an escape from my torment. My home from the outside looked like a normal family. It consisted of a divorcee and her two daughters, but it was a prison of depression and shame. We didn’t do anything as a family. We never once went out to dinner, on a vacation, rented movies, went to an amusement park, or even had a picnic.

My mother always wanted us to look like everybody else. When we took our only family excursion to the grocery store on Saturdays, she made us dressed impeccably. Little did everybody know these clothes were found rummaging through thrift stores. The three of us would ride the city bus to the grocery store, and then again back home. We would only get enough groceries to fit into three bags, one light (for me), one medium (for my sister), and one heavy (for my mom).

The façade humiliated me. I knew we were just lying to everybody. We were not a happy family. We had no joy, no hopes, and no dreams. My mother did what she had to do for us, and nothing more. She was the breadwinner, not the caregiver. She didn’t know how to nurture, she only knew how to provide.

My mother once attempted to make a dentist appointment for me. I was ten. She instructed me where to stand and wait for the bus. She explained to me which numbered bus to get on and which stop to tell the driver to stop at. This seemed simple enough to my mom, but to me it was a nightmare.

As I was waiting at the bus stop, I noticed all the buses that had zeroes, which was the number I was supposed to get on, said Downtown, which was where I was supposed to go, but they also had other destinations listed, which confused me. I was so terrified of getting on the wrong bus that I didn’t get on any of them. My mother didn’t seem to understand why this was so difficult for me, but I was just too young to decide which bus was the right bus. I was terrified to ask the bus drivers if it was the right bus, and everyone else at the bus stop seemed to know exactly where they were going and exactly how to get there. I never made it to the dentist, and my mother never took the time off work to take me, ever, in my life.

Around this same time, my constant stress and guilt manifested itself through my digestive tract. If I wasn’t constipated, I had diarrhea. I had to create ways of coping with this chronic problem, and some of my solutions oftentimes caused me to bleed a bit. One day I looked down into the toilet after using it to see that and it was full of blood. No, I wasn’t becoming a woman, I was bleeding severely from my butt.

That morning, the bleeding was much worse than ever before. It was so much worse that I was forced to endure the humiliation of telling my mother about it. I thought surely, she would have to take me to the doctor, but to my surprise, she simply advised that I take some vitamin B and drink plenty of water. I felt like screaming, "MOTHER, I’M BLEEDING SEVERELY FROM MY BUTT! DO YOU THINK YOU COULD TAKE ME TO SEE A DOCTOR?"

Instead, I took the vitamin B and hoped the bleeding would eventually stop.

My sister and I were never taken to the doctor, never got yearly exams, never got our teeth cleaned, we never even had a flu shot. This fend for yourself motto was ingrained deep within me. I knew I had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, and nowhere to go for relief.

I found solace with animals. I acquired my first pet and named him Oscar. He was a stray cat I fed when he came around, and eventually he never left. One day at the grocery store I was with my mother and sister, my mom asked me to pick out some cat food. I was elated. The joy I felt was exquisite. Up to this point, my mother had not even allowed me to have a gerbil, and even though Oscar was not allowed in the house, this was her way of letting me know we could keep and take care of him. We set up a bed and a bowl for him in the laundry room, located between the two apartments upstairs. He would stay there at night and still be there in the morning when I woke up. The apartment we moved to was in a rural area where there were many fields and horse ranches. A small creek ran through a large field next to our apartment building. I would spend hours on end out there, catching crawdads and running after garter snakes. I built a small, makeshift tent out of tree branches an old blanket I found. Inside my fort, I felt invisible. I would go inside my tent and pretend I was the boy raised by wolves. One afternoon when I was playing in my forte, I found a dead baby bird. Its eyes were bulging, with a thin layer of blue skin covering them. I could see every vein in its body, but I wanted to see more.

I went inside the house, got one of my mother’s kitchen knives, and took it to my tent. There, I cut the bird open, examining each part. I felt a bit nauseated, and the smell was like raw chicken. After I was done with my examination, I dug a hole in the ground and buried the bird in a shallow grave. I went back inside the apartment and washed my hands and my mom’s kitchen knife. When I went back outside, I found one of the neighborhood cats prowling around my tent, trying to find the bird’s remains. I decided then I should burn the remains.

I went inside and found some matches, went back to my tent, and dug up the bird. I put sticks and leaves on top of the bird and lit the match. The pile ignited immediately. The fire roared up and caught part of the blanket on fire. I quickly ducked out of the tent and yanked the blanket free from the tree branches.

Fire engulfed the blanket within seconds, and my tent was no more. I stood there and watched the blaze until there was nothing left but smoldering ash. Later that evening, my mother was playing with my hair while we watched television. She leaned down against my long, blonde hair and inhaled deeply. Why does your hair smell like fire? she asked.

I had to think fast about my explanation. I lied, saying, The neighbors were burning leaves all day while I played outside. That was that. She believed me and never brought it up again.

Our neighbors to the north had a small stable area with two horses. I frequently filled my jacket with fresh grass from our lawn and took it for them to eat. The neighbor was a drunkard. He would go out to the barnyard and start beating the horses. One of them reared up, in a frenzy, and collided with the fence, breaking his leg. I kept my eyes on the stables, but never saw the man, or the horse, return after that day.

The surviving horse was average sized, with a light brown body and black tail and mane. I decided to name her April. We began a long courtship. Every chance I got, I would call her over to the fence and spend as much time as I could talking to her, feeding her, and petting her through the fence. Eventually, I felt confident enough to climb over the fence. I was careful not to alarm her and talked to her calmly the whole time. She just watched me in anticipation, waiting for her apple or whatever I had brought her that day.

After a few months, I was sure the owner either didn’t know about my visits, or just didn’t care. Each time I climbed the fence, I got more and more confident and went farther and farther into the stable yard. April had a big enough stable for just one horse. She would get bored, and I could hear her from my apartment calling out for me. She and I would play a game of hide-and-seek. I would go behind the stable and call her, then she would come charging around looking for me. We had a couple of close calls where she nearly trampled me, but it was all in good fun.

Sometimes I would climb the four-foot fence which separated the running yard and the stables. April would come right up to me and stand there. I would put one leg over her and keep one leg on the fence. She didn’t seem to mind at all what I was doing, but I could never get up enough courage to let go with the other leg. With no reins and no saddle, I knew if she had gotten too excited, I would be thrown and trampled. So, I remained content with our relationship the way it was.

On a cold autumn afternoon, I went to the laundry room to see Oscar. I found him lying in his bed, despite the fact the washer and dryer were going. Normally, Oscar would have darted out the moment a machine was turned on, but this afternoon he lay there without the will to even run. I ran back into the house, and alerted my mom that she had to come quickly, something was wrong with Oscar.

Her reaction both alarmed and surprised me. She went outside and saw Oscar lying there. She said we would call the veterinarian clinic and make an appointment. I realized then that my cat must be very sick. I was equally surprised by my mother’s willingness to take the animal to get help. I was never taken to the doctor unless I was about to lose a limb or something.

What she did then astounded me. She picked Oscar up and brought him into the house. Granted, we were only allowed to keep him in the bathtub until the appointment the next morning.

Early the next morning, we all got up, got dressed, and prepared to take Oscar to the vet. My mom didn’t own a car, nor did she know how to drive one, so, as usual, we were going to take the city bus. While we were carrying Oscar out of the bathtub and into the living room, he started having convulsions. Then his entire body went stiff. My mom, my sister, and I stood there in horror as he proceeded to vomit up blood.

My mom ordered us to look away. My sister ran screaming into the other room, and I turned and faced the wall.

I could hear these horrible, guttural moans coming from Oscar, and my mom’s sighs of anguish at what she was witnessing. After what seemed like an eternity, my mom announced that Oscar was gone.

My shock and horror was unlike anything I’d ever felt. My emptiness was immediate, my sorrow inconsolable. My mom went to great lengths to help me cope with my loss. She helped me dig a grave right outside my bedroom window so I could always watch over him.

The following spring, a beautiful ring of flowers miraculously grew in a perfect circle around his grave. My mother reassured me God was watching out for him and that brought me solace.

CHAPTER 5

DEVIANT BEHAVIORS

The move to our next apartment was a complete change for me. I hadn’t only moved away from my friends and family, I started a new school. This new school provided me with many distractions. It was here I experienced many firsts.

A couple of my friends and I would go into the girl’s bathroom and play passed out. The way we played was like this: one girl would stand behind, one girl would stand in front, and the one who was going to pass out was stationed in the middle. The middle girl would bend over, breathe in and out as fast as she could for about one minute and then hold her breath. At this point, the girl from behind would wrap both arms around her, squeezing as tight as possible, and if possible, lifting her off the ground. The middle girl would faint within seconds. The front girl was supposed to catch her.

The feeling of waking up after passing out was delicious. My head would be whirling, and it would take a few minutes for me to even remember where I was. Most kids were afraid to play, so eventually I ran out of helpers.

In fourth grade, students could partake in music class. I attended the introduction seminar with the rest of my class, and I left feeling an excitement I hadn’t felt before. I imagined myself as part of the music program, playing concerts for our parents and practicing after school. I excitedly went home and waited to tell my mother the good news. I explained all about practice and how we would take our instruments home with us. I announced to her I wanted to play the clarinet, and excitedly handed her the permission slip for her signature. She took a moment to read the permission slip, and then she looked down at me. She explained we had to pay to be part of the music program, and she simply couldn’t afford it.

The words coming out of her mouth were incomprehensible to me. She couldn’t possibly be saying I couldn’t be part of the music program. I