Those Who Teach Courage. Part One.

 

They were best friends.  She, awkward and pale with tousled brown hair and mouth full of large, wayward teeth.  Her bestie, caramel and statuesque with a headful of tiny and tightly wound ebony ringlets.  They had met the previous year, sharing the same class at school.  They shared a love for music and fashion.  Late 1970s funky town and funky prints.  In the small, southern California beach town they lived in she could walk the six blocks from the little house she shared with her mom…to the apartment that her bestie shared with her parents.  This was the era of sleep over parties, dress up fashion shows, and disco dreams.

Caramel because she came from a white mom, and a black dad.  The mom was striking, a hint of strawberry in her wavy hair.  Her dad was tall.  SO TALL.  If she stood next to her friend’s dad, the top of her head barely reached his belt line.  It wasn’t hard to believe that had been a basketball player, professional in some far-off country.  Was it Sweden? She wasn’t paying attention to any real details. 

A best friend is the best thing to have when you are in elementary school, inching towards pre-teen confusion.  Her own dad wasn’t far off…he lived just on the other side of town; but he was somehow inaccessible to her.  He “wasn’t the marrying kind” and travelled all the time for his work.  So, any dad was kind of “the dad” of the moment and sort of a novelty. Her best friend’s basketball dad was elusive and exotic, but nonetheless seemed at least present in his family’s life. 

When summer arrived that year, it was sleep overs every other night.  Both mothers worked full time.  The year prior, she had finally convinced her mom that she was old enough to stay home by herself during the daytime.  How she had HATED the string of babysitters and day cares she had attended from pre-school until then.  The whining worked.  Her mom had relented. This summer, she’d be staying home alone while mom was at work.  But there was a short list of rules (that she usually ignored while experimenting with the oven, cooking, and eating sugar straight out of the Tupperware container with a spoon.)  Until this bestie materialized…she spent hour upon hour watching TV.  Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeannie, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Alice, soap operas and game shows.  And Solid Gold of course.  Solid Gold was the stuff funky dreams were made of. 

Sleep overs turned into mornings roaming at the park in the center of town, wandering from her house to her friend’s apartment.  Looking back, there would never be that kind of freedom again.  The apartment had a car port with a cool shelf they could climb up, lounge on, and talk for hours.  The park had a hidden path behind the bushes that circled the entire park.  And the dreaded “Devil’s Path” adjacent to the street they both lived on was always a fun time. Devil’s Path was a long stretch where an old train track had been laid, at one point bringing some kind of rail traffic to the town.  Long abandoned, it no longer started or stopped anywhere useful, and the mile or so hard packed dirt path was a favorite area to explore, use as a short cut, or make mischief.

This morning, they had spent the night hanging out at her house and as they rolled out of bed late that lazy weekend morning…they walked from the house to the apartment.  Although they’d tried to call ahead – the phone was busy, maybe off the hook.  They skipped on the uneven sidewalks up the hill, and then down.  Within a few minutes they were climbing up to the second story apartment.

The door was unlocked…and they let themselves in.  The apartment was sparsely furnished and was quiet, too quiet.  Scanning the room, nothing really looked amiss.  Clearly, no one had gotten up for the day.  No apparent movement.  It was nearing lunch time and so it seemed odd that there were no smells or sounds coming from the small kitchen.  Glancing around the living room, the floorplan was one she knew well.  She had lived all over this small, but urban city.  Little two-bedroom apartments sharing one small bathroom and basically one living area slightly larger than a bedroom and a kitchenette off to the side.  Shag carpet and linoleum flooring.  This was the same type of apartment she’d grown up in.  You are either upstairs or downstairs.  Basically, the patch of concrete outside the front door is the yard.  The lack of interior space doesn’t really matter because the outside is your playground. 

The timeframe roughly 6 years before the McMartin Preschool molestation case just a few miles from her home, 8 years before the Richard Ramirez Night Stalker terror, and 10 years before the Los Angeles riots protesting the Rodney King’s police trial.  Those events would mold and teach her generation that you could not trust the adults to take care of you, that you weren’t even safe in your own bedroom, and that crowds could quickly turn from a party to a protest.  She and her best friend were innocent to the foreshadowing of these events as they tiptoed around the silent apartment.

The bedroom doors were on either side of the shared bathroom, with the walls of the living room creating a suggestion of a hallway.  As they peered into this area, they could see both bedroom doors ajar, and super tall dad draped across the bed.  Diagonal and face down, passed out, the longest legs and torso stretching on either side of his cotton underwear.   Bestie shot a glance her direction, with a single finger over her lips indicating fervently to remain very quiet. 

Both bedroom doors ajar allowing the daytime in, but the bathroom door in the center was closed tightly.   This created a shadow in the tiny hallway.  They crept towards the bathroom, intent on making it to her bestie’s room for a change of clothes.  As they approached the bathroom door, a weak sound called out and the door cracked open an inch. Her friend froze, intent on getting into the bathroom now.  It didn’t seem odd, when bestie motioned for her to stay in the hall, while she slipped into the bathroom to talk to her mom.  What was odd, was the thing that happened next.

She thought she might step into the bedroom not occupied with the sleeping basketball dad, to wait sitting on the bed…but hadn’t even taken a step before she heard this, noise.  “Mom-MEEEE.  Oh!  Mom-eee…”  It was an exclamation, a cry, a sob, a sound so full of emotion and sorrow, fear, sadness.  She had never heard a person make a sound like that.  Suddenly, she forgot where she was going. She couldn’t decide what that sound meant.  In that moment, carefree transformed into great concern…

It was likely just a minute or two she waited, but the anticipation and suspense multiplied her sense of time.  First the head full of ebony ringlets slipped out, and then her mom slowly emerged.  Her mother was bent over, as if in pain as she tiptoed through the doorway.  One side of her face was bruised; had she fallen in the tiny bathroom?  It wouldn’t be hard to slip, in these apartment bathrooms outstretched arms can touch each wall at the same time.  But as her friend’s mother fully emerged, the eye on the other side of her face told the tale that someone had inflicted this damage on her.

Mom was in a thin bathrobe and underwear.  The red, raw, eye socket wasn’t even turning into black or blue.  Obviously fresh, it looked like an abrasion, like an asphalt burn fresh and raw, but dry.  Stunned, her awkward, naïve, preteen brain finally understood that the passed-out man in the other bedroom had done this to her.  Slowly her brain was flooded with realizations:  She had locked herself in the bathroom to get away from him.  And now, they needed to tip toe around the apartment, get stuff, and get the hell out.