Chapter One

My brother was born on a cold and gray Indiana day in February, 1974. I was three years old at the time of his birth. My heart swelled the first moment I laid eyes on his red cheeks and chubby body.  I wanted to hold him and care for him constantly.  When he smiled, I smiled.  When he laughed, I laughed and when he cried, I cried with him.  Over the years we would cry together often, we would cry for each other, with each other and we would cry when we were separated by circumstances out of our control.

The first time I truly remember my mom, the very moment in which I can clearly see her face, was on a steamy, three shower a day, kind of morning in 1975. I was four years old. My brother, one at the time, was sleeping peacefully in his crib.  My father was working the night shift and due home soon.

I was standing next to my mother’s bed, something was wrong and I needed her. I was having a hard time staying awake. I wanted her to know that I had just eaten several raw hot dogs. I needed to tell her that before that, I had eaten the entire bottle of baby aspirin she left open on the counter.

Her eyes were closed tightly.  Perhaps she was trying desperately to shut out the misery of having gotten pregnant at seventeen.  That at twenty-one and in her prime, she was saddled with two young kids that had robbed her of any chance of a modeling career, college or just the simple joys of her young twenties.  Her mouth was agape, the snoring was impossibly loud and no matter how much I pleaded with her, she wouldn’t wake up.  Giving up, I laid down on the floor next to her bed and drifted off to sleep.

My father returned home shortly after. He saw the empty pill bottle first, then my lifeless body lying next to my sleeping mother’s bed.  He ran to me and lifted me off the floor.  He reached for the phone and began dialing 911 as he shook my mother, yelling at her until she finally awoke.

It is bizarre what you remember.  To this day I have flashbacks of the emergency room doctors saying over and over while pumping my stomach, “Do you like Tweety or Sylvester better?”  I was staring at them, wondering who they were, trying desperately to make sense of what was going on, and they just kept asking over and over, “Come on sweetie, do you like Tweety or Sylvester best?  Stay with us. We need you to talk to us.”  Finally I conjured the energy to respond.

 “Tweety”, was my pained reply. My throat was aching from the large tube used to pump my stomach and there were tubes in my nose to help me breathe. I don’t remember anything after that. 

I suppose shortly after, they finally allowed me to sleep off the trauma.  I imagine my father taking me home and putting me to bed, walking by my mother, who was caring for my younger brother, and looking at her in disgust. I can feel her shame as she took in his hatred.  How she must have hated herself, but seeing it from someone else, too much to bare.  Their miserable marriage crashing in on them and in the face of my father’s blame and disgust, my mother’s overwhelming guilt and anguish found someone else to blame.

She came up with a plan. One that would define our long and tortured relationship over the years.  As my birth had been the cause of all her forgotten dreams and promises, this too was to be my burden.  She would calmly and with conviction explain to anyone that would listen how horrible it was for her that her four year old daughter was so jealous of the beautiful baby boy she brought home from the hospital a year ago that she tried to commit suicide.  “Oh I am not making this up,” she would say.  “She told me so herself.”

Though I find it doubtful that anyone believed her story, she believed it and that was enough for her.  It assuaged her guilt, made her feel good about herself and allowed her to wake up another day and suffer through this life that had ambled so far from the dreams she had for herself, she didn’t know who she saw in the mirror anymore.