Sunny’s mother was another Bakersfield mother who frequently “took to bed.” The reason for this, Sunny explained, was that she often had a hangover from the previous night’s drinking. In all the months I spent time at their house, I never saw her out of bed, but I also never saw her falling-down drunk like my mother.
When Sunny and I occasionally ventured over to the other side of the house to see her mother, all the brightness and joy of being around her siblings faded into darkness. We had to pass through the huge living room, which felt like a funeral parlor it was so sterile and quiet. The bedroom her mother shared with Sunny’s stepfather felt equally cold and lifeless. Her mother was nice enough, but our visits were short and I had no interest in getting to know her, since I was so angry with her for being an alcoholic like my mother. And after each visit, Sunny would seem distant and distracted.
Sunny sometimes talked about her mother’s drinking problem and how it affected her siblings, but she didn’t complain openly like I did about my mother’s drunken rages. What we mostly talked about was how we couldn’t wait to get out of Bakersfield. Sunny was actually graduating high school six months sooner than the rest of our class so she could start at Bakersfield Junior College early, and we talked about moving to LA or SF and starting a life filled with adventure and fun—a life as different from Bakersfield as it could be. Sunny wanted to be an airline stewardess and I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher, the only two professional jobs I knew were possible for women at the time.
Even after Sunny started junior college, she still picked me up in the morning and drove me to school. But college was difficult for Sunny. She found it hard to study with all her siblings around, and studying at my house was difficult because my mother’s drunken rages were increasing and the blare of the TV always filled the house. We tried studying at the downtown library but it closed at 7:00 p.m.
When I shared with Yvonne the difficulties Sunny and I were having finding a place to study, she offered to let us use her apartment on the nights when she had scheduled meetings. Sunny and I were thrilled. Yvonne lived downtown, so we left the library when it closed and went right over to her apartment three times a week.
One night, after we’d been studying for a couple of hours, I got tired and started looking around at Yvonne’s apartment. Much to my delight, I found a liquor cabinet stocked with all kinds of alcohol, including after-dinner drinks. I started tasting the various aperitifs to see which one I liked. Sunny didn’t have any interest in alcohol—in fact, she stayed away from it, saying she’d had enough of alcohol from experiencing her mother being drunk.
I didn’t hear her come home, but suddenly Yvonne was standing right behind me, watching as I drank down another mouthful of alcohol. She’d caught me red-handed.
“What are you doing, Beverly? Is this how you thank me for my hospitality?” she said gruffly. “I trusted you—treated you like the adult you say you want to be treated like. Now get out of my house. You’re not welcome here anymore. Sorry, Sunny, you’ll have to go too.”
I was mortified. I felt like I had been struck by lightning. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare first at Yvonne, then at Sunny.
Yvonne had been nice enough to offer her apartment; she’d trusted me enough to leave us in her apartment while she was out. And this was how I’d repaid her. What was wrong with me? I felt so ashamed of myself. I’d tried so hard to get Yvonne to like me, to become a special person in her life like she was in mine. Now I’d ruined it. Sunny and I had lost our study place and it was all my fault. Worse yet, I’d lost Yvonne’s trust.
I could tell Yvonne was disappointed in me, but she never threw it in my face. In fact, she never brought it up again. But I worried that she would never trust me again, and even that she hated me.
I wished I could learn to think before I acted. And I wished I understood why I kept disappointing the people I loved—why that part of me that needed to break the rules kept rearing its ugly head.
chapter 36
Sunny was always up for an adventure. Like the time we were at Hart Park on Easter Sunday afternoon. The place was packed, and as we drove around in the VW, guys would hang out the windows trying to get Sunny to pull over. But she just ignored them, as usual.
On this day, we parked along the main road to watch people drive by. Two guys on a motorcycle stopped just ahead of us and parked. The guy driving came over to talk to Sunny. She chatted a little but made it clear that she wasn’t interested. The guy kept pestering her to go for a ride on his motorcycle, and Sunny kept saying “no way.” Finally, she said, “Why don’t you let me drive your motorcycle?”
The guy just laughed, but then he realized she was serious. “Are you crazy?” he asked. “Why would I let you do that?”
I don’t remember what Sunny did—if she batted her eyelashes or just said something that convinced him—but all of a sudden she was out of the VW, sitting on the motorcycle, and beckoning me to join her. I got on and away we went.
I trusted Sunny without hesitation. I believed she knew how to drive a motorcycle and would keep us safe. She started off nice and slow but as soon as she was out of sight
