I screamed at her and she screamed back. Then all of a sudden she was throwing my painting, my record player, and my paints out the front door and onto the yard. “Get out! Get out!” she yelled.
I stood there stunned, not knowing what to do. She continued her rampage, going into my bedroom, taking my clothes off the back of the doorway I used for a closet, and tossing everything onto the wet lawn.
I ran out to salvage my belongings, grabbing them and placing them on the red tiles of our porch, but she had already run past me with more clothes.
In a panic, I ran into the house and called my friend Judy, the one friend I knew who would be up that time of night, and asked her if she could come pick me up.
The rest was a blur. Judy’s mother ended up picking me up and was kind enough to let me stay with them. A few days later, I finally started my period. I was enormously relieved. I was only eighteen years old and had only $100 to my name. I had already decided that if I was pregnant I would have an abortion. There would have been no way for me to raise a child under my current circumstances.
I was about to start my second year of junior college in a few weeks, and now I had nowhere to live and no job to support myself. I couldn’t impose on Judy’s mother much longer. After about a week, I decided it was time for me to move to LA.
chapter 43
Nothing grows in the dust, not even a weed. That’s why the Okies and Arkies had to abandon their dust-ravaged farms during the Dust Bowl and head out to California in hopes of greener pastures. And that’s why I had to escape the barren emptiness of Bakersfield and the destructive windstorms of my mother.
Just like the Okies dreamed of the fertile California land, with its orange orchards and green hills, I dreamed of finding people with love in their hearts.
I needed people who could love and respect me the way I was. People who didn’t resent me for who I was or what I accomplished, who weren’t so disappointed with their own lives that they needed to ruin my chances, who didn’t think I was bad because I made mistakes sometimes, who didn’t punish me with silence. People who wouldn’t take advantage of my need to be loved. People who didn’t want to kill me because they wanted to die.
Kicking me out of the house was my mother’s final act of rejection. She’d finally accomplished what she’d been threatening to do most of my life—getting rid of me. I wondered why she hadn’t had an abortion or put me up for adoption, since she’d never really wanted me. I had been an inconvenience from the beginning, and now she was free of me.
My mother had exerted her power over me one more time, and she had won. But in doing so she had actually done me a great favor. In fact, throwing me out was the best thing she could have done for me. Now that I was no longer under her roof, my mother could no longer control me. I was free.
Like my mother had told me many times, I had raised myself. Now I was going to find out if I’d done a good job. In some ways, I’d been on my own since I was four years old and roaming the streets of Bakersfield. But Bakersfield was just a speck on the map compared to Los Angeles. I didn’t know how I’d fare in a big city like LA on my own. But I knew I had to go. There was nothing for me in Bakersfield but more pain.
When I told my friends I was going to LA, they were amazed that I had the strength and courage to just pack up and go alone to a strange city. What they didn’t understand was that I had already done it many times before. I had moved from Bakersfield to Sonora, Sonora to Ceres, and Ceres to Bakers-field—and though I was with my mother each time, in a real sense I was all alone. And in many ways, moving to new neighborhoods, as we had, was like moving to a new town since each one was so radically different. I was used to having to make my way in a strange place with no support or guidance. I was used to trolling the streets looking for new friends.
My friends also couldn’t believe I’d move to a place like LA, which they imagined to be fraught with crime and dangerous people. But, as far as crime and dangerous people were concerned, I’d already survived Bakersfield, with its child abusers, peeping toms, Hells Angels, rapists, and murderers. What more could happen to me that hadn’t already happened?
I truly believed I could survive whatever LA had in store for me. I had survived the loss of my best friend, my mentor, and the love of my life, all within a few months. Before that, I’d survived child sexual abuse, rape, and an attempted suicide. But most of all, I had survived my mother’s neglect, selfishness, and cruelty.
I had come close to going over the edge many times, but I hadn’t fallen off the cliff. The thoughts I’d had while babysitting that little boy so many years earlier still had me convinced that I’d come close to becoming a sex abuser. I had come close to falling down a terrible hole of promiscuity when I lived on Janice Drive. And I had come close to rejecting all my values and becoming a criminal when I shoplifted. I’d even survived my own self-destructiveness.
I felt good about myself for surviving all these things. I felt good about not giving up and falling into complete “badness.” It had
