It got worse. We got to the hospital’s emergency room and the doctor took one look at me, a fourteen-year-old girl, and assumed that I was pregnant. Great! Adding insult to injury, or more accurately, embarrassment to agony, the doctor performed a pelvic exam on me. Excruciating! Finally, they decided to operate. The appendix was perforated and ready to burst. I would have ended up like my brother Carl if they hadn’t operated. It made sense that part of my father’s paralysis in helping me was related to the trauma associated with Carl’s death. He was equally troubled about how he was going to pay the hospital bill. At least he was sober at the time.
They kept me in the hospital a bit longer than usual because they probably realized there was nobody at home to take care of me. Reverend Mother Superior Auxilium as well as Ilean, Pauline, Marty, and some other friends came to visit me in the ward I shared with seven other people. So did my friend Ruth Helen. She was the first new friend I made when I started high school in Owensboro.
Ruth Helen was one of those girls who had already become a tall, full-figured woman. And there I was, still a girl, at five feet two inches and flat-chested. She lived in a mansion in Owensboro. Despite our radically different economic backgrounds, we found that we had a lot more in common once we opened up to each other about our problems. My eyes opened to the fact that my family circumstances were not just the domain of the poor. She told me that her mother, a glamorous, wealthy, and well-traveled woman, beat her. Her father was also an alcoholic. I’m getting ahead of the story, but Ruth Helen and her family would soon make a miraculous impact on my destiny.
What I also cannot forget about my stay in the hospital was one old lady in the ward, Mrs. Chancellor.
“I’ve got to get these fishhooks out of my side,” she moaned repeatedly.
I begged her, “Mrs. Chancellor, don’t do that!” She kept taking off the metallic clamps that closed the incision after her surgery. Doctors used those as an alternative when problems with the skin tissue made suturing difficult. I had to yell for the nurse more than once.
I went home to Marty’s near the hospital for the first few days after I was released. The day I got there, Marty went into the hospital herself for—guess what?—appendicitis. I often wonder if it was a coincidence or inherent symbolism that we all got appendicitis. In my situation, the case could certainly be made that my body and spirit literally couldn’t stomach what was going on any longer, and my insides threatened to explode. When I went home to Rockport, I stayed downstairs on a cot for a while to further recuperate. It was not the most pleasant of times.
The more I look at my own children and grandchildren, the more I’m convinced that infants come into the world with a certain wiring. It is probably one good reason why Babby didn’t have as easy of a time coping as I did. When we would talk about what we were going through, it was always curious to me why she was more prone to cry and become negative in her thoughts and words and get nightmares, when my first response was always to look for a solution.
The experience of my youth, as challenging as it was much of the time, proved to have many tangible and positive by-products. For example, I learned how to read people extremely well (most of the time!), something that was put to good use once I started acting. With the few who protected me not always there to shield my eyes, cover my ears, or lead me away from harm, I saw too much. I could easily pick up lies. I had to grow up fast.
I realized very early on that the choice was mine how I was going to respond to my circumstances. I never wanted to be perceived as a victim. And I never wanted people to feel sorry for me. When you come from a disadvantaged and deprived situation you have a tendency to either become hateful and mean or end up as a type of person who is more giving in nature—giving, in fact, in compensation for what you didn’t receive yourself. I chose the latter. I also made another conscious decision: to be in the company of achievers rather than losers. I was attracted to role models like my teachers and Ruth Helen, people whom I wanted to be like or whose achievement I felt could be within my grasp someday.
CHAPTER 4Wide-Eyed and Confident
The burning question on the lips of all of my classmates the last year of high school was, “Where are you going to college?” The girls I knew best were mostly from affluent families, and having the financial wherewithal to go to college was a nonissue. The very fact that they asked me about my plans was proof that none of them knew of my impoverished reality. It also helped that we all wore uniforms. What little they did know was that I lived in another town on the other side of the river. I had never invited anyone to visit because I was ashamed of my house and my father’s condition. The only exceptions on both counts, of course, were Oscar and Ruth Helen. Ruth Helen came to my home on a few occasions to pick me up or drop me off. But even she respected my situation. She didn’t ask to come
