Bruised and Accused

I got up rather early yesterday. 6 am. Sunday and 6 am are not synonymous. What roused me so early? Slight pangs of constipation. It's worrisome. And I hate not pooping properly.


Walking across my torso last night, Chicken, my better half, who will be celebrating his Sweet 16 this autumn, helped me to discover that one of my ribs was bruised. The discovery of even fresh corporeal discoloured apparitions can't always be explained. There are the few, however, that are permanently grafted to my longterm memory cache.

Memorable Bruise #1
Inflicted by a certifiable nutcase I used to work with. Though a Born Again Christian I'm pretty sure, but not positive, that God had little to nothing to do with it. Admittedly I had given her a near atomic wedgy. I suppose there are ways to surrender in this game of delight for one. Her fight or flight procedure was as follows:
Ass to the ground
Turning of the head
Biting of my arm

Some may say I deserved this retributive act, but her g-string remained a tacky yet unmarred flossing utility; her privates were left unscathed... by me anyway. For 3 weeks I had a blackened bruise in the perfect shape of a scream on my right bicep.

Bruising generally occurs through wrestling, mock fights, drunken hard leanings into intersecting walls, falling up stairs. With company, those are the most embarrassing.

Memorable Bruise #2
When I was about 15 I was walking with my brother Walter to a restaurant. It was a fairly chilly autumn day. My hands were shoved deep into my jacket's pockets. I was going up a small set of stairs when I tripped. I fell face first with the unfortunate inability to catch myself as my pockets were acting as hand prisons. Good news: All my teeth remained.

Oh, right... back to the pooping.

Years ago I was on the set of an immemorable movie. What oftens happens to people when they are in close proximity of others in the same boat, for a prolonged period of time, is they end up talking about bodily functions. One of the performers was telling me about the Salt Water Cleanse. Cleansing suggests something clean and fresh. Spring. This is a rather disgusting process.

Booming Voiced TV Announcer: Are feeling rather bunged up? Stress or an altered schedule creating turmoil in your body?

Here's the recipe:
2 tsps of sea salt dissolved in
4 cups of lukewarm water

Choke this savoury cocktail down as quickly as possible, ignoring the fact that you want desperately to vomit.

This fella told me that within 10 minutes of ingestion, I'd be on the toilet for 1/2 hour.

The Comrade's First Attempt
Elapsed time: 10 minutes...
I made myself a coffee, arranged a stack of magazines, cigarettes...

Nothing.

Elapsed time: 25 minutes...
Waiting. Waiting.

Nothing.

Elapsed time: 45 minutes...
Screw this!

I began to apply make-up. As soon as I touched mascara wand to my first eyelash there was a red panic button pushed. ALARM!

10 seconds to containment breach!
She's going to blow!

Luckily I made it.


My wonderful friend Dirty stopped by for an impromptu visit yesterday. Her presence effectively diffused a situation between my mother and me.

Mom and I were discussing a separate conversation I had with my eldest brother Vince the other day. Last Sunday, most of my immediate and extended family had gathered at a reception for a newly created association. Having been a resident of a tiny village in China was the only requirement for membership to this association. Other invited curiousities were the offspring of these explorers. I bowed out.

Ah crap! Everytime I write a line I have to go to the bathroom.

Vince had left me a message saying that at the gathering he had met someone I knew. Nice. This is what was going through my mind:
Oh, it must be so and so; someone I met while straining blue martinis. Someone I ribbed once. Someone male.

Wrong on all accounts.

The person who claimed to know me was a young woman, older than me by a few years. She was the youngest and thinnest child of a family of 3 children. Her two elder brothers were little Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum-like roly poly fat boys. Her parents have operated a fish and chip store longer than I have been alive. It's still in operation. There has been not one variance in altered decoration since its inception. The walls are ever a light minty green. There are the original faded and fake gild framed 1960's Pepsi Cola ads placed on an angle in their storefront's window which occasionally receive a dusting. It is a fast food museum. Both the decoration and the inhabitants grow more faded and aged. As much as I like fish and chips, I never go in there. They are proud people who would never accept my money.

The last time I recall visiting this family was approximately when I was 10 years old. The two things I remember were:
1. The shock and horror that children could be that fat.
2. It was the first time I'd ever seen food wrapped in newspaper. I thought that was the best thing ever.

The rest of it was a blur. I remember no interaction with anyone, save the parents. The boys kept to themselves and each other. The girl was silent.

Vince: So do you remember her?
The Comrade: No. Not really. I remember her existence, but aside from that there is no real memory of her.
Vince: Well she remembers you.
The Comrade: Oh?
Vince: Do you want to know what she said?
The Comrade: Yes.
Vince: She remembers you as an angry child.
The Comrade: What?!

First high maintenance and now this. This is the second accusation I'd received in less than a week that I've never been accused of before.

In 1968, during a memorable year of universal political revolutions and change, The Comrade was birthed. Since that day, head ridiculously full of untamable hair, she did nothing but laugh, coo and be delighted by things like tabloid wrapped food.

Prone to bursts of anger eruption, sure.
But angry?

The Comrade: Are you sure she was thinking about me?
Vince: That's what she said. She said you were the youngest.
The Comrade: Yeah, but who the fuck is this person?
Vince: Well she seemed to remember you clearly. And she seemed very willing to talk to you about this. So maybe you can call her to clear the air. It would be nice to reignite an old friendship.
The Comrade: Okay, A) There is no air to clear because she's wrong. B) There is a lot of consideration with whom I spend time with. And C) Don't you have to at least remember someone in order for that person to be considered friend?

It was at that moment I realised my voice had pitched an octave higher than normal. My juggular was knotted in a 1" bas relief. I had to do an internal check. I didn't want to seem angry.

The Comrade: [calmly] Well, my brother Vince, seeing as you did grow up with me, what do you think? Was I an angry child?
Vince: I didn't sense real anger until you were in mid-adolescence.
The Comrade: And that anger was directed at one person.

Papa can you hear me?

The Comrade: Eunice was the angry child.
Vince: Maybe she was confused and got the sisters wrong.


Anyone I tell this story to says the same thing: Why are you letting this bother you? I think if it were an isolated case, if this hadn't happened to me often, I'd let it go, thinking it was merely mistaken identity. Perhaps I would goodnaturedly suggest she check her age 10 facts. But it isn't an isolated case. Throughout my life, there has been a barrage of fictions created about me. I'm sick of being wrongfully accused.

My brother Vince didn't remember this girl. She was a virtual stranger to him. She accused me of something that anyone who grew up with me would know was absolutely untrue. But he didn't say anything. He never said that at 5 years old, even when I was sick, I'd never want to leave a party; how I would go around dispensing wedgies even then. When I was 2 years old, with a sticky-outy belly, which visually broke up the scratchy ill fitting dusty pink bikini I wouldn't take off for an entire season, I would often be found in the backyard, mouth permanently fixed in a delight gape, waving well wishes to friends and neighbours with a newly planted apple tree's branch. I used to wave to Vince a lot. Are you making so much money now that you forgot? How much is enough? How my mother would often use adult fist-sized torn chunks of Italian loaf to shove in my mouth to keep me from yammering on and on. I had so many questions. How every single photo taken of a mini Comrade simultaneously captured small eyes and huge laughter. And yet he said nothing. He was quick to believe a stranger even though he was my big brother. Someone I thought knew me. So to the vomitorium list, I add a gross lack of familial defense of my honour.

I was talking to my great friend Fatty about it the other night.
Fatty: Angry? You have got to be the most passionate person I've ever met.

I'd never have to ask, but I knew Fatty would always defend my honour. And he knows I'd kick anyone's ass for him.

I come from a family who has aired its dirty laundry in front of others, parading it like the headlining act during a fiesta. Full on yelling and threatening matches between father and pick-a-child had habitually occurred in the middle of our sleepy one block street. My father would wear his rather old world authoritarian parenting like a Purple Heart. Because 3 of his children "turned out well", "well" being a marker of status and wealth in this society, he figured his tour of duty warranted this honour.

He used to say to me:
3 out of 4 ain't bad.
It's your fault.
You are not my daughter.
You're stupid and ugly and will never amount to anything.
You're a loser.

He used to say to others:
I have 3 children. She doesn't count.
She's a loser.
It's not my fault.!

These I overheard. I'm sure there were more. I see the eyes cast on me when I am persuaded to go to these family functions. They are eyes of judgement. As my very wise mother has always said, "Nobody remembers any good thing you do. And true or not, they never forget the bad."

But it's the not true that I have great difficulty with.

"You're going to take HER word over MINE," he shrieked. Over dinner I recounted the story of how he instigated a fistfight over a $2 discrepancy in a long distance phone bill. He didn't want his elder sister to know the truth. Or maybe he suppressed it. Maybe it's how he lives with himself.

My mother fell down in a grocery chain's parking lot a few weeks ago. She never told me. Not until yesterday. My parents were on their way to Cuba days after the accident. Luckily she didn't break anything. She was swollen and badly bruised on her stomach.

Dear old Dad: Well if you're not going I'll take someone else.

Her lovely face was unmarred. Her passport. Had she a bruise on her face she wouldn't have travelled to their annual destination. She didn't opt for the delight she usually garners from swimming, though.



Dirty has asked me on two occasions how I've become the type of person I am. She notes my strength, my honour and my ease with other humans.
The Comrade: Home. That's where it comes from, Dirty.

Dirty and I were talking about fathers in line for the Father of the Year Award™. As wonderful as my dear old dad has been, I think Dirty's daddy really deserves this honour.

We were sitting facing each other on my sofa, my good friend and I. Embracing sunbeams streamed through the large windows creating the extra heat women often love. We were drinking mimosas, toasting and talking for 8 hours straight like only great girlfriends do.

I sat fixed listening to her as she told me how unpopular she was growing up. She spoke of the ill-fitting mismatched clothes. All the forced labour she was made to do around the house. How one day she and her sister Doris had picked up the phone to call the Children's Aid Society to report how they were repeatedly being raped by their father. How this organisation had stripped both the sisters down and sprayed them with a delousing agent. In front of a panel. More humiliation. Just like prison. How the girls were shuttled to half-way homes populated with violent, young female criminals; their slumber party inmates. They were all treated the same. Like criminals.

Two weeks later the girls received a phone call from their father's attorney. Through lies, threats and gentle, cloying persuation, the kind that born legal emissaries receive directly from the antichrist, this professional, whoring for hundreds of dollars per hour, convinced these young, very scared ladies to sign an affidavit.

Here ye, here ye.

This didn't happen.
Our father never did this to us.

Okay, please sign here.

The taste of bile cleaved its way past the champagne cocktail.
I can't tell this story without crying.

Dirty is one of the most appropriate, considerate, ever laughing, lovely and loving people I know. It is an honour to be her friend.

And fucking right I get angry.