Ione Skye (3:15)
Part 1 Girlhood 1 the Bastard 1973-1979 I was three years old and my brother six when Carl, our first stepdad, blasted into our lives. Within weeks of their first date, mom had accepted his marriage proposal and the three of us left sunny LA for the east coast with a man we hardly knew. Carl was really from Florida but moved around a lot. We didn't yet know why. He was rich and had recently purchased a brand new modern house in Lush Green Ridgefield, Connecticut. It was 10 times the size of our snug West Hollywood apartment, with sky high ceilings and wall to wall windows, like living in a big box set down next to a forest. Mom had let her friends talk her into marrying Carl. Let someone look after you for a change, they'd said. A nice Jewish girl at heart. Mom did want looking after, and Ridgefield was only an hour and a half train ride from my Grandpa Benny and Grandma Tilly in Queens. The comfort of having her parents nearby was the deciding factor. For mom, this partnership wasn't about love. It was, she hoped and believed, about security. I was too young to remember the wedding in our new backyard, but old enough that moments from that day, brought back to life by photos and long talks with mom and Donno, are clear enough to touch. Like following my big brother away from the noisy party and down the sloping lawns and into the quiet woods. Smoke, the white German shepherd puppy Carl had given us, bounded ahead as we disappeared into the pines, leaving the wedding and all that it meant for us behind. It was Carl who finally came looking for us. We heard his big booming laugh when we appeared from the trees. Dono in his mini suit, me picking pine needles from my hair. Carl still had his dark Florida tan, which was set off by his bright white three piece suit and matching bright white teeth. His hair was long and blond and gold rings shaped like suns and moons flashed on his fingers. Look at your mother, he said, leading us back to the party. Isn't she the most beautiful woman in the world? In pictures of the reception, Enid stands unsmiling under a yellow and white striped tent, surrounded by guests in their embroidered prairie dresses and velvet suits and over the knee, suede boots and capes and fedoras. She's undeniably beautiful and wispy as a daffodil in her white silk wedding suit. Before we left Los Angeles, she'd had her long strawberry waves cropped into a pixie cut that made her a dead ringer for the actress Mia Farrow. With almost no makeup, her skin glows, but her eyes are dull and far away. I already understood at that young age that beauty mattered. When mom read to me from Grimm's Fairy Tales, the words jumped from practically every page. In the pink, the maiden was more beautiful than any artist could portray with paint. In Snow White, the evil queen's sole desire was to be the most beautiful in the land. In Sleeping Beauty. Beauty was one of the gifts the fairies gave Princess Aurora. From the way Carl spoke, it seemed that beauty might be the most valuable gift of all because beautiful girls would always be taken care of. For a time, we coasted on the adventure side of the wave. Carl bounded around the house like a jittery giant who'd consumed too much sugar. But our stoic nanny, Cosette, kept the peace and made us feel safe. She was from Haiti and spoke to us in English and French. And she carried us around, one on each hip. Cosette, put them down. Mom would say, they're too heavy. Fortunately for us, Cosette didn't seem to mind. We needed her warmth and attention. Mom's once powerful maternal instincts weren't what they'd been before Carl. Her thoughts seemed a million miles away. She'd stopped cooking and got paper thin. I thought Carl was exciting in a dangerous kind of way. I loved discovering the random treasures he brought back from his mysterious travels to South America. Tucked into drawers and bookshelves like Easter eggs. When I admired a heavy pewter seal that materialized one day, Carl said proudly, you like that? I stole that for your mother. I'd nod along when he explained that stealing wasn't wrong. Getting caught was. Back then, I still had my father's last name, Leech. Sky was my middle name, which Carl liked best. One day, sky, he liked to say, I'm going to buy you a purple jet because Ione means purple jewel. Did you know that? I didn't believe everything he said, but pretended to. With each of my fathers, I would try to be easy and sweet, wanting them to love me more than anyone else, even more than my mom, as I always wanted to be somebody's favorite. Sometimes Carl's promises did come true. I'll bring you back an emerald, he said as he and mom headed off on a business trip to Colombia, and sure enough, they'd returned with a bag of sparkling emeralds. I got to pick one to have made into a ring. On my fourth birthday, Carl presented me with my emerald set in gold prongs on a delicate band. It was very fancy and too grown up for a little girl, which made it even better. He told me I was special because I was deep and beautiful like mom and an older soul than my big brother. Carl was fond of Donno, but I got all the compliments. He also told me often that I was the reincarnated soul of a baby mom almost had once but didn't, which I would later learn was an abortion. I'd really wanted to be here, so I came back, and that's why you are so special, he'd explain. I had no understanding of exactly what he was talking about, but often fantasized about a ghost baby flying around a fairy tale English cottage waiting to be born as me. It was a funny image, but also strange and unsettling. Carl did not share his reincarnation theory with mom, only me. There was something melancholy about it, and mom didn't like to talk about sad things. She was sad enough already. Anyone could see mom wasn't thriving in her role as Carl's beautiful wife. She'd grown distant and closed off, retreating more every day into a shell that looked like our mom but wasn't her. She was surely suffering from worry, stress, and depression, but as kids we didn't know that term. The best word we had for mom in Ridgefield was frozen. Mom wasn't just isolating and missing her old friends. She'd been tricked. We all had, it turned out, the excitable big kid version of Carl we all liked at first was just one side of him. The other side had a terrible temper, possibly fueled by cocaine. In retrospect, before Ridgefield, Carl had hidden his bad side from us, but now that he had us, he didn't need to do that anymore. The scariest thing about Carl's temper was how unpredictable it was. All of us were bracing for an explosion, the time mom accidentally threw away $10,000 in cash he'd hidden in a wastebasket as the Two of them vainly scoured the local dump for the money. Mom remembers thinking, if he hits me, I'll have a reason to leave. But Carl just laughed and delivered a philosophical speech about how his material stuff the BMWs, the boat, the gold watches and custom suits didn't matter to him. Only love mattered. Carl gave this speech often and genuinely seemed to mean it every time. But then maybe the next day, he'd find a half eaten bowl of chicken soup Donna left under his bed. Carl was a health nut, so we were supposed to be vegetarians or a wet bathing suit on the Eames chair in the living room, and the windows would vibrate from his rage. We'd all grown to fear Carl, but Donno did the most. My brother especially hated to be picked up from school by our speed demon stepdad. Ask Carl to slow down, he'd whisper, gripping my wrist in the backseat. I liked to go fast and wanted to impress Carl by being tough and unafraid. But I knew the rules. If Dono asked Carl to slow down, he might swerve the car to scare him even more. It was shameful for a boy to be afraid, but charming for a girl. So I learned to play damsel in distress. Please slow down, Carl, I'd plead. I'm scared. I think we were always waiting for Carl to hurt Donna with more than his words. For the moment he'd finally raised his hand to my brother. The day it happened, Carl was supposed to be on a business trip, so Donna and I were in the living room wrestling with a leather Sako beanbag chair that was not a toy. I was pinned underneath, screaming and laughing, when I felt Donno's weight chirk away. There was a whack and a thud. The bean bag lifted from me and I saw Carl press it down on my fallen brother. Donno's screams grew muffled and he thrashed his skinny legs like a bug under a rock. How do you like it? Carl yelled, veins bulging. My brother stopped kicking, stopped screaming. Why couldn't I scream? Why couldn't I kick? I wanted to kick Carl right in the shins. I didn't ask to be saved like this, but I couldn't make myself move. Slowly, my brother sat up and Carl walked away. Donna wasn't crying, just staring ahead with a blankness that reminded me of Mom. He'd gone to that frozen place where it was easier to be. It would be years before we told mom about what happened that day. Worrying her would only make her worse, we thought. The longer we stayed in Ridgefield, the less she spoke or laughed or came out of her bedroom. In Los Angeles, Mom's doors had always been open to us. Every morning I'd climb out of my toddler bed, run to her room, and throw myself into her sleeping body. Mom would open her arms and pull me close, but I was more cautious now. I rarely knocked on the double bedroom doors when she was in there. Sometimes I'd stand outside, my cheek pressed to the heavy wood, until I heard her breathe or cough or rustle the covers. In wintertime, if it was too quiet, I'd pull on my coat and snow boots and run outside to check that her window was closed. I was worried mom might literally freeze like our pet parakeets had our first winter in Ridgefield. Ice Storm Felix had been a hell of a storm. The power lines came down in the middle of the night, and without heat the house got so cold that Carl carried us from our beds to sleep by the fire in the sunken living room. In the morning, our glass walled box looked out on a glistening white wonderland so beautiful that we gasped and saw our breath. Choo choo, went Donno, puffing clouds of white vapor. Choo choo. I mimicked, running after him to the kitchen. We both screamed at once. The little yellow birds we'd brought home from the pet store just a week earlier lay stiff and frozen on the bottom of their cage. I wouldn't have expected Carl to remember them, but mom loved the birds as much as we did. She'd loved them and still had forgotten about them. Mom wasn't strong enough to protect us, but the woods were. If the weather allowed, that's where we'd be. Atv. He could barely see over the wheel, and I'd wander, running my stick through the soft earth beneath me and stopping every few steps to crouch in the roots and leaves, communing with the gleaming crawling beetles. I loved to build fairy houses. A mushroom cap for a table, soft moss for a carpet. A fir branch roof. In my fairy houses, there were no sharp corners, no closed doors, and no fathers.
