Final Segment

26 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by When a Third World Came West in buttefly, college, Disney, graduation, jail, photography, Rollins College, roommate, Tunisia, Will's Pub Tags: , , , , , ,

Final Segment

I didn’t mind working at Disney.  I kinda liked the outfits that we had to wear and I got to put on a blue plain bathing suit every time I did family shots at Typhoon Lagoon.  I worked on Main Street with friends, had dinner with Nancy and Rachel at nearby Downtown Disney, and I made friends with all the girls at the check-out desks.  I got pretty good at getting the backgrounds into my shots, I won MVP that year for getting the most photographs on average per day, 456, and I was pretty good with the customers.  I still visited Sam on the weekends, driving up the two hours to Bradenton, parking in the garage to pay the meters for two hours, and then talking with him for another two hours up in the jail cell.

I’d moved in with a girl named Deidre who I’d met at Will’s, a place where I was watching a really good live band, and we moved in together two months later.  I didn’t talk to her too much about things that had happened in the past few months, we just tried to go out, meet new people and talk about going back to college.

When I got enough money I bought a small plastic fence and some sunflower seeds that I planted in my parents backyard in the corner.  I put the fence all around a small patch of grass, which I dug up to plant the sunflower seeds.  I came home three times a week to check on them, water them and to see that they were getting enough sunlight.  Three weeks later little sprouts of plants grew with separate leaves attached to their vines and the necks of themselves began to get taller over time.  Two weeks later I came out to see a little one budding and then three days later I came out after a rainstorm to see that they had all gotten their petals.  I named two of them “Juliet” and I named the other flower “Julian” and I really believed that somehow the thing that was Sam’s and mine of which I had to let go, was there in this garden growing right now.

Sam called me in February of 2002 , right after Valentine’s Day, to tell me that the court had finally arranged to fly him back to Tunisia, which is where he was originally born and was from.  I’d gotten used to living with Deidre, to filming and photographing at Kodak, and to signing up for night school.  I’d kind of counted on Sam to be nearby me, even if it was only two hours away.  But I couldn’t imagine coping with being apart from him when he was in there, nearly 4,000 miles and so far away.

One time I got high with my friend Tony and I told him that I felt sick and that I had to lie down so I left him there sitting in Deidre’s and my living room.  I shut and locked the door to my bedroom and then I shut and locked the door to my bathroom.  I lied on my bed, listened to Mazzy Starr over and over and felt like I was gonna scream.  I couldn’t put my finger on what was so attractive about Sam or why I was so nuts, so crazy for him.  Maybe he was intense, maybe he intimidated the hell out of me, maybe he was cute, maybe he was deep, maybe he was withdrawn.  Maybe he was outgoing while I was more shy.  Maybe we were both the same age and we wanted the same things, maybe we were crazy for adventure and maybe we didn’t care at getting to wherever no matter the costs.

For weeks I tried to fill the void I felt before he left me.  I went to Michaels and I bought different colors of crinoline and Christmas wire.  I bent the wire to make little butterflies with antennas sticking out of their heads and then I cut out and super glued the crinoline over them.  I put them all in a box, put a note in the middle that said “don’t fly away forever.” then I wrapped the box in crinoline too and drove down to Bradenton where I said goodbye to him for the last time.  He told me that he needed money and so I gave him some and I arranged for the guard to give Sam a pack of cigarettes when they let him out.  From then on he called me from Tunisia a couple of times and on nights when I felt lonely I’d try to cross the country codes to call him too.  I would get messages in Arabic that I couldn’t understand and no matter what I said at the other end of the line, he’d never pick up.

When I got my college degree a year later I went out to eat with my family, got a job teaching at a private school, and I started running every day.  I didn’t want a TV, I read for three hours a day, ate vegetables at every meal, and emailed Sam at every chance I got.  I waited for phone calls from him, dated guys in between, spent lots of time helping out my family by going back to church and helping with their youth ministry group.  I talked about the New Yorker with my dad, joined a running group, and made two new friends.  I looked into graduate school, applied to public schools to get better health care and looked into moving to a new city.  When my mother showed me my college graduation picture one day, however, I couldn’t believe it.  I hadn’t really seen a picture of myself after the ones that Sam had taken of us on our wedding day.  I didn’t look the same.  Whatever had happened in the past had shaped me for the future and no amount of staying still could keep me from going back or staying the same.  I knew now that the only way I would survive what had happened was to move on, keep moving on, and to move forward all the same.

Segment 36: When a Third World Came West

26 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by When a Third World Came West in 20 year old women, babysitter, Cinderella, disney world, grandmother, jail, kodak, Manatee County, paneras, pregnant, Sam Tags: , , , , , ,

Segment 36:

Beatrice was my mother’s business friend who was in a relationship with another woman named Beatrice also.  She had a daughter who I used to babysit from another marriage back in 1992 that dissolved because of a number of reasons.  And now here she was at Paneras drinking black coffee and tapping the empty cup that she’d drank the last of it out of, against the ends of the table.  I didn’t need her to lecture me, I already knew what she was here to say.  I’d answered her message that I’d gotten that morning driving back from the beach when I was busy throwing up all my breakfast into another old coffee cup.  Here I was drinking more coffee that I knew was bad for me and for the kid and listening to her the next afternoon.  She opened up to me about a time when this had happened to her, when she was married and she’d found out that she was pregnant, when it just wasn’t the right time.  She asked how it had been since I’d been back from college, living with my parents and she asked how I thought they’d felt living with me and everything else that had been going on.  And I knew what she was getting to, that I was difficult lately, obstinate, and that I’d really stirred the pot up a bit what with me not making a decision yet about this thing, and about me not going back to college yet.  I’d secured a job with a friend of mine around the corner and I was happy with that, but I still thought about college and I couldn’t think about my future within the context of me possibly having a baby soon.  So everything was up in the air.  I wanted it but I didn’t.  Living at home without Sam around the corner, even if he was on East Central at a homeless shelter, wasn’t easy either.  I’d sit at the dinner table with my parents not feeling like I had anything to bring up and feeling like nothing was really fun anymore, or exciting.

I’d taken up driving back and forth towards where Sam was because he was being held in an INS detention center since he was illegally here in the United States and since he hadn’t made any attempts to renew his visa.  It was two hours one way and I would load up on quarters from my mother’s bank, pay the meters for two more hours, lock up my purse, sweaters and other things in a locker, and ride up in the elevator to see Sam.  From where we sat separated by the glass divider, we could see Manatee County out of the porthole window behind him on the concrete wall.  I’d worn a yellow sundress once and Sam and I had talked about different names for the baby until we decided on Juliet for a girl and Julian for a boy.  I was happy.  After I’d leave him I’d drive around in my car until dark, listening to the Indigo Girls and sitting next to the beach so that I could stay feeling close by Sam and close by as a family.

Sam started to feel bad when he’d stay on the phone with me at nights, using other inmates’ calling cards to stay up and talk to me.  But I used to get night sweats and I’d get sick at night and I’d put him on hold while I ran to the bathroom to feel better and to get it all out.  I’d drove up once when he’d had his final hearing against the judge and he’d begged him to let him free so that he could take care of me because he’d said that I was sick and that I needed help.  But the judge didn’t budge and I think that the lawyer who thought I was lying about being pregnant smiled in the corner about how Sam didn’t bring any evidence or conviction to his side of the fence.

Eventually I gave in and my grandmother came down to help me with the aftermath.  I called Sam to tell him that I’d lost the baby and I was hysterical telling him that I’d never felt like this way in my life and that I didn’t know how to go on now, feeling the way I did.  I bled for days afterwards and I would sit in the shower and feel loss and guilt and would miss it.  I applied for a job at Kodak soon after on Vineland Road, they offered me a job taking photographs at the theme parks, and I went to an orientation.  Not even three weeks later I was snapping shots of families in front of Cinderella’s castle on Main Street in white pantaloons, a white beret, and a blue and white striped shirt.  Things had really turned around.

When a Third World Came West: Segment 35

26 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by When a Third World Came West in 20 year old women, baby shower, Baltimore, beach, boyfriends, Confessions, Dating, florida, gynecologist, jail, marriage, motel, moving, neighbors, olive garden, Orlando, reception, relationships, running, security, unwanted pregnancy, waffle house, work Tags: , , , , , , ,

Segment 35

Sam called and called and I even removed my portable telephone from its socket and put it at the floor of our hall closet so I wouldn’t be tempted to answer him.  He kept calling my cell phone too until I kept it off permanently, storing it in my wicker night stand and not opening the drawer.  I took to writing poetry in a half-used journal and I sat outside writing in it, on the porch, on the couch, and on my bed in the afternoons.  One day my mother asked when I was going to get a job to pay her back for when I used her credit card to pay for Sam’s and my dinner at the Olive Garden and for other things that I bought, so I started looking for ones in the Want-Ads and in the Classifieds.  I put in applications at local restaurants, at an old deli sandwich place that I’d worked at when I was fifteen my freshman year of high school, I applied at Lynx, my old job, and I was successful at contacting a staffing agency.

A week later we held a shower for my cousin who was going to be having a baby but the father didn’t show up because it wasn’t that kind of a relationship.  I helped my mother to make the potato salad and I set out the napkins, the forks, filled up the glass cups with ice, and put tea bags into the tea kettle to brew it for drinks.  My cousins showed up a half and hour later and I hugged them pretending that nothing that had gone on with Sam and I had gone on at all.  I was dressed up in a sun dress and my hair was pulled back into a pony tail and I pretended not to miss Sam even though I was wondering if he had tried to call my dead cell phone that was shut away in my nightstand.  I played cards with my aunt and my grandmother, I hugged my grandfather, and helped my uncle load my pregnant cousin’s gifts into foldout seats in the back of his truck.  I’d gone running before my pregnant cousin left and so I waved to them as they passed out of our community while I ran up Horatio and three miles down towards the 7-11.

When I got back that night I took a shower, felt rested, wrote some more in my journal, ate cereal while I figured out more jobs, and then lay down on the couch.  My head was burning up and I felt hot and warm.  I’d thought all day about what it would be like to be embarrassed by having to admit that you were pregnant and I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about what my pregnant cousin had had to go through.  Somehow my parents must have been reading my thoughts because they picked up on it and they asked me what my condition was and I said I didn’t know.  In my head I tried to think back to when I’d had my last period but I couldn’t remember and I just hoped and hoped that I would get it.  My mother didn’t save anytime asking me if I was pregnant and I felt sick again even having this conversation and I said I didn’t know.  She took me to the Walgreens where I had to pay for three of the tests in front of a teenager who was the cashier by the automatic doors.  When I got home I drank two bottles of water until I peed on all of the tests and until I’d watched all of them turn out pink positive.

I went to my therapist a few weeks later, told him that I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I should do and then I visited my gynecologist two weeks after that.  Things were a mess.  My gynecologist was also my mother’s poker friend, Jewish, and extremely talkative.  Despite my insistence that this be a private affair, my mother encouraged me to go to her anyway because she was a good doctor and anyway I felt awful.  She told me that I was six weeks pregnant and she gave me some options and I made her swear that she wouldn’t tell anyone and I’m sure that she did tell someone.  I made an appointment to get the thing taken care of but I came home that night still holding onto me being pregnant and not wanting to let go of it.

The next day I called and told Sam that I was pregnant, I packed up my things, my new credit card and I drove all the way to the beach.  I called into work, I ate at a Waffle House, and I rented a room from a lady with a red BMW who was blond, nice, and motherly looking.  I called my friend Karen and asked her to wake me up early in the morning so that I could make it into work on time.  I put down my things next to the bathroom and then walked out to the beach so that I could think and make up my mind.  I walked out to the dock where there were bugs and moths hovering at the lamps to light the way for the fisherman and I felt the breeze from the ocean when I got towards the end of the wooden walkway.  I still couldn’t think and I had no words to say to myself in my head that would help decide one way or another.  The bugs were starting to bite at my legs and I was in the way of the men trying to cast of their lines to get something to catch that would feed off the bait so late this time of night.

In the morning I woke up early and I sat on top of the covers in my work dress and jean jacket.  I was drinking coffee even though I knew that I wasn’t supposed to in my condition and this already told me that I wasn’t ready to go through with this or to deal with it in the long haul.  I’d kept quiet from Sam all these days but I’d brought my dead phone and now I turned it on.  At a quarter till 7 he called me and this time I picked it up.  We talked for awhile about why I’d ignored him, about how he hadn’t given up faith in me and about how he’d felt that my parents put me up to this.  But I said no to all of this, I’d just said that I was preoccupied because I was busy, I told him that I was pregnant, that I didn’t know what to do, and that I was scared.  He reacted really well, he was over-the-moon, he was really happy, and I guess he thought it was a free get of out of jail card.  He’d been trying to stay in the country for months and now here was his chance just handed down to him, but I wasn’t so sure.  I still couldn’t make up my mind.  I hung up with Sam, loaded my things into my car, threw up on the way to work in an old coffee cup, and made it through until 5 pm at my work desk without any other interruptions.

 

Segment 34: When a Third World Came West

26 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by When a Third World Came West in 20 year old women, Baltimore, boyfriends, car, courthouse, florida, jail, marriage lisecnce, police, security Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Segment 34: When a Third World Came West

We were on our way back from the Congress Avenue Exit and Sam was as grumpy as ever, messing with the radio and not really being satisfied with any of the songs that he was hearing on the radio.  I was keeping covered underneath the last chenille blanket we had in the car, lifting my legs up so that they could be covered up by it to stay warm.  Sam liked to keep the air conditioning on real high even though it was almost October and not as hot as it used to be back when we’d met in July, but he didn’t notice the difference. I didn’t know how fast he was going but he slowed down at some point and pulled to a stop at the shoulder.  He looked out the rearview window and stared at the cop parked behind us, walking back up to Sam’s side of the window.  I hurried to get out my insurance card and began rummaging through the glove box pretending to look for his license, a visa, a valid registration; I don’t know what else what.  But the cop asked for a whole list of things and the only thing I could provide was my insurance card, which was all I was responsible for.  Sam on the other hand looked at him empty-handed and Sam knocked his head against the back of his head rest.  The cop asked Sam to get out of the car and Sam explained some things to him and I was hoping that this would all be enough because it’d worked before.  We’d manage thus far to work our way out of trouble with a lot of talking up to.  But it didn’t work.  They handcuffed Sam and I got out listening to him yell from the cop car to me to call Dante’s to say that he wasn’t going to be into work today or tomorrow.  I caught up with the cop just in time before she’d closed the door to her car and managed to find out where they were going to be taking Sam to so that I could get him out.

Sam had a ton of quarters hidden back in the luggage carrier that he kept in our trunk and I used most of them all to call Dante’s and to find out where he was being held.  Normally I could figure out maps pretty well but I was all jumbled up in my mind and I was nervous, missing turn-off points, where I was supposed to go, and missing the exits for Titusville.  When I’d finally gotten there I drove around a dusty town, picked up some gas, and passed the space shuttle at sunset.  I parked, walked up the many steps to the jail, and sat down amongst a bunch of crying babies and yelling mothers.  In the back I found a quiet seat and counted out the $420 that Sam and I had collected from our jobs in the past few months, and then I thought.  Here it was all going to waste and I was sure, just like the last time, that we wouldn’t get all of our money back.  I bit my lip and realized that I was furious, being put in this situation again again and feeling like I was supposed to come up with an answer for how to get us out of this one.  I must have been there an hour trying to come up with something to do before I stepped up to the cashier’s desk, waited in line, and asked her what I was supposed to do.  She told me that they needed $500 in cash, which was more than I had, and that they were closing in a half an hour.  I didn’t have enough money in my bank account to get out eighty more dollars and I sure as heck couldn’t call anyone who would bail me out for this second or third or fourth time.  I packed up my things, zipped up my purse, and walked out the double glass doors to the parking lot which was growing darker by the minute.

I was eating dinner at the granite coffee table, cereal and apples and listening to Sade on the radio when my parents came into the dark house.  I didn’t really keep any lights on in general I didn’t make any efforts to leave any on especially tonight. I spooned more of my chunky cereal that had gotten mushy from me spooning it back and forth in the milk so many times.  My mother put down her jacket across the back of the dining room chair and began undoing the back of her necklace as she walked into her room.  She didn’t see me so I said “hello” when she turned on the light on her bed stand.  She and Jim came out to ask how my night was and I asked about theirs, they’d gone to the theater to see a play with their two favorite lesbian friends and I asked about the couples’ daughter who was in middle school, who I used to babysit.  They asked me what was up and I told them and I said that I was done with Sam, that they could count on me for that, and that I was done with making any more mistakes.  I told them that I missed college, that I wanted to see Dr. Deetrum again, and that I needed help setting up a bank account because I had $420 to put in it.  My mother sat down cross legged, leaned back with her hands against the carpet and my step-father piped up about all the things he’d been concerned about with Sam for the past few months, how Sam had avoided them, how Sam had been despondent and how Sam had acted untrustworthy.  And I agreed to all of it.

when a third world came west: segment 33

05 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by When a Third World Came West in boca raton, brett, florida, grateful dead, west palm beach, what a long strange trip it's been Tags: , , , , , , ,

One time Sam asked me if he could get away but he wanted to get away by himself.  So I agreed I said sure.  He tossed his ginger ale at me when we pulled over at a gas station to meet up with the people who were supposed to be picking him up.  It was near the Congress Avenue exit in Boca Raton.  I didn’t want to be alone so I drove back towards West Palm Beach and I stopped somewhere along Meisner Avenue, parking my car near some Palm trees and a dime meter.  Then a fluctuated back and forth between a Fat Tuesdays that made Pink Panties margaritas that was filled with sophomore college kids all going to Florida Atlantic University, and another bar.  It was the first place where I saw granite counter tops up close and a waiter who matched them in black asked what he could get for me and I ordered a cosmopolitan.  There was a younger guy down at the bar who was my age and that was pretty much it.  There were two guys on the other side who were older, with cigarettes and blowing their smoke out towards the open doorway with the people walking by on the slack tile.  I don’t know how many drinks I had before one of the older guys approached me, drew a picture on a napkin of his house that he was renting from an old lady.  He told me was having a party there that night and he invited me.  I don’t know what possessed me to say yes but I agreed to give him a ride back to his place.

We picked up cigarettes first at a Mobile station and we drove around the inlet with more palm trees till he told me to put on my lights.  We drove around some neighborhoods and then I hit the curb when I parked alongside it and next to only one car.  I knew I was the only one here and probably would be the only one here the rest of the night, but I followed him through the grass that grew through the stone walkway anyway.

When he pulled back the gate  I saw a large pool clear of leaves in between a guest house to the right and the main living space. I could hear music off in the distance but I didn’t know from where.  We opened a screen door with plastic crank blinds and walked into his kitchen where he fed his pit bull with all the lights on in the room.  He went around the house opening up the rest of the plastic crank blinds on the windows until the air that was coming through was humid and hot wind.  He asked me what music I liked and I asked him what kind he had and he named about five or six albums he had until he said the Grateful Dead.  He came back over to the couch and I sat beside him in my short skirt and crinkled top with my face hot from the air and the wind.  We talked for a little bit and then he asked me if I wanted to smoke up and I’d never turned it down up to now so I welcomed it and we sat back and listened to “Saint Stephens”off “What a Strange Trip it’s Been”.  Brett looked at me and asked what my story was and I told him a little about what had happened lately. I expected him to give me advice or to tell me that I should be nicer to my mom or dad, understand more from where they were coming on their side of the fence.  But he said “You guys are gonna change the world, huh?” It was what I thought too at that moment. Like something great was gonna happen for me and Sam. I felt so in love at that second that my stomach hurt, that my head got big, that I couldn’t come up with anything to say back to him.  Everything just felt real lately and I couldn’t describe it.  He kissed me once before he went into his bedroom and shut the door to go to sleep.  His dog followed with him and took off one of the throw pillows from a lounge chair and pressed it up against the end of the couch so I could rest some.  But I kept going up to his turntable and playing “Saint Stephens” and “Jack Straw” again and again and again.

In the morning while Brett made coffee and stood with his back to me against the counter chewing an English muffin, I slipped the cd into my bag and zipped it up.