My Life, a Four Letter Word

by Dolores DeLuce

  At the dude ranch, I began to feel like my old self. I was learning how to ride horses and enjoying the time with Mary, her friends, and her toddler, and tried to push Bill out of my head. Bill had found the number of the Ranch, which I had forgot and left on the dresser, and he called me on Saturday night. I was jolted out of my safe place, but when I took his call there was something hypnotic in his voice luring me back to him. He sounded on the verge of tears and was pleading.

  “I’m so sorry baby. I miss you. Will you ever be able to forgive me? When you get home baby, it’s going to be different, I promise. I’ll make it up to you. Just don’t leave me. I’ve never loved a woman like you before.”

  As if I had been given a suggestion by a skilled hypnotist, I forgot my fear and started to look forward to our reunion.

  It was after midnight on Sunday when I arrived home. I anticipated a warm welcome, but when I put the key in the door and walked in, Bill was gone. I flipped on the lights. The apartment looked almost empty. I noticed that all of Bill’s belongings, including Maurice and the picture of Joan Baez over the bed, were also gone. I was really shaken. Once the reality of his lie and betrayal hit me, I put my bag down on the empty bed and went over to the mirror at the dresser. I watched my tears fall as I sobbed like a melodramatic soap-opera actress over this crazy man and then, suddenly, I woke from the trance and my tears stopped. It occurred to me that I got lucky, that the monster of my dream was gone and I had gotten off easy. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  Two weeks later I got a call from a woman who found my number on a matchbook in Bill’s pocket, who claimed to be Mrs. Barkley, his legal wife. She opened with, “Are you the bitch my husband’s been shacking up with for the last month? I just want you to know that he’s back with me now for good and if I ever catch you with him, you are one dead bitch.”

  “Excuse me.” I replied, “I had no idea that Bill was married. You don’t have to worry about me.” The real Mrs. Barkley went on to tell me that the reason Bill had moved in with me in the first place was because she had thrown him out of the house—temporarily.

  “Honestly Mrs. Barkley, I know your Bill is a catch and that more than one woman would want him, but I can assure you I’m not one of them. Besides, I already have a new man, and if Bill knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away. My new guy is a Marine and very jealous.” At that the conversation was over and I never heard from the real Mrs. Barkley again.

  The new man I was referring to was Larry, the brother of Alan, my scene partner who had played Stanley Kowalski in acting class. Just a few days after Bill disappeared, Alan asked me if I would do my part for the anti-war movement by taking in his brother Larry who was AWOL and hiding from the FBI until he could make his way up to Canada. Larry was not a tough Marine at all but a short, cute and cuddly Jewish boy who had been drafted into the Army and was about to be shipped off to Vietnam. Like most college kids of this time, I was against the Vietnam War, but this was the first time I ever took a stand. I knew I could get in trouble for hiding Larry, but the minute we met, we became instant friends and I wanted to help save him. He was a safe harbor for me, too, after living with Bill, and it wasn’t long before we became lovers.

  No less than a few days after the call from the real Mrs. Barkley, in the middle of the night with Larry in my bed, the front door opened. Bill stumbled in with his buddies after work to pick up the party where he had left off. He still had the key and was so loaded that he acted as if he still lived there and that I was still the little woman waiting for him at home. When he saw Larry in my bed he said nothing at first, but then took me aside and insisted I go down the hall with him to his buddy’s apartment in the building so that we could talk. My fear was instantaneous, but he was acting friendly and said he just wanted to explain why he had left me. Since Bill was twice Larry’s size, and I didn’t want Larry to get hurt, I followed Bill, and left Larry with the welders at my place.

  The moment Bill used a key to let himself into the other apartment, and I saw that his buddy was not there, I was jolted out of my sleep state. Bill threw me down on the floor. I realized that Bill had planned this evening. He said, “Bitch, you think you can bad mouth me to my wife? I thought they were educating you at that college, but I guess not. It’s time I teach you a real lesson.”

  He brutally pulled off my clothes and started to rape me. As he pounded away at me he kept saying, “I’m gonna fix you so no other man will ever want you.” Just as he reached his climax, he sunk his big teeth into my left cheek with all his might. Like branding a piece of cattle, he left his mark on my face and then passed out on top of me. I lay beneath him bleeding and in pain for what felt like an hour, but it was probably only ten minutes, and when I was sure he was out cold, I wiggled my way out from under his sweating, snoring body. I grabbed my robe and ran down the hall. I woke Larry up and we left the sleeping welders in my place and took off to Eugene’s, where he was still living in my old apartment by the college. Eugene took one look at me and threw on his clothes and took me to the emergency room for a tetanus shot. The next day Eugene, Larry, Leon and Beverly the butch dyke all accompanied me back to Gregory Street to confront Bill. When we entered my apartment, Bill was gone and this time he took my stereo and albums, too. I began to question my attraction to dangerous men, and along with each loss of innocence went more of my valuables.

  14. BABY LOVE

  With all my reality checks bouncing and the curtain closed on the ‘Landlady of Gregory Street’, I moved to Hoover Street with roommates I met through a notice board at L.A.C.C. I had no vision for a future, and like a fool who digs a hole to China, I had no clue of my destination.

  I assumed it was a coincidence that I had attracted three men named Bill, all born under the sign of Gemini, lived with three unwed mothers, and once again found myself in a household with yet another unwed mother. My new roommates were a couple who brought to mind plantation days in the Deep South. Eula was a simple African American gal from Alabama, and her baby’s daddy, Norris, was light skinned and as Uncle Tom-ish as they come. He could almost pass for white, and was embarrassed to let his white friends on campus know he kept a darkie hidden at home. He never openly admitted to being Eula’s child’s father. It was through Eula and Norris that I met the next player who would further shape my unplanned journey.

  Reginald Vinson, an Afro-sporting Gemini with handsome Middle Eastern features, was a fellow student I met through Norris. Reg was married, and had a stunning four-year-old, bi-racial daughter named Laura. Upon our first encounter, I felt no immediate attraction to him, but I instantly bonded to his exotic, bright little girl. Laura had large dark eyes and wavy long black ringlets that framed her light complexion. She was Lena Horn, Ava Garner and Jennifer Jones all rolled into a child. Reg would drop her off for Eula to babysit while he went to school, and Laura nestled right into my heart. I sensed her need for female companionship and on the mornings when I was home, I could give her the undivided time and attention that her babysitter Eula could not spare with a demanding two-year-old daughter of her own.

  At the end of the semester Norris threw a party at our house and Reg was one of the guests. Reg had barely said more than a few words to me in his comings and goings, but the night of the party he got real chatty and went on and on with details of his middle class Denver upbringing and his boring selected studies in computer programming. The more cheap red wine he guzzled, the more he began to confess his troubles and reveal details about his unhappy married life.

  Reg said, “I’m only twenty-five and I have ulcers already. The grief my wife gives me on top of my job, school and my kid is enough to kill a brother.”

  I smiled and politely asked what he did for work.

  I’m a full-time night janitor at a high school in Highland Park, and I’m carrying an almost full semester’s load of credits. Half-flirting and half-complaining, he confessed, “I don’t know how I get so messed up over you crazy white women? My old lady is a spoiled
heiress whose daddy owns half of Miami Beach. She drinks and takes those funny pills and has no motherly instincts. I know she’s cheating on me, too, but I just can’t prove it.”

  Despite the large Afro, Reg was relatively conservative for an Afro American in the days of emerging black power. Before the party ended, we were making out under the blooming Jacaranda in the back yard. In the following week, he played hooky from his job and picked me up for our first date. Without red wine, he was awkward making conversation and we just drove around Griffith Park until it got dark. Once he found his courage, he parked in front of the rainbow fountain on Los Feliz Boulevard and, like an innocent school boy, hesitantly put his arm around me and asked if he could kiss me. After my last brutish lover, I found his shyness refreshing. I felt safe in his arms and liked him because I knew he was a good dad to his little girl.

  I knew he was cheating on his wife, but I felt sorry for the guy. I figured he wasn’t getting any at home, and thought I’d help him out. I didn’t really think it would go much beyond the second date. Reg asked me to join him in Highland Park at the high school where he worked. I didn’t mind because I knew he really never had any spare time, so I showed up at the empty campus after 8 p.m. He unlocked the back door and let me in and I spent the first hour of our date accompanying him on his chores from one classroom to the next. Once his work was done, he led me into the band room. He unlocked a big closet with one of a hundred keys on a chain and took out several plush velour capes that were from the band uniforms and used them to make a soft comfortable bed on the floor for us. It was kind of romantic. Right there between the drums and the tubas we made sweet crazy love. His lovemaking brought to mind a more innocent time of taboo lovemaking like in the church basement at Saint Anthony’s with Dominic. Reg may not have been the first married man I had sex with, but he was the first one I ever found myself falling for. If it hadn’t been for his race, Reg was the kind of guy that even my father would have liked. He was conservative, hard working, dependable and a good provider to his family, even if he was cheating.

  Not long after our night together, Reg came home earlier than usual from his job and found his wife in bed with a gun-toting revolutionary who he had always expected was his wife’s lover. With that, he did an about face and came directly over to my place. Within days he found a one-bedroom apartment just a few blocks up the street from the Hoover plantation, and we moved in together.

  I immediately fell into the role of the good wife. Reg only opened up emotionally to me after he had had a few drinks, and my neediness for more attention and reassurance grew, as did his resentment toward his ex-wife. When he drank, he would spew all the venom he had stored up over the five years of their horrible marriage; but when he was sober, he had little to say. At first I didn’t mind, because I could lose myself in playing house, cooking and sex, and the occasional social outings with other couples.

  Laura was a dream to care for. Reg and his ex had no formal custody agreement, so Reg would take her whenever it was convenient for him, about once or twice a week. Laura’s need for love and attention brought out the best in me. One weekend, when Reg and I had plans with his friends Bill and Harriet to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bill offered Reg and me a hit of LSD to enhance the film experience. Reg, cautious about hard drugs, turned it down, but I accepted. I had tripped once before on a half hit, and had a very pleasant sensual experience, so this time I took the whole hit. Just before we left the apartment for the film, Reg’s ex-wife arrived unexpectedly to drop off Laura and, after a heated argument in muffled tones coming from the hallway, Laura joined us.

  In the dark movie theatre as I came on to the acid, I became aware of Laura’s labored asthmatic breathing. I felt an intense connection to Laura and sensed the child’s illness had less to do with her bad cold and more to do with the disharmony in her family. I spontaneously placed her on my lap and rocked her in my arms. As she fell asleep with her head resting on my breast, our breathing began to synchronize. From the film’s sound track, I also tuned into the amplified breathing coming from the astronauts in hibernation on their mission to Jupiter. I made a profound connection to the breath, the life force within, and how the astronauts were being kept alive by Hal, the spaceship’s talking computer. The LSD was opening my mind to a much deeper conscious connection to life, love and the breath, but as I watched Hal the runaway computer take over the mission and one by one snuff out the life of each sleeping astronaut, I had a glimpse of understanding that Hal was like an out-of-control mind. As I watched the horror fantasy without, I felt my own love and energy from within healing Laura’s labored breathing. By the time we left the theatre, Laura’s cold symptoms were completely gone, with no signs of her asthmatic breathing.

  I had been living with Reg for close to a year when my brother, Richie, then eight years old, came to visit. My brother thought Reg was the coolest guy, especially when Reg drove him all around L.A. on the back of his motorcycle. Richie and Laura were just a few years apart, and we took the kids to see Disneyland, and the zoo and pony rides at Griffith Park.

  On the Fourth of July, that summer of ’69, Dominic, my ex-high school sweetheart, made an unexpected visit to L.A. and crashed on our couch. After a long day’s picnic at Griffith Park with Dom and the kids, Reg returned Laura to her Mom’s, Dom retired on my couch, and I put Richie to sleep in our bed. That night Reg and I made love on the bathroom floor. Perhaps it was the unorthodox location, or the sexy red, white and blue halter I wore to the park in the heat of the day, but something had ignited Reg’s passion to a fevered pitch. From the start, our sex life had been less than explosive, but on that Fourth of July, we popped like firecrackers. In our excitement, we forgot to take precautions. Without a rubber to hold them back, Reg’s sperm took off like young men in a three-legged race. That night, one of them made the race to the finish.

  My parents knew nothing of my relationship with Reg or of any other boyfriends since I left home. Days before I put my brother on the plane back to New Jersey, I wrote a thoughtful letter to my parents explaining that I had met the man of my dreams, and we were in a serious relationship. I placed the race card as carefully as I could in the middle of my glowing description of Reg and told them that I thought they would approve of Reg if they gave him a chance. I put the letter in the mail.

  While waiting for the reaction of my father, I flashed back on a memory that I held of my family at the drive-in movies in 1959, when we went to see Imitation of Life. In the film, Lana Turner’s young daughter, played by Sandra Dee, befriends a girl at the beach who, upon first glance, looks like a white child, until the girl’s black mother shows up. When Lana learns that they are homeless, she decides to take in the woman with her daughter and offers her work as her maid. As the light-skinned black girl grows up alongside her white friend, the perky Sandra Dee, she grows unhappy and at school begins to pass herself off for white. As she grows older she begins to deny her mother, the only evidence of her true race. As soon as the girl is old enough, she runs away, abandoning her mom so that she can pass in a white world. The heartbroken mother dies an early and unexpected death, leaving the daughter to regret her choices.

  I watched my father caught up in this tearjerker, trying to conceal his tears, and in that moment I took note of his softer side and stored the information. Now hoping against hope, I prayed that my dad would apply that same empathy toward me.

  During that summer of ’69, the murder at the Stones concert in Altamont shook the idealism of the love generation, and the Manson cult news was about to explode and add a wave of fear and confusion to my high hopes for peace. On the same day my parents went to Newark Airport to pick up my brother—who stepped off the plane darkly tanned, with his hair grown out into an Afro and wearing a large Tijuana sombrero—my letter arrived in their mailbox.

  When I called to see if Richie had arrived home safely, my mother answered the phone and said that they just got back from the airport and had found my letter. My mother, a true r
omantic, spoke calmly. “As long as he’s a good man and if you love him, I can learn to.” I was shocked at how easily she had accepted Reg. She didn’t hear my dad pick up the extension in their bedroom. With the same intensity he used to hurl the red high heels at me when I was twelve, he roared into the phone, “You nigger loving whore, as long as I’m alive you will never see your brother again.” I was silent. “As far as I’m concerned you are dead to us. Do you hear me?”

  With that the line was severed between California and New Jersey, between me and my blood kin. I felt like Tevya’s middle daughter, Chavala, in Fiddler on the Roof, when her papa turns his back on her as she pleads, begging to be accepted despite marrying out of her faith. Deaf to his daughter’s sobs, Tevya walks away hollering, “This I can never accept.”

  15. COLD CATS

  When I told Reg I was pregnant it became clear that our relationship would not endure the addition of a baby. In our tiny love nest on the hottest day on record in July, Reg’s coldness made the air-conditioner irrelevant.

  Reg said, “Just when I’m getting on my feet, the last thing I need is another baby with a messed-up white woman. You better deal with it because I’m not going through that again.”

  I knew I was the rebound girl, but I never wanted to accept it. This rejection collided with and compounded the blow from my own father. I was only a few weeks along and, ironically, had registered to take biology during the late summer session at City College where I studied a mammal’s single-cell transformation into a fetus during the first six weeks of my own pregnancy. Miserable from morning sickness and the corpse-like man lying next to me in bed, it was clear that, once again, I had made a love match that brought a whole new kind of pain.