“It’s rare to meet a memoirist who can write about the darkest things without judgment and emotional simplification. Wendy C. Ortiz is that kind of writer, and Excavation is a book that’s devastating, funny, tough, broken, and achingly clear all at the same time.”
—Paul Lisicky, author of The Burning House and Lawnboy
“A raw, unflinching memoir, beautifully told, Excavation is a portrait of all that roils beneath the teenage surface, a reminder of the secrets that any kid might be hiding. Ortiz is a fearless and generous storyteller, peeling back the layers of memory, exploring her parents’ alcoholism and her years-long illicit relationship with a teacher, never slipping into the easy traps of sentimentality or self-pity. This is a brave, illuminating book; one that resonates deeply with the teenage girl I once was, and one that saddens me as the mother I am now.”
—Cari Luna, author of The Revolution of Every Day
“Excavation stopped my heart. Its story is vital, cracking open a dialogue about what we keep secret and how those secrets shape our lives. The narrative is direct and unflinching, pulling you, challenging you, the kind of read where you call in sick because ohmygod what happens next; but between those moments, Ortiz hits pause and looks back, allowing the reader to breathe with her, to reflect with her, to “wrestle with ghosts,” in language so breathtakingly beautiful, so precise and poetic and true.”
—Megan Stielstra, author of Once I Was Cool
EXCAVATION
A MEMOIR
Wendy C. Ortiz
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve relied on handwritten, detailed journals from the period of time that this memoir covers, as well as my own memory.
Names have been changed, in most cases to protect the privacy of individuals.
Table of Contents
Blurbs
Title Page
Author's Note
1986 September 1986
Fall 986
November 9,1986
Notes on an Excavation
1986
1985-1986
November 1986
Notes on an Excavation
November 1986
December 1986
1987 1987
Home 1987
Early 1987
March 1987
April 1987
May 1987
1987
June 1987
July 1987
Summer 1987
1995
Summer 1987
August 1987
Notes on an Excavation
September 1987
Fall 1987
Late Fall1987
Notes on an Excavation
October 1987
Fall 1987
Notes on an Excavation
Notes on an Excavation
1988 January 1988
Spring 1988
Summer 1988
Fall 1988
Fall and Winter 1988
1989 1989
Early June 1989
Early Summer1989
Summer 1989
Notes on an Excavation
Late Summer1989
September 1989
Fall 1989
Notes on an Excavation
1990 1990
1991 Summer 1991
Fall 1991
Late Fall 1991
Notes on an Excavation
Acknowledgements
Author Bio
Also From Future Tense
Copyright
1986
SEPTEMBER
1986
The classroom was not his when he first arrived; it was the domain of substitute teachers for the first few weeks until he walked into the room.
I slid into my seat and stifled a groan. There was always the silent exasperation that came with new teachers; the need to learn their likes and dislikes, their mannerisms, and what one had to do for extra credit.
My back pushed into the plastic cradle of the chair. The clock arms twitched in micro-movement. I winced.
The teacher’s desk was at an angle that faced our neat rows of desks. A cream-colored built-in cupboard behind the desk stood empty and anonymous, but contained the essence of privacy, space that the teacher would fill with teacherly possessions.
Out the window, across the narrow courtyard, was my homeroom teacher’s classroom. Mr. Connell was someone I labeled a spaz, whose wackiness and unpredictability is what kept our attention during class. I wrinkled my nose at the assignments Mr. Connell conjured up, but I avidly participated, figuring I’d trust his method of teaching to get me an A, or at the very least, a B.
In front of us, though, was the new guy who’d been hired to take the reins and lead us, the advanced eighth grade English class. I could already imagine the assignments: mundane essays about summer vacation, or what we might do with a million dollars won in the California state lottery. Pen-drawn spirals multiplied on my notebook covers, scribbles in my hardcover textbooks, the middle section pages cluttered with my tiny handwriting, messages for the student who would open it next.
This teacher wore slacks and a collared shirt and tie, with a dark cardigan sweater in place of a blazer. His burgundy loafers, with tassels, gleamed. Only one of my other male teachers dressed this way, and I was reminded that these kinds of clothes didn’t occupy a place in my father’s closet.
While I walked between classrooms at junior high, my father was in a warehouse, doing math problems, his pencil scratching graph paper before he cut sheets of metal to form ducts and casings. This work didn’t require more than t-shirts, corduroys or blue jeans, sometimes a denim apron. My mother, on the other hand, worked with and for suited men. She pushed paper, answered phones with the words, “Data processing, this is Dee,” and took smoke breaks off of Sunset Boulevard where she worked on the seventh floor of a city office building.
This teacher started talking to us in a fast and easy fashion, as though we were all old friends and he’d just returned from a weekend jaunt. I watched from my desk, noting his easy demeanor, how he was already joking with Brian, the class jester, and how he made eye contact with Veronica, whose attention I craved from the tip of my black boots to the top of my hair-sprayed bangs.
“Mr. Ivers,” he introduced himself, his eyes meeting ours resolutely as he spoke.
His voice boomed as his thick hand composed on the blackboard: IVERS. ENGLISH. Chalk dust scattered away from him like an aura. I coolly looked down at my wood-top desk when he turned his attention to us, asked questions about the school, how we were doing this fine afternoon. He offered information about himself, smiling, knocking on desks with his fist, inhaling loudly. I wondered whether I wanted to look up again and watch what was suddenly sounding like fun, kids letting go of their fragile teenage seriousness—the laughter catching, the banter baiting.
I decided to display a disinterest I was learning to perfect. This air of disinterest took the place of thinking about school, or how life with my parents felt raw, wounded. My preferred setting was the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which felt wild and thick with the comings and goings of high school dropouts-turned-punks, their colored hair stiffened with spray, hands outstretched awaiting change. Placing myself just outside their unpredictable orbits, I aligned myself with them, and any group that was already drifting against, or outside of, the margins. This way I would not be central to anything, but could simply observe, absorb.
Mr. Ivers, the man with a tie at the head of the class, joked with us, shared that we were his first real teaching job, but that he was onto us, that he cou
ld hone in on the teenage mind better than we thought. No one challenged this; it seemed plausible. His entrance to the classroom felt like instant habitation: his very being emitted energy, energy that pushed into the corners of the room, high up into the ceiling, up against the windows, daring us to take our eyes off him and look outside.
As soon as I found myself on the edge of my seat, searching the faces of Jennifer, or Tammy, both of whom were laughing and answering Mr. Ivers’s questions, I remembered: Not interested. I leaned back into the hard frame of the chair and let my knees splay out just enough to suggest a hint of the “unladylike,” as my mother would call such a pose. I twirled my pencil around on the desk and kicked Abigail’s desk in front of me, wanting her to join me in an active atmosphere of supreme disinterest.
My eyes were dry and itchy. I pointedly glared at the clock again, for effect. I considered the money in my book bag, what it might buy me if I went to the Galleria later. I didn’t want to go home. Or, I wanted to go home to parents who didn’t fight, didn’t drink, and were just normal, even though I wanted to be anything but normal. My palms lay flat, motionless against the cool desktop.
✵
English class was in the afternoon.
By that time I had already laughed in homeroom, reapplied eyeliner in front of the bathroom mirror at nutrition break, sulked and scowled at math, and sat slackjawed, taking careless notes through history and science. The catering trucks that served as our only lunch choice if we didn’t bring our own had come and gone. It was time to master grammar, read old books, and/or stare at the chalkboard as I silently sang Depeche Mode songs to myself (People are people, so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully…), waiting for the final bell to ring.
I worked at perfecting the art of sighing: long, loud and heavy; eyes rolled to emphasize a look of non-commitment. A careful pursing of lips and the tap of one black boot on the floor: I punctuated English class often until the day Mr. Ivers assigned us to write one creative paragraph.
One creative paragraph, he said. “Surely you all have papers, pens? Okay, go to it. Five minutes. Yeah, you can shoot hoops, Brian, but can you write? Yeah, a creative paragraph. Don’t give me summer vacation, or what you’d do with a million bucks. Give me one creative paragraph, on anything your little hearts desire. Yep. Here, paper, pen, do you need a desk? How about a brain? Sorry, can’t help you with that. Okay, then, go. Start it up, start me up…” His voice dissolved into an obnoxious rendition of a song I recognized as the Rolling Stones.
I sighed in exasperation.
I crossed my legs. My black leggings rubbed against each other.
I tugged a little on the long-sleeved white collared shirt wrapped around my waist, its arms embracing my hips, the buttons just touching my thighs. I stared at my notebook page, and tentatively let the pen touch it.
Then the image formed. Fire, hillsides, disaster.
I ground my pen into the blank paper, curving, sloping, across its face, across and back, across and back, until the paragraph appeared on the page.
Five minutes passed.
“Alright, hand ‘em up,” Mr. Ivers said. Abigail turned from her seat in front of me to take my paper and shot me a look of Huh? That’s it? A small sea of papers moved to the front of the class, their surfaces whispering softly against one another. Mr. Ivers collected the papers from the students in the front row, walked back to his desk, and leaned against the edge to read each paper to himself.
There was a titter, then a hush, as we watched him relax into his lean, reading, flipping to the subsequent pages rather swiftly. He grunted, occasionally glancing up to say, “Yeah, right!” looking a bashful student in the eye, or “What the…?” directed at another. There was a strange, bouncy feeling in the air, as if we were forgiven for writing poorly, as if he was amused by our adolescent boredom and our confusion and our young, silly way of life.
When he got to my paper, my throat clenched. I knew it was mine, because I’d starting using recycled paper, a telltale soft brown.
He read my paper and paused, re-reading, until I had to take a breath.
Mr. Ivers looked up at me (He knows my name? I think), and asked in a low voice, as if we were the only ones in the room, “Wendy, can I read this out loud?”
My head tilted, nodded softly. Yes, I thought to myself, too scared to say it aloud. Just get it over with.
The class was quiet. They listened as he read each word slowly, words that formed an image of a fire that charged violently down a hillside to ravage the basin below.
When he finished, he looked up and shook his head.
“Excellent,” he said. “This is great work. This is what I asked for. Thank you.”
My legs untwisted under my desk. I slouched in my seat, hid a smile, looked down at the haggard little etchings on my desk. I tried not to meet his eyes again that day.
Mr. Ivers placed the papers in a corner of his desk, and turned to begin scrawling notes on the blackboard.
The class pressed on.
My palms were wet and I felt unmoored. I wiped my palms on the shirt that encircled my waist with its flimsy, translucent hug.
FALL
1986
“Open your notebooks,” Mr. Ivers ordered, stepping backward from us, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his glasses. I saw a glimmer of a smile, and then a furrowed brow in mock seriousness.
“You’re going to use these notebooks to compose journal entries. You’ll turn the notebooks in to me once a week, every week. You can write about whatever you want, so long as there’s evidence of writing somewhere, somehow, in that notebook. Got it?” He held his elbows. He caught my eye.
“Why don’t we take just a little bit of class time to start this gig. Anyone have any questions?” Mr. Ivers began moving past students’ desks, throwing out joking comments, lingering with kids who pleaded that they had nothing to write about.
I raised my hand. My eyes followed him, starting with his tie. My eyes crept up his thick neck, ending on the cleft in his chin. I glanced at Abigail, who was busy writing in her notebook. She paused, put her head down on her desk. I bit my lip when suddenly Mr. Ivers’s eyes met mine.
“Mr. Ivers? Can you c’mere?” I held my raised elbow in the air as if it was a burden to hold up, as if I was wounded and required assistance.
He lifted his palm to me as he focused on Sheila’s question. Sheila whined about the assignment and Mr. Ivers cajoled her into starting with just one sentence. When Sheila’s pen met paper, he made his way to my desk. I watched him, the way his mouth opened slightly so that I could see his tongue dart out and touch his lips.
When he came to my desk, I pressed my lips together and hid a smile.
“What am I supposed to write about? Like, anything? We can write about anything?” I let my hand touch the cool of the desktop.
“Yep,” he answered, looking at me with raised eyebrows. I noticed beads of sweat on his forehead, which was broad and pale. He started to move on to another raised hand, and my arm shot back in the air, straight, sure.
He turned back to me. “Yes, Wendy? Another question?”
I brought my eyes back to the desk, back to the notebook, away from his small, hazel eyes and amused look. “So like it doesn’t have to be specifically about school?” I felt my legs twist up under the desk. I imagined I needed a touch-up to my eye-liner. My lips felt chapped under the coat of bronze lipstick.
“Nope,” he answered as he moved away from me, down the aisle between desks. “In fact, I would hope that it has hardly anything to do with school.”
I watched his back, the expanse of his gray sweater, and inhaled the almost imperceptible scent of his cologne. He went back to briefly conferencing at students’ desks. His words were lost on me as I stared at my notebook, its pages naked, waiting to be split open and attacked with my pen in one fluid motion.
Later, after half of the first page was covered and I felt like I was coming up for air, I looked up to find Mr. Ivers’s eyes fixed on me, a slight smile on his face, as the class bent over their notebooks.
✵
After school, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up. My friend Eva and Mr. Ivers flanked my sides, and I felt the dip into nighttime occur even though it was just nearing four-thirty.
Somehow, someway, I mentioned the novel I was writing.
“You’re what? You’re writing a book?” he said, hands on his hips. The dimple in his chin was showing, and he waited for my answer. I glanced at Eva. She had taken home my special red binder on different occasions, always returning with praise, wanting to read more. Handwritten on lined paper, it contained pages in the hundreds. My book was being written in bubbles of private time: after watching television and instead of watching television, before sleep, between phone calls to friends, sequestered in my bedroom. I savored my identity as an only child, different from most of my friends. Silence, notebooks and carbon paper were commonplace in my bedroom.
“What are you writing?” my mother asked occasionally, only to receive the same answer every time, “Nothing.” My father seemed unaware and uninterested in what I was up to when I sat cross-legged on my bed, door not quite closed, Soft Cell crooning softly out of the stereo speakers.
I flinched, imagining what would happen should my parents ever invade the red binder and read its contents. Looking at Mr. Ivers, I felt a tickle in my groin. I bit my lip, leaned heavily on one leg.
“Yeah, I’m writing a book. Eva’s read most of it,” I answered.
Eva laughed, a sound that mixed appreciation and something else, something like Watch out, Wendy. We both knew what the pages contained. And I knew why she was laughing like that. The moment felt like when I steadily walked the length of a swimming pool that got ever deeper, relishing the moment when my feet would touch nothing.
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