by Sachi Parker
This went on and on. He kept throwing out possibilities and suggestions, and I kept lying to validate them, and then he would pull them back from consideration. He was toying with me, manipulating me, and I knew it, and it was driving me crazy!
Finally I cracked. “It was me, Daddy! I did it! I ate the cream puffs!” I broke down in tears as I blubbered out my confession.
Now, you might think that, at this point, Dad’s face would have broken into a warm smile and he would have patted me on the head and said, “I know, sweetheart. I know you ate the cream puffs. I just wanted you to tell the truth.”
But he didn’t. His stare became only more fixed. “You did it?” he said in a voice of quiet outrage. “You did it? That’s horrible. Why would you do something like that?”
I had no answer. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have eaten the cream puffs in the first place, would you? They weren’t your cream puffs, were they? Were they?”
“No.”
“Then why did you eat them? Why would you do something as awful as that? And then lie to me about it? Are you a liar, is that what you are?”
He went on and on in this merciless vein, grinding me down relentlessly. Then he closed his eyes, shook his head, ran his tongue along the rim of his upper lip, and sighed sadly, as if his disappointment in me were bottomless.
As for me, I couldn’t stop crying. Yet, all the while, I kept thinking, They’re only cream puffs!
From that point on, though, I was terrified of eating anything in that house.
This episode of bullying manipulation, trivial though it seems, served as a necessary prelude to the Retainer Incident.
When I was nine years old, I had a retainer instead of braces on my teeth. One day, I took out the retainer—I don’t remember why—and I lost it. This is the kind of thing that happens naturally to nine-year-olds.
Dad didn’t see it that way.
“Do you know how much those things cost?” he thundered. “How could you lose something so important? Why couldn’t you just keep it in your mouth? What’s wrong with you? Idiot!”
It was only with the greatest reluctance that he bought me a new retainer; and he made it crystal clear that I’d better not lose this one. Ever.
So I promised myself I wouldn’t.
A few months later, Eguchi-san and I were on a pilgrimage to her family home in the country. She wanted to visit her private shrine.
It was fairly typical for middle-class families in Japan to have shrines on their grounds. They’re small and simple, but in their own way they are quite ornate, all red and gold. Eguchi-san had brought me to her family’s shrine many times before. Her not-so-hidden agenda was someday to see me embrace the Shinto religion.
I was not brought up in any religion (which might strike one as odd, considering my mom’s very public engagement with all things spiritual). Not Christianity, Buddhism, pantheism, not even atheism. I was a blank slate. Eguchi-san saw in me a golden opportunity for conversion; she would have given anything to lure me into the fold.
So she regularly brought me to the shrine, hoping for my eventual enlightenment. She must have thought I’d be filled with a sacred awe by those huge fox god statues flanking the shrine door. Actually, they scared the hell out of me.
Her family home and its shrine were about five miles away, and since we were walking, we had to get an early start. We were fairly close by noon, but as we were getting peckish, we stopped at a sushi bar for lunch.
I didn’t want to get all that chewy fish stuck in my new retainer, so I carefully took it out, wrapped it up in tissue for safekeeping, and put it right by my side. I never let it out of my sight.
Well, I guess I did let it out of my sight, because when I finished lunch, I turned around to find it gone.
Gone! The retainer, the tissue paper, everything!
I was stunned, and my panic level went from zero to sixty in a nanosecond. Suddenly the image of my father, red-faced with rage, loomed before me. “You lost your retainer? AGAIN?”
I was frantic. Where could it be? Was it on the floor? Had I put it in my pocket? I raced around the restaurant, checking under every plate and napkin. Could someone have walked off with it? But who would steal another person’s retainer? No, it had to be here somewhere. It had to!
Coming up empty in the dining room, I rushed into the kitchen itself, and there I spotted a large barrel of garbage, filled to the brim with fish heads, fish bones, and various chunks of fish innards—it was really disgusting. Instantly I knew that my retainer was in there somewhere. Without hesitation I dove into the teeming mess, digging my hands through the slime, pulling up bones and cans and anything that felt remotely retainer-like.
No luck. I emerged empty-handed, and cast about desperately. Were there any more garbage cans I could hurl myself into?
Eguchi-san tugged at my sleeve. “Sachiko-san, we must go. It’s getting late.”
“But my retainer!”
“I know, but we have to get to the shrine and then make our way home before it gets dark. Remember, if you chase two hares…”
I knew, I knew—I would never catch one, but I needed to catch the hare with the straight teeth.
Still, I had to agree that the situation seemed hopeless. Desolate, and smelling like a herring boat, I walked out of the sushi bar with Eguchi-san and continued on the road to her house. Whatever spiritual uplift was awaiting me there was irrelevant now, because by tomorrow I would most certainly be dead.
Eguchi-san, with her shining faith, would hear none of this. She always carried a message of hope. “Don’t worry, Sachiko-san. If you pray to the fox gods, maybe they will return your retainer to you.”
“Really? You think so?”
Eguchi-san nodded gravely. “The gods are very powerful. Nothing is beyond them. But—you must pray very hard.”
Eguchi-san held out her smooth sandalwood beads. I was ready to try anything, so I took them and I prayed and prayed, over and over, and I silently made one of those desperate vows that you believe with your whole heart and yet privately assume will never be called to account: “Please, kindly fox gods, find my retainer, and I will worship you forever!”
The praying continued all the way to Eguchi-san’s home. By the time we arrived I was so nervous I had to run into her house and pee—which took quite a while, since I was wearing seven layers of brown underwear.
Eguchi-san was waiting outside when I returned, and she handed me an offering for the fox gods: a small bag of dry rice. I took it, feeling that it was an awfully stingy offering in exchange for the desired miracle, but Eguchi-san understood the ways of the gods much better than I did.
To get to the shrine, I walked through a great wooden archway, down a path of bursting chrysanthemums, and past those two terrifying fox god statues. I held up the bag of rice meekly as I passed, murmuring, “This is for you. I’ll just put it inside.”
I walked into the small red-and-gold building, and approached the shrine. With trembling hands, I opened the small doors of the shrine to present my offering.…
I gasped in amazement. For there, in the shrine, on a red silk pillow, was—my retainer!
It had returned! The miracle had happened!
I grabbed the retainer, dropped the bag of rice in its place, and rushed from the shrine, back up the chrysanthemum path, and into the arms of Eguchi-san. “Look! Look! My retainer!” I screamed.
Eguchi-san smiled knowingly. She was not surprised at all. “The fox gods have smiled upon you.”
They had! I looked back down the path at the enormous statues. Though their granite visages were still grim and forbidding, they now seemed to wear just the trace of a grin. I remembered my vow, and I had every intention of fulfilling it. From now on, I would be a Shintoist!
Now, if I’d had any common sense I would have kept this whole episode from my father, because no matter how you sliced it, it still revolved around the in
disputable fact that I’d lost my retainer again. Yet, I’d been so thrilled by this spiritual intervention that I had to tell him everything. Everything!
Dad listened quietly to my story, took a sip of his scotch, and stared thoughtfully. “So now wait a minute,” he said finally, trying to wrap his head around this evident miracle. “You lost your retainer at a sushi bar?”
I nodded vigorously, incriminating myself with delight. “I wrapped it up in tissue, and when I turned around, it was gone. I looked on the floor, I looked in the garbage—everywhere!”
“And then you found it, a mile away, in a shrine?”
“Yes! Because I prayed, and the fox gods found it for me, just as Eguchi-san said they would!”
“Eguchi-san said that?”
“Yes!” My pride in that old woman’s marvelous transformative faith knew no bounds, and I wanted the world to know it.
Dad just nodded slowly, very slowly.
I don’t know what happened next, but Eguchi-san never came back to work after that.
Chapter 3
On Location
So now I was alone—or living with Dad and Miki, which amounted to the same thing.
Miki didn’t actually live with us. As I said, she had her own house, and that’s where she usually slept each night. Or sometimes she might stay in the tatami room in our house, a small guest room that lent a suggestion of propriety. I guess it was important for Dad to preserve the illusion that he was not having intimate relations with this woman who was not his wife. Accordingly, there were never any shows of affection in front of me—no kissing, hugging, nothing. They went to great pains to hide their relationship, although it was clear even to me that she wasn’t following him into the bedroom every night just to sing him a lullaby.
Whatever transpired behind the door, she never stayed. Every morning, she’d be gone, having repaired to the tatami room or stolen into the night, and Dad would emerge from his bedroom alone. Invariably, perhaps in testament to the glories of the evening before, he would be naked.
Totally naked. On a cold morning, he might pull on a kimono, but it would be uncinched and flapping wide open. That’s what I generally woke up to: Dad and his naked body. I would watch with fascination as he casually crossed the room, his penis dangling and bobbing from side to side.
Admittedly transfixed by this foreign protuberance, I still wanted it covered up. I couldn’t say anything, though. I had to pretend that it was cool. That it was part of the routine. I had to be cool with everything.
Maybe I should have just stayed in my bedroom, but the fact is, all nakedness aside, the early mornings were the best times to be with Dad. He’d start up a fire in the fireplace, and then make his tea. He used real bone china, and the best English breakfast tea, specially ordered from Darjeeling, India. I remember him throwing the boiling water on the tea leaves (just like with cowboy coffee), and then settling down in his favorite easy chair by the fire.
He was quiet and meditative in these times, and that, I felt, was the real him. He hadn’t started drinking yet; it was the only time of the day when he was completely sober. That’s why I made sure I got up early to be with him. Because once he’d had his first glass of Dom Perignon champagne for breakfast, that was it. The charming, moody playboy Steve Parker would take over, and the dad I cherished would be gone.
Sometimes I would grow so lonely sitting in that empty house at night that I’d call Yuki’s parents and ask if I could stay with them for the evening. Yuki’s mom would always say yes, and I’d take a cab over.
Why I chose that avenue of escape, I can’t say. I still didn’t really like Yuki all that much; over the years, our relationship had not moved off its initial settings. She was still a competitive, assertive alpha-female, and I was still a shy doormat. Her mom was so nice and friendly, though; she would always welcome me. She’d pay for the cab, make me a snack, and send me off to school with Yuki in the morning. It was like being part of a family.
• • •
I made my usual trips to Los Angeles every summer, and made the same adjustments to a wildly different culture. We would shuttle back and forth between Mom’s big house in Encino and the bungalow in Malibu.
Mom was always entertaining, and plenty of interesting houseguests passed through our portals. One was a man with a dark mustache and an interest in the supernatural; his name was William Peter Blatty. He had written the screenplay for one of Mom’s lesser films, a college movie called John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, and he was a neighbor down the street in Encino.
Mom and Mr. Blatty were kindred spirits, and he became a familiar face around the house. Much of the time, I found them engrossed in animated discussions of ghosts, paranormal experiences, the afterlife, and so forth. They liked to get out the Ouija board and ask questions of the infinite, and once or twice they even conducted a séance in the house.
Blatty was Catholic, and a big believer in sin, evil, and the constant presence of the devil, which Mom would dismiss with her competing theories of karma and self-actualization. So he decided to write a book that would prove to her, by the very power of its narrative, the existence of evil in our everyday world. Several years later, when The Exorcist was published and became a national phenomenon, he conceded that he’d taken his inspiration for the actress mother, Chris MacNeil, from Mom. He even offered her the role of Chris in the movie, but she turned it down because her agent told her the script (which won an Oscar) was no good.
The unfortunate corollary, of course, was that if the mother character was based on Mom, the daughter, Regan, must have been based on me. Maybe Blatty did use me as a reference when he was sketching the basic outlines of the character. But that was as far as it went.
I don’t recall ever walking like a crab or spitting vomit from my revolving head, or doing anything untoward with a crucifix.
I will admit, though, that the photo of the little girl on the first edition of the Harper and Row hardcover book looked an awful lot like me. Mom was sure it was me, and she told Jason Miller, the actor who played Father Karras, as much. When this was conveyed to Blatty, he denied it. “Shirley, how could I have gotten Sachiko’s picture on the cover of the book?” Mom had the answer: “You could have broken into the house and stolen it.” He insisted he had nothing to do with choosing the photo on the cover, which makes its unsettling resemblance to me even creepier.
• • •
I enjoyed Malibu, not only for the beaches but for the hills and scrublands behind the house. I used to love walking back there by myself. Nowadays there might be the reasonable fear of being carried off by coyotes or cultists, but in those days it was normal for kids to wander off by themselves and explore nature.
One time, as I walked the wide carriage trail, I found a side path that cut through the brush and wound up on the side of a mountain. Ever curious, I started up the meandering path, an Alice exploring a reverse rabbit hole. As I reached the top, I came upon a plateau with a stunning vista and, of all things, a small working farm.
It was an old shack in Spanish adobe style, probably built by the owners themselves. There was a huge vegetable garden, and a corral with several magnificent palomino horses. As I walked across the field toward the shack, a stout Mexican woman in her mid-thirties emerged from the garden carrying a basket laden with corn. She had a marvelous sun-lit smile, and she greeted me in Spanish.
I couldn’t understand a word she spoke, but her voice was musical and friendly; she took me by the hand and led me into the house, and before I knew it, she was feeding me tortillas and beans. Just like that, I had a new family.
After I ate, she took me on a tour of her garden, and I remember there was corn, lots of corn. You could eat it right off the cob, uncooked, sweet and delicious. She would pick strawberries and grape tomatoes right from the vine and pop them in my mouth, warm from the sun.
I don’t remember her name—she was just Ricardo’s mom to me. Ricardo, her teenage son, was in charge of the palominos. He wa
s always at the corral, grooming the horses, training them, riding them bareback. About sixteen years old, he was friendly like his mom, and always smiling. She didn’t speak English, but he did.
That very first day, he caught me staring in wonder at those beautiful horses. “Would you like to ride?” he asked genially. I certainly would!
Ricardo carefully helped me up onto one of the horses. There was no saddle or reins. I had to ride bareback like him. “Don’t be afraid,” he cautioned gently. “Just hold on to the mane and I’ll walk you around the corral.” He didn’t know that I’d been riding horses for years. I grabbed the palomino’s mane and trotted confidently around the corral, as Ricardo watched in surprise.
Moments later we were both riding bareback down the path, right across Malibu Road and through the access route to the beach. We took off across the sand and raced along the shore. I just held on to that mane and galloped down the beach, kicking up great sprays of water. It was exhilarating.
I went back often to the farm on the hill. I’m sure no one on Malibu Road—the stars, the celebrities—even knew it was there. For me, however, it was a second home, a warm, loving place far preferable to the pretentious social scene below. Over the next couple of summers, Ricardo and I would spend many happy hours riding along the beach on our palominos, splashing down the shoreline. It was idyllic and entrancing, and completely platonic. I was the little girl in love with nature, Ricardo was like my watchful big brother, and we were romping through a wholesome tableau straight out of a Disney movie. I was completely happy.
• • •
SOMETIMES my visits with Mom would dovetail with one of her location shoots, and she would bring me along. Thus, in the winter of 1966, on my Christmas break, I found myself flying to Paris, where Mom was filming Woman Times Seven. For some reason, Yuki came along with me. I’m not sure why; as I said, we weren’t really friends, but somehow it had become accepted that we would spend our free time together. Why Mom would want to bring her to Paris, though, I couldn’t say. I assume she got to know her a little in Tokyo when she was filming My Geisha, and Dad must have talked about her quite a lot. Still—kind of a mystery.