Everything I Never Wanted to Be

by Dina Kucera

  He says, “What about that boyfriend?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean. Do you have sex with this boy?”

  I don’t answer. He continues.

  “What does this boy do to you? Does he touch you here or there? Does he do this or that?” But the priest is actually saying really graphic things.

  I’m completely paralyzed with fear. I can see through the sheet that he is masturbating. I am trying to suck up my tears. I can see the door knob from where I’m sitting and I think if I can get to it before him, I can run out.

  I sit there while he goes on like this for what seems like forever. Then I jump up, grab the door knob and run through the empty church screaming.

  I get out the door and I am sobbing. My friend’s mom has driven me to confession and asks me what happened. All I can get out is that I had to run out. She launches into the trouble I’m going to be in when she tells my parents.

  I get home, and my friend’s mom tells my parents that I ran out of confession and I was disrespectful to the priest. My parents don’t even allow me one word. They march me to the car and now we’re driving back to the church where I am expected to apologize to the priest for being disrespectful to him. I try to explain and they won’t let me talk. I’m a troublemaker.

  The priest invites us into the rectory, and I can see a glimpse of fear in his face. Until he finds out that I am there to apologize to him for my disrespect while he was jacking off in front of me. He sits there, smiling, waiting for his apology. I’m crying. I apologize because I want out of there. He sweetly smiles and says, “I forgive you.” He looks like the devil. Afterwards, my parents are talking with him in the entryway. I look on the coffee table and see his watch. I put it in my pocket. Fuck him. When I get home I crush it with a hammer and throw it in the ditch.

  After that I refused to go to church. I told my parents what happened, and they said I made the story up because I hated the priest. They tried over and over to physically drag me out of the house to go to church. I said I would never go back and I didn’t.

  After that I stopped believing in God.

  Twelve years later, I was living in Phoenix. The phone rang and it was my mother. She was crying. I thought, Oh my God, what happened?

  She said she picked up the morning paper, and right there on the cover was the priest. They were taking him out of the rectory in handcuffs. They were charging him with sexually assaulting more than a hundred children. Many of the victims were kids I went to church with. Mom was crying and saying how sorry she was that she and my dad hadn’t believed me. I told her I loved her, and I was over it.

  After I got off the phone with Mom, I began to think that it was this shit bag priest who I didn’t believe in. And it was the whole idea of church in general that I didn’t believe in. But did I actually believe in God? Because God was a separate idea. Could it be that this priest actually had stolen my belief in God, and that God had nothing to do with it? Was there really such a thing as God?

  All I know is that my mom spent her entire life praying, and it seemed to me that her life sucked. Because that’s the attraction to God, right? You pray for things and he gives you those things? If it is his “will”? Did God give my mom anything? Was it not in his will?

  People talk about Divine Order. The people who are really pumped up about Divine Order are the people who have had a sweet Divine Order in their lives. I know that my life is what I have made it. But my mom?

  Divine Order is the concept that every single thing in your day and your life is exactly how it is supposed to be.

  Divine Order for some people is, “Went to college, got married, had three children who are now senators and oncologists, had seven grandchildren, then I died peacefully sitting on a blanket in the middle of my flower garden.” That is a really nice Divine Order.

  Then there are people with a different Divine Order. “Went to college, married an alcoholic, had six kids, twenty-four grandchildren, lived in my car, and died choking on a pretzel in the parking lot of a dollar store.”

  The Divine Order people are the same as the “money doesn’t matter” people. The people who say “money doesn’t matter” are the people with shitloads of money. If you ask an old lady who lives in the middle of a drug-infested, violent, poor community that she can’t leave because she can’t even afford bread, she might say that money matters. She might say that she had five children, but two of them were killed on the streets, and if she had money, she could have relocated herself and her children when they were small and maybe her life would look different today. So does money matter? Yes. It matters a lot. And was this her Divine Order? No. People got involved and fucked it up for her.

  Because God is dealing with humans who are imperfect, the Divine Order can fall apart at any second. I’d like to think Divine Order is something to move toward. Sort of like a goal. I believe God has a plan for each one of us. I say, “Always try to move toward your Divine Order.” Move toward the things in life that are good and kind and loving. And that may be the best we can do.

  I’ve asked Mom about God more recently, and she says God has blessed her more than she can ever imagine. I look down at the hole in her sock and think, Really? She says she was blessed with “abundance.”

  Mom has this black pant suit. When she thinks of abundance, the pant suit is one of the things she uses as an example. She says she’s still waiting for the right occasion to wear her pant suit.

  Because of her medication, Mom obsesses about certain things. On the day I asked her about God, she talked about the black pant suit all day. At some point, she asked me to help her put it on.

  I help Mom put on her black pant suit. She looks in the mirror.

  “It still looks nice, right?” she asks.

  The pant suit is solid black with shiny gold clasps. The gold clasps are enormous, and there are five or six that go down the front.

  I say, “It really looks nice, Mom. I love it.”

  Then she says, “Where could I wear this?”

  I say, “The Grammys?”

  I change her out of the pant suit and guide her back to her chair. She spends the rest of the day mumbling and napping. I guess this is our Divine Order.

  This is a letter of love a game of romance since 1810. Copy this letter six times and give it to six friends No boys! This is not a joke! Then on the sixth day drink a glass of milk and say the boy you like. Within six days he will admit his love. If you break this chain you’ll have bad luck in love. It starts tomorrow!

  Carly

  nine years old

  Chasing the Dragon

  I am open to the idea of God, and Divine Order is jammed up my ass on a regular basis. This is the detailed version of my Divine Order, as I remember it.

  Jennifer, my oldest daughter, was four-and-a-half years sober when she relapsed. Yes, the half year makes a difference. She was twenty-nine, an alcoholic, and an addict.

  Coke, crack, heroin, meth, anything they were serving at the party, she would do it. Lots of it.

  She was normal, and then it seemed like overnight, she began to disappear for days at a time. We would search and search for her, and then she’d walk in days later and not understand what the big deal was. She was with a friend and their phone didn’t work. Why were we being so “dramatic”?

  Soon after, she began showing signs of serious emotional problems. I have certain pictures in my head that never go away. One of them is from when Jen was about eighteen.

  Jen is at our house to shower and eat before she goes back out on the road. The party road. She is taking a shower and I need something in the bathroom, so I walk in.

  My daughter is standing there, naked. Her back is to me and what I see almost makes me pass out. Cuts. Everywhere. Deep cuts. She has so many all across her back and arms.

  I am so startled I quickly shut the door. I stand there for a moment holding the door handle. I am shaking and my heart is racing.

&
nbsp; I open the door again and scream, “What the hell happened to your back?”

  She says she slid down a hill and for me to get out.

  I start crying and say, “You didn’t slide down a fucking hill. Look at your back! Look at your arms! What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

  She quickly dresses, walks out of the house, and I don’t hear from her for weeks. Then she calls and acts as if the whole event never happened. Then she moves to another state.

  Jen was an alcoholic and now drugs were becoming a bigger part of her life. After she moved, she started using heroin. She was at a house party with people and they were all using heroin, so Jen joined in. She said years later that she first tried heroin because she was drunk. Now, years into our drug hell, I realize she probably said she was drunk so I would feel better.

  One of the people at the party overdosed on the couch. So the people who lived in the house dragged this guy to the shower, closed the door, and left him there. He died in the shower. Someone’s brother or son. He was lying dead in a shower, and there were people out there who had no idea that their lives had just been destroyed and that soon they’d get a phone call.

  The following day, Jen was disturbed about the death, so she decided to move again. This time to Miami. Where she felt she could make a fresh start.

  Her first day in Miami, sitting at the pool, Jen made a heroin friend. They went to his apartment and shot up heroin. Jen spent all her free time at his apartment. She couldn’t stop using heroin and drinking until she blacked out.

  One night she decided to commit suicide by jumping off the twentieth floor balcony. Fortunately, a friend stopped her and told her she needed to go back home and figure things out. She came home the next day. She was a mess. Her arms were infected and looked horrifying.

  This was my first experience with one of my daughters using heroin. I can still remember that exact moment and how I sat on a chair in the living room. It felt like the ground was moving. I was in complete shock. Heroin? Really? This is something I’ve seen in movies. I’ve never actually known a person who used heroin. Heroin will kill you. And the people I saw in the movies on heroin were middle-aged men. They were homeless and greasy and very, very thin, with beards. Not pretty young girls.

  We couldn’t afford rehab, so Jen detoxed at home with us and began going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. All day. Every day. She was sober for more than four years.

  Since her relapse, I’ve noticed several unexplained cuts on her arms and one on her face, and she has been forced, by law enforcement, into two different forty-eight hour psychiatric units. One in Phoenix and one in Los Angeles.

  While she was sober, Jen got married, but when her husband went off the rails and spun out on crack and went to prison, she realized she was gay. Nothing will make you gay faster than hubby robbing a grocery store wearing a ski mask, cranked up on crack.

  I walk into Jen’s room. She’s lying on her bed watching a movie, with a girl. Jen says, “Hi, Mom. I’m gay and this is my girlfriend.”

  I go, “Oh. Uhm. Nice to meet you.” Then I walk out and say to John, “Hey, Jen is gay and that girl in there is her girlfriend.”

  He goes, “She’s what?”

  “Gay.”

  “She’s gay?”

  “Yeah. That’s her girlfriend.”

  “Hum.”

  “Can you go get some milk? It’s on sale at Fry’s.”

  “Send Jen. And her girlfriend. They can be gay at Fry’s.”

  Jen is gay. She has a girlfriend. Fine. They hold hands and hug each other. Fine. I couldn’t care less. Let me say that the “girlfriends” are not making out in public or doing anything inappropriate. When we go to a mall, they walk around like any other couple.

  Once, we went to a restaurant and they held hands. The entire restaurant turned to look at them like the girls had fire coming out of their asses. I ignored the other people and ate my meal.

  Other times, I’ve heard comments. One old shriveled up lady said, “Why do the gays have to be affectionate in public?” I wanted to beat her down, but her wheelchair was in my way.

  We go places and people pull their children away or cover their eyes. One man actually confronted them in a fast food restaurant.

  Half the time, I ignore it. We have a good time anyway and just carry on with the day. But the other half of the time, I simply don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to be stared at. I don’t want to hear hurtful things. I don’t want to feel like I have to defend them when we go somewhere. I feel like I’m being dishonest when I intentionally don’t take the girls with me somewhere. But some days, I just don’t want the look-at-the-gay-people attention.

  Jen is an amazing, beautiful person. I want her to be happy and fall in love and laugh and cry and live a life. The gays are just like everyone else. But I’ll be honest: when Jen and her girlfriend come over for dinner, I throw the silverware out after they leave. I don’t want everyone in the house turning up gay.

  April is twenty-eight. She is an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic, and the father of Jen and April is an alcoholic and an addict. If you bottle that up and produce children, odds are, the kids will have some issues.

  But April’s “issues” didn’t show up until her late teens—as opposed to the other two girls who literally went from the playpen to the crack den. April was the responsible one. She was organized, efficient, and on honor roll. April was that kid in school who reminded the teacher to give homework.

  April was nineteen and living in Albuquerque. I had been told that she was hanging around with some really rough people. One day she called me and told me she was pregnant.

  Finally. I didn’t think I was ever going to get to be a grandmamma.

  We had a huge fight. I told her she should not have a child at nineteen. I told her I was speaking from experience and, as the saying goes, as hard as you think it’s going to be, you end up wishing it were that easy. We fought and fought for several weeks. In the end it was clear: she was going to have a baby.

  So I had to consciously change my way of thinking. I had to support her decision. It was hard. I didn’t want my daughter to have a hard life. I knew what it was like trying to take care of a baby alone. She said the baby’s father was great. They loved each other. He would be there and support her and take care of her—you know, all the things you hear before the baby arrives.

  So the months went by. John and I slowly began to get excited about the prospect of becoming grandparents. Every time we went into a store, we picked up a few things. Lotion, oils, diapers, baby stuff. Then April found out her baby would be a boy, and she decided his name would be Moses, just like his father.

  John immediately began to equip Moses with every kind of Chicago Cubs gear he could find. Moses would be a Cubs fan. As days and weeks went by, the excitement grew.

  I talked to April daily. She took her pregnancy very seriously. No sweets, no soda, no bad food, only healthy things. She told me she had a headache, and I told her to take a Tylenol or Advil. She said absolutely not. No pills. She was pregnant and those pills would get into the baby’s system. She did all the things her midwife and the hospital suggested. She took the classes, took the tour of the hospital. I was really proud of April. She read so many books on parenting and baby books, and really tried to get as much information as she could to be the best possible mom. She completely walked the line when she was pregnant.

  The big day was approaching. We were so excited we couldn’t stand it. Jen went to New Mexico to be with April in the delivery room. I was in Phoenix. They were going to call me as soon as I became a grandmother. Everything was set. All we needed was a baby named Moses.

  Jen and April are in the delivery room. The baby is delivered, but then the doctors and nurses say “code blue.” Moses has his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck three times.

  Jen is standing there in shock and April doesn’t know what’s going on. Several people rush into the room and take Moses away. Jen r
uns out into the hallway and throws up on the floor. April is screaming, “What’s going on? Someone tell me what’s happening!”

  I get a call from my ex-husband’s sister, who is also at the hospital. She sounds strange. I can hear a lot of activity in the background. She says she doesn’t know what is happening. She says they took Moses to another room. I’m confused and asking her questions. She says she will call back when she finds out what is going on.

  April calls. She’s crying and says there’s something wrong with Moses. She says they took him to the intensive care unit. While she’s on the phone, the doctor begins to tell her that the umbilical cord was wrapped around Moses’ neck. April asks, “What does that mean? Is he going to be okay?” She says to me, “I have to go, Mom.” And hangs up.

  A while later, Jen calls and sounds completely shaken. She says the doctor doesn’t know if Moses will survive. Moses is having a seizure. One long, never-ending seizure. They put him on three different seizure medications and a breathing machine because he can’t breathe on his own.

  John and I drive to Albuquerque at four in the morning. We walk into the baby intensive care unit, and I see April sitting by her son.

  She looks up and sees us and starts to cry. She looks old. She looks completely broken down. She is pale and has dark circles under her swollen eyes.

  John and I walk around the corner, afraid of what we will see, and there is tiny Moses. He is attached to so many machines you can hardly see him. We can’t kiss him. We can’t move him. All we can do is sit by him and rub his feet.

  They gave April a room in the intensive care unit so she could be close to her baby. The doctor met with us in her room and said he didn’t know what was going to happen. He said the fact that Moses lived through the night was encouraging. We asked about long-term problems. The doctor said he didn’t know. He said Moses was not out of the woods yet, and we would know more day-by-day.

  Each day Moses got a little better. John and I had been there a week, and at that point the doctors felt confident Moses would survive. No one could say what problems he would have, and Moses had still not woken up once since he was born. Even so, John and I had to get back to our jobs before we got fired.