My junior year I was allowed to come back to the public school. But I wasn’t okay. I didn’t feel good. I started to feel really bad. I stopped going to classes that weren’t the four I really cared about or rehearsals for a new play I was doing after school. (I can’t remember the name. Tough time for my memory.) I shared a car with my brother, and so many nights I thought about doing one of two things: I would get on the freeway and drive west until I got to somewhere warm and welcoming, or I would drive home to sit in the garage with the car running, leaving the heat on so I was warm and comfy, and listen to my favorite mix tapes before I went to sleep and didn’t have to wake up.
My mom sent me to our family psychiatrist. I liked her. She told me I was looking at the world through “shit-colored glasses.” But still, school was more and more uncomfortable. I had never felt like I knew how to be one of these kids who seemed so normal, and now there was an even bigger gulf between us. I didn’t know how to voice any of the panicked screaming in my head. I was only happy doing theater there.
A week before tech started for another show I was doing that spring, the head of the theater program asked me to drop out of the show. The school administration was unhappy about how I’d cut my class schedule down so much and thought I shouldn’t be allowed to be in a school production. I was called into a meeting with my mother, and as we sat in the theater head’s office, he smiled sympathetically at me and said that although I wouldn’t be doing the show, they’d put a flyer in the program about “teen depression.” I assumed that was also the reason they’d give to my castmates as to why I dropped out right before we opened—why, with only a week to recast my part, they’d now have to put in so much extra work after so many rehearsals. As if that would make it all okay and not totally destroy that last connection I had left at my high school. I remember feeling this bizarre split in that moment—intense panic deep down that made me want to scream, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!” but also like my body was frozen and shut down, unable to feel much or even speak. My mom, sensing this, I suppose, put her hand on my arm and leaned over to whisper to me, “Please don’t run out of this room.”
Not long after that, I dropped out completely. Though I had been an A student my whole life, because of what I’d missed I was going to have to be a fifth-year senior, in order to get enough gym credits and credit for a class called Consumer Education that would satisfy the school’s graduation requirements.
I spent afternoons in a local park near the library. A group of small kids would come by often for their recess. I loved seeing the games they made up. It usually involved two teams finding weapons to use against each other and then battling until most got bored and split off in little groups, except for the one kid who was not good at reading the room and continued to run screaming at everyone.
Some days I’d go inside the library and open any book I found interesting. Old science manuals. Short stories by D. H. Lawrence and Edith Wharton. A collection of essays about humans and the way they interact with animals. Psychology and sociology books. Virginia Woolf essays. Just chapters at a time. Pieces of things I found interesting that day. The homeschooling of the depressed kid who fell through the cracks.
I wasn’t sure how or if I’d ever graduate. But my dad found an art school in Chicago. I auditioned that summer for my senior year. I got in. I was ecstatic. I’d been saving up money for college by working at a local coffee shop and doing various acting jobs: a McDonald’s commercial that never aired, a driver’s ed video for the state of Wisconsin, a video for kids about how to deal with alcoholic parents, an antismoking PSA. I used those savings to help pay tuition for my senior year at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. It was absolutely worth it to me.
I immediately loved the art school and the students. They felt like “my people.” Weird and wonderful and all so talented. I loved (most of) the teachers. I felt like I couldn’t fall through bureaucratic cracks there. I did correspondence courses so I could graduate on time. I smiled again. I went from not being able to speak for months to getting voted best personality at the end of the year.
But most important, I made good friends. I became particularly close with one person.
Megu.
* * *
I, ALONG WITH a group of several others, was asked to look out for the new Japanese foreign exchange student. She was staying in a home in Oak Park. So I started talking to her.
Megu was half Japanese and half Bangladeshi. She was tiny and wore little flannel shirts and cardigans and came up to my armpit and had short hair, which she permed. She said it was to look like Bob Dylan. She had one front tooth that stuck out, and I never knew if she was being silly on purpose when she’d say, “I have to brush my tooth.” Her English wasn’t great but she didn’t seem to care. She seemed to find me funny enough, too, and we hung out more and more. We used her electronic translator, which I called Kancho after learning that it sort of meant “butt sex” in Japanese slang. She pretended to roll her eyes at that, but then about a month later she was saying things like, “Oh no, I left Kancho at home.”
As we became closer friends, I invited her to move into our little guest room. She was paying more than her family could necessarily afford to live in one room in this other house. So she started living with my mom and me and my big dog Emma. My mom had sort of an open-door policy of sharing her home with friends who might need a place for a while. I’d like to think this is something she’s passed on to me as well. And we had extra room as my brother was away at college for most of the year and my dad had moved out years before. My mom was very open about her plans to eventually sell the house and move into a smaller condo, but she was hoping to hold out until my brother and I were firmly settled elsewhere.
Megu’s room was next to mine, and most nights I’d hear her humming (I distinctly remember a lot of “I’ve Got the World on a String”) as she’d paint self-portraits or make little bug figures out of things she’d found outside. She found long branches and soaked them so they’d bend. Then she painted them black and stretched them over her bed like a canopy.
We got better at talking to each other through Kancho, and I found out about Megu’s school history. She hadn’t had a normal high school career either. See, most of her schooling was in the hospital. Megu had had cancer. She showed me her passport photo one day, which she hadn’t shown anyone else. She still had that funny tooth sticking out, but she had no hair. Her short Bob Dylan perm took on a new meaning.
She stayed in my house for two years, even when I went to college. Just Megu and my mom and dog. My mom would call me and say, in a loving way, “Megu is so weird,” and Megu would call and say to me, in a loving way, “Your mom is so weird.” They were both absolutely right.
One summer after she’d returned from a visit to Japan, Megu pulled me aside at my boyfriend Henry’s beautiful beach home in Michigan. She said, “I have to tell you something.” With light help from Kancho, I learned Megu’s mom had gone to a “witch doctor.” I only say that because we don’t quite have the words. Maybe more of a shaman. Her mother walked in and without her saying much, this man said, “Your daughter doesn’t have cancer.” He gave her a small sachet for Megu to wear around her neck for protection. Megu showed me. She was smiling, sort of glowing. Megu felt free. She felt “well” finally. I told her that was amazing. She smiled at me for a beat and said, “Yeah… So I can smoke pot now.”
* * *
MEGU MOVED BACK to Tokyo permanently the summer after my freshman year of college. I never got a proper goodbye, though. The week before Megu left, Erica’s car was hit by the train in Kalamazoo, so I drove out to sit with friends on the hospital lawn.
Megu went home. I went back to school in California. Somehow her address got lost in the house while I was away. We couldn’t find any new contact information for her. There was no social media really (not that Megu would ever take part!). Every other year or so for about ten years, I did a search for her online, which was very difficult without
Kancho.
But then, Megu was a Zen Buddhist. I think I learned enough from her to know this story isn’t a sad story. We were lucky to meet when we did, and how nice to have this special friendship and funny stories to tell about this wonderful bizarre little person. I got to see Megu feel freedom from sickness finally one day, and she got to see me start smiling and laughing again.
We didn’t lose each other. We found each other.
Owen would’ve liked Megu.
May 17, 2020
I’ve started planting basil.
I’ve never planted anything before, although I have a fake tree that I love, left in my apartment by my wonderful landlord Howard. This is so new to me, in fact, that I forgot to also buy soil and pots. I had this tray of basil sitting outside and then inside for a week. Inside, because I read basil needs to be warm. But now I’ve got three pots (a fourth on its way courtesy of Amazon) and two mugs, and I’m willing this basil to grow, to not die under my care. I ask Kevin every day if he thinks it looks good. He assures me it does. “Look at those happy leaves!”
* * *
WHEN I WAS growing up, both of my parents were excellent gardeners. I never quite inherited their green thumbs. They loved going to our local nursery, Frank’s, and buying new plants and flowers every year. Our yard was small but always full of flowers and bushes and vegetables. We had peonies that blossomed by April or May. I know this because this was always my end-of-year gift for my teachers.
Next to the peonies was a butterfly bush. That plant attracted lots of butterflies but also lots of bees. I got mad about something or other as a kid and went outside and wrapped my fingers around a bee to get stung. That would show my mom.
We had a raspberry bush, and we could pick fresh raspberries right off the stem and eat them. I think I liked the novelty of getting to eat raspberries right off the bush more than I liked raspberries themselves. My dad had a giant bleeding heart bush that sat loudly and proudly in the corner like royalty. We had bright orange poppies. Snapdragons. Lilies of the valley. Crocuses. Rhododendrons. Lilacs and honeysuckle. Forget-me-nots. My parents at one point put a trellis on our porch, and we had morning glory growing up the front of the house. We had tulips running along the side of the house. My mom had an herb garden, and the mint was another one I got to eat right from the ground. Rosemary. (“Run it through your fingers, Cecily. Doesn’t that smell good?”) Thyme. Basil. Tomatoes wrapped around wooden sticks! I think cucumbers, too.
Just remembering them all now I’m blown away by how committed my parents were. I can’t believe I remember all these names. I can’t believe I remember where each of the flowers was planted in my yard. I knew where all the roses were planted because that’s where I found my mom the day in fifth grade when I ran home from school because I told a boy I’d “go with him” and he put his arm around me and I pretended to like it but inside I felt terrible. I wasn’t ready to “go with” someone. Why were all my classmates ready to date and kiss, even French kiss, and I wasn’t?
My favorite part of our garden, though, was a purple plum tree in the front yard. It was the perfect size for an eight-year-old who couldn’t climb trees. I would sit in a little nook between two thick purple branches and wonder if I’d ever get to eat the plums before the squirrels. We had big fir bushes lining the front of the house, like a gentleman’s beard. One time my magenta “Pizzazz” bicycle was stolen from our garage. Months later I discovered it had been returned, thrown into those bushes with a giant hole in the tire.
Speaking of bicycles: I have always had a blurry memory that I saw a kid I didn’t recognize from school have some kind of awful bike accident on the playground. I remember it as his handle impaling him. I was haunted by this image of a big hole in a kid’s stomach. But that can’t be right, right? Memories are funny.
Back to my garden.
One day my brother, Nat, and my dad had a really bad fight. This was not out of the ordinary in my house. My brother had ADHD, ADD, depression, dyslexia, learning disabilities, Asperger’s. He was very overweight. All those “disorders” that just get you labeled as a bad kid. Especially in the nineties. My dad and Nat would have loud screaming matches, and my mom would hold me in her room because they scared me. After this particularly bad fight, my brother went missing. For hours. We searched the streets around the house, yelling for him, and called neighbors. We almost called the police. He came back around dusk, just walked through the door. Turns out he was sitting under the porch all along, hiding behind the morning glory.
My brother and I would fight, too. Physically sometimes. I bit him hard once in the armpit. That was the only time I ever got a hit in. He was bigger and stronger, so most of our fights he was chasing me around the table, where I could fend him off for a while. I wasn’t ever really scared, though. I loved my brother dearly. I knew he loved me. One night he had taken a little axe from wherever we kept an axe for some reason and was going at the lock my parents had started using on the fridge doors to keep Nat from overeating. I sat at the kitchen table right next to him, silently watching him. My mom yelled for me to come upstairs. But I didn’t this time. My brother turned to me and said, “I wouldn’t ever hurt you.” And I said, “I know.” My brother was the sweetest and funniest person I knew—still is. He’s a really good guy with a big heart that he didn’t get to share with many people for a long time.
As you can imagine, school was not a very kind place for my brother. I don’t quite know the extent to which he was bullied, but I remember hearing some on the playground. For being fat, for not being able to read as well as other kids. Kids would make jokes to me as if I’d find them funny. He was put in some special classes, which must have been very frustrating for a guy who is so intelligent and now works in IT.
He started seeing a psychiatrist at one point. Sometimes I’d go along for family sessions. I remember the building had huge ornate metal doors and a black-and-white checkered floor. Later on, I would start seeing this same psychiatrist. She prescribed him Ritalin for his ADD. The pills worked until the day he yelled upstairs, “Mom, I think I have to go to the hospital. I swallowed my whole bottle of pills.” We spent hours in the Oak Park Hospital that night. They made my brother throw up to get rid of the pills in his stomach. I saw him sitting up on his hospital bed in the ER, exhausted and crying. I spent the night at the house of my mom’s best friend. Later we found a note he’d written. I only remember that he wanted to leave all of his money to Planned Parenthood.
He was admitted to the children’s psych ward at Rush hospital in Chicago for a week. I can’t quite remember what it looked like there. I can vaguely remember seeing children’s drawings taped onto the white walls. It smelled like disinfectant. He had art classes and daily therapy. We had a couple family sessions. Being the youngest, and seemingly “okay,” I wasn’t always involved in those sessions.
After the week, my brother came home. He went back to school. My parents spent a few weeks still seeing his counselor, but on their own. And after one of those sessions, I sat on the couch by the back door, waiting and watching for them from the window as I normally did when they were out. I saw my mom walk out of the garage first, quickly with her head down. My dad followed slowly behind her, his head down as well. They asked to talk to my brother and me, and so we all gathered in my room, Nat and I on my bed, them standing in front of us on my pink carpet. And then my parents said they were getting separated. My dad would be moving out.
* * *
IN THE YEARS after my dad left, the garden began to slowly fall apart. My mom still did her best to keep up with her favorite flowers, but it was hard to find the time as she was back in school to become a nurse and then eventually a nurse practitioner. She did this while raising two kids full-time except for “Thursday night and every other weekend.” I remember the yard becoming messier, disheveled. These long vines dangled over the little cement walkway near the roses where I told her about going with a boy. I hated these vines and branches because they were
always just in the way, tangling me and catching my arms like someone trying to keep me from leaving an upsetting conversation. Some sections were empty, or sparse at best. I tried to plant wildflowers near the roses once but I didn’t do much more than scatter the bag of seeds. So they never really became the lavish garden pictured on the front of the seed packet. My plum tree got a disease and the city cut it down. My mom replaced it with a little apple tree, but it wasn’t purple and there was no longer a nook for me. My dad’s bleeding hearts were gone.
My mom sold the house eventually, downsizing to a two-bedroom apartment. She made sure to find a place with a little balcony facing south. She has all of her plants out there. It’s harder to maintain, though, as she spends half her time living in a condo in Puerto Vallarta. She saved up for a long time to get that condo in Mexico, and she’s enjoying her retirement there as much as she can—although she never seems to stop working in some way: volunteering at local schools teaching English or helping with food drives and whatever else may come her way. I had to beg her not to return to work as a nurse at the start of COVID, because I was scared with her age and a heart condition she’s developed. She and I share a love of the sun and the beach. She’s down there now, during this quarantine, unhappy that they closed the pools and beaches. I try to tell her it won’t be forever and she should sit on her balcony, where she can still enjoy the sun she loves so much. My brother watches her apartment when she’s gone. Along with his girlfriend. He’s madly in love, finally getting to really share his big heart with someone.
My dad lives in a house across town and he is still an avid gardener. He likes big statement pieces like clay fireplaces and stone Buddhas. (And, yes, it’s totally that older-white-guy self-help cliché thing, but I figure I’ve teased him enough about it over the years and so now I can just appreciate the statues for actually being really lovely.) He can spend hours sitting out in his yard. He even got remarried in that backyard. My two friends followed me down the alley as I cried that day after the ceremony. Not because I didn’t appreciate and love my new family: my stepmom, Colleen, who loved me so much and told me often, and my two stepsiblings, Steve and Sammi, both of whom I adored. It was just an official ending to the life and family I once had. And I was sad for my mom.
This Will All Be Over Soon Page 8