I take a deep, trembling breath and try to absorb the phenomenal unraveling of the green stones. Dad sees my reaction and waits a few beats for me to catch up.
“Pen Ci and I took my stone to all kinds of places to see if it really could be destroyed. We tried everything—smashing it, running it over, and banging it with anything we could find—but not a scratch. We even took it to a shooting range, but the bullets just ricocheted off—no mark, nothing.” Dad went on, “Nobody could believe it. It was written about in the local Thai papers and everyone considered it to be this big spiritual thing. Then…it got scary.” His voice was hushed now.
“Scary? Why scary?” I’m even more worried now.
“Well, there was too much publicity. We were afraid people would want to steal it, and if they wanted to steal it, they wouldn’t care if they hurt or killed us for it.”
“So…so what did you do?”
“We had to leave the village and go to Bangkok to stay with some of her family,” he ends the story abruptly as if he has said enough.
“Oh,” I say flatly. “And no one came after you? What about Pen Ci and Jack?” I press on anyway, wanting him to be less vague.
“Yeah…uh…I…uh,” he stammers and his feet begin to shuffle under the table. “I’m…uh…working on that.”
I don’t answer. I have already figured out that Dad speaks only when he is ready to speak. I’m confused about his ultimate intentions and after a few minutes of silence and trying to sound as nonthreatening as I can, I ask, “Working on it? I thought you were going to meet them in California?” Then in a soft voice, still not wanting to piss him off, I come straight to the point. “When are you going to do that?”
“Gotta have a plan, Dawn, gotta have a plan,” he replies with a half smirk almost to himself. Still not looking up from his cards, in an “I dare you to question me about life” way, he turns, looks deep into my eyes, and asks, “Don’t you got a plan, Dawn?” His mood changes rapidly as he shifts the questioning toward me.
“Plan?” I answer, taken off guard. I’m fifteen, and I live under my mother’s roof in a neighborhood going nowhere, I think. I don’t believe I even have any choices, much less the ability to plan anything. I stammer on, “Uh…I…uh.”
“Awww, come on. Don’t give me that.” His voice sharply accuses me of lying. “Everyone’s got a plan!”
Well, I don’t! my mind screams. Dad’s mood swing has shocked me, and I stay silent, afraid that he is getting mad. He continues playing his solitaire hand, slapping the cards down hard, making it uncomfortable to sit next to him. Finally, I can stand the tension no longer, and while Jethro Tull’s Aqualung plays menacingly in the background, I make a gesture of peace. “Wanna smoke another doobie, Dad?”
“Yeah!” he says, sounding lighter again. “Why don’t you roll us another one, babe.” His mood is sweet. As if he is sorry he had sounded harsh, he cracks a smile and it immediately melts the tension.
“Snot is running down his nose,” ring the lyrics from the cabinet encased stereo. I look up at him and smile.
Dad’s relationship with my brother and sister is quite different from mine. With Terry it is hit-and-miss. Sometimes she seems friendly and sometimes not. She has her own agenda and friends—and she keeps them hidden. She is only a little more than a year younger than me, but it makes all the difference in the world. At times she sits at the table with Dad and me, taking tokes from a joint and watching him make his plans as he studies his playing cards. Consumed with the constant worry of surviving in our neighborhood, Terry doesn’t seem much interested in the stories Dad tells. Some of his adventures catch her attention, but mostly she is relieved that his presence takes the pressure off of Mom’s angry control over her.
She is always on guard, concerned about who will try to fight her next. She is also proud of her strength. One afternoon, while Dad sits playing solitaire at the dining room table, we happen to glance out the window. There looms Terry facing two Cuban girls from the block. Quickly Dad and I stand at the glass to watch and although we can’t hear what they are saying, we can tell it is a confrontation. In an instant, she throws a hard punch that lands right between the eyes of one girl’s face. I race to the front door, swing it open with a bang against the wall, and run to help my sister. I can hear Dad pound on the window yelling for them to knock it off, but when I arrive, it is only in time to see them scramble out from under Terry’s flying punches. Heart pumping and fists balled tight, I barely have time to pick up a rock and throw it after the fleeing girls warning them not to ever come back. I look at my sister, her face and arms red as she tries to catch her breath, and shake my head in disbelief.
“Damn, Terry! How the hell did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, huffing and puffing for air. “I just fucking did it.” I can see the waves of adrenaline wash over her face. Dad quickly appears.
“Niiice,” he says admiringly, rubbing her shoulder. “Now that’s a Schiller for ya. That’s a Schiller. They’ll think twice before trying that again, eh, Ter?”
Terry stands, swollen with pride, and comes down from the rush. She answers with a threat, “They’d better, Dad!” At fourteen she is the toughest girl on the block. That day she is also the proudest.
My brother, Wayne, is never around. He is a typical boy who loves spiders and snakes, exploring, and setting things on fire. (Well, maybe he’s not so typical.) He likes fishing in the local canals and comes home with mud puppies as the “catch of the day.” “You can’t eat those—they don’t have any eyes!” my sister and I shriek as he chases us around the house trying to touch us with their slimy skin.
Wayne doesn’t know what to say to a father who has been gone since he was four. He is eleven now and has only vague memories of Dad. Still believing Mom’s interpretation of things, he is cautious and spends his time getting to know Dad in a shy, subtle way. He pops his head in at the table from time to time watching Dad’s habitual card playing with uncertain interest, but he gets bored easily. He isn’t into smoking pot and doesn’t like seeing me get high. Bothered by Dad’s lack of attention to him, he likes to slip out of sight without a word, get his snake, “Queen,” from his room, sneak back in, and egg her up my leg from under the table.
“Quit it!” I squeal, annoyed at his prank.
“No,” he dares and tries to get Dad to notice his pet snake. He makes a face at me to poke fun of my smoking pot like I’m cool.
“Come on now…let’s not play around,” Dad tells him. “What do you got there?”
Slowly, Wayne pops his head up from under the table and brings Queen into the light. “Let me see. What’s that?” Dad asks, feigning interest. Wayne is thrilled that he has his father’s attention, and he hands him the snake with a big grin.
“It’s a boa constrictor,” Wayne explains excitedly. “And they live around here. They’ll squeeze you to death!”
“Cool. Uh. That’s nice, Wayne.” Dad smiles approvingly.
Wayne beams and dashes from the room to gather the rest of his reptile collection. Dad holds on to Queen awkwardly, and to his dismay Wayne returns to show off all of the slithery friends that he has hidden throughout the house. From that point on my brother spends most of his time catching bigger and creepier pets to display for Dad’s approval, always getting the same dull interest from Dad and relishing every bit of it.
Dad wants to keep everything as even-keeled as possible. He wants out of his marriage with Mom and figures that the less he says, the better off he is. Although he trusts me with bits and pieces of his past, and feels pretty good that I am his one captive audience, he still seems nervous that I might go to Mom with his secrets. He knows how hard it is for her to accept the divorce. She believes they should stay together, at least for us children, but now that the split up is inevitable, all she can do is hide her feelings of failure and try to seem friendly. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy, even though it looks like she will take the blame anyway. Dad know
s this too.
The divorce process, once the terms are agreed on, takes about six weeks. In the days after initially filing the papers, Mom and Dad sit down with us children. “We have something serious we need to talk to you about,” my father announces.
The three of us line up in front of the couch, silent and not making eye contact.
“Well, you know that your mom and I are divorcing, right?”
“Uh-huh,” we mumble.
“Well, the thing is…Well, um, you kids are going to have to choose which one of us you want to go with, uh, as your guardian,” he explains clumsily.
Wow! I haven’t thought of that. I haven’t thought at all that I would have any say in the direction of my life. Dad is definitely cool. He is mellow and doesn’t like to fight. He has traveled all over Asia and has been on great adventures. He understands how I feel and likes the things I do. He is teaching me new things about faraway and exotic lands, and I want to see the beautiful places he talks about. He lets me make my own decisions, and just as my mother suspects, he looks like a good guy to me. I never blame him for leaving us and not coming back. Instead, I believe his stories of being unjustly thrown in a Thai jail and am impressed with his survival of the ordeal. I am in awe of all the things he has done and look up to him with the unconditional love of a daughter.
It doesn’t take me long to pick Dad. It doesn’t take long for my sister to pick Dad too. My mother’s heart sinks. The look in her eyes is that of deep hurt and pain, but her face quickly changes to an angered mask. I don’t understand her reaction. She will be happy to not have us as a burden anymore, I say to myself, and with Dad’s help, I chalk up her attitude to her bad-tempered personality.
“Vell,” she snaps, “vat about you, Vayne?”
“I…uh…I.” My brother’s head hangs down. He is obviously uncomfortable with the spotlight. “I…don’t know,” he answers in a barely audible voice. He sounds small and confused. He wants to connect with his dad, the other man in the family, but at the same time, embarrassingly, he is still young enough to want his mom. As tough as we all think we are, he is only eleven years old. I feel bad for him. I can see it is tearing him apart, and I want to hug him and convince him to come with us.
“Vell, who do you pick, Vayne?” Mom insists, “Me or your fater?”
His face turns red. Backed into an emotional corner he quickly responds, “You, Mom, you!” A flood of tears streams down his face, and he bursts down the hallway to his room. The door slams shut behind him, shaking the decorative plates that hang from the paneled walls. Dad cringes, slips his hands into his pockets, and turns away to glance out of the dining room window while Mom puffs up her small frame, looking strangely triumphant. She gives my sister and I each an icy stare, turns on her heel, and storms out of the house. Bam! She slams the door louder than my young brother’s earlier attempt, enough to make the cement walls quake, and wordlessly declares herself the unsuccessful winner of our family’s pain.
So Dad has been in the process of formulating a plan, and now I know I am a part of it. At least for the next three years until I am eighteen, I think. Now it is safe for him to reveal to Terry that he is headed for California and we are going with him. The house is quiet. No sound comes from the back bedrooms, and I guess that Wayne has slipped through the window with Queen or one of his other reptilian friends. Terry disappeared earlier, and there is no more movement from Mom.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to go with me when I talked to you before, Dawn,” Dad admits with a shy smile, his gaze still focused through the glass.
“What? Hell, yes, I want to go with you, Dad.” I almost jump from my seat. I can’t believe it. Am I really going to get out of this place? Questions swirl through my mind, and I can’t contain myself. “Dad? Where are we going to stay? Am I gonna meet Pen Ci and Jack? When are they coming to the States?”
“Now, hang on, Dawn,” Dad says, motioning his hand downward for me to calm myself. “Let’s take this slow.” Suddenly, his face lights up, and he puts his finger up in the air as if to gesture that he has an idea.
“What?” I’m curious now about the excitement on his face.
“Ah-haaaaaa!” he says slowly and points his finger toward the sky like a lightbulb has gone off. “I know. We’ll ask the cards.”
“What? Read our fortune?”
“We’ll do it over here.”
Dad leads me into the living room, moving the coffee table out of the way and grabbing his deck of cards. We both sit cross-legged on the living room floor. He picks out a red queen, lays it in the center of the floor, and explains that she represents me. He hands me the cards and I begin to shuffle. “Place all your thoughts into them while you shuffle, Dawn,” Dad instructs. He sits with his legs crossed directly opposite me and is very still. I get the sense that he has done this many times and imagine this is how he speaks to the man from the stone.
I close my eyes, pressing the cards hard between my palms, and begin to shuffle. Carefully, so as to not break the train of thought, I give them back to Dad. He holds them in his palms and mumbles a prayer under his breath. Slowly, he places each card down in a star pattern, then circles it with more cards, and finally places one facedown on the red queen. He takes a deep breath. “Ahhh. That’s a good one, Dawn. Ahhh. Now, let’s see.”
At that moment, Terry comes storming into the house banging the door behind her. “Hey!” She sounds out of breath and heads in our direction. “What are you guys doing?”
“Shhh,” Dad tells her, trying to keep his concentration. “Sit down.”
Terry approaches like an oncoming train, stepping directly over the cards to find a seat on the couch against the wall.
“Aww, God damn it!” Dad yells, flinging down the remaining cards. “You can’t do that!”
“What? What happened?” Terry asks, wide-eyed and frozen.
“Aww, shit!” Dad moans, “Son of a bitch!” He reaches down with more grunts and groans of disgust and scoops up the spread of cards.
“Wait,” I cry. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t read these cards. They’re all wrong now.”
“Wrong? What do you mean, wrong?” I’m in a panic. “Can’t you make it right?”
“Ahh, there’s nothing I can do, Dawn. She put the bottom of her foot over your head. Over your head! Here…,” he says, pointing to the red queen.
“What…what did I do?” Terry whimpers. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You ruined my reading!”
“It’s not good,” Dad says as he gets up from the floor. “It’s not good.” He shakes his head and walks away.
I am bummed. The silence is thick between my sister and me as we both sit, stunned. We are already nervous about all the changes that are happening. Deep in my heart I hope this is not a premonition of the days to come.
Time drags by at an exaggeratedly slow pace as the school year ends. I can’t wait for us to be out of here. Dad passes his time predictably. He wakes early in the morning, sits at the table with his coffee, and reads the paper. When he is done, he faithfully pulls out his cards and begins endless games of solitaire while he mentally makes more of his “plans.” Once summer arrives and school gets out, I sit with Dad and drink coffee, reading the parts of the paper he has just finished. I have my own deck of cards and have fun practicing my shuffling. Dad watches from the corner of his eye, smiling.
So go the remainder of our days—most of them, anyway. My excitement is high; the divorce will be final very soon, and we can be on our way. But then comes one odd morning at the end of June. I drag my feet into the kitchen as usual, annoyed at the harsh Florida sun flooding the house, and find that Dad is not in his regular spot at the table. This is odd, I think, but I am not alarmed. I tiptoe into Grandma’s room, where Dad sleeps, and stand next to his bed. Dad is curled in a ball with the covers over his head, moaning in pain.
“What’s the matter, Dad?”
“I don’t feel good,” he groans
weakly.
“Why?”
“My head! It hurts!”
“Do you want some aspirin?”
His voice is a childlike whimper. “'Kay.”
I wait for him to say something else, but he says nothing. This isn’t right, I think, strongly sensing the presence of something serious. I run to retrieve the pills. Dad downs a double dose of the aspirin and after a while comes to the table to check the paper’s headlines. He’s feeling a bit better but wants to go back to bed.
“Where does it hurt, Dad?”
“Right here,” he says, pointing to the space between his eyes. The spot looks angry and red as if he has been poked. I dismiss it as only a migraine that will get better soon. (I’ve never associated the constant small pimple on the side of his nose with this terrible headache. After all, it is “just a pimple.”) Dad doesn’t stay up very long; he says that the pain is getting worse, not better, and he goes to bed early.
Mom stays quiet through all of this and keeps her distance.
The next morning is as bright as the day before. Dad doesn’t come to the table again, so I worry and go to check on him.
“Dad, are you all right?” I call out softly.
He is again curled in the fetal position and sounds like he is barely breathing. He mumbles something I can’t understand.
“What?” I ask, beginning to panic.
He lets out a long, low groan that sounds as if it comes from a wounded animal. I can’t understand him and reach out to touch his shoulder.
“Dad! Are you all right?”
With great effort, he rolls over and pulls the covers off his head. Trying to block the light with his arm, he looks up at me.
“Oh my God!” I’m shocked at the sight of his face. “Dad, you’ve got a big lump between your eyes where that red spot was yesterday!” I gush. It is too late to try to sound calm.
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes Page 5