Dad looks panicked, and he touches the spot. “Yeah, I thought I felt something. Is it bad?” He looks me over carefully to check my expression.
“You gotta go to the doctor.”
His voice is barely audible. “Yeah, I think you are right, babe. Go call your mother.”
Mom races home after my panicked call and takes Dad to the hospital while the three of us children wait nervously at the house for any news of what’s wrong. Already stressed about the divorce and getting the house ready to close escrow, Mom is afraid to reach out emotionally again, but she can never turn down anyone who needs help in such a desperate way, not even if that person is the husband who is soon to be her ex. She waits patiently at the hospital until the doctors are able to diagnose his condition.
It takes only a few hours before we hear that the news is not good. It appears, to the best of the doctor’s knowledge, that Dad has cancer. The only puzzling thing is that they have never seen any kind of cancer like this before. What they know is that the lump on Dad’s face is definitely a tumor and it is growing fast. Immediate surgery is the only hope.
When Mom calls, she tells us they are signing permission papers scheduling Dad for radical surgery first thing in the morning. The tumor, we are told, is growing so rapidly that they have to cut off his entire nose.
“Oh my God!” I scream, putting the phone back on the hook. “This is terrible!” Then I remember the date. “But…but…it’s his birthday tomorrow,” I sob. I’ve been planning to give him the macramé necklace I just finished working on, the one he shyly mentioned that he liked, the one with the roach clip on it.
We are all in tears.
Mom comes home in silent shock and quietly readies us for the hospital in the morning. In the blink of an eye, the relationship I’ve been developing with my father has changed, and again the uncertainty of the future is frightening.
Dad is out of surgery sooner than they had anticipated. We stand anxiously as they wheel him into the ICU recovery room, where we see that his entire face is bandaged. The doctors explain to us that the tumor does not appear to be malignant at this point but that its rate of growth is alarming. “Tumors that grow like that can easily turn malignant, and this one could have suffocated him quickly if it had gotten any bigger. Apparently, he used to mix batches of Agent Orange in Vietnam. This may very well be the cause of this type of cancer, but it’s too early to tell. We made the best decision in removing the nose,” the doctors confirm.
It all makes sense, of course, but damn this is harsh.
When Dad begins to wake, the nurses call us in, knowing we are eager to visit and support him.
I walk quickly to the edge of his bed and softly call out to him, “Hi, Dad…how ya feeling?”
His eyes flutter open, and he tries to focus. He raises his hand to fumble at his bandaged face. “Umph,” he mumbles wearily, and closes his eyes tight as if trying to wish the whole nightmare away.
I take his hand and struggle to find healing words but fall painfully short. My eyes wander over the room, across the white square-tiled floor, and up the mint green—colored wall next to the head of the bed. A calendar advertising a local insurance agency reads July in bold letters. I remember today is Dad’s birthday.
Excited, I blurt out, “Happy birthday, Dad!”
It is not the best thing to say. The look he gives me could kill a large animal. I feel awful and kick myself for saying it. I shrink back, appalled at myself, and let my brother and sister take their turns visiting. I clench my fists and hope they will find better words of comfort.
Then it is Mom’s turn. “Vell, do you need anyting?” Mom asks coldly, her accent sharper than usual. Now that she knows he is going to live for a while, she feels put out. There is a strange vindictive tone to her voice that makes me uncomfortable. Mom has a habit of speaking her mind and damn the consequences. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to care that Dad is so vulnerable right now. She puffs herself up like a cobra ready to strike and, to my dismay, lets all of her pent-up anger fly. “Vell, maybe you should have thought about all those things you did to us, Vayne. Dis never vould have happened. Da vay you left Grandma vaiting for you! She died vaiting for you!” She stops abruptly, her eyes shoot accusing daggers, suggesting that this tumor is God’s retribution on him.
Terry, Wayne, and I back into the corner of the curtain in the ICU cubicle.
How could she?
Dad’s eyes light up through the fog of the anesthesia, and he glares at her. “You…you wished this on me, didn’t you, Edda?” His voice cracks, and he throws a desperate stab of guilt at her. Mom stands still in her tracks. In shock and horror, her eyes and mouth drop open. Dad’s brief moment of strength fades quickly, and he falls back onto his pillow. “Go home,” he says, dismissing her with a weak wave.
“Come on, kids!” Mom orders as she turns on her heel and walks out.
Somehow, I guess, the little green man with the long white beard in Dad’s stone has lied.
CHAPTER THREE
From Sea to Shining Sea
Where’s Terry?” Dad demands, walking into the air-conditioned house from the hospital. He has heard from Mom that she ran away.
He looks awful. Like a heavyweight boxer after a title fight, he has dark, heavy bruising under his eyes from the radical scraping of sinuses, and his voice is raspy. It has been two weeks since the surgery, and his face is still heavily bandaged at the nose area, the gauze strips wrapping around his head.
Much less laid-back and more serious now than he was before the surgery, Dad is now barking orders. Dealing with a life-threatening illness, he has little patience. He’s not messing around. “Where is she?”
I stand up and answer matter-of-factly, “Nobody knows, Dad.”
“Aw, now what? What is it, Dawn? What’s the deal?”
“She ran away.”
“Aw, come on. What was she thinking? That I wasn’t coming back?”
“I don’t know, but I think I know where to find her.” I don’t tell him this, but I have heard a rumor that she took off with her boyfriend.
“Then go find her!” His tone is filled with disgust. “Let’s get this shit over with.”
My sister, Terry, is very mixed up. As the middle child, she seems to find it difficult to feel favor from either Mom or Dad. She took a huge step of uncertainty in choosing our father to be her legal guardian. At this point in her fourteen years of life, though, she trusts only the streets. With Dad so suddenly at the hospital for a surgery with unsure results, Terry’s best reaction was to bail. When the familiar streets called, she ran to them for comfort.
Terry’s boyfriend—Juan, a Cuban boy she clings to as her solace—also hangs out on the streets. Older than Terry by four years, Juan protects her from most of the Cuban aggression she seems to naturally attract. He also helps get her into lots of trouble. Juan, a grown kid from the streets of Carol City, fancies himself a smooth con man. He stands five foot two inches tall and has pockmarked skin, dark eyes that shine mischievously, and a crooked smile. He is the one Terry is with when she is often nowhere to be found. Rumor on the street has it that they are shacking up at a friend’s house near Collins Avenue on Haulover Beach, where we often hitchhike when we skip school.
Dad isn’t in the mood to mess around. He wants to get this show on the road. The divorce is final, the house is sold, and he is in a lot of pain. We have only a couple of days before we have to vacate our home.
“Go get her,” he orders again, knowing I will handle things.
“Where’s Terry? We’re looking for Terry.” Scouring our neighborhood, I leave the message with my best sources on the street. I am eager to help Dad, and I puff myself up with the importance of the role. When I receive the address where she is staying, I head back home with the news.
“Let me see that!” Dad impatiently snatches the paper from my hand. “Okay. What do you have to tell me about this, Dawn? What is this place? What’s their deal?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know. Sounds like a gang place, Dad.”
“Awww, shit! Let’s go get her!” He grabs the car keys from the wall and heads out the door. I follow close behind, and as I slip into the passenger seat, I silently ready myself for a hostile confrontation.
It is an unusually windy day. The tallest palm fronds sway wildly, threatening to drop their heavy coconuts. We pull up to a pale yellow house on a block of stucco homes, each one a different desert color. Dad walks up to the front door with an air of command. Then he stops, slowly looks from side to side, and rings the doorbell.
The house is silent. I see a side window curtain pull back. The door squeaks open, a safety chain clinks across the gap, and a pair of dark eyes peek out. “Is Terry here?” Dad is polite, but firm.
“Why?” The eyes behind the door are suspicious.
“She’s fourteen, and I’m her father. She needs to come with me!”
The eyes glare at us for a few minutes longer; then in a sudden decisive move, we hear the chain rattle and the door opens. “She’s back there asleep.” We step in and scan the room. A young Hispanic girl peeks out from behind the door. “Terry told us her parents were dead and she had no place to go,” the girl explains to my father, her accent thick. “She’s in the back room to the right.”
“Go get her, Dawn,” Dad instructs, holding his head down and away so the girl won’t stare at his bandaged face. “Tell her to hurry!”
I scoot past them, hurry down the hall, and barge through the door. Terry is under a pile of blankets. Her foot sticks out from under the covers, bearing a macramé anklet I made for her last birthday.
“Terry! Terry!” I bend to feverishly shake her bare foot.
“Ump, whaaattt?”
“Terry. It’s Dawn. Dad’s waiting for you in the front room. You gotta go. Now!”
“What?” Terry sits bolt upright. “He’s here?”
“Yes! Now let’s go!”
“No! I’m not going!” Her hair wild, she scans the room. “Where’s Juan?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Now let’s go before Dad gets real mad.”
“Is he mad?”
“Not yet, but don’t push it. He’s in a lot of pain, and this is the last thing he wants to do today. You know we’re leaving for California in a couple days. We gotta be ready!”
“He doesn’t want me to go with him, Dawn.” Her voice is a whimper, and I know she is feeling insecure. “Besides, I love Juan!”
“Oh my God, Terry, you do not! Let’s go. Now!” Terry lets out a few audible groans and slowly gets up. She stalls for time, rummaging through her things, stuffing a large, plastic garbage bag full. “Come on!” I’m getting antsy. Things are too quiet, and Dad’s been waiting too long.
Giving in, Terry picks up her bulging trash bag and follows me out to face Dad. He is standing with his hands in his pockets, jiggling his change, and nervously looking out the window. The Hispanic girl fidgets at the door as she watches us come out. Dad avoids our eyes. “You got everything, Terry?”
Terry stands still, eyes filled with horror. She hasn’t seen Dad since the day of his surgery, and the gruesome evidence of the missing piece of his face stops her cold. “Yeah.” She looks down and brushes a tear from her cheek.
“Then let’s go.”
I stop to thank the girl and her family for taking care of my sister, and then I fall in to follow Dad to the car.
“Tell Juan I’ll call him later, and let him know where I am, okay?” Terry calls out to the girl from the backseat window.
Dad presses down on the gas.
We drive back to Carol City in silence. Terry sits by herself hugging her plastic bag and looking despondently out the window.
We arrive at the house in time to see Mom and Wayne packing boxes and small pieces of furniture into her car. I try to catch a glimpse of Wayne’s eyes, but he averts my gaze. His long, stringy, sun-streaked hair hangs in his face, and his shoulders sag like a tattered dog toy. He briefly looks my way long enough for me to see that his eyes are red and swollen and his cheeks are streaked with tears. He is taking the breakup of our already broken family really hard, and I am going to miss him just as much as I know he will miss me.
Terry makes a beeline for the house, not looking at Mom or Wayne, while I stand in the front yard, immortalizing the images of what I called home for the last seven and a half years. It is time to close things up and say good-bye to the shapes, smells, and shadows of a difficult part of my childhood. I stare at the cherry hedges on the side of the house. I gaze at the royal palm by the mailbox, noting how much it has grown. Then I think about Grandma.
The presence of Mom is everywhere also. I memorize the multicolored bushes that rest just under her bedroom window and recall with a strange attachment the sadness that lives there. I stare at the sidewalk in front of the house, where I roller-skated on a Christmas morning in my new faux fur and Naugahyde jacket that Mom worked so hard to be able to afford, and I smile. What is a nauga anyway, and how many did it take to make this jacket? I wonder and laugh. Even with her many jobs, Mom always tried to make Christmas special. I know that despite all the rage between us, I am going to miss her. I picture how we might have been closer, and my heart hopes that all the hurt between us could somehow be instantly fixed.
“Are you coming in, Dawn?” Dad’s voice snaps me out of my daydream.
I figure Dad probably wants me to roll him a joint, and I answer, “Yeah, be right there.” It is becoming twilight, and everyone has already gone in. I walk past Mom’s car, loaded to the brim with the precious treasures of our home, and I brush a tear from my eye.
Why does it have to be this way?
It is so hard here. If we stay I will probably end up dead, like a lot of the other kids I grew up with. Drowned in a canal like the girl I sang with in the choir before Grandma died; wiped out in a car wreck from a midnight race; shot down for whatever might be in my pocket. I know this. I want a better life, but why does it have to be so hard?
The next day Mom and Wayne are gone early. They are busy renting an apartment in North Miami. Dad and Mom have made arrangements to split the proceeds from the house, and Mom is very fair. As long as she can help it, she will never let her children go without, and in her own way, she wants to make sure her two girls have enough.
Dad is busy packing all his medicines and bandages together for the trip when he focuses on Terry and me. “Pack only the things you really need,” he says, counting his rolls of gauze.
“Dad, I gotta talk to you,” Terry insists, pulling him off to the side of the room.
“What, Terry?” He sounds annoyed at what he knows she is about to say.
“I’m not going without Juan!”
Dad looks up at her, then challenges, “You’re not what?”
“I love him, Dad, and I just can’t leave without him!”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Terry?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice shaking.
“And where am I going to put him? We don’t have enough room.”
Seeing a possibility that Juan can come with us, she shoots back a response. “Yes, we do, Dad. I’m only bringing a little bit, and he doesn’t have much stuff, either,” she rationalizes.
Dad thinks for a moment. “What’s he got, Terry?”
Terry stands, looking blankly at him for a minute, then asks, “What…what do you mean?”
“What’s he got?” Dad repeats. “Money…pot…you know. What’s he got to contribute? To bring with him?”
Terry smiles as she comprehends Dad’s meaning, knowing she has good news. “He’s got money, Dad, and pot.”
“Yeah? Really?” He perks up with interest. “Well, where is he?”
As if on cue, Terry runs to the phone to call Juan, and in only minutes he is knocking at the door.
“What the hell? Were you waiting around the corner or what?” Dad asks, amused at the comedy of Juan’s appearance. “Come in; come in.” He w
elcomes him in with a wave and a smirk.
Juan is grinning from ear to ear and sits down at the dining room table, ready to strike a deal. He pulls out a bag of Jamaican bud, promising to pay his own way and Terry’s too.
This makes Dad very happy. “Go get your stuff ready. We leave in the morning.”
After a sleepless night, I watch the sun rise on our final day in Florida. “Do you have the map, Dawn?” Dad asks for the third time, making a final run through the details.
“Yeah,” I mutter, distracted by the way Mom and my brother will not look at me, even though they have come to say goodbye. Although I am excited to leave, my heart is heavy. I try to make myself believe it will only be for a short time and we will see each other again soon. Dad has promised Mom he will keep in close touch with her, and she reminds us that if we don’t like the arrangements, we should let her know and she will work something out for us to come back.
“I promise you, Edda,” Dad swears uncomfortably, “they’ll be fine. Now let’s say our good-byes; we gotta go.”
I reach out to Mom first and hug her hard. Her body is stiff, and she is softly crying. “I love you, Mom,” I tell her, and I begin to cry also.
“I luff you too, Dawn,” she says, hugging me close, her German accent thicker through the tears. “If you need anyting, call me. Your fater knows da number.”
I walk over to my brother next. “Hey,” I whisper. There is a long pause. “Are you going to be okay…you know…with Mom and everything?” I keep my tone light.
“Yeah, I guess so.” He sniffs, obviously holding back tears. He looks dejected.
“I love you, Wayne.” I reach out to give him a hug. He melts into my arms, fitting into my body like a well-worn glove. We hug, sweetly, only the way a baby brother and big sister can, and then he lets loose with deep, heavy sobs.
“I love you too, Dawn,” he says through his flood of tears. We hold each other tight one last time, then pull away again, wiping our faces dry.
As he looks down, my thoughts search for just the right words, but what can I say? “Be good, Wayne…and don’t worry. We’ll see each other soon.” I try to reassure him, but my stomach churns with uncertainty. I turn away quickly, before I can stand no more, and walk out to our car, packed to the gills the night before. I get in and stare out the window. I’m not in the mood to watch everyone’s good-byes. I am anxious to flee, to get on the road.
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes Page 6