Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (9 page)

“And that’s why you took her away from him?”
I was confused.
Wasn’t
he
the one who needed protecting?

“She claims that he sexually
abused
her – touched and kissed her breasts; took showers with her while
his penis was erect
.”

Oh Christ
.
I closed my eyes.
Not this again.
I knew that the shower
s were
real, but the rest?

“Officer, please
be aware
that Aurora
has made prior accusations
.
She claimed she was raped in Issaquah, and
her own doctor didn’t believe her.”

“Yes.
Mr. Warwick mentioned that.”
A short pause.
“You understand that these
allegations
are very serious, and
that
DCFS
must take all
possible
steps to protect the child?”

“Of course.”
I
breathed in the smell of
burnt
coffee
.
What if this
is
true, I thought?
What if Nigel weren’t just
English-
eccentric, but a classic pedophile?
He’d always been enchanted by young girls,
especially blondes like Aurora.
When we
first adopted her, he thought
we’d gotten
Alice in Wonderland.
Neither of us knew
then
she was really
The Mad Hatter.

“OK.”
I held my cellphone tightly.
“What
’s the next step
?”

“Aurora has requested that she come live with you in Los Angeles.
Would that be acceptable?”

“
Um, y
es.”

Why did I
agree?
Be
cause somewhere up in Washingon
, there
was a piece of paper filed where I’d signed on as Aurora’s mom.
Coerced or not, I’d joined up, and
that meant taking enemy fire.

“Great.
” The Sheriff sounded relieved.
“We’ll make arrangements to get her down there.”

Shell-shocked, I returned to the meeting.
They were still
discussing
warehouse parts
and how
to
invoice
them
in
Excel
.
I cared less than I normally did, which was actually not at all.

I was
alternately
excited and terrified
–
Aurora was
coming to L.A.
!
I happily paid for her plane ti
cket, good for the next night.
She’d be
taken to Seatac
by
a social worker
, then
put in the care of the airlines.

I had seen her
twice
in
the
past
six months – trips to Seattle mo
st notable for their mutability. I
n a single day (and I swear this is true) there was rain, sleet, hail, and snow.
The only thing missing was a plague of locusts
– maybe the death of the first
born.
I was so glad not to be there,
I
could have
prostrated myself
and kissed the
floor
of the LAX terminal. But th
ere was no time as Aurora
leapt
into my arms.
She was fourteen now, definitely a young girl and not a child – something Nigel had failed to note. He still talked to her
like she was
a toddler: “Now clean up your room, OK?”
using such sugary, fakey tones that
I
wanted to slap him
.
Even kids should
be permitted some dignity.

“Mom!” it was strange hearing that word, since I had never wanted to be one.
I gave Aurora a huge hug.
Despite her issues
–
her
lying
and
chimerical moods
–
I still loved her.
I had a deep sympathy for what she’d been through,
augmented
by the helicopter-parentage of Nigel.
Poor thing:
she thought she’d
made it into paradise
– big house,
horses
,
her own room
– only to find herself
poor
again
, and
even
worse,
saddled with a lunatic father.

“How was the flight?”

“Good.
Last night I stayed
in a foster home.”

I nodded.
Of course, Nigel had been in touch.
He’d agreed to take a polygraph, and it hadn’t gone
so
well.
Nigel was the kind of person who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
He would blurt out whatever
he was thinking
(“You’re fat,” “What’s that spot on your face?”) so he actually
volunteered
information to the
Sheriff
s
:
that he might have accidentally touched Aurora’s breasts
while
he was tickling her; that their mutual shower
might have resulted
in a partial erection.
We would find out
later –
too late
–
two
truths
that could have changed everything
:
1) Nigel had Asp
erger’s and 2) Aurora was lying, except for the fact
they’d taken
a
shower.
She recanted to
me
two years
later, in rare tears at
having destroyed another life.

“Look!
”
She
poi
nted to huge letters spelling
out
“
L A X”,
an artifact from the Democratic
Convention.
Dramatic lighting bathed them in purple, blue, and red, along with some monoliths left over from
2001
.
She loved the
nearby
Radisson, and what wasn’t to like?
With its bar serving soft
drinks, pool with
free
towels, room servi
ce, and mandatory valet parking, s
he and I were rich again!

At first, things went great:
she used my Mac to text her friends while I worked
at the short-lived Vectron
.
It was July,
and
there was no better
place
than L.A.
!
I introduced her to my favorite haunts:
Tito’s; Dinah’s; Islands; The Mann Village
in Westwood.
We had an amazing day at Disneyland, and, ironically, I bought her a Mad Hatter
red wig and hat
.
Nigel had tried, but now
I
was
living
my
Parental
Fantasy:
a single mother in the city I loved, with a beautiful blonde daughter I would guide to perfect adulthood.

Like the
Housing Bubble, this one burst
post-
rainbow
, but in
both cases, you couldn't say you hadn’t been warned.
“Owwww!”
I stared at Aurora lying on the
bed
, trying to
process
what
had
just
happened.
She’d bitten me
.
On the arm.
And there were teeth marks.

“
What the hell is wrong with you?!”
I yelled. “Even my dogs don’t bite me!
Are you an animal, or a human being?”

She stared at me defiantly.
We’d been arguing over something trivial – like whether
or not to go swimming.

“I am
telling you right now, I will
not
put up with this shit!
Nigel may, but I won’t!
You pull that ag
ain and you will
be back
in
Seattle so fast you’ll be a blur of motion out the door!!”

“Go fuck yourself,” she spat,
tensing
every muscle. At that moment she
was truly feral.

“I won’t tolerate
that kind of language.
If I’d
even
said ‘shut up’ to my Mom, she would have
grounded me for twenty years
!
”

“Whatever.”
Aurora smiled up at me
with a contempt that was
actually
frightening.

“Let’s move on,” I
finally
said
, turning my back to her.
I went
to disinfect
my wound.
You
probably realize,
Dear Reader,
that I
shouldn't
have said what I did.
That threatening a child with removal after she’d been
booted
from twenty-
three
homes did nothing
for
her sense of stability.
Before you criticize me unduly, put yourself in my
Size Seven
Sperry
s
:
I had
no experience with children
,
and was
parenting a
Def Con
One
teen
.
I’d been bitten, slugged,
and cursed at
, and I was
not
a
shiksa
martyr who could
shrug
, “Oh well,” and go off to bake some cookies.
I was a tempestuous Jew –
remember my attraction to the Brontës?
– and my primitive response to being hit was to throw an
answering
punch
.
There were so many times I pulled back, on the verge of delivering a knockout.
Don’t worry, I never
touched
her.
But Jesus, I fucking wanted to!
Nigel would just stand there while she
purposely
kicked the steel plates in his legs, the result of a
long-ago
accident.
I wouldn’t – it was simply not in my nature.
I had
hot Russian and Romanian blood –
hell,
my sweet Papa Ben
had cold-cocked a guy
at a card game
!

By this time I’m sure you are asking:
what causes a child to bite, kick, scream, and lie
?
Let’s let the psychiatrists take over
: s
he’d been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (duh!), Post Traumatic St
ress (from the beatings), and RA
D.
This
last
s
tands for Reactive Attachment Disorder, and it is the most severe of the three.
The best way I can explain it is that it’s the same malady
which
afflicted
Romanian orphans:
thrown as babies into steel cribs, left to cry until they could cry no more, a key part of the brain failed to develop.
Unable to attach to another person, these kids were stuck with prehensile
limbic systems
.
They
are
unable to feel empathy for anyone but themselves.
They
don’t
understand the
difference
between family and a stranger, and
will
attach
in a second
to a stranger, while
abusing those who love them
. R
AD
children
often
grow up to be sociopaths – even full-blown psychopaths.
If you are not given love as a child, the tragic consequence is that you can never love anyone else.
It’s a sentence that crazy Donna, noncognizant of her
actions
, passed on Aurora for life.
Sadly, Donna recently took her own life, realizing at the periphery of her madness how much she’d ruined Aurora’s.