The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (3 page)

Wanda had seen me for what I was. And what I was was filthy. After the reveal—after
my
reveal—I felt consistently, upsettingly exposed whenever Wanda was around. This did nothing to satiate my need for attention. It rather stoked the flames. The cruel elements of an unfair world had
made
me forget to lock the bathroom door, and I craved compensation. I had suffered
An Offense
! I now deserved
A Treat
! I wasn’t picky, either. Anything would do provided it presented me in an attention-worthy light:

But months passed by and no such dreams came true. I held out hope that one day maybe they would, and told myself that in the meantime I should do as I had always done. I should turn to my imaginary models.

“Excuse me, Ms. Barron?”

“Yes, Nancy?”

“I did some new paintings I thought you’d like to see. Since, well, you are very good at painting judging.”

“Why, yes, Nancy. Thank you.”

“Here is one of Sam. You will see that he is fat and also crying.”

“Why, yes. I
do
see. But
why
is he crying?”

“Because he lives with foster parents now who tell him that he’s boring.”

“And also that he’s fat?”

“Yes. And also that he’s fat.”

The shame I felt at having been caught in the throes of these conversations had been jarring enough to make me conscious of my volume, and to prompt an unfailing diligence where the bathroom door lock was concerned. However, it had not been enough to curb the impulse to have the conversations in the first place. Bathroom socializing was just who I was now. It gave me the energy to persevere: at school and at home. In the face of Sam’s asthma. Until my modeling career took off.

I do not know if I was ever again overheard, but I was never again confronted. I figured that Wanda never wound up mentioning my antics to my mother simply because my mother never mentioned them to me. As time went on, as I realized with increasing surety that Wanda had kept my
secret to herself, I felt increasingly grateful to her, more trusting and impressed. I was, if not attached, then comfortable. If not adoring, then admiring.

In short, I was a fan.

One year into Wanda’s employment, she broke the news that she was going back to Poland. She told us over breakfast.

We were all together in the kitchen, Wanda, my mother, and me. My mother was eating a bag of homemade trail mix, I was eating Eggo waffles, and Wanda was fiddling with a tiny hunk of cheddar cheese. Eventually Wanda said, “Missus, hear me. Please. Father in Poland is bad sick.”

My mother turned to face her.

“Bad sick?” she asked. “Wanda: He is cancer sick?”

Wanda nodded yes. My mother started pointing to various body parts. “Cancer sick where, Wanda? Brain?”

“No.”

“Lungs?”

“No.”

“Stomach?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,
Wanda
.” My mother placed a hand on Wanda’s shoulder. “Missus super sorry. Missus let you go.”

I could tell from my mother’s tone, and Wanda’s too, that stomach cancer was serious business. I felt a flash of jealousy, but only a flash. For while stomach cancer would trump Sam’s asthma, it would also maybe kill me. And if it killed me, then Sam would get my room.

ONE WEEK LATER
, Wanda left. The van dropped her off for one last time. And for one last time, it picked her up
again. She waved good-bye and I waved back. I was sad to see her go. My mother was too, of course. I could hear the strain in her voice as she talked on the phone to her friends.

“What? No! I’m great.
We’re
great. I mean, I
have
been working full-time. And running the house. What? No: My cleaning woman left. Her dad’s got cancer. What? No: Stomach. I
know
. And, of course … yes, exactly. My little one has asthma.”

I’d listen in for a while, then go for a shit in the bathroom. I’d occupy myself in the usual ways: I’d look at a portrait Nancy had painted. I’d listen as Jenny explained how although Sam
was
the one with asthma,
I
was the one with a future as a model. Although she wouldn’t say it in those words exactly. It was more like, “You’re awesome, Ms. Barron. One day, you’re gonna look good in some bras.”

I’d nod in agreement, all the while fingering a swollen gland I’d started hoping was a tumor.

And Kelly would smile. She’d give a thumbs-up.

“Show that bullshit to your mom,” she’d say.

“I will,” I’d say, and wipe myself, unlock the door, and hurry down to dinner.

The Buddhist word
“samsara”
refers to life’s daily sufferings. The adolescent dynamic between my brother and me suggests my parents had this in mind when selecting our names.

Our childhood dynamic was, if not stellar, then acceptable. I resented the skill with which Sam usurped attention. I tried and failed to compete. But these resentments were never an active dislike. They were just a desire to be rid of him. A kind of “No
personal
offense, but my parents find you
too
compelling. I would like for you to leave.”

Our adult dynamic is even better. Sam makes a dependable companion in the slow march toward our parents’ inevitable deaths. It is therefore important that I am around when he needs me. Or rather, it is important that
he’s
around when
I
need
him
. So I pursue him via voice- and e-mail. I leave messages in which I say: “Hi there. It’s me. What if
Mom
dies first? That’d be weird, right? Okay, bye. Call me back.”

So we get along now and fared okay as children.

Adolescence, however, was war. Adolescence was
samsara
.

THE PROBLEM STARTED
my freshman year of high school. I had been encouraged by my parents to join an extracurricular club. I was trying to decide between the Student Coalition for Animal Rights and the Student Coalition for Awareness. I eventually decided on the Student Coalition for Awareness after realizing I was too passionate about bacon to do much in the way of animal rights.

The purpose of the Student Coalition for Awareness was to allow its members a sense of superiority to all non-members. Beyond that, we worked to raise awareness around the issue of modern-day sexism. Our mission statement read, “Feminism Forever, Sexism for Never.” We’d attend weekly lectures on female oppression at nearby universities. To keep myself from falling asleep during these lectures, I’d imagine that I was the one delivering them.

Other activities included choral performances at battered women’s shelters. These I saw as an opportunity to channel my desire for attention into my individual choral performance. We would sing rousing standards like “Freedom Is Coming” or Bette Midler’s “The Rose.” Song choice depending, I would sing either very high or very low to ensure the battered women could hear my voice above those of my fellow club members.

By the end of one semester, I’d been inspired to replace the word “women” with “womyn.” I’d advise friends and family, strangers and enemies, to do the same.

“So I ran into this woman I knew from …”

“I’m sorry. But are you spelling that ‘whoa-MAN’ with an
a
or ‘whoa-MIN’ with a
y
?”

“What? Um, oh. I guess, well, I’m spelling it like … you do. Like … with an
a
.”

“Right. Well, you might want to
not
. Unless, of course, you think
womyn
—WITH A
Y
—are undervalued slaves in a patriarchal society.”

“But I …”

“What’s that?
Right
. I didn’t think you did.”

AROUND THIS TIME
, Sam turned eleven. He was enjoying the slow burn through puberty, and while normally an older sister wouldn’t have to clock such horrors, I did, and that was thanks to Sam’s problematic lack of self-consciousness coupled with his poor taste in home decor. Somehow, somewhere, he’d scored five life-size posters of Carmen Electra, and used them to wallpaper his bedroom. In each and every one, Carmen’s tanned and glistening body had been dressed in a bikini and posed on all fours like a dog.

Sam’s behavior conflicted with my burgeoning feminist tendencies, and a civil war erupted. It began with frequent, high-pitched screams.

“You’re an asshole! You hate womyn! You hate me!”

Or perhaps: “You degrade us! You exploit us!”

Sam’s favorite joke—owing to a recent social studies lesson on the Navajo tribe—was to respond to me with various Navajo-inspired nicknames.

“Shut-up, Yelling-Stupid-Whore-on-Couch.”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT, YOU SEXIST PIG!”

“Fuck you, Dumb-Slut-Red-Hair.”

In the early stages, our parents’ method for handling an argument was to refuse to get involved. My mother would
tell us to be quiet or to go outside. So we would go outside. But then a neighbor would inevitably complain about having to hear us. There’d be the eventual knock at the door.

MY MOTHER WAS
a reasonable woman when spoken to reasonably. If a neighbor complained, she would apologize to the neighbor and come outside to get us, to bring us back inside. At that point, we’d be forbidden from watching TV, and so at that point, we’d try to behave.

But not for long.

Eventually, inevitably, Sam would peek his head into my bedroom and say, “Carmen Electra has big hot boobs and Sara Barron is a big dumb bitch.” Or I would peek my head into Sam’s bedroom and say, “I’m hiding your inhaler, by the way. And if you have an asthma attack, I will
like
to watch you die,” and it would all start all over again.

Sam and I stayed stuck in this cycle for ages and then instead of getting better, it got worse. The anger I felt toward my brother was compounded over time by my parents, who condoned his sexist posters by permitting him to keep them up.

My dad defended his position.

“Sara,” he said, “listen to me. Please. Your brother’s having a hard time. He’s going through puberty. He’s puffed up on steroid medication. Your mother tells
me
that
the teachers tell
her
that he gets teased all the time, and I’m sorry—Sara, I genuinely am—but if he comes home and wants to look at girls, well, I just don’t have the strength to tell him no.”

“ ‘
Girls
,’ Dad? Did you just call them ‘
girls
’?”

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I should have called them womyn. With a
y
. You are absolutely right.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation.

“Oh, like
that’s
gonna help! Your antisocial sexist son handles his
hatred
of womyn—WITH A Y!—by staring at
objectified
womyn? And you
let him
? I mean, my God. MY GOD! Way to go and raise a rapist! I hate you all! I’m so ashamed!”

It seemed that my parents had gone from Maintaining a Neutral Position to Maintaining Sam’s Position. This upped the ante of my attack on Sam. I went from verbal sparring to property destruction. I snuck into his bedroom one afternoon and, with indelible marker in hand, defiled Carmen Electra. I bestowed unto her a bowler hat made of penises, and handfuls of wiry pubic hair.

The ante? It was upped.

In response, Sam destroyed my prized possession, a framed, autographed photo of Tyne Daly. He swiped it during my Student Coalition for Awareness meeting, and used my mother’s garlic press to break the frame. On the actual photo he wrote, “I AM A BITCH. I AM A DUDE.”

Ante upped again.

I showered his pillowcase in the oily detritus found in an empty sardine tin. He bit my sizable calf muscle to the point of bleeding. He punched my face. I punched his face. He snuck into my bedroom, dismantled a cardboard box, and drew a bull’s-eye upon it. Sam then took a shit on the bull’s eye.

Ante upped again.

I cried when I saw the shit on the bull’s-eye. Sam cried too, in an effort to drown me out, and our combined volume hit such a high level that a neighbor finally called the cops. The cops’ arrival felt dramatic enough to make Sam and me shut up. As it turned out, though, one of the guys was a friend of my mother’s from high school, so she, my mom, was able to smooth it all out.

“Howard? Mehlman? Lynn Barron! Or, well, I should say Lynn Handelman! Highland Park High School class of 1965!”

My mother apologized on behalf of her children. She was pitch-perfectly contrite, and Officer Mehlman was charmed and sympathetic. In truth, the whole thing hadn’t been that big of a deal. Nonetheless, my parents were exhausted and embarrassed, and to punish my brother and me, they insisted we sit beside Sam’s bowel movement for the remainder of the day.

Which we did. We had to wait eight hours to be
allowed
to clean it up.

THE ARRIVAL OF
Officer Mehlman served as a climax in my adolescent war with my brother and led my parents to the unsurprising conclusion that they had to get rid of one of us. Only temporarily, of course. Only for the summer. Seeing as how Sam was the younger and more likable of their two children, I knew I’d be the one to go.