Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (4 page)

Unfortunately, my grandma passed away not too many months after she arrived. She and Grandpa had both smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes since adolescence, and Grandma developed emphysema. Before she moved to Hawai’i she needed to use an oxygen tank, but for whatever reason, in Hawai’i her health improved enough so she didn’t need the tank anymore. Or so we thought, because one night she went to sleep and never woke up. Grandma was just sixty-one.

Grandma had an open casket, and I remember being startled at seeing her body. It was the first dead body I’d ever seen. Pastor Jeremiah Hoaeae led the services, and he spoke about the body being a shell, that Grandma’s soul was no longer in it. Her spirit had gone to a better place so we shouldn’t mourn, he said. But I did. We all did.

At the service Leland’s girlfriend did a beautiful hula dance. Tawny even came and shed tears. My grandpa had been a navy man and was a really tough guy. The entire event was beyond sad, but my grandpa was the most devastated of us all. Soon after, my grandfather returned home to Colorado. We all missed them both.

I loved my grandma deeply and I knew she loved me just as much. But we had to move on as a family. In the midst of his grief, Dad regrouped again. From his perspective, it must have been a terrible time. First his wife leaves him, then his mom passes away.
Dad adored his mother, and I know her loss left a huge void in his life. Dad also had a slew of young children to be responsible for and a business to run. That is a lot for anyone to handle. Before long some of the balls Dad was juggling so precariously began to drop. First, business fell off. Tawny had written a lot of bonds on the Big Island, and it was hard for Dad to keep up with two locations on two different islands. Next, some of his employees began to mismanage Dad’s business. They must have thought that with Dad being so distracted he wouldn’t notice, and I don’t think he did—at first. But by the time he did it was almost too late to bail himself out of a huge financial hole.

Still, Dad spent as much time as he could with us. He set up a business line in our house, and all of the kids, myself included, began answering the bail bonds line to help out after school. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I soon became very good at giving instructions and taking messages over the phone. I can just imagine what Dad’s clients must have thought when a seven-year-old regularly answered his bail bonds business line.

Leland also helped out by taking us to school. On weekends we all went on crazy adventures with Dad. We went fishing a lot, and I remember being in a boat with Dad and Leland, who were spear fishing. Both were bare-chested, and I can still remember how happy they were when one or the other actually speared something. Another time we sailed all the way to Captain Cook Point, and Dad told us how Captain Cook had discovered Hawai’i. During those trips I found that I really loved the ocean. There was
something calming to me about the rhythm of the waves. I also loved swimming and asked Dad to take me every chance he got.

Dad often took time to read to us to from the Bible, and as a family we talked about what the stories meant. We had some great discussions. One day we learned that a local boy and girl had drowned tragically in a pool. Dad was so moved by the incident that he wrote a story about them. I vividly recall him reading his story to us and can picture Dad’s handwriting on the blue paper that he ripped out of a notebook. He wrote that our grandma met the two children in heaven and grabbed their hands to welcome them.

To ensure that all of his children were safe and well cared for when he was away, Dad put an ad in the paper for a nanny. It wasn’t long before a number of very pretty nannies moved, one by one, into our home, and then out. Even though I was quite young, it didn’t take me too long to figure out what was happening. After a few days or weeks of taking care of us during the day (and at night when Dad was out of town), each nanny somehow began sleeping in Dad’s room.

I can’t tell you how many nannies we had. It seemed like dozens—but I am sure the number was far less than that. Of all the nannies, we had one in particular whom I became very fond of. Unlike the others, she was not classically beautiful. It turned out that the other nannies were ultimately there because Dad must have seemed quite a catch, but I could tell that this nanny was there for
us
. She kept our house spotless, cooked great meals, and every day when I came home the house smelled wonderful. Once she
even served escargot, a French delicacy of cooked snails that I had never even heard of before.

This nanny meant so much to me. One evening I was sitting at the dinner table and when we bowed our heads before the meal I remember praying out loud, “Dear God,
please
don’t let Dad screw the nanny.” I wonder how many little girls are anxious about that particular topic. Several days later I woke up to find my beloved nanny sleepily coming out of Dad’s bedroom, and I was heartbroken that God hadn’t answered my prayer.

★

I’m not sure which of the nannies first turned Dad on to hard drugs. Or maybe it wasn’t a nanny. Maybe it was someone else, but at about this same time Dad became more and more distracted, and business dropped off significantly. Dad, who had been our rock, was becoming irresponsible.

Toward the end of my second-grade year I was thrilled to be part of a talent show at school. I was going to dance to one of my favorite songs, “Dream Lover.” I wasn’t part of much of anything in the schoolroom, so the talent show was a rare opportunity for me to fit in.

Dad promised me he wouldn’t miss this event for anything, and I couldn’t wait to show off onstage for him. But during the performance, which was held during a daytime school assembly, I looked at every single person in the room and scanned every single
face. I couldn’t believe my dad was not there, but he wasn’t. I was so disappointed. Later, at home, I asked Dad how he liked my performance—just to be sure I hadn’t missed seeing him. His vague answer only confirmed my suspicion that he did not see me dance.

Second grade finally ended, and for my eighth birthday, Dad hired a clown. I excitedly sent out invitations to everyone in my class and to several neighbor children. When the big day arrived I was jumping up and down with anticipation, but my exhilaration soon turned into a black pit of anxiety that settled in the center of my stomach. Other than the clown, my friend, Emma, was the only one who showed up for the party. Dad was in his bedroom with the nanny du jour, and only came out of his room for a few minutes on my special day. I wish I had understood how badly Dad was hurting, and that the nannies and the drugs were his way of self-medicating his pain.

On my eighth birthday I felt terribly alone. I am not sure why the other invited children did not come to my party, although I can think of several reasons. Some parents might not have wanted their children to associate with me because they suspected that my dad used drugs. It might also have been that parents didn’t want their kids associating with a “white girl.” With Emma as my friend the racist attacks on me had lessened, but I still had to watch my back. It could also have been that kids still thought I was weird. I talked differently, I looked different, and I liked different foods. The gap just may have been too big for eight-year-olds to bridge. The result, however, was that I was devastated.

I entered third grade at yet another new school, Honuanua Elementary, which sat on top of a hill in the Big Island town of Captain Cook. When I was young, Dad had a habit of not renewing his rental agreements, so we moved a lot. This was my fourth school in four years and something like my fourth house in two years. I was getting good at adapting but did not have any more luck making friends in this school than I had at the previous one. Plus, I had lost Emma, my friend and protector, in the move so in some ways third grade was even worse than second grade had been.

★

In writing this book I found I had to make a choice. I could choose to skip over the really bad parts of my life, or I could be honest and share them. Not mentioning the bad experiences might keep a few readers from becoming offended, but it also would eliminate segments of my life that impacted me profoundly. After significant thought I decided I had to share; otherwise this account would not be honest. Not sharing might also make a few readers confused as to my behavior in my early teens, which were right around the corner. Here’s the first of several really bad events in my life.

While Dad was otherwise occupied, my siblings were dealing in their own ways with the losses our family had endured. Leland was old enough that he could go out on his own and make his own life, but Barbara and Tucker were stuck at home with me. Their
way of coping was to get into the Goth lifestyle. For my brother and sister, this meant dressing in black, wearing ghostly white makeup, dying their hair jet-black, experimenting with drugs, and hooking up with people of the opposite sex.

Barbara was only five years older than I was, which would put her at about thirteen. The age gap between us at that stage of our lives, however, was huge, especially as Barbara’s friends were all a few years older than she was. It made finding things to do together difficult, as we were into very different activities.

My after-school hours became a nightmare. At first I spent that time alone in my room listening to music on my stereo. But what I really wanted to do was spend time with Barbara and Tucker. However, they often had friends over. On a typical afternoon, Dad would pop his head out of his room and instruct my siblings to play with me. Their version of that, though, was to allow two of their friends to make me watch as they messed around on the floor, which turned into the two friends having sex. My siblings also often stuck me in a closet in Barbara’s room with a thirteen-inch TV/VCR combo and a pile of porn videos. On another occasion they made me watch as their friends killed a cat and drank the blood. This was during a time when my siblings Goth tendencies became overshadowed by devil worship. As much as I believe in God and in the power of good, I also believe in the devil and the evil that follows him. At this time in my life I learned that hard lesson.

I also loved animals, so the cat killing was especially traumatizing
for me. I was very young and impressionable; at only eight years old all I wanted was to fit in. What I heard and saw during those afternoons gave me a totally unrealistic picture of life, love, and relationships.

Today I have gained enough perspective to understand that the dysfunction in which I grew up made it much harder for me to understand normal. I have just now begun to recognize and understand healthy relationships, but for me, I had to understand unhealthy first.

★

T
oday I know where
my children are at all times. As a child I got into my most serious trouble when I was unsupervised, which is why I keep such close tabs on my kids. If I lose sight of them, whether it is at the supermarket, the park, or the mall, I instantly panic and feel helpless and breathless until my eyes reach their adorable blond heads. The mere thought of being separated from them makes me petrified.

Even though my life at home was not as good as it could be when I was young, the thought of being separated from my family terrified me. I loved my family fiercely. We were like a gang, the Chapman Gang, and what stability and comfort I had in life came directly from them. But my greatest fear was to come true twice in the coming months.

By this time we had moved again. One day after school when Barbara and Tucker were still in their Goth phase, I found myself sitting on the floor in the center of a circle surrounded by my two siblings and their friends. What was most interesting to me, however, was that everyone took turns blowing smoke in my face from a joint they all shared. I got stoned right away, and I remember the good feeling I had when everyone laughed. I felt good not just because of the pot, but also because this particular kind of laughter, to me, meant acceptance.

I was so happy to be included in any activity my older brother and sister might initiate that I didn’t give any thought to how appropriate the activity might—or might not—be. I could tell that Tucker wasn’t too keen on me actually smoking pot myself, but his resolve lasted only a few days, and before I knew it, I had my own joint to keep me busy while I watched the porn videos in the closet.

Fortunately I also had other, more appropriate, avenues of entertainment. Dad has always been an animal lover, and we had lots of animals around when I was growing up. If we saw something cute, he let us bring it home. Pets are such friends, especially to little girls who don’t have many companions. They are also great teachers.

I remember that Dad bought me a little lovebird that I named Rockadoodle. I loved this bird so much! He sat on my finger and I spent hours listening to him sing catchy tunes. One evening I decided to take my feathered friend to bed with me, and we snuggled down together.

When I awoke the next morning I found a lifeless little bird next to me, and I ran to my dad to share the news. Bless Dad for knowing the right thing to do for me at that time in my life—Dad took Rockadoodle and told me he would fix him. After what seemed like hours of waiting Dad told me Rockadoodle had made a full recovery but had decided to live in a big tree outside, rather than in a cage inside the house. Dad then took me to a window where we both looked out. Then he pointed to a large tree and told me that was where Rockadoodle now lived.

I now know that I probably rolled over in my sleep and squashed my little friend, but Dad never let me know that. While it might have been a wonderful “teachable moment” for another child, I had already suffered the loss of so many people whom I loved that Dad knew I didn’t need to hear that about Rockadoodle.

★

At about this same time, with the departure of yet another nanny whose name I don’t remember, I found that two new people had come into in my life. “Ginny” was our new nanny. And a man I’ll call Nathan soon became a friend of my dad’s. Nathan was a balding older man who became a sort of sensei to my dad. In addition to being a kind of spiritual teacher and a regular fixture in our household, Nathan also had a charismatic personality.