Chapter 12 — A House Divided

One particular day when I came home from school, the TV was on and red and green candles were lit on the table, sprinkling the room in a delicate fragrance of myrtle and rose. In the corner, a tall Douglas fir stood cloaked in a blazer of blinking white lights and covered in ornaments. A white and gold angel sat at the top and spread her wings out over a sea of neatly marked boxes, each one bearing one of our names. In the kitchen, a light was on and the familiar aroma of chilaquiles hung in the air.

“Veronica?” I called out. “Veronica, is that you?”

For a while no one answered, then I saw her walk out of the bathroom. She had on a long red dress that let out a trail of perfume behind her. As she came down the hall, she blotted her lips and fluffed both sides of her hair with each hand. “Mom?”

“Well, hello stranger!” she said. “You expecting someone?”

“No.” I said. “Well, maybe Veronica. Anyway, I thought that you left us.”

“Oh no, silly!” She looked surprised. “I’ll be staying here for a while or do you forget that this is my house.”

“You mean yours and dad’s?” I corrected her.

“Of course. But half of it still belongs to me. Besides, don’t you want us to have Christmas together?”

“Sure,” I said not knowing whether I meant it or not.

For the next few months, things were sometimes pretty weird. My mom would make our lunches for school then have dinner ready when we got home. Then there were days when she’d do the dishes then go back into her room to get ready. Then the doorbell would ring, and my father would answer. “Oh, Larry. Won’t you come in? Ginny will be ready in a few minutes. Can I get you something to drink?”

My sister Marie would sometimes joke, “I’m not so sure that I’d take that drink if you know what I mean.” Sometimes it was my dad who went out and my mom would stay in her room with a pack of smokes and a bottle of wine. Those were the days that really scared me. I remember her always yelling at Veronica. Sometimes, they would get into fights and then I’d hear my mom start to beat her, sometimes with her hands and sometimes with a shoe. It was all over stupid stuff really, not washing the dishes or forgetting to make the bed or whatever. It wasn’t until I got older that I figured it out—Veronica looked just like my mother, especially now that she had grown up.

Sometime, right before summer, Marie had something she wanted to share. Roger stood beside her holding her hand.

“What, you’re graduating with honors?” my father joked.

“Very funny,” she laughed, then looked over at Roger and burst into a wide toothy grin. “Roger and I are getting married!”

All that summer my mom sat in her room, sitting under her sewing machine, and working on dresses. Sometime after I went back to school, she called me and my sisters over, gave us each a hanger, and told us to go to our rooms and change. The dresses she made for me and Veronica were a lightweight tropical coral chiffon that hung just below our knees, while Marie’s was an ivory A-Line Princess that swept to the ground in layers of sequence.

“It’s beautiful, mom!” Veronica said as she lifted the edge and twirled around, flexing her knees. I told my mom that I never wanted to take mine off, while Marie said nothing, she just stood there and cried.

The wedding took place in a small church in Fullerton, and my mother and Veronica did all of the cooking. I asked my dad if I could invite Carl so we could show off some of our dance routines, while my mom invited a few of her acting friends. Marie and Roger both looked so happy—the “tom boy” and “beach boy” my father would call them. My family watched me dance and everyone said, “look at the baby, she’s going to be a professional dancer someday.” Later that evening, my father tied two metal cans to the back of my sister’s Volkswagen as the happy new couple drove down the street. I waved back until I felt a hand come down on my shoulder.

“Pammy, this is Mrs. Haag,” my mom said as a short skinny lady a few years older than her reached over and extended a hand. “Her son Marty is taking some classes at the Acting Academy on the weekends, and I thought that it might be something you’d like.” Knowing my mother, this wasn’t a question, but a place that I’d soon be spending my Saturday’s. “I’ll think about it,” I answered. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Haag.”

“You can call me Elizabeth, dear,” she said. “Nice meeting you too.”

That night when we got home, I asked my mom if Dirk was going to be in those classes and I remember that she got pretty angry. “I don’t want to talk about Dirk!” She warned me.

“Why?” I asked. “What happened to him?”

“Dirk is dead!” She said as she looked directly into my eyes. “Somebody said a bunch of shit about him and so the cops started poking their noses around. Then one day they found him and…”

“And what?” I asked.

“And so, one day they found him outside with a gun in his hand and a hole blown right through the side of his head—brains splattered all over the trees.”

“I see,” I answered but knew that I better not say anything else.

The first Saturday after the New Year started, I was in my first class.

Later that spring, I became an auntie when my niece Sarah was born. Marie and Roger still lived at home, and my mom spent most of her time working at her boyfriend’s store. When Sarah got older, I offered to babysit, and soon I was no longer just an auntie but a second mommy as well. When I wasn’t babysitting, I was at school, or acting, or dancing. Veronica was usually out with her new boyfriend Steve, and my mother was helping the man she was dating at the store he had opened off of Imperial. Sometimes, after work, she’d bring home a bag of fresh fruit—guavas, mangoes, pomegranates, and things I had never heard of before like plantains, jicama, and Chinese pears.

For the next few months, he picked her up in the morning, and they’d usually be gone all day. Then, sometime around the first day of my fifth-grade year, his car stopped coming and my mom would still be asleep in her room. Sometime later, I found out that the store had been closed and that the man had moved back to Alaska for good. My mom would spend most of her time drinking until the day that she went out at night and ended up going to jail. My dad got her out, but she still had to go to meetings each week. It was at one of those meetings that she met her new boyfriend, a man who had a really big home up in the hills and six children of his own that he lived with after his wife had moved out and left him.

One day, during my seventh-grade year, my mother came home and told me that my cousin Susie would be living with us. What was even worse, was that we would be sharing the same room. My mom broke the news to my dad.

“Ron, we need to do something!” she said.

“Don’t tell me your sister’s drinking again!” he answered.

“Drinking and walking the streets! Ron, Susie literally has no mother.”

“As you wish,” was all he answered, then he turned and walked out of the room.

Not only did Susie and I not get along, but we also literally despised one another. For starters, we were polar opposites, her the tomboy and me the girlie girl. Since she was a month older than me, she’d sometimes try and boss me around when we were both younger, but now I wasn’t having any of that. “Just stay over there on your side of the room!” I told her the day she moved in. A short time later, when Marie and Roger moved out, Susie moved into Marie’s old room and spent most of her time with my sister Veronica. I missed having Sarah around, but at least now I had my privacy. Not to mention, my parents had just got me a phone and I was already talking with some boy who lived next door to my mother’s new boyfriend. One day, my dad found out and was pissed.

“Good lord, Pam, how old is this guy?” he said throwing both of his hands in the air.

“Oh, Clark. He’s nineteen,” I answered.

“Nineteen? Nineteen!” he fumed then walked out of the room.

By this time, my mom had already moved in with David, so Clark and I would see one another whenever I’d visit. That summer, his family invited me to go with them on vacation. I could tell that my father wasn’t too happy about it, but he didn’t try to stop me. When summer ended, Clark had to go far away for school, Humboldt State, or someplace up north. We both kept in touch for a while, but then just as quickly drifted apart.

My eighth-grade year, I was really coming into my own. I wore my hair longer around my shoulders, and I had begun to master the art of flirtation, pulling on one of my long dark curls, batting my eyes, and letting out a short playful giggle. I had dressed mostly in leather and the training bra that I wore the previous year was already a C-cup. Furthermore, I was no longer Pammy, but Pamela. In fact, I never let anyone call me “Pammy” again, not even my family. “It’s Pam-e-la,” I would tell them with an emphasis on the “e-l-a.” Of course, Pam was okay, but that was strictly among my friends.

My last year of junior high, most of the boys had crushes on me, but I had long since outgrown them and was now dating high school seniors. On weekends, we’d go and hang out at Cloud Nine or Studio K at Knott’s Berry Farm. You had to be eighteen to get in, but that didn’t matter if you knew the right people.

That year, my mom got Veronica a job at Albertsons and soon she was dating some guy she worked with. It didn’t take long before her and Don were talking about marriage, then my mom started talking about it was well. Only this time it wasn’t Don and Veronica—it was my marriage that she was talking about.

“Pammy, you remember Marty?” she said.

“That’s Pam-e-l-a!” I answered.

“Well, anyway, me and his mother have been talking a lot, and since you both are in acting, we thought that you both would make a really nice couple.”

“Shit mom, I’m only thirteen!” I snapped.

“Watch your mouth Pammy, uh, Pamela,” she said, correcting herself. “It wouldn’t be until you were eighteen and graduated from high school.”

“We’ll see,” was all that I said. “Look, I gotta get ready to go out. We’ll talk about it later.”

Don and Veronica tied the knot that summer three months after their first son Andrew was born. The wedding took place in our backyard, it was so hot that day that the cake started melting.

“What the hell are you doing in white?” My dad asked my mom as he got ready to walk her down the make-shift aisle he’d laid out on the patio the night before.

“Shut up, Ron!” she retorted, then turned toward my sister. “Don’t you look beautiful, honey!”

That year, I was starting high school, while Ronnie was going to Fullerton College. The day I registered for classes; I got a call that same afternoon.

“Yes, this is Pamela.” I said when my mother gave me the phone. “I see. Awesome! Oh my God, thank you!” I squealed.

“Mom, you are not going to believe this,” I said, as I put the phone back in her hand.

“What is it honey?” she asked.

“I just made Drill Team, Tall Flags, and Dance Production! Not bad for a freshman, huh?”

I couldn’t wait for school to start. “Troy High School will always remember me,” I said to myself. I guess in a way I was right about that.

It didn’t take long for me to make friends. Within a month, I was hanging out with all of the cool kids. I remember that most were in Drama, but there were a few in my English and Math class. There was Dexter and Jason, Diane and Lisa, not to mention the Queen Bee herself—Miss Erika Tracy! Erika was the tall pretty blonde that all of the guys wanted to date. But she was also a tease and not to mention, kind of a bitch, or “Ms. Bitch” as she used to remind us.

Erika, Lisa, Diane and I were all “Madonna-bees” dressed in leather and denim, a black see-through top, and lots of crosses—the Catholic ones with the body still on them.

I would also see Marty each day in class, not to mention on Saturday mornings. Pretty soon we started dating and sometimes he’d come over for dinner. My friend Erika called him a geek, but then again, she called everybody a geek. Then there were my friends Trey and Randy who were both a year older than me. Trey would sometimes give me a ride in the Jeep that his father got him that year for his sixteenth birthday, and Randy would usually just tag along until the day he met Cindy, then the two of them were always together. Erika, Diane, Lisa, and Jason lived just down the street in Placentia, and sometimes I would go there to visit.

“Look, bitch, this ain’t Yorba Linda!” Erika hissed the day that I noticed her place “looked really small.”

“We call it Sissyland,” Jason confirmed.

“Yeah Jayce, after all the sissies like you and Dexter,” Erika taunted.

The odd thing was, after the divorce papers finally went through, I ended up living with my father and Susie in one of the Sissyland condos. My mom moved out of David’s house and lived with my brother in a two-bedroom apartment somewhere down the street. My mother and David were still dating, but decided it was better living apart. My mother asked me who I’d rather live with.

“By now, you realize your father and I will not be living together anymore,” she told me. “So, you need to let me know right now who you’d rather live with. So Pammy, who do you love more, me or your father?”

I’m not sure that she ever got over me choosing my dad, but that was where all my friends were living, and besides, I didn’t want to switch schools since I was already doing so well at Troy. On the other hand, my brother Ron had a car and a job and didn’t want to leave my mother alone. But I was her baby and from what I heard, shortly after I moved in with my dad, my mom started drinking again.

It wasn’t long after we moved in, that I had to learn all the lines for the play. I was Tatania in Midsummer Night’s. And that leads me to where this all started…

“Wait, what did you say your name was again?”

“Virgil,” he told me.

He looked like an ancient professor with a long white tunic and a scroll that he carried wherever he went. His hair was combed forward like Julius Caesar, and a laurel wreath hung neatly over his whitening locks.

“Shit, how long have I been asleep?”

“Time is not something that we keep over here,” he answered. “It may have been days, or it may have been years.”

I’m not even sure that I slept the whole time. I had seen two of my friends looking in through the window trying to get me to come outside. They were telling jokes and asking when I’d be back in school.

“Come on Pam, you’ve got to get up. We’ll be doing Merchants of Venice and you should be Portia, since you’re already a rich bitch and all.” Then he held his head and started to cry before the nurses came to take him away. “Come on Pam, we’re counting on you!”

“Trey!” I called out but he couldn’t hear me. “Trey!” I tried to shout through some invisible barrier that held me inside.

Sometimes, my family came to see me, and my father often fell asleep in the chair next to my bed until my mother and David walked in and he ended up leaving. I was really sad when my mother would come. She would always bring me some flowers that she put in a vase on the nightstand, then she would just sit down and cry. The same with Veronica who sometimes came after work when Don was at home watching the baby. I could hear their voices and sometimes even feel their pain, but I couldn’t respond. It was like I was locked inside of a tunnel.

“This does not surprise me,” Virgil responded in a hushed, patient tone as if he had seen this movie before. “Those who are here cannot cross over.”

“But where am I?” I asked. “And when can I leave?”

“That’s all up to the Chief Commander,” he said.

“Chief Commander?” I asked.

“Of course. The Lord of the Universe. Some call him God, while others choose to call him by name.”

“What’s that?” I pressed him.

“That would be Jesus, the Christ, the living Lord of the Universe. I never knew him when I was alive, but now I just do whatever he says.”

“So, this is your home?”

“Yes.”

“Is it heaven or hell?”

“Neither,” he said, “but it’s as good as it gets. I live up there on the hill,” he added, pointing somewhere out in the distance. “We call it the Citadel. There’s lots of people who live there with me, some of them I’m sure that you’ll read about in school one day. Good people, all of them—it’s just that, we didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” I asked.

“We didn’t believe,” he finally said. “Where he lives, I cannot go, but maybe you will someday.”

“You mean someday, I can meet Jesus?” I asked him.

He didn’t really give me an answer, instead he moved his hands over his scroll and read a verse inscribed next to one of the millions of names all carefully engraved in some ancient text. “This is not your final home. In fact, most people on earth never come to this place.”

“Then where do they go?” I inquired.

“I’d rather not say,” he answered, shaking his head. “But you are one of those rare exceptions whose day of reckoning has not yet arrived. In other words, it is not your time.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by “it’s not my time,” but he suddenly disappeared from my room. The next thing I knew I was standing beside the water’s edge where the same old man with the scraggly beard, his eyes still fixed in a fiery glare, put down his craft and hoisted the sail. He said nothing, just waved me on board, and I went back through the trees before we sailed into a deep impenetrable fog. Every now and again, I could hear their voices, some familiar, some not, but the voices grew louder the farther we went.

When the fog finally lifted, I was laying down in a bed and I felt somebody holding my hand. Light from a window came into a room where all of my family was standing, some crying, while others were praying. Then I heard my mother’s voice, soft and gentle, like the voice I’d heard when I was a baby and she’d rock me to sleep.

“Oh, Pammy I love you,” she said over and over. Then my father joined in “Hang in there, baby.”

I leaned over as far as I could as the mist began to shift under the light. I tried to breathe, but the tube sticking out of my throat made it impossible.

“Doctor come here!” I heard one of the nurses say. “I think that… I think that she’s starting to breathe on her own!”

“You’re crazy!” The man who I believed was the doctor shot back, the sound of his clipboard smacking the table. “I just checked her this morning. Nothing’s changed for more than a week.”

“But she’s moving.” The nurse pleaded with him. “Please, come over and see for yourself.”

“She is! She is!” My mother spoke up. “I think she can hear us!

The doctor sighed loudly into the air then I heard him walk to my bed. “Oh, Pammy we love you! We love you!” My mother repeated over and over as the doctor lifted the edge of the mask from over his mouth. “Can you hear us, Pammy? Please give us a sign.”

Then the doctor now speaking in a low and monotone voice started to ask me a question.

“Young lady. If you can hear me right now, please lift your right hand.”

The room went silent all around as both of my parents stood by the bed. A minute passed by without a response, so the doctor repeated himself. Still there was nothing. After a few more tries, the doctor tore off his mask and looked at my parents.

“Mr. and Mrs. Vasquez,” he said in a soft empathic tone that seemed rehearsed by so many years of seeing the worst. “I know that you both love your daughter, but I need to caution you against getting your hopes up.” When he heard my mother starting to cry, he softened his tone. “What I’m trying to say, is that this young lady was seriously injured. We had to remove over forty percent of her brain. I promise we’re doing all that we can, but there’s still a chance.”

My mom cut him off. “A chance of what?”

The doctor paused to collect himself then took a moment choosing his words. “There is a chance that even if she survives, she will always remain a vegetable.”

“Doctor, you don’t know Pam!” My mother said in a voice I remember hearing when I was a child right before she ended up smacking someone. “Pam is a fighter! She wasn’t even supposed to be born—she spent the first four months of her life in an incubator, has lived through more shit than you can ever imagine! If anyone is going to make it, she is the one!”

The doctor just sighed and turned from the side of my bed, then a few minutes later he walked back over and spoke to my mother. “Listen ma’am. I have an idea. She may not be ready to lift her hand yet due to atrophy in all of her muscles, what do you say we try something else?”

“I’m all ears, doc.” My father said while my mother just stood there and sulked.

“Okay. Young lady, if you can hear us, please try opening one of your eyes.”

As the doctor was speaking, I felt a hand clasped tightly around one of mine—soft and gentle, yet strong and assured. I remember that hand when I was a baby as it once led me out of a stroller when I was taking my very first steps and walked me outside to wait for the bus on the first day of school. I remember back then that it had a ring around one of its fingers, but this hand didn’t have any ring. Yet, I still wanted to squeeze it in mine and pull it up to my lips and never let go. Then the doctor asked the same question again.

“Young lady, if you can hear me…”

I made one final push as a rush of air filled up in my lungs, and a flicker of light started coming in like fractured shards of broken glass. There was pain, each tiny beam like a series of fiery needles, then a wall full of shadows. But I could hear their voices and felt the hand now squeezing me tighter. Then my mom began to repeat after the doctor and the pain started all over again.

“She can hear us! She can hear us!” my mother shouted.

“Of course, I can,” I wanted to say. “Now will all of you just shut up?”

Then I heard my mother ask me one final question, and when I opened my eyes this time, it didn’t hurt quite as bad. It was as if I was standing in a sea of light and the shadows stole away all the glare, each fiery beam swallowed up in their voices.

“Pammy, do you know how much we love you?”

This time I wasn’t afraid of the pain, I slowly opened one of my eyes, and then the other, embracing the light and the love that I felt all around me. Then again, I heard the doctor telling my mom that I still had a long way to go, but things looked much better. She let out a huff as if to say, “I told you so.” Yet, after eleven weeks in a coma, it was clear to everyone in the room that the girl who had died that night in April had come back to life.