Dorothy Cury
When I moved to Las Vegas in 1981, the news of two kidnapped girls' bodies found chucked in the Vegas desert flooded our television. My mother regarded the incessant newscasts as premonitions. I was to be the next ten-year-old victim tragically abducted on her way home from school. To trick fate, she kept me sequestered in our apartment for almost a year—refusing to enroll me in fifth grade. We were both certain that if I walked out the door, I would never return.
The threat of abduction displaced my real fear that my mom would be taken away, snatched up by cops on a pending shoplifting charge she'd dodged in Los Angeles. It was more probable that she would be stolen from me than I from her, but since the TV informed us that child-napping was the most imminent threat, we believed it, finding it easier to distrust our own logic and let the media decide our worries for us.
Our flight to Vegas began months before our actual departure when my aunt Bashia came to stay with us from Poland so she could earn money for a car. Bashia based her expectations of America on what she had seen on the greatest circulator of propaganda, the television, imagining that everyone lived like the Carringtons on Dynasty. When she discovered that the walls of our dingy apartment in the heart of the Culver City Mexican ghetto were not covered in gold-leaf wallpaper, but rather the occasional cockroach, she was shocked. We had less than she did. But her greatest disappointment was learning that she, herself, had to earn her pay. Much like a bratty teenager, Barbara was under the assumption that my mother and my uncle, were going to throw cash that they didn't have at her simply because she graced them with her presence.
One aspect of American culture did live up to her expectations—consumerism. She was in awe of the rows of stores overflowing with merchandise. She'd never seen so many varieties of a single product in one place, entire stores devoted to sneakers or watches. Even if you had the money for an extravagant purchase in Poland, you could only choose from the one or two items that a black market smuggler had in stock—but never so much in one place, just sitting there, begging to be taken. She concluded that everything was free in America; you just took what you wanted. And so she did.
For six months she filled our home with stolen presents for her children and husband. My mother joined in, making our stay in America also a little more pleasant. Until one day, a Sears surveillance camera caught them stuffing Levis into their suspiciously large purses.
The moment we walked out of the store, three plain-clothes security guards pounced on my mother and Bashia. The officers forced my mother's arms behind her back. When she yelped in pain, protesting that the handcuffs were too tight, the security guard squeezed harder until he'd forced a metallic click. I saw the skin around her chubby wrists form rolls that folded upon themselves as her fingers turned a purplish-red.
After being escorted through the stark catacomb of Sears we were placed into a cement room with a dozen black-and-white televisions. The guard who'd hurt my mother reveled in showing us the video of Bashia looking over her shoulder as she filled her bag. Finishing the show by saying, "Gotcha. Ain't no way to wiggle out'a that one. That's five years minimum."
For the next seven hours I waited on a metal bench at the police station imagining the next five years without my mother. I would spend adolescence with my uncle, who although he loved me like I was his daughter, would be more lost than me without my mother. Since he was born, she took care of him, ironing his clothes, cutting his hair. At the age of 33, she still bought his underwear.
As we drove home from the station, I refused to let go of my mother's arm. I cried uncontrollably at the thought of her in prison, fighting toothless tattooed convicts, having to use a plate of franks and beans as a weapon. I deeply inhaled the smell of Aqua Net on her now dilapidated bleached curls, not knowing if it would be the last time. Meanwhile, my uncle teased his two sisters for their greed. Bashia cried louder than I did, making me feel more hate for her than I'd already had before the arrest.
My mother seemed unfazed by the incident. In the same enthusiastic tone one would use to describe a trip to Disneyland, she explained the foolproof plan she'd devised in jail.
"Don't worry. My friend told me that if you are arrested in one state, the other state won't know about it, so you are free. All you have to do is get a new social security number and move. I know a guy downtown who got my friend a green card. No big deal. I was thinking of going to Las Vegas, anyway. Los Angeles is too expensive," my mom gleefully explained.
I didn't ask my mom, "What friend?" I was just hopeful that there was a way to keep my mother.
My sixteen-year-old sister Maggie took the news less enthusiastically. "I can't move. I won't. I have friends here. I'm moving in with Charolette," Maggie said.
"You can do what you like when you are 18, until then, you're moving to Vegas," my mom said.
"I hate you," my sister said.
"Good," my mom replied.
The day after the arrest, my aunt bundled up the loot she'd accumulated through thievery, and, like a beaver working backwards, she took apart the structure she had built, made up of stolen bubblegum, Adidas and Levis that occupied half of our dining room. She hopped on the first flight back to Poland, an unsuspected fugitive. We fled, too—packing all of our possessions (or at least as much as would fit in a ten-foot thrifty mover U-Haul) to find our fate across the desert in Las Vegas.
My mom assured us that our impromptu relocation was actually predestined because, only a few weeks before, her friend Marisha, who was born with psychic abilities and had moved to Vegas a few months earlier, made the prediction. The only thing I thought Marisha was an expert at was how to achieve leathery skin by spending all day by the pool sipping vodka on-the-rocks, but I must admit that I, too, was intrigued by the riches she had foreseen.
"Terena," she began in her heavy Slavic accent, "tell me how it makes sense to pay more for your run-down apartment in Los Angeles, than a beautiful house with a pool in Vegas? Plus, you get a job as a black-jack dealer like me, and you'll be making twice as much as you do sewing for those lazy American bitches." She noticed that the mention of a pool peaked my interest, so she winked at me. Then, she rattled the ice in her empty glass prompting me to refill it. As I poured from the bar, she provided us with a glimpse into my mom's future, "I see a fresh start for you and even a rich, handsome man, who isn't a son-of-a-bitch bastard like the last one."
When my mom woke me at two o'clock in the morning to leave for Las Vegas, I didn't mind. We relocated at least twice a year and were long overdue. Besides, I hated Culver City. Most of the kids at my school spoke Spanish to each other, so I never understood what was going on. Worst of all, they had crushes on the boys from Menudo, while teasing that the members from my favorite group, Duran Duran, were maricons.
So, I gladly packed my possessions—the knock-off Jordache chords my mom made and my one generic Barbie doll. I decided to leave the only two pictures of my dad, since I had blacked out his teeth, and also wanted a new start with no more son-of-a-bitch bastards.
Marisha volunteered to baby-sit me our first day in Vegas, while my mom, sister and uncle looked for a place to live. I begged not to be left behind, knowing my mom would settle on an apartment in the cheapest, therefore dodgiest, part of town if I wasn't there.
As my mother rang Marisha's bell, she attempted to console me by saying, "Don't tell me you wouldn't rather swim in a nice big pool than sit in a hot car." When my face didn't lose its sour expression, she used guilt. "Be nice. Marisha misses the daughter she left in Poland, and you make her feel better."
After three rings of her bell, Marisha finally answered the door—topless. I'd never seen an adult woman's breasts in person and the sight of her brown, sagging sacks made me cringe at the thought of one day having a pair of my own. I looked away in shame, burying my face in my mother's arm. I tugged at her, giving her a telepathic plea not to leave me with this crazy woman. Once my mom left, Marisha forced me to join in her topless extravaganza; explaining that her way was continental and sophisticated, that tan lines were tacky, and that American women were too prudish for their own good.
Our show was well-advertised, because a parade of gentlemen-callers stopped by. It was mostly deliverymen, but a few men came for their lunch break to make sure her pool PH-levels were balanced. When a guest arrived, Marisha interrupted my attempt to break what I thought was the world record of ten underwater flips in a row, to meet the man. I modestly approached with my arms folded across my non-existent chest, she dug her acrylic nails into my sunburned arms until they unraveled by my sides. Then she reminded me that I was too young to have anything to hide, laughing at her clever remark, causing her exposed bosom to jiggle for added emphasis.
Marisha began the introductions with, "Dorota, this is my very good friend, you can call him uncle. She looks just like my daughter back in Poland, sniff, except my daughter had blonde hair, not brown, and green eyes, not blue, and straighter teeth. Darling, why don't you get your new uncle here a drink, and refill mine?" My new uncle leered at me making me feel more naked than I already did. When Marisha and her guest continued their conversation inside the house, I had to wait outside even if I had to go to the bathroom. She told me to pee on the grass, but do not enter the house. As I got older I was grateful that she spared me the site of the rest of her nude body entangled with that of a beer-bellied man, with a sunburn on his bald head.
That night, my mom picked me up an hour later than promised, but I didn't complain, since we got to stay in a motel room. The lack of kitchen meant that I could eat McDonald's rather than my usual dinner of homemade soups containing animal parts normal people threw away. This was the seventh time I'd ever had this culinary delight because my mom deplored fast food, declaring it for lazy American mothers who don't care if their children grow up disease-ridden and mentally-deficient. Mom had a tendency to be idealistic when it came to some things, like eating processed food, but also to be rather lax when it came making sure I didn't hang out with drunk, loose women and the horny men who enjoyed their company.
I spent the remainder of the evening with my head propped-up against the end of the bed and my hands deep in a bag of fries, watching television, happier than I'd been since the arrest.
My mom interrupted my viewing by saying, "I can't believe that you would rather eat this junk than my delicious tripe soup. Let me see what is so good about it." Then she dug her hand in my bag, grabbing not one, but five of my fries.
I protested with a whiny, "Momm-eee." I didn't care if I sounded selfish. I only got small fries with my Happy Meal and I was like a dog with a bone, unwilling to share.
She replied, "Okay, okay, Americanka," the biggest insult she could think of, unable to hold back at smile at how such a simple thing could bring me so much joy, momentarily forgetting about the preservatives that were stunting my growth.
Suddenly, a breaking story interrupted the Facts of Life and my peace. The local news anchors reported that a nine-year-old girl, Sarah, had been abducted from the Whiskey Pete's casino at the state line, only forty miles away from Vegas. Her mother, who pleaded to the cameras for help in finding her little girl, was missing part of her front tooth.
This prompted my own mother to clench her chest in melodramatic sympathy, pronouncing hysterically, "This country is full of crazy people. Don't you be so stupid and talk to strangers."
My mom was being overprotective, so I ignored her and went back to chomping on my fries.
The next day she picked me up from Marisha's house an hour-and-a-half earlier than expected.
She burst out enthusiastically, "I've got fantastic news that will make you the happiest girl in the world, moie skarbie! I liked it when she called me that. It meant her greatest treasure. "Hurry up and change. I'm taking you to see your beautiful new house."
Elated by the idea of having our own house, I yelled out questions from the other room as I rushed to changed out of my soggy bathing suit. "Does it have a pool?" I screamed.
"Yes, bigger than this one," she said.
"Score! Is it one or two stories?" I asked.
"Two," she replied.
Oh, I always dreamed of having stairs so I could slide down the banister like Ricky Shroder did on Silver Spoons! "Can we have a dog?" I continued.
"Yes, a small one, but you have to clean up the poop," she said.
As we drove past several neighborhoods to reach our palace, I gazed upon each house saying, "Is that it? Is that it?" I would take any of them. I continued bombarding my mother with questions. "Does it look like that one?"
"Oh, no. That's a shack compared to ours. Ours is much newer, much prettier," she boasted. "You'll see."
Finally, my mom pointed in the distance, and sang, "That's our new home. Isn't it beautiful?"
I wasn't sure what she was pointing at. All I saw was an apartment complex surrounded by desert. Confused, I asked, "Where?"
"Are you blind? The one right in front of us," she said.
"But, Mom, that's an apartment building, not a house." As I rolled up the window, I stared at the lock on my door, exaggerating my pouting. I wanted her to see that she'd disappointed me, once again, for the bazillionth time. I was enraged at having my hopes raised, in believing that she would actually keep one of her empty promises.
Unwavering in her enthusiasm, she explained, "It's the same thing as a house, but better. We don't have to worry about mowing the lawn or fixing a leaky roof. It's a condo!"
These were not her words. They came from a real estate broker.
"But I really wanted a backyard. I'd mow the lawn," I pleaded.
She continued her sales pitch, "A condo is something which could be ours forever and we'd never have to move again."
"So, we own it?" I asked.
"Almost. I'm leasing with an option to buy." Another addition to my mom's expanding vocabulary.
"And that is just as good since, after a year, they will take part of the rent I pay and put that toward a down-payment, and then the house will be ours."
"You mean apartment," I corrected.
"I mean condo. Don't act too smart." she said.
Realizing that no whining would keep us from moving into a glorified apartment rather than a house, I listened to my mom rattle off its selling points. Since it was a new building there were no roaches. Although there wasn't a backyard, there was a patio. And the neighborhood seemed safe. I didn't see a single guy with tattoos on their necks, making kissing sounds at me, like in Culver City. By the time I saw the community pool, I, too, was sold. The entire trip back to the motel, I daydreamed about swimming all summer—with my top on.
After moving in the next day, I unwound with the Cosbys. Just as Dr. Huxtable was about to scold Vanessa for sneaking out to see a concert, another breaking news announcement disrupted my viewing. A ten-year-old named Carla, was kidnapped. She disappeared from the Circus Midway, a place my mom promised to take me that Saturday. Carla's mother had taken her to the bathroom and waited outside, but her daughter never came out. This scared my mother even more than the story from a few days before, because it could have been me.
My mom was frantic. She forbade me to leave the house unless accompanied by a family member. That burden that fell upon my reluctant sister, who would have much rather given me to the first stranger she saw, who would, as she put it, "put up with your annoying shit." Like most of my mom's promises, punishments, and resolutions, I expected her to forget about it in a few hours.
But the barrage of updates on the kidnappings that bombarded our television revived my mother's fervor. Driving down the street, billboards with the words MISSING in a thick font over the victims' last school photos loomed above us. Our milk cartons also had their pictures. The few joys life afforded me at the age of ten (the pool or 7-11) were off-limits unless I could coax someone to accompany me, which was practically impossible. My mom was either working or too tired. Even though my other roommates, my uncle and sister Maggie, were unemployed, they could not be bothered by my need for air, sunlight or Slurpees.
Although Maggie hardly left the house, I hardly interacted with her. Maggie's daily routine consisted of sitting by the stereo with the headphones on, drowning out the world. One year ago she had everything: a boyfriend and freedom from the family she despised. My mom trusted Maggie's boyfriend Mark, and as long as she was with him, she could do whatever she wanted including ditch school and spend her days speeding around LA in a sportscar.
Then, faster than it came, it was gone. He was gone. Mark died, not by racing down Santa Monica Boulevard as predicted, but due to a preventable infection. His throat swelled to the point that it suffocated him in his sleep. Everyone who'd frowned upon Mark dropping out of high school his senior year, was now consoled by his choice to live his life to the fullest, as short as it was. At the funeral, the mourners sang along to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird."
But nothing consoled my sister. She became more distant from our family, as though we'd strangled him during the night. She resented being forced back with us. It was one month after Maggie's loss that my mom plucked her 350 miles away from her friends.
About two weeks after we moved, a Barbizon modeling school ad in Seventeen magazine asked, "Has anyone ever told you, you have beautiful eyes?" Mark had. On that, she decided to be a model. This surprised me, not just because depressed people don't usually want to smile for the camera, but because fashion never interested Maggie. That was my domain. From the age of eight I was a clothes-whore, while Maggie's wardrobe consisted of a flannel shirt and Levi's. Her only "accessory" was the feathered roach clip she used as a hairpin.
Even harder to believe than my sister's choice of careers was that my mom agreed to finance the $2500 courses. Mom wouldn't spare twenty dollars a month for ballet lessons I wanted, but spent $500 for a class called "Tips for the Catwalk."
Barbizon replaced Maggie's depression with egomania. Maggie lived in a fantasy world in which she already was a model. The only time she was ever nice to me was to say she would die to have my waistline. But usually, she just yelled at me for touching her shit, which now consisted of a mountain of make-up. Barbizon might have given her the look and confidence of a model, but it took away her ability to have a conversation unless the topic was "her big break" or "her next photo shoot."
My other roommate, my unemployed uncle, sequestered himself in the second bedroom, leaving it only to go to the store. It was as though my mom, my sister and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with an extra door because the second room was off limits—occupied by a ghost we never saw but knew existed. When I complained to my mother that it wasn't fair that my uncle got his own room she said, "Your uncle is doing very important work. He is writing a book about the history of Poland, so needs his privacy. Don't disturb him."
A month after we moved in, my mother announced that my eighteen-year-old cousin Kashia, Bashia's daughter, would be staying with us for six months. This trip was her graduation gift. My mother offered our extended family extravagant presents when she could not even afford a sofa. I wanted to ask her if she hadn't learned her lesson from our last visitor. And wasn't she embarrassed that we had no furniture? I did not mouth my concerns, since Kashia would be an escort for the pool.
It turned out that my cousin needed me more than I needed her, since she didn't speak a word of English, yet could not stand the thought of not knowing what was being said. When I wasn't translating every word spoken on television, I was decoding the lyrics of her favorite 80s hits by bands such as Flock of Seagulls.
"And I ran. I ran so far away. I just ran. I ran all night and day. I couldn't get away," I translated to Polish with the music blaring in the background.
"That's all they say. It makes no sense. Are you sure you didn't miss a line? Rewind it," Kashia commanded.
"No. I already rewound it twice. That is all they say over and over. I told you the song is stupid," I said.
She never believed that the songs she thought were so heartfelt were just gibberish put to a danceable beat.
Kashia rarely spoke English since her greatest fear was to mispronounce something that would make someone laugh at her. Whenever prompted to say "thank you," she would burst out in nervous giggles and plead to my mother in Polish, "Oh, Auntie. I can't do this. Don't make me." Kashia was reasonably cute with her button nose, so she worked it. Most people couldn't see through her saccharine facade, but I did.
Despite her own phobia of being mocked for her accent, she had no trouble ridiculing mine when I spoke Polish.
"She said h-ches-ni not h-chesh-ni," Kashia chuckled.
"Well if my Polish is so bad, I guess I don't have to translate anything else for you," I said.
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry," She apologized.
A few minutes later I mispronounced okulari, and the mockery resumed.
Two months into Kashia's visit, back-to-school commercials appeared. Normally, I looked forward to a new school year, but this year was different. For the last three months, I'd hardly left the house. Even with a chaperone, I was petrified. When a man entered the communal pool, we left in a panic. One time, my mom forced me to throw out the garbage, which meant crossing the parking lot. My heart beat uncontrollably. I ran the 300-feet faster than I'd ever run the 10-yard dash in PE. The only place I ever felt safe was behind the locked door of our home. So, I didn't remind my mom about enrolling me in school.
When my birthday passed in September, I knew school was already a month in, so I broke down and reminded my mom that I should enroll. She didn't think it was safe for me to walk the six blocks to school, and she had a job that she could not leave to drive me.
"Someone could kidnap you! What would I do then?" she said.
"Well, maybe Kashia would walk me," I asked.
"Are you kidding? They'll kidnap her, too. She's so cute. Then what would I tell your aunt? Besides, your cousin is only here for another few months, and you may never see her again. We'll just wait a little longer, maybe a month," my mother said.
Another month turned into five months. My cousin decided to stay out her entire six month visa. My mom thought it a shame to leave her in the house alone for the three hours a day while my sister attended her Barbizon classes, so she delayed my education.
During these months, the police uncovered that Carla, the girl who was kidnapped in the Circus Midway bathroom, had been murdered by her stepfather. Her mother didn't want her husband to get in trouble so she decided to piggyback the other abduction. The police also found Sarah's murderer, an ex-con from Arizona who'd picked up the young girl on his way to Mexico. Her parents had left her in the arcade for over six hours while they gambled. The perpetrator was now serving life in prison, with no chance of parole. Like a sixteen-year-old with a new boyfriend, the local news soon forgot the victims it had once obsessed over. But the fear stayed with me.
My cousin returned to Poland with little more than hand-scribbled lyrics to all of the top hits of the early 80s, and a newfound fondness for shaved armpits. Within a week, my sister left, too, going back to LA. With two less mouths to feed, my mom finally rented-to-own a sofa. When it arrived, she couldn't wait for my uncle to return from a trip to the store to get the rug he kept in his room. So, we marched upstairs to get it ourselves. It was rolled up in the corner like a log. As we anchored it down the steps, a flood of empty vodka bottles poured out. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them.
"That is what that son-of-a-bitch is doing up there," my mom screamed. "That's why he can't get a job." She stopped dragging the rug, and sat down on the stairs and cried. Between sobs she mumbled that she was tired. I tried to pick up the bottles for her, but she told me to leave them for my uncle to see.
The next day my uncle left the apartment early in the morning, freshly showered and smelling of Old Spice cologne. He returned that evening with a job. It wasn't much, working as a desk clerk at a rundown hotel in the ghetto, but part of his salary was a free apartment. Within a week, I finally got what I wanted, my own room with a complete bed.
There were only six weeks left in the school year and I was afraid that if I didn't go, I'd fail fifth grade, so my mom finally agreed to enroll me. When we went to the office to register, I was certain they would hold me back, but my mom said not to worry, she would take care of it. When the woman at the front desk greeted us, my mom pretended not to speak English.
My mom whispered to me in Polish, "Play dumb. Tell her we just moved here. They have to enroll you. It's the law."
"Tell your momma we need to see your transcripts," the receptionist said.
"Mom, they need to see the paperwork from my last school. They are totally going to hold me back," I said in Polish.
"Don't worry, just tell them I don't understand. They have to let you in," she said, and then gave the receptionist a look of confusion.
It worked. After drawing a picture of a schoolhouse and saying something in Spanish, the receptionist gave up and gave me a placement test.
At school, I saw that other kids walked around and rode their bikes without adult supervision or fear. Within a few days, I, too, walked to a friend's house without murderers and molesters crossing my mind.
With everything going so well, I should not have been surprised when my mom announced that we would be moving to my uncle's hotel in the ghetto to save money. She explained that she was a couple of months behind on the rent, so we had no choice. My mom had gone overboard furnishing the apartment and was in debt. She told me I had to pack that night because her friend was coming by with a pick-up truck. When I protested, reminding my mother that the neighborhood she wanted us to move to wasn't safe, that just last week my uncle told us about a shooting in the parking lot, my mom said not to worry. She would drive me to and from school.
Dorothy Cury is a freelance magazine writer and graphic designer living in New York City.