Buffering Read online

  At the time it was just the three of us—my mother, Naomi, and me. She and my father had separated, and Mom was working temp jobs transcribing video recordings of newscasts. Every cent she made was put toward keeping us in this house in an increasingly expensive suburb of the Bay Area. She insisted that good schools would keep us safe. Our house was on the same block as our elementary school. As an adult I can see what incredible value this held for a single mother. Naomi and I could walk ourselves to and from school, and Mom could work whatever shift at whatever job she could find.

  That night Naomi and Mom were watching TV in the living room. The show was scary, so I wandered off to find a way to entertain myself. Our house had five rooms, but we used only two and a half of them. The others were off limits. The blue bedroom had a door that was always shut. It was filled with furniture and antiques from my mother’s various finds. I once broke a teacup from the blue bedroom. It was green and vaguely Irish looking. It may have been a family heirloom from my great-grandmother’s7 side. Mom was incredibly angry when she found out, apoplectic. She rarely got angry, but when she did, it was devastating. I remember running off and trying to fix the cup with Elmer’s glue, crying because my fingers were sticking together but the pieces of the cup wouldn’t. I felt small and useless. Mom found me and held me and wiped my tears, telling me that she was sorry, so sorry for her anger and that the cup was just a material thing. And material things didn’t matter. People before objects, Hannah. Always.

  Our kitchen was also in a constant state of domestic threat. I’ll spare you the description. Let’s just say flies and maggots and hidden rats and leave it at that.

  Our dining room was where all the books and miscellaneous technology went. Keyboards without computers. Printers without paper. Piles of newspapers and magazines. The dining room was where our pets would go to defecate. There were French doors that separated it from the living room.

  The second bedroom was where Naomi and I slept at night. There was a mattress on the floor and clothing, well, everywhere. As an adult who’s worked with charities, I now understand why there were so many garbage bags filled with clothes around our house. And why we could never seem to find anything that fit. It’s because most shelters will hand you an assorted bag of clothing vaguely marked “girls” or “boys” with an age range. It wasn’t until recently that I put all of this together.

  The living room was where my mother would sit up at night until she joined us in the bedroom to sleep. She would spend hours chain-smoking cigarettes and listening to Art Bell or Pastor Murray on the radio or talking on the phone to people she knew. That last sentence was a lie I told myself. The truth was that she was talking to herself.

  Anyway, back to the aspirin.

  I wandered down the hall toward the bathroom. One of my favorite ways to entertain myself was to go into the bathroom and bite the lipstick out of the tube. I liked the waxy way it felt against my teeth and tongue. I spat it into the toilet and put the empty tubes under the sink. And that’s where I found the aspirin. I don’t know where I got the idea, probably from a medieval history show I had seen on PBS, but I decided that I was going to crush up these tiny white pills, thirty or so, and make myself a potion. They were easy to crush with the bottoms of other bottles, and if I could find a cup, I’d mix it all up with water and drink it. And that’s exactly what I did.

  As soon as I swallowed, I knew I’d done something wrong. It was as though a raindrop fell from the sky and through the ceiling, landing like a cold spark against the top of my head. I had just done something bad. I had done something very bad, but I didn’t know what and I was starting to feel scared about it.

  I calmly walked with the (now empty) aspirin bottle into the living room, where Mom and Naomi were still watching TV.

  “What’s this?”

  My mother glanced toward me. “It’s medicine. Don’t eat it, it can kill you.”

  If before my panic had been a raindrop, I was now drenched in a thunderstorm. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember starting to wail. I was only five, but I certainly did not want to die.

  My mother sprang from the couch toward me—whether she’d heard the empty bottle drop, or had simply figured things out, I’m not sure. She carried me toward the phone and called Poison Control. I remember the look on her face as she stared back at me. It sticks with you, that first memory of seeing worry—blind panic—on your parent’s face. She was only a few years older than I am today, living my adultolescent8 life and feeling so lost at times. But at least I’m not on the phone with poison control while holding my child who has just potentially killed herself.

  The conversation was not going well. Mom was becoming angry with whomever was on the other end of the line. Phone calls often ended this way for her.

  She told us that we had to drive to the hospital and we had to leave now. As we ran to the car Naomi threw herself down on the sidewalk out front and screamed, “Please God, don’t let my sister die!” into the night. I was not thankful for her prayer in that moment. I was embarrassed.

  At the hospital everything was cold and bright. Mom and the doctor were not happy to see each other. My mother had trouble getting along with a lot of adults we encountered. He was not kind, though, I could tell. I remember finding him very scary as he handed me a kidney-shaped tray and a cup full of what looked like tar. That wasn’t far off; it was charcoal. He told me to drink it and I said I didn’t want to. He said don’t sip it, that will make it worse. Well, I wasn’t going to drink it without tasting it, was I? I took a sip, and the taste made me want to cry again. Mom asked if there was an alternative to my having to drink the charcoal. He said that he could put a breathing tube through my nose and a hose down my throat to my stomach.9 She glared at him. She hated doctors. She told me to drink it, and I did.

  As the charcoal moved past my gag reflex and I puked everything out, my last recollection was seeing my dinner come back up and being worried that it would mean I’d have to wait until tomorrow before I ate again.

  In all the years we lived as a family (a family that grew and grew and then shrank and shrank) our home was never clean. I remember reading the word “squalor” for the first time and having to look up the definition. Upon reading it my brain made a “ruh-roh” motion and pulled on my collar. Authorities came and went with threats of “clean this place up, or we’ll take the children away.” The cops were the enemy.

  There were numerous incidents like the aspirin story during my childhood. I remember a time when I stabbed my leg with a boning knife while Naomi and I were watching a tape of Tiny Toon Adventures. Naomi ran to the bathroom to get a cold washcloth to press down on my leg and then had to go to a neighbor’s house to call my mom at work10 since our phone bill hadn’t been paid and the phone had been shut off. I saw the little worms of fat splitting the skin beneath. This was my first examination of the human body. If I had to put my thoughts into words, they would be Whovian: “We are a lot bigger on the inside.”

  Another time, in middle school, when Maggie was still a baby, we were told that we had to clean the house or the cops would take her away. My friend Rachel’s family came over to help out. I remember using a mix of bleach and ammonia to clean the bathroom with Rachel. The windows were all shut, and Rachel and I were definitely getting accidentally high. Her mom, Jane, saved us from further exposure, telling us through her laughter what idiots we were. And it was true. But we were happy idiots.

  Our house was never tidy. If we’re going by the standards of Child and Family Services, it was technically “uninhabitable.” But it was full of happy memories and sacred objects. Even when my mother spent 2008 living out of a shopping cart, she kept the things that were most sacred to her, like Naomi’s kindergarten graduation certificate with her award for “Most Improved Handwriting.” My mom may not be sane, but she sure is sentimental.

  I wish I hadn’t been so hasty when I was twenty, shoving our memories into garbage bags in my mom’s house. I regret
not taking something for myself—an heirloom—whereas Naomi had the maturity and the foresight to salvage the things that were precious to her. But I suppose we can’t hold on to everything. Sometimes we have to start over and make new heirlooms for our children to eventually put into their own boxes or bags as they see fit.

  But from the time I was a teenager I’ve kept a journal. I began journaling because of my mother. Initially I thought I could make some sense of her logic by transcribing and translating her thoughts. I figured that if I didn’t understand what she was saying, it was simply because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. If I could crack her code and learn to speak her language, we would find a way to communicate. I spent years recording my mother’s prose, word for word, and then looking for a purpose where there was none. But then eventually I found one. Because the habit of transcribing her thoughts led me to begin recording my own.

  When I set out to write this book, I realized that although I didn’t save anything from our old house, my heirlooms have always been with me, in the form of the memories recorded in my journals. So this chapter and those that follow, and the journals that inspired them, are my inheritance. And now I’d like to pass them down to you.

  Because at the end of the day, we are all kind of one big family.

  Hrm. Speaking of family, next up, my dad.

  1 Now called “Child and Family Services” to make it sound less scary.

  2 We call the illness “Annette” and the happy memories “Mom.”

  3 My third. At the time I was also working at Berkeley’s School of Journalism as assistant to the director of new media, and also as “maintenance manager” in the co-op where I lived, taking care of clogged sinks and toilets.

  4 It was a solution that would not last long. By the time I graduated, Mom was homeless.

  5 Annette had lost it (meaning she’d had a psychotic episode) over seeing me walk into the house with a dolly to start moving things.

  6 Michael was referring to the fact that this job was simply too much for our motley crew to handle, and that we needed to focus on what was best for keeping Mom housed, rather than cleaning out her belongings.

  7 My great-grandma Long was the only person who showed my mom any kindness as a kid. She died not long before this incident took place.

  8 Adultolescent = amateur adult = the second adolescence we call “young adulthood.”

  9 Honestly, this guy was being such a dick. Little did he know that his statement and the image that went along with it would haunt my dreams throughout my elementary school years.

  10 The rules when my mom was at work:

  1. Never call 911.

  2. Call her at work only if someone is bleeding.

  ORIGINAL KIN

  3/30/09

  My father taught me how to drive. He taught me well at that. I’ve only been in one accident and that was caused by crying over Rachel. Sometimes I think my father has it all right. Life, God, the Universe, Everything. Sometimes I just don’t know. I want to be close to him. I miss him. I want to call him and go to movies. But there is always this awkward block, a wall. Like he can’t ever really be a part of my world because I live in “The World.” The world of sin, disappointment. A world far from him and his pursuit of perfection. He is a good man. He cares for many. If he ever found out about my wretched past inclinations it would devastate him.

  I think I’m slowly becoming straight. I’m slowly leaving behind my world of women and should try harder to meet a good clean guy who is caring and sensitive and dorky. No one who smokes, no one who listens to loud music. Just someone who will love me as I try to love him. One day, maybe that can happen. Maybe when I’m more fully formed. And Dad will never have to know that I filled the car I learned to drive with women and kisses. Drove it to their homes so I could continue to explore this deviance. My dysfunction.

  People have often told me that I’m “well spoken,” to which I usually reply, “Why, thank you! Probably comes from my dad, Noah. He’s a preacher.” Then they say we must have a great relationship, and I say, “No, not really, it’s actually pretty distant on account of the fact that I’m gay.” Then they offer their condolences and we move along.

  But this isn’t a conversation, this is a book, so I’m just going to tell you the whole truth. And “The Truth” is something my dad is an expert in.

  My father is a Jehovah’s Witness. Witnesses refer to their religion as “The Truth” and the unfortunate realm outside of it as “The World.” To me, that life seemed too isolating. And also socially irresponsible, since Witnesses don’t participate in “the government of man,” meaning that they don’t vote. Which I think everyone should do! We owe it to our future generations to make the world better than we found it. The Witnesses were officially founded in 1931, but the religion was based on a Bible study group that started back in the 1870s. They’ve failed to predict the apocalypse three times (in 1914, 1925, and 1975). But hey, who’s counting?1

  My father and mother both became Witnesses in the early 1980s. They met in 1979 at age twenty-one at work. He was her supervisor, and to be honest I don’t remember what the job was. But they met and quickly fell in love, marrying two years later. When I was a kid I asked my father about his first memory of meeting my mother. I was hoping to hear something about her interests or hobbies, something I could attach a sense of lineage to. His reply was, “When I went to pick her up for our first date, she made me wait outside for a long time. Then when I walked in, there were towels everywhere covering up stacks of dirty dishes. Very strange. There was a lot of tin hat stuff happening back then, too.”

  By “tin hat stuff” he was referring to “the wearing of a tin hat to keep alien radio waves out of your head,” a phrase sometimes used to describe the behavior of people with paranoia. I think. Schizophrenia first manifests in the early twenties. So my mother was probably starting to hear voices for the first time when she and my father met. Due to the stigma surrounding schizophrenia and a general lack of awareness back then, there was no way that my father could have known that. And also no way he could have known that someone with borderline psychosis needed to stay as far away from psychedelic drugs as possible.

  Too bad that’s exactly what he was into at the time.

  It’s hard for me to imagine what my dad must have been like before he joined the Witnesses. But here are some of the things I do know: he went to a special school for gifted kids, graduated from high school at the age of sixteen, and was accepted into the budding Computer Science program at UC Santa Cruz. This was in the 1970s, before most people realized how important computers would become. He was asked to join MENSA, and because of his early work on computer programming, he was at the forefront of all the technology we build our lives on today.

  Other things I know: his father was an alcoholic, and my dad was the second in a line of five siblings. He studied tai kwon do and was “the fun brother” who smoked a lot of weed and did harder drugs. He also briefly dabbled in Buddhism. With black-brown hair, blue eyes, a big smile, and a broad build, he was always well liked by those around him. A charming, intelligent, funny Jewish boy—until he was no longer Jewish. He said a rabbi once told him, “You don’t need to believe in God to be Jewish,” and that was the end of it for him. Incredibly ironic, considering the many contradictions of his chosen faith. But hey. To each their own.

  When he met my mom he was still in his “Let’s do drugs and try to contact spirits” phase. She pulled him out of that and into another form of mind control. She had recently met a Jehovah’s Witness, who invited them to join a Bible study group to lead them away from the confusing world and toward the blissful opportunity of eternal life on a paradise earth. That sounded pretty good to both of them.

  In 1983 they had Naomi, and in 1986 they had me. After I was born, Annette started to pull away from the religion and had relations with another man. Noah did the same (with a woman). They eventually divorced, were “disfellowshipped”2 by the Witnesses, and lat
er they reconciled. Noah insisted that they try to be “reinstated” in the Truth, but Annette didn’t want to be. Noah was eventually reinstated, but Annette never was. However, they got very close to being remarried; in fact, they tried to get remarried twice, but Annette was against the religion and constantly flip-flopping about their marriage. The last time they tried, they drove to Nevada in the night (with my sister and me in the backseat) and made it all the way to the judge’s chambers with marriage license in hand before Annette suddenly said she needed a cup of coffee and never came back. The judge laughed at my dad and said he wasn’t going to be marrying them any time soon.

  So that’s enough background on Noah the person; let’s move on to talking about Dad.

  Growing up, Naomi and I would spend four days a month with our father at his home across the bay in Fremont. “Dad Weekends” could be nice, but if our visit fell on a holiday, we were screwed. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in celebrating holidays of any kind, including birthdays, because they are pagan. They explain this by reciting a parable about John the Baptist, who was killed as a birthday present to King Herod. Thus, all holidays are evil and sinful and pagan. Duh. The end.

  If a “Dad Weekend” fell on something big, like one of our birthdays or Christmas, my mother would do everything in her power to get him to switch. But honestly, I think that my dad still resented my mother for breaking his heart and dragging him through her “nervous breakdowns” and “emotional roller coasters.” Let’s all take a moment to have compassion for my father as a young man. He really couldn’t handle how unstable my mother was. I’m sure it was traumatizing for him. He once told me about seeing her on the bathroom floor stroking razor blades along her skin. How could a man in his twenties be expected to deal with that? He simply couldn’t.