We had a summer cottage at Old Colony Beach in Old Lyme, Connecticut. We’d head there as soon as school let out and wouldn’t return till Labor Day. We started going to this beach when I was a baby and stopped going as a family when I was in my mid-teens or so. This is partly because my folks made enemies there. The beach had its fun points, but for the most part, I preferred to be at the Massachusetts house. It was mostly a Jewish beach since my folks weren’t the least bit thrilled about hanging with those who were different than them. Not that they told me to hate others, like blacks. No, I’d come to hate everybody in general, regardless of race, color, etc., later on in life all by myself.
When I was around eight, Tammy and I would go and “be bad” when we’d go to check the cottage during the off-season. We’d rip screens off of other cottages, yank old doors off their hinges and things like that.
I mostly hung out with Andy. Andy was the youngest of six kids. They all lived in the cottage next to us. My parents and his parents, Judy and Al, had been friends for years. Since before I was even born. The friendship ended in the seventies and Judy and Al sold their cottage shortly afterward.
My parents had a falling out with at least three other families there, but it was mostly because of my mother. On and on went these childish little cliques and their struggles for popularity. I didn’t realize just how silly and immature it all was until I got older.
For the most part, the days were spent with me being bored on the beach (I could only swim and shovel so much sand), and the nights were spent doing a variety of things. Sometimes I was out interacting with other kids. There were bingo and movies on the beach. When I stayed in, I’d either watch TV, listen to the radio, or play with my dolls.
Despite my boredom, there were a few positives to the beach like ice cream, fried dough, candy necklaces, miniature golf and glow-in-the-dark wands. There was Mrs. Labriola too, an old lady at the other end of our street. I don’t remember how we met. I know my folks knew her somehow. We probably met while she was out in her yard which was beautifully decorated with lawn ornaments and I was walking by. She lived there year-round. Other than her kids who’d come to visit her and her dog, I was pretty much the only company she had. She was very good to me, often spoiling me with little treats when I’d visit. I was between eight and ten when I started visiting her. The last time I saw her was when I was around twenty-four in 1990. After moving to Phoenix in 1992, I learned she died in 1994 when I called her home and her son Vito answered.
My folks often played cards or other games with other couples just like them – very white, very straight, and very Jewish. My mother, as did my sister, had a thirst for praise and popularity. Recognition and acknowledgment were everything to them.
The most horrible memory I have of being at the beach was the one where my mother nearly left me for dead.
Literally.
The older I got, the more obsessed my parents, particularly my mother, became with my appearance. I had a chubby spell on occasion as a kid, causing my mother to taunt me as if I were a beached whale. I began to get more and more self-conscious and my self-esteem started to crumble. I also began to eat less and less as the pressure to fulfill Dureen’s obsession with me as the “beautiful” child mounted. Known for my big, long-lashed eyes, thick curly hair and being petite, I felt pressured to keep up the image, or else! When I finally did lose a little weight, she congratulated me as if it were the biggest accomplishment I could ever make in my life.
On one particular crash diet I threw myself on when I was around ten, I had not only no food but no water. I had nothing at all. I did this for a few days, then on the third day or so, I could barely lift my head off the pillow when I awoke that morning. I was so incredibly weak.
My mother and her best friend, Charlotte, were just off of the little kitchenette that was just outside my room. I called out to her but it was useless. When I asked for food and water, she refused to help me.
“You did this. You correct it,” she said to me, anxious to return to her backgammon game which was obviously much more important.
I was confused. I just didn’t know what to think at this point. Here she had been picking on me for being fat, yet when I insisted I was too full to eat anymore at a restaurant one night, she had made me eat it anyway and I ended up puking in the parking lot. It took all that before she quit making me continue eating once I was full.
As I lay there in my weakened state for many hours, I knew it was going to be up to me to save myself and that I’d surely die if I didn’t. I guess something must’ve wanted me to live because if that kitchenette hadn’t been right off my room – forget it. With all the strength I could muster, I pulled myself up out of bed, stepped just outside the room and yanked open a cabinet. Then I grabbed a Devil Dog, spun back around towards the bed and collapsed onto it. My heart was pounding. It took me all of ten minutes to gather enough strength to unwrap the wrapper and eat the damn thing. By this time it was late afternoon.
After I ate, I showered and went outdoors. My legs were shaky. And being the kid that I was, I didn’t hold the fact against my mother that I could’ve died had I not managed to feed myself, and I almost didn’t!
In my early teens at the beach, I’d often cruise the next beach over, which was a public beach, for anyone who had some pot to spare or share. Once, I was dumb enough to get into some guy’s car and drive away to get high where there were fewer people. He hit me for sex but dropped me back off at the beach immediately when I said no. The guy could’ve kidnapped, raped and killed me, so something was looking out for me that day, too.
I attended two camps in Maine. One when I was eleven, the other when I was fourteen. I was supposed to be there the whole summer, but that didn’t happen. I managed to get kicked out of both camps. I really hated camp. Not so much because the activities weren’t fun, but because it was too structured and hectic, leaving no time for any space or privacy. I always valued my solitude and I missed being in my own room with my own things and not having to share a bathroom with twenty other girls. I missed my stereo the most.
Camp M, the one I was in when I was fourteen doesn’t stand out in my mind in any way. All I remember is making sure I’d get caught smoking cigarettes so I could get kicked out, and slugging the camp counselor assigned to my cabin. I guess she startled me when she went to wake me up, so I didn’t literally “slug” her. She said I did, though, but I knew she was exaggerating because she wanted me out of there just as much as I did.
Camp N, the one I went to when I was eleven, does stand out in my mind because of a woman whose name I can’t remember. She was somewhere between her late teens to mid-twenties. She was extra nice to me and seemed very fond of me. I think she was some kind of supervisor because she had her own cabin in which we spent my last night in together.
Twenty years later, in Phoenix, Arizona I tried to track this woman down to thank her for caring for me in a time when so many people didn’t. I was never one to take good people for granted after all the bad people I’d dealt with, and I’m still not. Though I contacted Unsolved Mysteries for help and was shocked to get a phone call from them inquiring about her, I never could find her or learn her true name. No one I spoke to seemed to remember her. All I learned was that the camp was predominantly a Jewish camp. I should’ve figured as much, I suppose, since my parents were pretty big on hanging with our own kind.
Jenny, a friend I’d had since I was nine, wasn’t a very good influence on me. On top of a controlling mother, I had this bossy friend telling me what to do, too. But being the nice person that I was, I put up with it till I was in my twenties.
After a year of our friendship, Jenny moved to a rural town about forty minutes from where I lived, but we visited each other from time to time.
She had an older gay sister, Robin, who was on her own. Both Jenny and Robin were adopted. Her father seemed pretty passive, but her mother was a neurotic alcoholic that I never really liked.
Jenny and I had our share of good times, but I can’t say I was too thrilled with her for getting me started on cigarettes. Who knows, though? Maybe I’d have started anyway. She also introduced me to pot, though fortunately, I never got carried away with that. Just an occasional joint from my early to mid-teens. Actually, my last joint would be when I was twenty, but that story will have to wait.
As kids Jenny and I would hang out together, smoking our cigarettes and stealing from stores. Petty things like candy and cigarettes.
My other friend was Jessica. She and I are still friends today.
Just like Jenny had gotten me hooked on cigarettes, I got Jessie hooked on them. I spared her the pot, though. She and I didn’t cause too much mischief together, though we did skip school once.
Jessie was also adopted. Her adoptive parents were divorced. She lived with her mother a few houses away from mine. Her father was a very famous public figure.
I stayed with Jessie at his house in Connecticut a few times. His house was quite impressive. The layout was really cool. He had a lot of photos of him posing with other celebrities. The show’s set was in New York where he had a nearby apartment as well.
I hated school and having to get up early, though I found middle school to be a little better than elementary school, and high school to be even better. Before I became a ward of the state, that is. I totally loathed math, history and English. Science was ok. My favorites were chorus, gym, and the typing class I had.
I ended up at an alternative school at one point, the last public school I ever attended, if only for a brief time and it wasn’t too bad. That’s because we could get away with murder there. This was in Springfield and there were only a few teachers and students at this school. We could smoke freely and goof off all we wanted. Even our bus driver got high with us!
Throughout most of grade school, I was quite a rebellious little terror. Experts say my behavior problems were linked to the abuse I received at home, or my ear/hearing and ADD. Maybe it stemmed from all of the above. Who knows?
I’d do things like hit or kick students for no apparent reason and steal their snacks. Once, I hid a classmate’s glasses behind some books in a bookcase. I refused to tell the teacher where they were, so the class tore up the classroom in search of them, while I stood out in the hallway, grinning through the little square window of the door.
I played the flute and piano, but didn’t play the flute for long at all.
During the third and fourth grades, I was in the “retard room.” This was for slow learners or troublemakers such as myself.
One particular horrible memory I have of grade school was when I was in the first or second grade. I was afraid to go home that day because my mother had been fuming at me before school. This was because I had to wake her up because I couldn’t find the dress she wanted me to wear that day. I don’t know what went through the teacher’s mind when she thought she could save me by having a schoolmate walk me home, but that was her solution to the matter.
So this boy walked me home. I kept insisting that he not approach the house with me because I knew my mother would be mad if she saw me with a boy, but he stuck to me like glue anyway. As soon as my mother opened the back door the boy blurted out, “She was afraid you were going to hit her so the teacher told me to walk her home.”
Enraged at the thought of outsiders knowing that she hit her children, my mother slapped me right then and there in front of the boy. All I remember after she yanked me into the house, slammed the door on the boy and slugged me, was me huddling fearfully in the corner of the kitchen.
Mr. M, the high school music teacher, was definitely my favorite and the only man I really had a crush on before meeting Tom. He was tall, dark and handsome in every sense of the word. He was like a masculine version of Kate Jackson, also someone I had a crush on. This was when I began to really learn about rejection, for he was infatuated with another student at the time whom he later married.
I had no real friends in high school. Perhaps this was because I only attended Longmeadow High for the last part of my freshman year. From September till after the New Year, I met one-on-one with a private tutor at the Willie Ross School for the Deaf on the other side of town.
This was around the time I started seeing a therapist at the Jewish Family Services center in Springfield. Naturally, when my mother was present, she’d put on her public face. I believe I had to run away for a day in order to earn myself a few therapy sessions at this place. On and off throughout my childhood, I was a member of the Jewish Community Center. One day I hung out in this cave-like thing in the playground instead of going to school. I was also becoming self-destructive, cutting myself and things like that.
Back when I was around ten, I saw a shrink in Boston who recommended I stop having surgery. It was getting to me, that’s for sure. That’s a lot of operations to be having at any age, let alone so young.
This is when they began to control me with drugs, too.
Bio 5
In 1978 we moved from the newer side of Longmeadow to the older section. Although this house was much older, it was bigger and I liked it a lot better. It didn’t have much of a back or front yard. That was ok, though, since I was well past the days of playing outside on swings and in makeshift forts and tents, not that there were any woods in this yard anyway. All there was in back was a hedge separating a small patch of grass from a small brick terrace. There wasn’t much of a front yard, either. In fact, my dad could ditch his sit-down mower for a push-mower and leave the mowing to me. I didn’t mind. It was pretty much all I ever had for chores besides laundry, other than to keep my own territory neat and clean. I didn’t do any cooking. My only kitchen job would be to set the table, clear it off afterward, load the dishwasher, then empty it.
I received a weekly allowance of $10 which I’d spend on cigarettes. A carton of cigarettes was around $5 when I started smoking and ended up being over $20 when I finally quit eighteen years later.
Unlike the first house, which was on a dead-end road, this house was on the corner of a busier street.
It was also a two-story house with four bedrooms. My stereo and guinea pigs lived on one side of the cellar where I’d hang out a lot.
When Nana Bella first came to live with us at the first house, she’d snitch on me for every little thing. Then once she saw how my mom could be at times, she kind of felt sorry for me and we became closer. She even kept her mouth shut when I’d smoke. “Just don’t burn the house down,” she’d tell me.
She died when I was away from home as a ward of the state at age seventeen. Both of my maternal grandparents died two years later.
If I had to pick a timeframe in my life that was the worst, I’d say the teenage years were definitely it. This is when my mother began running out of patience with me, and her pawning me off on others or at other places would escalate. Places that could be even worse than being with her. I truly believe that my mother never wanted kids in the first place and that the only reason she had them was for show, so to speak. She married in a time when kids were expected of any couple.
As a hyper child with wild dreams of becoming a rich and famous singer, I was more than getting on my parents’ nerves. They started ignoring me more, becoming more and more engrossed in TV and outings with friends. I felt I lacked and needed attention. My mother’s control and ridicule were increasing by the minute. It seemed I could do or say nothing right, and as the last of my optimism and confidence faded, my early teens would be when I’d have my first thoughts of suicide.
I took an overdose of sleeping pills, but all it did was make me drowsy. I began to cut my wrists regularly. Actually, I’d hack up my left forearm. I wasn’t doing it to die. I was doing it as a way of channeling and venting my frustrations, my depression, and my growing anger. No one influenced me to do this, either. I never saw anyone do it on TV, never heard anyone talk about it. In fact, I didn’t know anyone else in the world had ever cut themselves.
Although raised Jewish, we rarely went to the temple. Religion wasn’t a regular part of our lives. That was ok with me, for religion is too structured and often bigoted in my opinion.
When I was somewhere between twelve and fourteen, I was walking down the street next to ours one crisp fall day.
“Oh, what a cute sweatshirt,” said this middle-aged woman who was out raking leaves in her front yard.
I looked down at my Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. “Thanks,” I said.
With my hair pulled back in a ponytail, she noticed my ear and questioned me about it. After telling her about it, she informed me that she had a deaf son and that I was welcome to go into her backyard and meet him, so I did.
Jeff was a dark, lanky boy a year older than me with the same exact birthday. He knew sign language well. All I knew at this time was how to fingerspell the alphabet. Jeff taught me many words a day. I’d write down the words I wanted to know and he’d show me the signs for them.
I began to teach myself Spanish at this time too, using books and records. That was all I could do since I knew no Hispanic people to help me. There were no Hispanics that I knew of living in Longmeadow at this time. The only Hispanic people I’d met were this family from Venezuela in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital when I had one of my ear surgeries.
I’d never even seen a black person till I was around ten, or maybe even a little older. “Dark Land,” I’d call the black section of the city whenever we’d drive through it.
I also dabbled a bit in French and shorthand.
Although Jeff and I hung out a lot together, neither of us liked each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. For him, it could’ve been for any reason. For me, it was because I was gay, though I didn’t know or understand that yet. I just knew that women in general were better looking than men in general. I was attracted to what I was attracted to and I didn’t question it. Not when I was attracted to someone I’d see somewhere, or when I was attracted to singer Linda Ronstadt, who’d be one of my favorite singers, or actress Kate Jackson.
The summer of 1980, when I was fourteen, was not a fun one. Instead of being at the beach, my parents were traveling daily, selling eyeglass frames to optometrists. I had just gotten kicked out of camp, and so my mother, not ready for me to come home and spoil her peace, dumped me off in Connecticut at the campground Uncle Marty and Aunt Ruth spent their own summers.
Although I was allowed to take my guitar and new guinea pig with me after losing one that I’d had for two years, I was not a “happy camper.” My only good memories of this time were the day I went water-skiing on the lake. Also, when I went diving with a bunch of other kids from a cliff that was a good fifteen to twenty feet high. It was scary at first, but I found it to be a lot of fun once I got used to it.
Marty and Ruth stayed inside a trailer while I stayed in a small outdoor tent. I didn’t mind the tent. It was my uncle I minded, along with my spineless aunt who went right along with his domineering ways. Believe it or not, though, she was the one that hit me that summer, not him. She slapped me across the face. I’m not sure if I earned that slap for bumming smokes off of others, or for the boy that was in my tent that they were convinced I had dragged in with me.
This kid actually came into the tent one early evening when I least expected it. He sat on my cot next to me as I held my guinea pig on my lap.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.
Saying nothing, he pulled my mouth towards his. Before his disgusting lips could touch mine, I heard, “Jodi, who’s in the tent?”
It was my Aunt Ruth. Both of us emerged from the tent, but before I could explain, she’d already made up her mind as to what had happened.
“Get in the trailer!” she demanded, where I would spend the night.
Shortly after this incident, my father came to get me. Before we left, he and Marty and Ruth openly discussed my “problems” as if I weren’t even there.
