Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
And the day broke from the mouth of Madame Butterfly…the hope that the sun will rise again … the amber waves glittered hot white as the sun moved towards the afternoon. To “Un Bel Di…” (not literally) Dr. J descended the stair in Ferragamo. This woman existed on the dimension of opera, however, literally, not a metaphor. She was an aria, classical, but buffoon, but buffoon is classical. After all, she was a prodigy on the piano and organ, a professional musician, once upon a time, according to Neiman Marcus Magazine, and a genius at it. A genius no matter what. Above all, that. Her genius was of a caliber beyond the stars in the sky, where she often rested her sky blue eyes, as she sparkled in haute couture sequins in the back of her limo. “Mama,” in her little girl/showgirl way, only wore Krizia to work, exclusively, a fashionista, as all good villains are because they exist in the dimension of fantasy, I believe—Dr J’s home. Her dusty violet Krizia suit with gold buttons was stunning. She was a chic woman, but she had a real passion, so range: ballgowns, cocktail dresses, doll dresses, and a closet of kimonos down the hall. From what I gathered, her outfits in church could sometimes be out of place. But I associate pianists with a touch of wild flair, why? I don’t know. Maybe one has to exit the mind, become one with, as classical can evoke that. Where someone is tuned into some conduit of electricity and is playing like mad, genius, as classical composers, I feel, almost occupy the same elastic headspace as mathematicians. Will Hunting, in Good Will Hunting, describes doing math like playing the piano. Beethoven, he could just play, and math was the same exercise for him. Dr. J sort of acted like BAD ACTOR trying to play the role of “genius” but uppity, girlie, flat like a glossy magazine but with her pianist hands— cultured, even classy. A pianist in Alice in Wonderland the opera, who will then punch numbers, glide across space in her chair — desperate — lives on the line…to Un Bel Di. It was life and death, for sure. “THE IRS IS COMING…” they were always coming to see Dr. J, specifically.
I’m giving you a little introduction to Dr. J to set the tone for a most unbelievably theatrical woman with a particular look and physicality… who exists in a world that dreams about these “great minds…” as Dr. J breaks glass… she looked about the air, as Russell Crowe did in A Beautiful Mind as in there were triangles in it. She was seeing equations, not empty space, Dr. J. She— was a genius. This was her objective— to BE— in ridiculous gestures — the one to rule them all: the geniuses. To “Un Bel Di.” Like, if you actually played that track over her real person moving through space, they would match, it might be groundbreaking, even, as a performance. This was her emotional state, saving the world via the IRS, accosting the priest with her rapes every Sunday, and wrapping her baby up in a sex scandal — Un Bel Di.
“Protect my baby,” tears falling down her cheeks. “Please, I beg you.”
Angelica might crack up/get angry, as Dr. J pushed a funny bone.
Once, coming back from Neimans in her cherry red Mercedes, she was high from shopping and possibly pills. She cranked up AIDA to the MAX and rolled the windows down. She began some ludicrous buffoon mocking aria over this melody at me, sort of cracking up, silly. “Ahhh…” I couldn’t make it up. I closed my ears, because she didn’t sound good, but Dr. J didn’t care—she was provocative in this way. The joke is, practically nightly, “she’s drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown…” in the same car. She was a pathetic character, so pathos, that’s where Dr. J lives on the comic spectrum as representing some desperate need for care. There’s a function to pathos, and I didn’t need the pity, neither did she, but she did need care. I might have had a rapier, but I was wrong to put it aside, I refused to take on ANY “oh, poor you,” like, go read a book. Sorry, that’s just who I am. “This was your wish, not mine,” meaning you wanted to know. She acted as if she came from the darkest of childhoods as the brightest thing in it. And over the years, people looked at me as if I were delivering a turn of phrase.
Pathetic: it’s a condition. Not an insult. But because I spoke of it really, and I’d never use that word casually, as a joke, you see, or as an insult, it was too close to real for some people, just like the words crazy and insane. People say things they don’t really mean, I got the picture—wink. Dr. J. They speak unreally—wink again. Dr. J. I saw her in everyone and everything. Because I was being real, it discredited me, even, like this person can go around yapping pathetic because they didn’t really mean it. People could get confused between the two and discredit the real deal, because they can’t handle it. “She was a real pathetic.” Joy was a real psychological case. She didn’t want to be normal, you see, she had no interest in it. She acted like a buffoon—a genius, in her mind. This wasn’t a woman to take it easy on, and I did for the majority of my life, as I didn’t have this point of view for most of my life. What she did was unacceptable. And everyone in my life missed it.
Imagine?
Imagine!
She cried, Angelica — firing her pointer finger at me.
“This bitch told me RAPE,” she desperately tried to COMMUNICATE IT. She wrapped up this woman in a sex scandal. Let’s be real. I’m more on the LEGAL end, you see, not on the “aw she was mentally ill,” sure, she most certaintly was, but there are LINES.
In another reflection moment, would you be concerned about someone’s woundedness, someone who abuses a child? No, are you concerned about their mental health state? NO, but if that’s the case, just get it out of my face and deal with it, you know what I mean? Go handle it. Deal with it. It’s a health care issue. It needs to be treated, and not in a system of punishment. This person is sick. It’s a disease. What she did was not okay, a parent was needed—that concerns my healing from all this.
On her way to the goddamn IRS in limo driven by her lover, supposedly, getting into the limo in front of us—absurd. My mother was completely absurd. Angelica told me to “pay attention” for the very first time in her red Cadillac — it was time for my first love song lesson. She clapped and turned up the stereo… “Me Va Me Va…” as Dr. J’s limo took off — probably she went to sleep with a man, shop, and then make a stop at the IRS…
I start here, because it was the worst, just the worst — telling someone this? Trying to EXPLAIN who Dr. J is? A woman who would wrap her child up in a sex scandal. Like, were they expecting Santa Claus? Are you expecting someone who isn’t unhinged? You know? This was my mother. This is the woman who is going to do this. She was a severe case, and they do indeed exist, in fairytale tones, even, since people were ignorant to the existence of madness, abuse, um, “these people exist…” Sorry to be “the one” for you, but welcome to a world with about eight billion people in it. Next. Mirror mirror…mirrors. And not speaking this way — caused me problems. I’m not going to waste my time rummaging through your disbelief just in trying to EXPLAIN who this woman was.
And so, by nature of how gross and offensive she was, Dr. J, and I say that with the spiritual support of political theorist Hannah Arendt because she’d definitely read this, and I definitely read her if not relied on her to help me through the insanity of this story. She was a woman, dead, who supported me better than anybody alive, especially through the insanity of everything that came along with this story. She saw “the world,” as a real entity, a real structure, and I needed her understanding of it to get how much of a role that idea plays into one’s psychology: what it means to appear in the world. That was hard due to the otherworldly nature of this story. This wasn’t a political battle, but it was a battle on the personal front.
That’s exactly how Arendt would have described it. “Maria can’t exactly appear in the world with a story like that. It didn’t even seem that people could SEE her as real.” Sure, Joy’s not a dictator, but there are some acts, some crimes, some ideas, call it what you want, that should not be treated as if they were made of pixie dust—rage is necessary, spiritual, in saying no, where it must be said. It’s a little Dr. J. “This is not okay—maybe in a few generations, we could revisit the idea of a relationship.” I had to, strangely, avoid very true ways of looking “evolved” or “resolved.” It wasn’t that, “all mothers are crazy,” which someone said, to me, of all people, or “she was wounded,” the path was — what she did was unacceptable. The path was one of a parent — if you touch my kid, you’re dead. There’s a big difference between social justice and —if you touch my kid, you see—a parent will kill you. It’s — a deep relationship, typically, not in my case, but generally parents are going to lose their minds. I was disrespected, at a very young age. If you touch my kid, you see, this is the parent, not the wiseman, per se, I’ll kill you. There is wisdom in it when it’s appropriate, you see, which in my case, it was — if someone wrapped up my baby in some ridiculous sex scandal, I would be furious. No? Yet, no one thought of it.
Except, the Zen Master Sybil: the reason why I was able to make through my dark night, as I went through one when I reopened all this. She was a Zen Master psychologist with the middle name Sybil, so I called her the Zen Master Sybil, evidently. I gave her an official title — she was spiritual in her approach, and rage was most certainly that — spiritual, necessary, red. She said.
She told me to — “pay attention” Angelica, behind the red wheel of her red Cadillac. The perfect day, that was Dr. J. The brightest colors, the day. Her backyard — I remember it — it was the greenest grass I ever saw, the field of dreams we twirled upon though it might be more like belief. The field of. Dr. J sounded and acted as if she came from this realm.
What was her general impression of her? I asked Angelica. What’s the first thing that came to her mind when she saw her? I don’t know about how she was at work, but she was never normal. I tried to explain this to people. She was not a “hi how are you” person. All you know about me is: I was beaten at two to the point of being sent away. That’s Dr. J. I don’t know if she thought she was normal, but she did not seem to care if she gave a normal impression of herself….getting naked in her office to seduce a man and running into church and accosting a priest with her rapes. I can’t follow her logic. Except, need, only need. She appeared primally starved, she appeared desperate though her money produced some flouncy spin through it all.
Angelica Liebowitz stuck her fork into her club salad that came in a glass leaf bowl—chic— she made some modifications to it, I remember. I don’t think I even got lunch, and didn’t my father pay her for these visits? To hang out with her, I had to pay, but I didn’t really get lunch, did I — you see? What I noticed in retrospect—that position took me a real effort to get to, thanks to Angelica, a woman who went on and on about how selfless she was, in taking care of me…for money… regardless of the reasons. Not just a couple hundred bucks, either.
So, how did she appear to you…?
Angelica paused and received that question now at an intimate angle at the end of the afternoon. What did she notice about my mother….firstly? She turned her head and searched across the pool at 3 o’clock. She paused. She really thought about it, her eyes darting around.
“She was…” She blinked and peered over the pool as if there were meaning in it that she, herself, could not totally describe.
“…the whitest woman I have ever seen…”
I had to laugh but on the inside. I didn’t want to put her in the position of needing to apologize, and she would have, which would have been ridiculous. It was the first phrase out of everybody’s mouth. “Never seen someone so white.” That struck a chord regardless of her intention, a file in my drawer. I felt the tremble through the architecture. There was a structure that held the world up, that held up a person, and I could feel it and it fascinated me. Racism, in particular, coming out of a sex scandal, when I was four? You know, some unspeakable, unbelievable, insane situation… that people don’t…see. That affected me. That was systemic. That was clear to me.
“You could not not see how white she was.”
There might be something right in front of you that you might be blind to, which is why, it gets annoying when people ACT innocent about it—another Dr. J reflection. In that, Dr. J is REALLY ACTING like she CAN’T SEE. It’s to a pitch that might make these attitudes or behaviors stick out to someone.
You’d think, no, it’s not possible, that a mother could do that to her child, and yet, people have done much worse than that. They lost the war, even, so the winners collect slaves, and they will be used as those in powers wish them to be used…. it’s very simple, cold, cruel, and not that unbelievable. White people, sorry, Europeans, showed up to the United States of America and passed out blankets infected with smallpox to the Native Americans— disgusting behavior. To the people who were so shocked, read a history book, you know what I mean? Was I supposed to support this? Now I know—no. It’s just, people got SO AFFECTED when they could spread it around.
“She was the whitest woman I have ever seen,” but truly! Really! The eye witness in church said, she “kinda” reminded her of Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations. It wasn’t a joke, she was sincere. “So she was a white villain who would kill puppies for a fur coat?” As this woman wasn’t white. “Yes.” As if beginning a Grimm’s fairytale, Angelica continued, “she was white, really white, strikingly so.”
“Beautiful,” she said. “Unusual shade.”
With skin whiter than snow, “she glowed,” Angelita wondered, seriously, if she glowed in the dark while making love, as Angelita only thought along these lines. Paired with her extraordinary eyes the exact shade of the sky too clear for comfort, and a red wig, real but fake, Angelita described her as “an attractive woman,” sincerely. Which she was…I saw it as part of her pathoogy, hard to explain. So was Ted Bundy. A beauty…with skin whiter than snow, Angelica said, once upon a time.
“Striking,” she said. “Features.”
“Sexy body…”
“Oh?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Very sexy body.”
“Beautiful breasts,” she said. Uh huh, as I said, I was eight or nine, confused, mostly, but I had gotten that impression. That she had an appealing figure. And, uh, “how many times did she come over in these four years?”
She flashed two fingers for “like twice.”
That’s a snapshot of Dr. J. A naked woman, didn’t matter where she was. Angelica saw her breasts more than once.
She snapped, the blue bottle hit the table, “put on sunscreen.” A fight between us since I was four. The whip came out, she practically sneezed through her six children’s names to get to mine as she always did. “My nose was getting red.” She even encouraged me to like my skin tone, a nice detail. I was the daughter of the whitest woman anyone had ever seen.
