TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 96

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 21, 20000000000006


Dear Crowd of Lovelies,

	I got another couple of letters via 
e-mail, copies from my lawyer, of villainman's 
lawyer's letters.  That was a poorly constructed 
sentence.  Nevertheless, these letters were 
further proof that villainman is not willing to 
settle.  He's demanding ten thousand dollars here 
and $350 clams there, for ridiculous things.  And 
the letters make me out to be a flake and 
dishonest scheming human being.  The 
characterizations are so false, but they hurt me 
anyway, and I cried because I felt under attack. 
Well, I don't just feel under attack, I AM under 
attack.  I wonder if this whole process will ever 
be over, or if villainman will continue to take 
pot shots at me forever.  Why?  Doesn't he have 
anything better to do than have his lawyer write 
five hundred dollar letters to collect three 
hundred fifty dollar complaints?  My lawyer 
protects me and my honour from these attacks, but 
they still hurt.  So I walk around hurt all day. 
It takes its toll.  The sun is not up yet, and 
I'm already whining about the divorce.  Not a 
good sign.  Let me wipe the slate clean with one 
sweeping gesture and start over again. 
(Whoooosh, sound of chalk dust hitting the 
floor).   There.  Better.



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Picnic at the Zoo

	We took the twins to the Oakland Zoo. 
They were old enough to toddle around, but 
weren't out of diapers yet.  This is why I 
carried a bag the size of a suitcase with me.  It 
had pockets for bottles, zippered compartments 
for diapers, plastic sealed bags for dirty 
diapers, room for wipes, ointment, a changing 
blanket, a change of clothes for two little two 
and a half year olds, emergency medications, 
first aid.  It was a travelling nursery.  In 
addition, we'd brought lunch for the twins and 
for the grown ups.  My parents came along for the 
leisurely trip to the zoo.

	The Oakland Zoo has, within it, a baby 
zoo.  There are pygmy goats, baby llamas, 
slowpoke tortoises, young elephants, baby farm 
animals, clusters of ducks, swans, geese, 
chickens and roosters.  There are young monkeys 
hooting in their trees, and seals swimming in 
their own huge tank.  There are lethargic 
crocodiles sunning themselves, immobile in their 
cordonned off fake river.

	More than a decade before this outing, 
I'd known a young woman, about my brother's age, 
whose name was Kristen Lauterbach.  Kristen was 
an amazon of a woman, tall sturdy, curvaceous, 
able to hoist hundred pound sacks of sardines. 
And that is what she did at her job as a worker 
in the baby petting zoo.  She got to know all the 
animals on an intimate basis, and told me that 
she wasn't afraid of any of them, even the lions 
and tigers.  The only ones that frightened her 
were the monkeys.  The monkeys, she said, had 
spite, anger, vengefulness, and viciousness to 
recommend them.  They were little ids, running 
amok.  When they bit, they bit to injure, and 
they bit for emotional reasons: jealousy, anger, 
greed, paranoia, not just if they felt physically 
threatened.  They bit to maim, to infect.  They'd 
bite and shake the victim to tear a good hole in 
him.  The only way to deal with the monkeys, she 
told me, was to punch them in the face.  Okay, so 
working in the baby petting zoo was not my kind 
of job.  I'm better off punching pieces of blank 
paper with a pen.

	Now, here I was  with my mother and 
father, my husband and my two twins, Feyna and 
Meyshe, walking the grounds of the Oakland Zoo. 
In the petting zoo, the pygmy goats stole all the 
pellets of food from the twins.  They nosed in 
and nibbled the ball bearing sized feed right out 
of the ice cream cone holders.  This delighted 
the twins.  They would drop the feed and run to 
me, grabbing my legs and squealing, then ask me 
to buy them another cone full.

	When they started getting cranky, I knew 
it was time for lunch.  We walked out to the main 
path that ran along the edge of a green field 
spotted with large shade trees.  There were 
picnic tables scattered among them.  We chose a 
table close to the path, put our things down and 
gave them a lunch of sardines, fruit and a 
vegetable/fruit puree that I made from scratch 
and put in their bottles:  mashed beets, banana 
squash, apples, powdered milk, protein powder and 
water.  The concoction was a bright magenta and 
attracted a lot of hummingbirds.  While they were 
sucking on their bottles, I spread out the 
blanket on the ground near the table and prepared 
to change their diapers.  One after the other.

	My parents sat at the table snacking on 
their own packed lunches.  Feyna was first.  When 
I'd cleaned her up and finished, I set her on her 
feet and released her, leaving David in charge 
while I changed Meyshe.  I'd gotten Meyshe down 
to the nude stage when I saw Feyna toddle off 
towards my father who picked her up and put her 
in his lap.

	I went crazy.

	I looked to David to take her away from 
my father, but he was attending to some big 
distracting thought that physicists think, and 
wasn't even watching.  I rose up, not knowing 
really what I was doing, nor why I felt this 
urgency, this sudden panic.  I ran over to my 
father, grabbed Feyna and pulled her out of his 
lap so fast he didn't have a chance to blink.  I 
felt like I was rescuing her.  And I was.  This 
was for all the abuse I'd suffered, for the years 
of filthy magazines stuffed between my bed 
sheets, for the leers and dirty jokes, for 
bumping into me by accident so many times in the 
hallway, for all his vileness, for the ogling, 
for the smacking of his lips and rubbing together 
of his hands.  I could have lifted the picnic 
table, the adrenalin was gushing through me at 
such a pitch.  My mother stared at the scene.  My 
father looked crotchety and disgruntled.  I 
hugged Feyna and kept her with me far away from 
my father.  When David woke up from his reverie, 
I instructed him to finish changing Meyshe. 
David had been under orders to keep my father 
away from Feyna, but he missed his cue.

	We packed up and drove home.  Meyshe and 
Feyna fell asleep in their car seats during the 
ride, and when we got in, we tiptoed into their 
room and placed them carefully in their cribs, 
walked out and closed the door quietly.  Nap 
time.  The hour or two in which mothers get to 
take a breath and prepare for the onslaught of 
the rest of the day.

	I found my father lurking outside the 
nursery.  Another surge of adrenalin hit my 
bloodstream.  I stood in his face and told him 
this:

	"I am grown now, and I have children of 
my own.  No matter what excuses you want to give, 
I am not here to debate this issue.  That's 
insanity.  Just know that I know that we both 
know what you did to me when I was growing up. 
We know what you are.  So, if you ever get near 
my children, if you even look at them funny, if 
you try to get them under your influence, if you 
so much as hint at laying a single finger on 
either of them, I swear to God, I'll kill you.  I 
don't mean that figuratively.  You are being 
warned."

	I went back into the nursery and left him 
there without waiting for an answer or an 
argument.  His silence was his assent.

	That day at the picnic table, I turned 
myself inside out.  Some instinctive protective 
fury came over me, and I realized that I was 
fully capable of patricide, just given the 
circumstances, and the inspiration.  I was not 
fully conscious of what I was doing.  It was 
biological, primitive and primal.  I could feel 
my blood popping in my veins.  When I'd grabbed 
Feyna away from him, I hurried her away and 
cried.  I cried as if I'd rescued her from 
machine gun fire.  I was shaking all over.  It 
had taken me until that day, that moment, to pull 
the pieces together of what happened to me.  I'd 
never allowed myself to focus on it.  I kept 
debating with myself about what I'd actually seen 
and experienced.  After all, my mother put doubts 
in me that what I'd perceived was not what I'd 
perceived.  And the poison my father had injected 
into me had clouded my vision.  I saw double, in 
fact: one real eye and one false eye.  I called 
myself a liar rather than face what had happened 
to me.  How could I bear the anger towards my 
mother for looking the other way, for staying 
with the crazy man?  For disappointing me.  For 
leaving me unprotected so that he could do with 
me whatever he wanted.

	After my speech to him that day, he never 
went near my children.  He never said a word.  He 
just receded into a sullen shell, and I kept him 
there with an occasional glance of admonition.


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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net