TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 56

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 11, 20000000000000000000000006


Dear To You,

	It is Saturday morning, and I let myself 
sleep in.  Good on me.   I usually don't allow 
myself the luxury.  But today is Shabbos, and on 
Shabbos, many ordinary things come to a stand 
still.  I don't open mail.  It would just upset 
me, and I couldn't do anything about it until 
Monday anyway.  I don't work.  The day is 
reserved for family and love.  I push away all 
worries.  They can wait.  If anyone starts 
talking politics, I have the option of saying, 
"Not on Shabbos".  But I will drive the car, and 
I will answer the phone, and I will turn on 
lights, light fires, sit at the computer, and I 
will exchange money for goods.  It's a personal 
interpretation of Shabbos.  It suits us.

	The difference in our lives has been 
enormous.  One day out of the week that we get to 
relax and not scurry around, beholden to the 
habits of the other six days.  One day a week in 
which work is forbidden.  You ought to try it. 
And it doesn't mean you're Jewish either.  Pick a 
weekday, or pick Sunday.  Pick any day, but the 
whole day, 24 hours of rest and peace, no 
errands, no filling in with the errands that have 
mounted up during the week.  It is a balm on your 
house.  We've done this now for about four or 
five years.  We don't intend to stop.  Oh, and I 
forgot:  no homework.  No exceptions.  If you 
make exceptions, it all falls apart.  Say that 
God told you to do it.  That is the authority 
necessary for such a habit breaking act.  It 
takes discipline, too.  You'll find yourself 
working, or twiddling your thumbs, wondering what 
to do, or wanting to leap in the car and go do 
that trip to OSH or Costco that you hadn't 
managed during the week.  But don't give in. 
You'll be glad.  If you can manage it without 
God's edict, then do that.  It doesn't have to be 
religious.  Just religiously observed.

	I observed this.


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Dying in Red Bluff

	My brother, Daniel, and I have been 
pretty close.  When I was still at home, we 
protected each other from our older sister, Dana, 
who wasn't averse to violence, and pretty much 
ruled the roost along with my father, the operant 
system being: whoever behaves the worst, writes 
the rules.  Daniel didn't know it, but he also 
protected me from my father.  When Daniel was in 
my room, I didn't have to be afraid that my 
father would come in at night and do whatever he 
felt like doing.   Nothing or something, just my 
father's presence was blood curdling. So, lots of 
times, Daniel would be invited to go to sleep in 
my guest bed.  There were two studio couches, 
arranged in an L, with the two heads at the 
juncture.  He would come in and we'd talk and 
laugh, take turns tickling the soles of each 
others' feet.  I taught him how to laugh into his 
pillow so we wouldn't get in trouble with my 
mother for staying up too late.  And I taught him 
how, if a parent (or a sister who would snitch) 
came up the stairs or passed by the door, if we 
were in mid air, we should return to a sleeping 
position slowly so it didn't look like we were 
dashing back to the pillow suddenly.  We taught 
each other many things.

	Much of what Daniel and I talked about 
were Justin stories  --  those bizarre behaviours 
that he exhibited on a regular basis that kept us 
guessing as to his sanity.  And of course we 
always wondered about the possible motivation for 
his behaviour.  He was hard to figure out because 
he was so perverted, so twisted, so sadistic, so 
narcissistic.

	He treated Daniel differently than he 
treated me, of course, and he treated my sister 
differently than he treated either Daniel or me. 
Daniel, he treated like an apprentice.  He'd walk 
him around the house with his arm thrown 
conspiratorially around my brother's shoulder, 
and he'd give him a tour.  "See Daniel, that's 
your sister, Tobie," he'd advise, standing at the 
other side of the dining room table from where I 
was having my hard time with schoolwork.  "She's 
crying because she hasn't done her homework until 
the last minute.  When you get homework, you do 
it in time.  You be the man.  Let her be the 
baby."  Daniel would cringe dumbly under our 
father's arm.  What do you do with a lesson like 
that?  Daniel reported that at the age when he 
began to figure out what masturbation was, he'd 
lock himself in his room and do what needed to be 
done, but he'd sense that something or someone 
was out in the hallway at the keyhole.  He'd get 
up, go to the door quickly to peer out the 
keyhole.  Then he'd see our father walking away, 
tucking in his pants.

	My sister was never the object of sexual 
abuse or innuendo, the leering, ogling and 
commentary I suffered.  He treated her as if she 
were Selma, his older sister, with whom he 
competed and to whom he felt inferior.  Plus, 
Dana would just go as far off the deep end as 
Justin.  They'd have punching fests.  She was 
dramatic, melodramatic even, and would shout her 
epithets to his face, in stentorian tones.  "You 
bastard!"  "How DARE you!"  Once, she knocked his 
glasses off of his head, threw them down and 
stomped on them.  Justin used to do what we 
called, "windmilling", where he would get his 
arms swinging in circles, one arm up, the other 
down, and he'd walk through the room, aiming at 
us, but especially at Dana.  He called her Selma 
sometimes.  It was all rather primitive.

	So Daniel and I were comrades, and 
confided in each other about all our innermost 
secrets.  I'm seven years his senior, so the gap 
was noticeable back then.  When I was sixteen, he 
was nine.  In some ways, he put me on a pedestal. 
He admired me and my artistic talents, which felt 
good to me,  though I knew that when I finally 
fell from grace, it would be a long hard fall. 
But I was definitely the big sister, guiding him 
as I could, trying to help him through the 
disfiguration of our lives in the insane 
household.  Being a guide for someone else helped 
me put my own trauma in perspective.  Teaching is 
the best teacher.

	He did grow up.  When I was about thirty, 
and Daniel was about twenty three, we drove up to 
Ashland, Oregon, for the Shakespeare festival. 
We planned on staying a couple of days, seeing a 
few plays, then driving back.  We were using 
Daniel's little Datsun sports car.  It was a 
convertible.  It was late late in the summer, the 
hottest time of year.  California and Oregon were 
burning.  We sweated through three plays and then 
packed it in for the trip back home.  On the way 
back, we had the top down and were travelling 
down the middle of California.  We were passing 
Redding which frequently boasts the highest 
temperatures in the state.  It was 105 degrees, 
Fahrenheit, (40 degrees Celsius).  The wind was 
like a furnace.  I don't deal with heat well.  In 
fact, that's an understatement.  I get heat 
stroke.  Daniel drove past an exit to Red Bluff, 
and then he drove past it again.  This is how it 
seemed to me.  I was alarmed.  Something was out 
of whack.  How could you drive past the same exit 
twice?  I shouted over the noise of the road and 
the wind.

	"That exit!  We just passed it!"

	"Yes."

	"No.  I mean we drove past it and then we 
passed it again!"  Then all hell broke loose in 
my head.  The heat fried up my brains, and served 
them to me on a platter.  "We're driving in a big 
circle in the middle of California.  I don't want 
to die in Red Bluff!"

	My baby brother grew at once older and 
responsible.  He steered off the freeway, 
suddenly, taking the next exit, and drove into a 
tiny little hamlet that was no more than a single 
road with a gas station on one side and a 
restaurant on the other, with a few houses set 
along the street.  He screeched into the gas 
station, stopping right outside the women's 
restroom.  I felt ill.  I staggered out of the 
car and pushed the ladies' room door open. 
Ladies would never have entered or used this 
restroom.  It was shockingly filthy, with 
streamers of toilet paper stuck to puddles in the 
floor, boot prints stamped into them.  I lurched 
into the single stall and threw up violently, 
then passed out on the floor.  When I woke up, I 
didn't care that I was lying on a concrete floor, 
strewn with toilet paper and garbage.  It just 
didn't matter.  Nothing mattered.  Thoughts 
swarmed in my head, disjointed non sequiturs 
dropped down from one ganglion of synapses to 
another.  I heard Daniel knocking on the door, 
calling to me, asking if I was all right.

	I struggled to get up and stumbled out 
the door into Daniel's arms.  He carried me 
across the street into the only place with air 
conditioning along the road.  It was a Chinese 
restaurant.  It was Sunday at about four o'clock. 
He kicked the door open and laid me out on the 
first table he could find, closest to the front 
door.  I lay there, half in and half out of 
consciousness, trying my best to make sense of 
the occasion.  The staff of the restaurant were 
concerned, and brought cool water for me.  They 
called the nearest hospital.  My brother called 
our family medical advisor which was my mother. 
She said to give me sips of water and keep me 
prone.  That is what the nurses at the hospital 
told the staff, too.  They also told us to keep 
me inside until after sundown.  So I lay there on 
the front table, gaining some perspective, coming 
out of my coma, taking a look around me.

	My brother had grown up and been my 
guardian and saviour.  Gratitude welled up inside 
me.  Had I trained him that well?  It being 
Sunday at four o'clock, p.m., people started 
coming into the restaurant for early Sunday 
dinner.  For some reason, my sense of humour had 
not been decapitated.  I opened my mouth and 
warned the nice people, "Don't order number two 
from column A".


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net