TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 20

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 5, 2000000006

Dear People in Tree Here,

	I have secured a place for my children and me to rent.  So we 
won't be out on the street come the 15th of October.  And in between 
now and then, we'll be heavily packing.  This has been a harrowing 
era of my life, and continues to be so.  It is too prolonged to be a 
life story.  It's more like an epic.


                     qpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqp

Broken Heart

	When Arthur said he didn't love me any more, I didn't believe 
him, because he'd said it before and changed his mind about a hundred 
times.  He loved me.  He didn't love me.  He loved me more than ever. 
He felt estranged.  Oh, no, now he loved me again.  This had gone on 
for months.  He was my first lover, the one I fell in love with the 
hardest, and I loved him with a zest and eagerness that swept away 
any cautions that I'd learned from growing up in a crazy house hold. 
I was completely unguarded every time Arthur told me he didn't love 
me anymore.  But I'd started to get used to it.  I was only 20, so 
adaptable!  My little heart could stretch and contract.  He made me a 
virtuoso.

	So when he finally meant it and it lasted more than a day, I 
didn't know what to do with myself.  I cried until my throat was 
sore, and I begged him futilely to bend back toward me.  I could not 
concentrate on anything.  Couldn't eat, couldn't practice the 'cello, 
couldn't sit still, shook all over, and thought keenly about suicide. 
Suicide got tangled in my hair and I couldn't comb it out.  So I went 
into the bathroom at my sister's house, which is where I was staying 
so that Arthur could be rid of me, and I took my bottle of Darvon off 
the shelf and swallowed a whole fistful of them.  Then I went into 
the next room and told my brother-in-law, Fred, what I'd done.

	"That was a stupid thing to do," he said, and he drove me to 
Cowell Hospital on the UC Berkeley campus.  They took me in and after 
questioning me about what I'd taken, they determined to let it work 
its way through my system.  It wouldn't even get close to killing me. 
I lay in a stupor for the next couple of days in the suicide room. 
There was a little window in the door, and a flap over the window so 
that the nurses could peer in on me every once in a while.  So every 
once in a while as I lay there crying or staring at a dot on the 
floor, the little flap over the window in the big metal door would 
open up and an eye or two would scan my room, make sure I wasn't 
tying my sheets together to hang myself, and then the flap would 
close and leave me to my reverie.  Everything in the room was nailed 
down and even the toilet was visible from the door.  There were bars 
across the windows.  They had me see the Cowell Hospital therapist, 
and I fidgeted in the chair, constantly moving, saying I didn't know 
what to do.   What should I do?  He said he didn't know what I should 
do, so I gave up on doing anything.

	Every day, they brought me a form to fill out for my meals. 
I could check what I wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and note 
whether I wanted a small, medium or large portion.  Every day, I'd 
check the box next to, "other", and write in that I wanted an extra 
large helping of Arthur Glickman.  The form would come back with the 
meal, I suppose so that I could compare what I'd asked for to what 
I'd gotten.  Usually, the people in the food service department would 
circle the "extra large portion of Arthur Glickman", and write some 
happy note next to it.  But on the third day, my request had been 
violently scribbled out, and the words, "We can't give you that," 
were written in.  That set me crying and rocking for an hour.  I read 
it as a terrible cruelty.  Even an anonymous person of the kitchen 
staff was cruel to me.  The whole world was unbearably cruel.  To me. 
To me personally, the world had a mission to be cruel.

	At first, I wanted to be around people, and I lay in my 
private room for a week longing for someone to talk to.  My mother 
came by every day, but that was only for half an hour or so.  I was 
pining.  Arthur did not come to visit me but once.   He stood far 
from me, more uncomfortable than a man in a hair shirt, looking at 
the floor and counting the minutes until he could leave, which he did 
after a few.  A guy named Tony, who had a crush on me, came, and Tony 
said he couldn't figure out why I'd gotten so upset over a guy like 
Arthur, because he wasn't very dashing.  The ways of the heart are 
mysterious.

	After about a week, I was ready for some solitude.  I needed 
to think things through and ground myself again.  That's when they 
took me out of the solitary confinement and moved me into a room with 
eight beds.  I curled up nervously, and tried to shut out the world, 
but the world was very loud, and I had to do things like nod my head, 
say hello, ask if they could keep it down.  The hardest part was, 
"Why are you here?"  Every time someone asked that, I went through an 
ethical trauma.  And out of those ethical considerations, I would 
say, "I tried to kill myself, but I'm not going to do that now," just 
so they'd be given an honest answer and so they wouldn't be afraid of 
me.  (The girl in the third bed tried to kill herself.  Steer clear. 
Don't upset her.  Tell her everything will be all right.)

	When they finally released me, the first thing I did was rush 
down to the music department and poke my head in the door where I 
knew Arthur was taking a class.  He saw me and came outside, but he 
didn't stop to talk to me.  He took me by the elbow and led me all 
the way down Telegraph Avenue and down Derby Street to my sister's 
house.  He opened the front door and tossed me in.  He said, "Some 
day, you'll thank me," and he walked away.

	I fell over on the couch weeping, screaming my throat open 
like a baby bird, tears soaking my shirt.  My hands were wet with 
salt water and I couldn't see through my crying.  I was a fountain. 
No one was home at Dana's and Fred's house.  They were all out at 
school.  I was alone and lost in my misery.  My great gasping for air 
and my sobbing were the only sounds, I thought, for miles.

	Next door to Dana and  Fred was a strange wood frame house 
with a steep set of stairs leading up the side of it to a back door 
on the top floor.  There was a small lawn.  The woman who lived there 
was very old, very nasty and there were rumours that she was crazy. 
The kids from the nearby Junior High School used to throw garbage on 
her lawn, and she'd come outside in her bathrobe to curse them and 
shoo them away.  She'd shake her fists at them, threatening to call 
the police.  They just laughed.

	This is the woman who pushed open the front door and came to 
sit next to me on the couch.  She gathered me up in her arms and set 
my head on her breast.  She stroked my hair.  "I know.  I know.  I 
had my heart broken, too, once.  More than once.  I know.  I know." 
She held me for a long time, until I was dry of tears, but I don't 
remember how we parted, just that she was there when no one else was.

                     qpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqp

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net