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between us. Our primary bond was shared time and shared tragedy.
     
     
    ON THE NIGHT my father died, I dreamt he was in my room, going through my dresser drawers, as if in search of something left behind. The next morning, I thought about the dream for a long time and
in light of the news that he was gone—at least in body—I knew it wasn’t a dream at all. My father had been in my room, searching.
    What had he been looking for? What did he want? Was he attempting to pack me up and set me on a path that would take me far away from Deb? Had love, pure love, finally entered into our story? Was he trying, too late, to set things right?
     
     
    ABOUT A YEAR after my father died, Deb got it into her head that she was going to be a healer for her church. She secured an apartment for herself and her own children, sent Bryan off somewhere (I have no idea where), and I was farmed out to a communal house in central L.A.
    As she dumped me with my princess bedroom set and a few bucks, Deb said it was time I learned to be on my own. “You are a challenge to the family dynamic,” she explained. “This arrangement will teach you the obligatory skills of autonomy.”
    Each morning, I was expected to work in the kitchen and help make breakfast. Then I was to go to school at Hoover Street Elementary. After school, I had another job at her church, cleaning offices, and then I was to get back to the commune and help with dinner.
    The woman kept me busy and apparently collected and retained my wages from behind the scenes.
    I was eleven years old.
     
     
    FOUR MONTHS PASSED while I learned the obligatory skills of autonomy. I was alive and I was surviving but I was also terrified and began to hear voices in my head—a chorus of mocking
insanity, a murmuring sound with laughter in the background. I could make the voices stop, but only by singing out loud. Snappy, energetic tunes worked best, such as “If I Were a Rich Man” or “When You’re a Jet.”
    I was a walking minstrel. Lunatic child.
    When I wasn’t singing at the top of my lungs, I was talking to myself. I’d say, “It’s going to be okay, you’re going to be fine.”
     
     
    IN THE LOW valley of what I considered my darkest time, nearly homeless, crazy, and parentless, I witnessed a miracle.
    One of the women, who also lived in the house, was having a baby in her room.
    I had been invited.
    I remember standing near the end of table, one of several witnesses. The woman, perhaps in her twenties, was moaning and rolling her head from side to side. She had a honey complexion and light reddish hair. Spiral curls of her hair stuck in the sweat that covered her forehead and neck.
    Her husband was at her side, holding her hand.
    There was great anticipation in the room. Sunlight fell through the tall windows and sent rectangles over the table, the floor, and the walls.
    When it was time for her to push, a midwife spoke in hushed tones—encouraging and reassuring.
    The Beatles’ White Album was on the table and “Blackbird” played on the turntable.

    Amidst the birdcalls at the end of the song, not one baby was born, but rather, two. Twins!
    As the small ones were lifted out—bare naked and squirming with life—something in me shifted.
    The voices in my head were gone. All fear had dissolved.
    I could hear my own breath moving in and out of my body and I remember looking down at my own hands, touching my fingers together as if seeing myself for the first time.
    I was in that room, vivid and alert, but I was also beyond that room.
    It wasn’t like I didn’t feel all the feelings I used to feel—anger at Deb, confusion about my situation, sadness for the death of my parents, longing, loneliness, and fear. Those feelings were with me but had been diluted to become small and unimportant when placed in the sea of this larger feeling.
    It was awakening.

NINE
    RETIREMENT
    BY THE SUMMER of 1975, Deb was finally busted for the way she was (or wasn’t) taking care of Bryan