Chapter 3: Valley Girl
My hazy memories morph to clear in 1960 coincident with my transfer to Van Alden Elementary, smack dab in the middle of San Fernando Valley. Yup, I’m a Valley Girl for sure. From home, meandering turns and crossings, a pastured chestnut horse who nabbed my lunch apple daily, a haunted house that scared the bejeezus out of me.
And, presiding over fifth grade, Mrs. Konold so creaky ancient gray and intent on drilling 50 state capitols into my brain. Who presided over us in presidential debate over Kennedy vs. Nixon. Every Thursday I safe-guarded 35 cents for school cafeteria hot dog day. Otherwise it was bag lunch that always included a neon pink snowball or Hostess cupcake and 5 cents for a waxy carton of milk. This is the year I devoured an entire biographical series about Red Cross founder, nurse Clara Barton. My aspiration of being a ballerina lost out to a single-minded ambition to be a nurse.
We lived on Amigo Avenue right next to the L.A. Wash, which used to be a river until the 1940’s. An unsightly concrete metaphor for the way things were coming down in the City of Angels. Our street sported a pedestrian path over the wash where I’d park my bike, catch the sun going down due west over the sparse water and touch into my developing spirit. Formal religion was not happening in our house; it was always about nature worship. Identification with Jewish culture stayed alive through ethnic foods, an occasional Yiddish outburst and lighting candles for Channukah. On Christmas morning we always went to the beach. To the east the L.A. wash led to Reseda Park where I fished in the lake and swam in the pool and went to summer camp. I worked my way up to ball check girl in the rec office in exchange for pool passes. I was making new neighborhood and school friends. Again.
Meanwhile things at home were coming to a head. Only conjecture helps me puzzle out what happened to my sister. She had her own bedroom but since she’d take to night wandering, there was an ominous bolt outside her blue door. Sometimes I’d hear her cry out and more than once I cringed over black and blue marks on her body.
I loved this little one, Clara Barton-ed her to my best. I’m guessing this physical abuse was noticed, maybe in the special ed school she attended. The one we had moved to California for her to attend. Maybe child protective service intervened. This is a story resurrected only through decades of hindsight. At the end of my year with Mrs. Konold, Beverly was placed in Pomona State Hospital. It happened so suddenly, no explanation. She was just gone. I try to touch into my heartbreak but perhaps my tender little heart had already erected some pretty solid defense. We went to visit her on weekends, a long painful drive there and back. I can only imagine how it was for my parents.
In December she was hospitalized with pneumonia. Before we could even go visit, she was gone. I’ll never know the full story but and I was left on my own to figure it out. My parents, lost in their own grief, had no skills or predilection to nurture my brother and me. I remember the little white casket, the graveside service, the flurry of people at the house. And then the big nothing. The hasty sweep under the carpet. A silence that echoed the death of my beloved dog the year before. Same.
Later that year I moved into that blue room filled with the breath and feel of Beverly. I felt so conflicted since I missed her big presence and at the same time was joyful to have space of my own. I could close the door and escape from all the household craziness randomly generated by my unpredictable dad. I was so done with sleeping in the company of my brother who was weirder by the day and had to rock his head and sing Davy Crockett to fall asleep at night. That song still gives me the willies. In this blue room I discovered my own sexuality, my absolute love of reading and a day dreamy propensity for poetry writing. I truly loved the safety of that blue room.
By now I was in sixth grade running with a girl clique called the Lucky Sevens. This may have been my singular foray into hanging with the popular kids. Sue Hornsleth sported a different colored mohair sweater every day of the week and Lori Levine’s hair was forever Aqua Net perfect flip. Not sure why they included me but I recall circling up with them once to decide how and when to kick someone out of this group. Shortly after that exclusion our teacher, Miss St. Jean, lost her son to suicide. Loss seemed to be playing out big time in my little life. The whole social in/out drama just lost luster for me. Though there was a sixth grade graduation boy-girl party with spin the bottle that felt pretty cool.
That summer of ’62, before the onslaught of junior high, was a moment of big shift. The weird thing is that right now, in current time, I’m mid-way through a History of the Beatles seminar and all the adolescence to come was backdropped by the emerging lilt of their music. My obsessive music consumption actually ignited pre-Beatles when I received a clock radio and transistor radio for my 12th birthday. The tunes from KFWB took over all the space in my head: the Shirelles and Martha and the Vandellas, the Ronettes and the unparalleled Supremes kept me and my friend Elaine dancing and singing through those long summer days.
And in the summer of ‘62 my folks, maybe as a way of healing their own hearts, piled me and Lance into that same Oldsmobile 88 to road trip cross country to visit the folks in New Jersey and attend the New York World’s Fair. It was an epic exploration of all the western national parks they could fit in on the way there and back. And it was our first family foray into camping. Not camping like it is now! We slept on the ground in green canvas bags lined in red plaid; cooked over a campfire every night; scooped water out of lakes and streams with our tin cups. I really don’t know why mom and dad felt capable of pulling this off. It was so not what normal people did in 1962. But we made it there and back and almost by default, the love of outdoor adventure was permanently installed in my being.
Now we were a family of four and I was prime for junior high. I was 12 years old.
❤️Bella