Miles To Go Before I Sleep (17 page)

Barb Wilson was waiting to greet me in Dallas. Together, we got on a commuter flight to Houston's Hobby Airport.

On the drive home from the airport I gazed out the window, watching the familiar landscapes of my youth scrolling by on our way to Pasadena, the Houston suburb where I grew up.

Pasadena has a couple of big claims to fame. It's home to many of the world's largest oil refineries. Driving along Highway 225, between Houston and Deer Park, oil fields and refineries stretch as far as the eye can see. At night, it's quite a sight. The flashing, glowing lights of the refineries create the illusion of strange, ghostly cities out of a science fiction novel.

Before it burned down in 1989, Mickey Gilley's famous country western nightclub was also in Pasadena. Gilley's attracted national attention as the place where
Urban Cowboy
, the 1979 movie starring John Travolta, was filmed. Barb Wilson and I used to go there on Friday nights to ride the famous mechanical bull and practice country western dance steps such as the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the shottish, the polka, and the two-step.

In the daytime, there's nothing romantic about the area immediately west of Houston. It's a sprawling urban mess—a mishmash of residential, commercial, and industrial construction. Houston is the only large American city with no zoning laws, and you can see the results. In Houston, and its suburbs, your next-door neighbor can open an automobile repair shop in his backyard—or a marble and cement mixing operation, for that matter—without a permit. Abandoned oil rigs, like iron dinosaurs from another era, dot the landscape. They stand idly by fast-food restaurants, miniature golf courses, flea markets stocked with velvet paintings and cheap jewelry, gas stations, and motels.

Pasadena is a blue-collar, working-class suburb where southern hospitality still prevails. People drive Ford and Chevy four-by-fours, wear cowboy hats, and enjoy home cooking.

On this first trip back home, I stayed with my parents and with Barb and Wayne part of the time, as I had the previous summer. Outside Barb's house was a big banner that read WELCOME HOME JACKIE. She and my other friends had tied a yellow ribbon around the huge oak tree in her front yard.

It felt good to be home again, surrounded by close friends and family. I spent a lot of time with my mom and dad, in the same house where as a young girl I'd played school with my sisters and neighborhood friends.

My mother, Billie, and my father, Eugene, met in the navy during the Korean War and settled in Pasadena soon after. They were typical of their generation. Dad joined the navy after high school and worked as an aviation electrician. He served on board the Intrepid in the South Pacific and later in Seattle, Washington. After the war, he worked as an operator for Ethyl Oil Corporation for thirty-four years.

My dad's ethnic background is German—and he is known to display the stubbornness which Germans are famous for. My dad also has a very gentle, loving, and sensitive side. His mother's maiden name was Brahms—and she was directly related to the family of the famous composer, Johannes Brahms. The two Brahms brothers came over to America on a ship in the late 1890s. One decided to stay in Texas; the other, the composer who wrote “Brahms Lullaby,” returned to Germany.

Moms background is French and Irish. She grew up in New Hampshire and, after high school, joined the navy. She later served in the Korean War and was stationed in Seattle, Washington, where she was a chaplains assistant and met my dad.

When I first arrived at Barb and Wayne's house, I sat in the same kitchen where Barb and I watched the TWA hijacking unfold in June. How different the circumstances were this time!

I was wearing a red scarf and wig to cover my shaved head, and the scar from my bullet wound was still visible. I removed the scarf and wig to let Barb see the soft spot in my head move up and down when I breathed—just like the soft spot on the top of an infant's head. It was pretty scary.

Barb arranged a homecoming party for me that gave me a chance to see all my old friends again. It gave me a big boost to see how much they cared about me. “I was praying for you, Jackie,” my friend Debbie said. “We're all so glad you made it through.”

About three hours later, after the last person left the party, I went into Barb's bedroom and just broke down. I sobbed and sobbed. I felt as though I had to hold everything in while people were around. Now I could let go and let things out.

Barb must have heard me, for she came in and sat down next to me on the bed. She just held me while I cried. “It's okay, Jackie. It's okay to cry. Just let it all out,” Barb said.

“Why am I crying?” I said. “I just get so down.”

“The only way to get through it is to let your emotions out, honey.”

“But I'm so afraid of letting people down. I want to be strong. But it's so hard.”

“Tears are good,” Barb said. “If you don't show your emotions, you're going to have a hard time. Don't be afraid to cry.”

I was physically and emotionally exhausted most of my time back home. I was so wiped out that I needed to take a nap every afternoon. I felt completely drained.

One afternoon when Barb was at work, Wayne asked if I wanted to see any of the television coverage of the hijacking that he had taped. I said yes.

Wayne popped the tape into the VCR and I lay on the carpet, watching the terrible event all over again from a strange new perspective. I just lay there on the floor, staring at the painful images flashing across the same screen on which I'd seen the TWA hijacking unfold six months earlier.

Wayne saw the pain on my face as I saw the news coverage of the hijacking for the first time. I felt like I was living through it all over again. Watching the tape gave me a sense of what it was like for people back home.

The two of us didn't say much as we watched. I sensed that Wayne was at a loss for words. I made only one comment.

“That's him,” I pointed to the screen. “That's the man who shot me.”

The video footage all seemed so strange and unreal.

The next day, I called an old friend who is a clinical psychologist, and asked to meet him for dinner. He was the first person I opened up to about the spiritual questions I was having after the hijacking.

At the restaurant, I asked my friend, “Isn't there more to life than what we're doing? Isn't there more to life than just waking up every morning, weaing the right clothes, and driving the right car? Is there some deeper meaning to life?”

I was searching for the meaning of life and, because my friend was a psychologist, I hoped he could help me answer the questions in my heart, questions like: “Why are we here? Why did the hijacking happen to me? What's going to happen to me now?”

My friend is a very sensitive and thoughtful man. He listened closely before speaking. “It's not unusual for you to have those questions, Jackie,” he said, quietly. “I'd be surprised if you didn't. It's probably going to take some time before things make sense again.”

I told him more about my perception and memory problems and, on this subject, he had some ideas. He had a friend who was a neuropsychologist—a doctor who studies and treats the language, perception, memory, and behavior problems often caused by brain damage and brain disorders—who was interested in testing me. I called and made an appointment with him.

When I went in, I took a battery of reading and memory tests, including the Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test, designed to measure how well people can distinguish different sounds. He recited word pairs such as “house-mouse,” “red-Fred,” then asked me whether the words were the same or different. Time and again, I answered “same” when the words were different. I failed the Wepman test.

Another memory test he gave me was similar to one I'd taken in Minnesota—with one important difference. This test required me to recall pairs of
abstract
words. For example, he presented me with word pairs such as “because-acknowledge.” Since I couldn't make a picture of “because” or “acknowledge,” I couldn't use a mnemonic technique to hide my learning disability.

The neuropsychologist was hesitant to tell me the results of my reading test. He didn't want to hurt my feelings, but I needed to know. “Your short-term memory is very, very weak, Jackie,” he said. “You're reading at a third-grade level and comprehending at a first-grade level.”

It was a big relief to finally have my learning problems identified. Now that I knew what I was dealing with, I could do something about them. Before I left the doctor's office, he suggested some techniques that could help strengthen my memory and reading ability.

The Sunday before I went back to Minnesota, I was invited to speak at my church—Trinity Episcopal, in Baytown—to share my story with the congregation. I was pretty nervous about it. What would I say? It had only been a short time since the hijacking. I was still in shock. But I agreed.

The night before, Barb helped me write down what I wanted to say. We sat at the kitchen table and worked on the speech. The next morning, Barb, Wayne, and I went to church together.

It was the first time I had ever publicly shared my story. Before this, I had only talked about what happened with my family, close friends, and people who knew me in Minneapolis. I was very, very scared.

Barb sat in the front row the whole time. There was only one point when I was overwhelmed by the sadness of what I'd been through. The tears started to come.

I stopped and Barb walked up to the podium and gave me a big hug. “I can keep going,” I whispered in her ear.

I finished my speech with a quote Barb had hanging on her bedroom wall. I knew right away that it was something I wanted to share with others.

“I want to be in Egypt,” I told the audience in closing, “but I can't be in Egypt. People say, ‘The U.S. is wonderful, why don't you want to be here?' I love the U.S. and, yes, I'm going to be here and I'm going to love it here. But I want you to understand that, for me, leaving Egypt is hard. I feel the way you might if you were suddenly snatched from your home and loved ones.”