Mother, Can You Not? (3 page)

“What’re you, crazy!? Atticus, get in there and shoot! She looks gorgeous!”

He was frozen, but the residents of the building that faced the alley were accustomed to this man’s behavior. Before Atticus could snap another photo, a torrent of water was hurled over all of us from a balcony above. Soaking wet, I looked up to find a woman holding a bright green bucket.

“Oh shit! I didn’t see y’all down there!” I glanced nervously over at the homeless man. “Ah, don’t worry about old Vic, he’s harmless, just gotta hose him down when he gets riled up!” She noticed he wasn’t wearing pants and was still viciously masturbating. “Well, shit. Looks like he’s got a sweet tooth for you, little girl!” She laughed and then looked over at my dad’s car. “And can you turn off that terrible music!? Lord!”

T
here has not been a single day in my entire life when my mother has failed to warn me about the danger of getting cancer. Insecticides, contaminated tap water, formaldehyde insulation, lead paint…danger at every turn!

The fears all stem from the passing of my mother’s aunt Kate, the woman I was named after. My mom
cared for Kate in the final months of her battle with cancer. My parents even had their wedding in her hospital room when the doctors decided Kate was too weak to leave her bed, and the experience changed my mother.

How? She became a textbook hypochondriac. If my dad has gas, it’s colonoscopy time. If I have a headache, clearly it’s a brain tumor. Over the years, anything she could do to limit our exposure to carcinogens, she did.

“You want Lunchables?! LUNCHABLES?! I read a study in the
Harvard Journal of Medicine
about the proven link between preservatives and nitrates and cancer. That crap is loaded with disgusting chemicals that can make a person grow a third eye! If you so much as say the word
Lunchables
to me again, you’re grounded until you’re thirty!”

At that point, I was six, so “no” probably would have sufficed.

My mom is quite creative. She sees cancer in places that no one else can—even cancer-research scientists.
You know those night-vision goggles that let people see things in the dark? It’s like that, but instead of seeing objects at night, my mother sees potential carcinogens everywhere, all the time.

Living in smoggy Los Angeles only exacerbated my mom’s hyper-anxiety. On slightly hazy days, she would force me to wear a face mask whenever I wanted to take our dogs out for a walk. If she decreed that there was too much pollution in the atmosphere during the school week, I wasn’t allowed to play outside during recess. Medical-grade hospital masks be damned!

Mind you, my mother didn’t get her smog alerts from the news or an atmospheric scientist. She just eyeballed the sky every day, and if it looked particularly cancer-y to her, I was stuck inside with my scratch-and sniff stickers.

However, the absolute worst thing for my mother’s “cancer is everywhere” worldview was her discovery of electromagnetic radiation. One fateful night in the early ’90s, a particularly compelling 3 a.m. infomercial
convinced her that electromagnetic radiation waves were:

My moms obsessive fear of all things carcinogenic finally met its neurotic enabler: the electromagnetic radiation field detector (EMF meter, for those in the know).

She ordered two, and these five-pound clunky devices became my mother’s most trusted advisors. She took them everywhere with us. If we needed milk, the EMF meter would decide if we were allowed to go into the grocery store and get it. If Becky was having a sleepover, I could go, but if it was at Emily’s electromagnetic radiation wave, cancer-riddled excuse for a house, I was out of luck.

When it came time for me to take computer class in elementary school, my mother made me use a special
anti-cancer screen protector she bought on HSN. You know, like all the cool third graders do.

When cellphones became a thing, my mother immediately jumped on the “headset cancer avoidance” bandwagon. To this day, if I hold a cellphone against my ear, she either screams at me or (if it’s a business call) waves her limbs frantically until I put the phone on speaker.

Incidentally, if I’ve ever spoken to you on the phone while my mother was within twenty feet of me, there’s a 99 percent chance my mom listened to our entire conversation. Sorry about that.

The sequence of events surrounding my application to elementary school, though, is unquestionably the most ridiculous (if not illegal) EMF incident to date. Naturally, when it was time to select a school for me to attend, the EMF meter was the first resource my mom consulted. The thought of her only daughter sitting in classes, slowly cooking in a hotbed of invisible, carcinogenic radiation waves, kept her up at night.

Unfortunately, she had already fallen in love with
the John Thomas Dye School (JTD) while I was in utero. In her mind, if I got into JTD, I was a shoo-in for the presidential nom in 2032 (I’m coming for you, Chelsea Clinton). If I did not get in, I’d end up being a lunch-shift stripper. But what if JTD had cancer-y EMF readings? Would she protect me from the radiation or throw me into the White House–bound microwave?

Making sure the school passed her comprehensive “Kate’s probably not going to die here” battery of tests became her top priority. Okay, no problem, right? She’d just throw an EMF meter in her bag, head over to John Thomas Dye, and take all the necessary measurements? No. Her thought process: “No way. A teacher might see me and tell the head of the school that I’m a neurotic helicopter parent, always lurking around the campus!”

So, the truth.

The task fell to her intern, Paul, an eager Harvard student who traveled to LA on his summer break to work with my mother on the set of
Star Trek
. I’m sure
he imagined coming out to Los Angeles, working with a real Hollywood director, and learning the ropes of show business on the iconic TV show. Instead, he was stuck ferreting out potential carcinogens at elementary schools around Los Angeles for his boss’s four-year-old daughter.

At this point, I think it’s important to really consider what she was asking her intern to do. She wanted this
adult man
to haul a clunky, bizarre-looking contraption onto the grounds of a school with young children at play and get EMF readings everywhere from the classrooms to the bathrooms.

When Paul nervously raised the pedophile concern to my mother, she told him, “Figure it out. Oh, and don’t go on a weekend. I need the readings when the lights are on and the school is in business. If you get caught, never, ever mention my name. Then Kate will never get in!”

I sometimes imagine Paul serving hard time for a crime he didn’t commit, defending my spot at the John Thomas Dye School with his freedom.

It never went that far though, because clever Paul ended up faking a flower delivery, concealing the EMF meter in a bouquet of roses to avoid suspicion (and arrest). He even figured out which teacher was single to make his cover story plausible while he walked around the campus, surreptitiously recording EMF readings.

I’ve always wondered how his story played: “What is an adult man like me doing in the stall of the first grade class girls’ bathroom? Why I’m looking for Ms. Ballard’s room, of course. As you can clearly see, I’ve got these flowers and a card addressed to her. Maybe she had a big date? Maybe it went well? But who am I to say? I’m just the flower delivery guy.” Proceed!

The John Thomas Dye School passed the test, and I spent five happy, radiation-free years there. And Paul didn’t even have to register as a sex offender!

These days my mother’s carcinogenic fixation has shifted from obsessively collecting EMF readings to installing a water filtration system under our sink, because the plastic water bottles of my childhood have turned on her in a BPA-laden, cancer-causing frenzy
of betrayal. Though she has moved on to fancier, more glamorous carcinogenic threats, my mom will never give up her first love: the EMF meter.

As the saying goes, you never forget your first neurosis.

S
ex is a subject about which my mother has always been very open. With me. With my friends. With my boyfriends. With my elderly Jewish relatives from the old country. Of course, that last example was at the height of her hairy-armpitted sexual-lib phase. At this point, she probably wouldn’t think it appropriate to proudly slam her diaphragm and spermicidal gel down on a Seder table and scream at Bubby Klein about birth control pills for men.
Probably.

I was a pretty epic nerd growing up, so there wasn’t really much breaking sex news on my end, unless you consider elaborate fantasies about the Backstreet Boys ripping off my overalls and making tender love to me on the set of Nickelodeon’s
Legends of the Hidden Temple
newsworthy. That didn’t stop my mother, though! One of the phrases I heard most often growing up was the old standby “Just remember what Grandmom always said: ‘Men think with their penises!’ ”

This candor about sex began when I was almost nine years old, and my mom decided she needed to teach me the facts of life. During the summer before third grade, she let me go to a day camp with my friends in Malibu. As school began in the fall, letters were sent out to all the camp parents, confirming rumors that a teen counselor had molested a young girl that summer. The moment my mom opened that note, she saw red:
TELL KATE EVERYTHING
ABOUT SEX, CONSENT, AND KICKING MEN IN THE BALLS RIGHT NOW! GO! GO! GO!

In third grade, my understanding of reproduction was that when two people fell in love, a baby immediately popped up in the woman’s stomach. Then a screaming infant appeared in a bassinet after a few months of eating all her food and kicking her in the ribs. I worried that the moment I touched a boy, a fetus might implant itself in my belly and eat all my Skittles,
so I avoided the opposite sex altogether. Just to be safe.
Oh really, Kevin? You want to hold my hand? Well, I want to go to college and establish my career.

It was a lazy Sunday morning when my mother yelled across the house and told me to get my butt in her room. I hopped into her bed, and she greeted me with a tender “Is that cream cheese on your chin??” I nodded. “Goddamn it, Michael! Kate, you can’t let your father feed you that crap. He bought the nonorganic kind again—it’s riddled with hormones and chemicals! That’s how you get cancer.” I sat silently, waiting for Hurricane Neurosis to pass.

“So, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” My stomach tightened as she pulled out a book from her bedside table with an illustration of a family holding a baby on the cover. The title was something straightforward enough like
Where Do Babies Come From?
Looking back, I’ve always felt it was a real missed opportunity for some innovative stork puns:
Stick a Stork in Me, I’m Done…Believing That Babies Come from Heaven!; Who Needs a Stork? Let’s Fork!;
and so on.

“Do you know where babies come from?” My mom opened the book.

“Duh, you told me this already. When a man and a woman fall in love, a baby starts growing in the lady.”

“Well, there’s a little more to it than that.” She proceeded to walk me through twenty mortifying pages about reproduction. The book had a lot of Dr. Seuss–esque illustrations, and it included the phrase “This fits here!”

I remember screaming, “WHAT?! That is DISGUSTING!” Then I shouted across the house to my father and made him join in on the fun. When he opened the door, I shoved in his face a page depicting a cheerful pink man mounting a fuchsia woman. Did I mention the pearl-white sperm seeds shooting out of the pink man’s cartoon penis? Well, those were there too.

“Dad, do you know about this?!”

“I…well…uh—”

“Oh my God!!! I am NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER doing that!” I threw the book on the bed and whirled back
around to my father. “Ewwwww, does that mean you peed in Mom to get me?!”

“Well, uh, not exactly.” My dad looked down at his shoes.

“How does that even work? Do you move around!?” I conducted an unbridled, Guantánamo-like interrogation, referencing the diagrams that displayed colorful stick figures having sex in every position under the sun. It was the
Kama Seusstra.

My parents answered all my questions patiently, and then I asked this: “Well, which position did you guys use to make me?” So “the talk” was going well for my parents!

I vividly remember my mother ending the conversation with a firm warning: “Katie, the other kids at school may not know about the facts of life yet, so you can’t tell any of your friends about this.” I nodded. She grasped my shoulders and forced me to meet her eyes. “Kate, I’m serious. This is really important. You cannot tell anyone. Other parents may not want their kids to know yet, and it’s up to them to tell their children. Not you.”

Naturally, the next day I woke up, went to school, and wanted to shout the facts of life from the rooftops! Every time I was tempted to tell someone, my mother’s warning rang in my ears, but the Cat in the Hat would not stop humping the Grinch in my daydreams. During gym, a particularly explicit version of
Green Eggs and Ham
was playing on repeat in my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut. My friend Ashley noticed my distress and touched my arm.

“Kate, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Ashley shrugged, as I tried desperately not to blurt out the word
PENIS
at the top of my lungs. And then my eyes fell on our pregnant gym teacher, Coach Cassidy.
Oh my God, did she do
that too?
The thought obliterated my resolve. “Ashley! I have to tell you something!”

Now, I don’t remember exactly how I phrased it, but whatever I said prompted Ashley to ask, “Wait, what?! There’s a hole down there?” So, (1) However I described it couldn’t have been great. (2) Ashley’s parents failed to educate their daughter about even the most basic biological realities. It’s a miracle she made it out of diapers.

Moments like this make me especially grateful for the full-disclosure policy my mother has on sex. And that’s even acknowledging the Cheesecake Factory family dinner when she very publicly ranted about an encounter she had with a “penis so crooked it was like his schlong needed braces.”

By that evening at dinner, I allowed myself to sink into a cautiously optimistic confidence. Maybe I wouldn’t get in trouble for telling! I had been fairly obedient, after all. It’s not like I shouted
SPEEEEEEEERM
over the school’s PA system. I only told one friend
and
made her pinkie-swear, cross her heart, and hope to die that she wouldn’t tell anyone else. As fate would have it, Ashley Adams did not take the hallowed pinkie promise quite as seriously as I hoped. She told her mother. After a quick phone call in the kitchen, my mom marched back to the dinner table, bristling with rage.

“Crystal Adams just called, and she is furious!”

“Crystal Adams…” My dad narrowed his eyes trying to place her, and I kept my gaze fixed on my plate. I was in trouble. “Is she the one with the giant fish lips?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.” She whipped toward me. “How could you tell Ashley about sex? Kate, you’re grounded! After school? No TV. Weekends? You’re home studying for a month.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to talk to someone about it, and Ashley’s my friend! Don’t be mad at me!” I looked down at the floor and tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

“We’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.” And there they were! The worst words a child can hear—my mother played the disappointment card. In my family, this was reserved for only the most heinous crimes.

The next day at school, Ashley avoided me all morning. I finally asked her at lunch why she was ignoring me. “My mom said you lied to me, and it’s true that the stork brings babies to mommies and daddies. She says you made up that story, and that you’re a bad girl, and we’re not allowed to be friends anymore.”

I wanted to cry. Although even as an eight-year-old, part of me was like,
really
? As an adult, I’ve always wondered: What was her mom’s plan? When would the lying end? After high school biology class? College?
Never? If so, Ashley was in for a very surprising wedding night.

It wasn’t until college that I even realized my mom’s openness with me wasn’t standard practice for all mothers and daughters. I was once joking around with my friend Ellen in our dorm about an uncircumcised penis she’d been caught off guard by the night before, and I laughed, “Oh my God, I have to text my mom about this!” Ellen froze. “Are you serious?! You tell your
mom
stuff like that?”
Wait, what? Your mom doesn’t know comprehensive details about the genitalia of every guy you’ve ever dated? Right. Mine doesn’t either.

But back in elementary school, I asked another friend for a pencil in history class, and she gave me the same response: “My mom says I’m not supposed to talk to you anymore.” I was stunned; did Ashley tell
everyone
? I choked back tears for the rest of the day, but the bottled-up sobbing broke free in a monsoon of snot and soul-rattling convulsions as soon as I got into the car with my mom.

Ashley’s mother had taken it upon herself to start a weird PTA mom crusade against me—the kind of
campaign only a woman with far too much time on her perfectly manicured hands could undertake. She was calling every mother in my elementary school class and telling them not to let their kids play with me, that I ruined Ashley’s life and was a creepy little girl, obsessed with “carnal pursuits.” The fact that the woman wasn’t even comfortable calling it “sex” in conversation with adults hints at a whole host of sexually repressed issues, but mostly just makes me feel sorry for her daughter.

Her campaign to brand me with a scarlet N for child Nymphomaniac did not sit well with my mother. She switched into full combat mode. The next morning in the car, she blasted Public Enemy and N.W.A. all the way to school and marched into the headmaster’s office for battle instead of heading to work.
Fuck tha police!

Mr. Thompson calmly listened to a rant that involved a lot of talk about puritanical moms and premarital penises, but he took it well and started chuckling.

“I’m sorry to laugh, but these mothers! Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Ashley’s mom. How do they not understand that sex is all kids talk about at this age!?”

“Exactly! If they lived on a farm, they would have already seen it all live!” Presumably a statement based on my mother’s vast childhood experience with farm animal copulation growing up in
Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Mr. Thompson called Ashley’s mom and told her to stop the gossip. And in spite of her mother’s “life ruining” concerns, Ashley and I both grew up to be normal teenagers. Not friends, really, just two well-adjusted humans from moms with very different parenting styles. Though I do hope Ashley’s mother eventually told her how babies are made or, at the very least, where her vagina is located.