Breaking the Surface (5 page)

T
HANK GOODNESS FOR THE
acrobatics and the diving. Without them, I’m not sure how I would have gotten through what turned out to be a challenging and lonely childhood. Between my doubts over whether my adoptive mother and father truly loved me, getting taunted and beaten up by kids at school, and fighting off my own terrible moods, there were times when I wanted to give up. But then I’d go to a talent contest and win first prize or do well in diving practice, and everything would be okay—for a while at least.

My mother tells me that I was very easygoing as a child, very easy to please, and that all you had to do to keep me happy was give me a toy and I played with it. I slept from six o’clock in the evening and waited in my crib until my mother got up at six or seven in the morning, eager to please even in the crib. Sometimes, though, I could have a stubborn streak, and there were times when I wasn’t so easy.

The first time my parents saw me, I was nine months old. They’d gotten a call from the Children’s Home Society that a Polynesian baby was available for adoption. They asked my mother if she knew what that meant, because most people didn’t want anything but a blond, blue-eyed baby. But Mom comes from a family of light-skinned blonds—she’s Scotch-Irish—and she specifically wanted dark-skinned, black-haired children, which she told them. My parents had already adopted my sister, Despina, two years earlier, in 1958, and like me, Despina had dark skin, black hair, and brownish-hazel eyes. She’s a mix of Native American, French, and English-Scots.

Another thing about me that appealed to my parents was the fact that I was nine months old. They’d adopted Despina at birth, and she was a handful. At nine months, I could sit up by myself. But Mom said that what really cinched the deal was my smile. Once she saw that, she didn’t want to look at any other babies.

For my first nine months I lived with a foster family. The adoption agency was having a tough time placing me because of my coloring. The family that took care of me called me Timmy, which might have been the name my natural parents had given me. My natural father was Samoan, and my natural mother was Northern European, blonde and blue-eyed, like my adoptive mother. Obviously, I didn’t get her coloring. Both of them were teenagers when I was born, and they weren’t married.

I don’t ever remember asking Mom if I was adopted. It was something I always knew. I remember her saying that she couldn’t have children, so adoption gave her the chance to have kids, which made perfect sense to me. It was also the perfect way to tell us we were adopted.

My adoptive mother, Frances Louganis, was born in 1927, in Mount Pleasant, Texas, a farming community of about eight thousand. Her parents were farmers, and grew everything from sugarcane and cotton to corn and potatoes. She and her sister and four brothers worked on the farm, which my mother hated, and as soon as she graduated from high school, she moved to Dallas and got a job with a loan company.

Despite Mom’s experience, I have fond memories of the farm and her parents, especially my grandfather, from my visits with them when I was very young. I would sit with Granddad in his rocking chair all afternoon. He always had a bottle of beer in his hand and we’d sip beer together. Before very long, I’d be a happy, giggling little four-year-old. Given that my grandfather was an alcoholic, I’m sure he didn’t think twice about getting his grandson started on alcohol at such a young age.

My favorite thing to do with Granddad was to go fishing. We’d spend hours sitting by the pond, not saying anything, and usually not catching anything either.

Granny wasn’t fun like Granddad was. She liked to bark out directions: “Get the table set!” “Get the napkins out!” “Get the silverware!” “Put out the plates!” And I did exactly what she told me to do.

Mom left Texas in 1948 and moved to San Diego, where she eventually landed a job with General Dynamics doing statistical typing. And in 1952 she met my father, Pete Louganis, who was working as a bookkeeper for the tuna fleet. One of the things Mom says she liked best about my dad when they met was that he loved to go out and have a good time. Unfortunately, the minute they got married, that stopped. Dad wanted to save money to buy a house, and after a year and half of saving, they put a down payment on a house in Lemon Grove, California, just outside San Diego. It was a three-bedroom, with a bath and a half and a large L-shaped living room with a dining area. At some point, Dad built a family room with a fireplace, but he forgot to put insulation in the walls, so it was too hot for us to use for much of the year.

My parents had a very traditional marriage. Dad worked, and he expected Mom to keep a clean house, iron his clothes, and to have dinner on the table when he got home. When it came to raising the children, that was to be Mom’s responsibility.

Dad originally wanted four children, and they started trying to have kids shortly after they married. It turned out that Mom couldn’t have kids, so they decided to adopt. They started with Despina and me, but after Mom saw how Dad was with us, she put her foot down and said that two was enough. I can’t blame her. Dad never helped take care of us, and he always liked things quiet. He couldn’t stand when we cried, so when Despina and I were young, most of the time Mom had to put us to bed before he got home from work.

Dad was born into a traditional Greek family in Boston in 1922. His mother died when he was nine months old, and his grandmother moved in to help rear him and his two older sisters, Mary and Virginia. Dad’s father had a crippling heart attack shortly after that, so my father’s grandmother wound up taking care of all of them on her own. After high school, Dad went to a professional school to become an accountant and then moved to California.

My father was not a handsome man, but he made a definite impression. He was about five feet eleven inches, with a medium build, a rather long face, and a very Roman nose. His hair was salt-and-pepper, and he had a receding hairline. Mom says that Dad was born an angry old man. He was a real authoritarian, but growing up, I don’t remember him being around much, because he spent a lot of time at the fueling dock where he worked.

Dad wasn’t the type of father who would give you a hug and say that he loved you. He was stoic and, except for anger, not very good at expressing his emotions. Mom was more affectionate. I could run to her side and put my arm around her or massage her neck. She would fuss with my hair or put her arm around me or take my arm. When I was a kid, she always tucked me in and kissed me good night.

From a very early age, I loved playing practical jokes on Mom. She still likes to tell people about the time, when I was three or four, that I tricked her while she was folding the laundry. I knew she would be putting the towels away soon, so I crawled into the cabinet where she kept the linens and hid. When she started putting the towels away, I grabbed her hand and scared her. She jumped back, and all the towels fell down. As soon as she realized it was me, she said my full first name and my middle name very sternly. I knew I was in trouble when she said, “Gregory Efthimios!” Needless to say, she made me refold all the towels, but she laughed.

You didn’t play practical jokes on my father, ever. The best way to deal with him was to steer clear. It was like we were always walking on eggshells at home because of Dad, and even then, he’d fly off the handle, especially when he was drinking, and he drank every night. It was pretty typical for him to come home after work and have two or three martinis before dinner. Despina and I would prepare them for him, or my mother would.

Mom would usually have only one martini, but Dad kept right on drinking through dinner. Sometimes when he was drunk, he could be very nice, and that was the time to ask for a new bicycle. But more often than not, he would get angry and we knew to leave him alone. We’d make ourselves scarce and let him fall asleep in front of the television.

Because of Dad, Mom got very withdrawn, and over the years she and Dad said less and less to each other. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but by the time I was twelve or thirteen, it wasn’t out of character for all of us to sit through dinner in silence. That was our time together every day as a family, but we rarely said anything to one another. I figured Dad must be preoccupied with his work and that whatever I was doing wasn’t important to him.

I don’t remember a lot of specific incidents when Dad got angry, but one time that really stands out was when my mother was in the hospital for a few days having a benign lump removed from her breast. Without Mom, it was just the three of us at home. I was on the phone talking to my girlfriend at the time. After a while, Dad came in and said that I’d been on the phone long enough and that it was time to get off. I said okay, but of course we stayed on the line. We were kids.

Dad came in a second time to tell me to get off the phone. Eventually I hung up, and I went into the kitchen to tell him that I was off the phone. I did it in a snotty way, which angered him. He said, “You get over here,” and started chasing me. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He started kicking it in. I’d seen his temper fly before, and I wasn’t sticking around to find out how angry he was, so I crawled out the window. Typically, he took out his temper on my sister or my mom. But I knew he’d been drinking, so I was afraid he was going to beat me up. Most of the time I wasn’t afraid of that, but this time was different. He was out of control.

I climbed out the window and ran down the street to a canyon I often went to when I wanted to be alone. I sat there for a while watching the stars. Eventually I went home, but before I went inside, I looked in the window to see where Dad was. He’d fallen asleep in front of the television, so I figured I was safe. I crawled back through the bathroom window, unlocked the door, and sneaked into my bedroom and went to sleep. I knew he’d wake up at some point and find me sleeping in my bed and not worry that I’d run away. The next day, it was like nothing had ever happened.

Another time, Despina stole money from Dad’s wallet. I took the blame for it, but he somehow found out that I was covering for her. He started screaming at her and grabbed her. He was about to start hitting her when my mother came running in, yelling, “You turn her loose, and when you’re drinking don’t you lay a hand on her.” She was really mad. He pulled away, and Mom told me firmly to take my sister next door to the neighbors.

Despina and I were too embarrassed to go next door, because that would have meant answering questions. So we just went to the canyon and talked about running away because we were so scared of our father. I don’t know what was going on with him then, but he seemed to be drinking more.

Despite his temper, Dad never hit my mother or threw things at her. If Dad got mad, she usually just shut up. She said she didn’t want to give him any excuse to do anything. Mom learned from being with her dad that you don’t talk back to a drunk. That’s how she learned to keep the peace. Unfortunately, that’s how I learned, too.

The way I saw it growing up, Mom had three primary jobs: to take care of Dad and the house, to make ends meet, and to protect us from my father. Mom got an allowance every month for groceries, but it was never enough, especially once she started spending some of that money on costumes for me and Despina, who was also performing in talent contests. It made us feel special that our mom was saving her grocery money for our costumes, and we did what we could to help out around the house. I had my chores, like taking out the garbage, and sometimes I’d vacuum. When I was older, I helped in the kitchen.

It seemed like Mom was always broke by the last week of every month, trying to stretch her allowance. Mom made tuna casserole a lot, but we never went hungry. What she didn’t know at the time was that Dad made more than enough money, so when he came home one day and said they were buying a new house, she was shocked. She had no idea they could afford it.

The payments on the new house were nearly three times higher than those on the old one, which made Mom very nervous. But it was a much bigger house in a much nicer neighborhood. We moved to a typical suburban street, with ranch houses and deep lawns. It was very hilly, and there were lots of places for kids to play hide-and-seek and great places for a moody teenager to go when he wanted to get away from everyone. Ours was one of the first houses built on the street, so there was plenty of open land around us.

The house had double front doors, four bedrooms, two baths, a two-car garage, a circular driveway, and a palm tree in front. It was set on a very deep one-acre lot, which was sloped steeply in the back. You had to go down a flight of stairs to get to the pool, which Dad had built a few years after we moved in.

Nothing really changed once we moved to the new house except that we had more room and now I had some great places to explore in the hills. Mom still struggled to make ends meet, and she had to work even harder at maintaining the peace. She tried her best to protect us from Dad. If I wasn’t home at a time I was supposed to be home and Dad asked where I was, Mom would say I was in my room taking a nap, just so he wouldn’t get mad. It really wasn’t until Despina and I were out of the house that Mom started standing up for herself.