Sunlight on My Shadow (20 page)

For the first year after I got back, I didn’t contact Mick nor did I hear anything about him, but I often wondered what he was up to. I had a date or two with friends of friends and patted myself on the back for not being interested in sex, having learned my lesson. I’d wait for marriage. Of course, I wasn’t tempted because I wasn’t in love and my resolution was easy to keep. I was finally pure and good, but for me, it felt a little too late. I was still grieving over my loss of virginity and didn’t quite know how to purify myself.

It was time to apply to colleges. I had taken the ACTs in my junior year but my scores were mediocre, probably because I was preoccupied with my horrible secret. The rejection letters were a blow to my already fragile ego, and I took the news as evidence of my lacking. I had applied to Michigan State and the University of Illinois but had to read those nasty letters, “We regret to inform you … do not have the qualifications we are looking for….” I decided Southern Illinois was the best of my options, so I planned to attend school in Carbondale in the fall. It was a shame because I had mostly As and Bs before I took the plunge into the darkness.

I graduated with my class of ‘68 in June: it had been a year since the birth. It was a strange summer because I had decided to forgo Bond Lake for the opportunity to work in downtown Chicago in a high-rise office. It was my first job and Dad thought it might be a good experience for me. I would be leaving for college in the fall.

One summer evening my girlfriends and I went over to the old Glenbrook kids’ hangout, Roosevelt Park. Wouldn’t you know, I ran into Mick. When I saw his brown eyes and his tight body with its air of confidence, the sparks flew. I still loved the way he squinted his eyes when he laughed and his lips parted, exposing his straight white teeth. He said I should come by his apartment sometime. He was living in Chicago near the “L,” so I could hop on the train and only walk a few blocks to get to his place.

The excitement of reconnecting at his city apartment was dampened by a sick feeling in my gut. Of course, I couldn’t tell my parents that I was seeing Mick again. I had been directed to be done with all that. So the dread of hiding and worrying about getting caught came back in full force. Again, like before, I did it anyway.

The view of the city from the train was a culture shock for me, being that I was raised in the clean, shining, and affluent suburbs. The litter between the buildings, clothing pinned to lines on the porches, and the shabby curtains hung to block out the passers by gave me a gritty-city feeling that nicely framed the guilt and dirtiness I felt as I walked over to Mick’s apartment. I walked fast, looking at the ground, then consoled myself by thinking that nobody I knew would be running into me here—in the heart of the windy city.

Mick was like a mangy dog that kept following me: I loved the thing even though I knew I would get cooties if I petted it. I loved him enough that I couldn’t help myself. I don’t remember us talking much about what happened to me. I told him that yes, I had the baby, and it was a girl. I thought about telling Mick that she looked just like him, but I was afraid it would make him feel bad that he should have been the daddy and he couldn’t remedy that. So I kept most of the details quiet. He didn’t ask me what those three months were like when I went away. I was relieved. I was happy to get off the subject and leave my sacred secret in the silence. I was afraid that if we talked about it, the sound waves would creep over the planet and people would know. I kept quiet.

Mick was off to new adventures. He was smoking pot now. The last I heard about marijuana was from the grade-school movies that featured pushers lurking around in alleys near school yards, ready to grab our souls and take away our free will. The movies told us to stay away from marijuana or we would soon be addicted to heroin.

“Pot? Really?” I asked.

“Yep, it’s cool. It doesn’t hurt you. Teaches you to be in the moment. Everything looks good on pot. You should try it,” he said.

“But aren’t you afraid you’ll get addicted?”

He chuckled in a way that seemed to say, How could you not know? Then he said, “You don’t get addicted to pot. That’s just propaganda. It’s like smoking a cigarette. You can quit when you want. It’s no big deal. My friends really dig it.”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Oh, Lennie and Kurt. We get together and smoke and laugh a lot. It’s a kick.”

“Aren’t you afraid it’ll make you want to try hard drugs, like heroin or something?”

“Oh, no, that’s dumb. I’d never do that.”

“Really?” I said.

For several days I thought about Mick’s presentation and my fear started to soften. It sounded like fun if it made you laugh. I wanted to share the weed with Mick. I wanted to be part of the group.

As an office clerk in my summer job, I sorted stacks of delivery tickets for a trucking company. I felt unimportant and bored much of the time. I watched the clock and eagerly cleaned off my desk at 5:00 when I could punch out and then take the L over to Mick’s. It was easy to do this without Dad knowing. I was just home from work a little late. I could have been shopping or whatever.

The next time the boys passed the joint, I took a puff. It felt like barbs of hot steam poked my lungs and ended in a coughing fit. They looked at me like I had committed a mortal sin. I was wasting the expensive and coveted weed. The next time I took a tinier puff and was able to hold the smoke in my lungs for several seconds. Then, with practice, I could hold it longer to get the full effects.

At first I couldn’t feel anything and thought it must have been wishful thinking that made them high. But then, around the third time, I said something like, “This stuff blows your mind.” And the friends laughed because they knew I was finally high. My eyes landed on some object in the apartment and I found myself staring, entranced by the intricacies. It seemed like I could actually feel the beauty my eyes took in, somewhere deep in my body. It was astoundingly sensual. And I loved the friends in the room. I felt close, like we were in a special club: The Enlightened Society of Weed Worshipers. We knew things others didn’t. We were hip. Then someone said something that made us all laugh hilariously. What? It didn’t matter. Sweet or salty food tasted like the first bite after a forty-day fast, the first bite, over and over again as I devoured a whole bag of salty crunchy things.

The mornings after, when I got ready for work, I felt dark and criminal for smoking pot. I was tossed into that gloomy feeling of guilt and remorse when I got back with Mick. Now I had an added arrow in my quiver of shame: I was doing drugs. But I liked the stuff. It took away the angst when I was high and I felt loving and light. Until, of course, the effects wore off, and then I was depressed and looked forward to the next joint that evening.

After Mick and I got back together, I made a visit to Dr. Keller and got the birth control pills he promised he would prescribe if I ever needed them; so much for my pats on the back.

A few weeks before it was time to leave for college, I got a call from Mick. He had been on a road trip with Kurt and had some bad news. He met a girl in Colorado, he said, and fell for her. He was surprised at how it hit him off guard. Did I really need to know these details? I couldn’t believe he was telling me this. I remember his words: they crushed me. He said, “I never knew love like this before. Love is like a rock.” All I could think was, “He found something better than me.”

That fall, I was supposed to be excited and happy to be leaving home and on my way to college. But I felt like I had to settle on third or fourth best because of my rejection letters. I was also mentally sick with the loss of Mick. I couldn’t help thinking about him and the girl from Colorado and imagining them together: holding hands as they hiked through meadows, stopping to look at wildflowers, laughing with their rocky mountain high. Daggers of anger and jealousy pulverized my tender heart. When I think back on it now, I should have seen it coming. Mick was not committed—and where was our love going to go, anyway? We couldn’t get back together in a public way because of my father’s prohibition. It was a doomed love affair.

I stared out the window as we drove through the cornfields on our way to a school that I didn’t even pick for my first choice. I thought it was a school for dummies. I thought the good schools were the ones that didn’t want me, along with a bunch of schools in California and other exotic states to which I’d applied. I thought it was just so not cool to be going to SIU.

My year at Southern turned out to be a year of changes. I must have been placed in easy classes because of my ACT scores. I whizzed through the courses and got all As. Compared to the nuns at Regina, the professors didn’t demand much. I lived in a dorm and had a sweet roommate named Lucy, and just before Christmas I hooked up with Johnny.

Johnny was an old acquaintance from back home in Glenview and too cool for me back then. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, and resembled John Lennon. His body was tall and well defined. I was flattered that he took a liking to me, this outrageously cute guy who loved to draw and take movies. Johnny attended SIU for the fall quarter, but dropped out and moved to California. He asked me to come visit him during spring break.

Mom and Dad were appalled. I suppose they were scared I would get in trouble again and didn’t like me going off to the other side of the country to see a strange boy. In spite of their disapproval, I hopped a jet plane headed for LA. I was 18, after all.

During my visit, I took my first slice of orange wedge, LSD. Johnny and I camped at Big Sur next to a large river that flowed into the ocean. We took the acid when we got up in the morning and then walked to the sea. The path to the beach wound through towering pines and thick ferns. The forest was thick with the sappy pine smell and the humidity from the sea. By the time we got to the ocean, we were flying high. It wasn’t anything like pot because it physically changed how things looked. Stars and sparkly traces flew off Johnny’s arm as he moved, like a falling star or a comet. The visions delighted my senses. I wanted to cry in awe and my body vibrated like it was in a state of orgasmic wonder.

Johnny took my hand and led me to a large rock that was just off the shore. We climbed on top. The sun was bright and warmed my skin. We sat perched up there, several feet from land, out in the blue sea. The waves came in and crashed, spilling over our bodies and releasing their salty spray as we held on tight, afraid we’d be washed away from our stronghold. We held on to each other and laughed after each wave passed: laughed that we stayed put, and laughed for the refreshing feeling of the waves washing over our faces, arms, and legs.

“Don’t look at the sun,” Johnny said. “It’ll hurt your eyes.” We had to remind ourselves of the most basic safety tips because our minds were off into outer space. Of course our pupils were dilated to saucers, so this was good advice.

Over and over the ocean waves immersed us in their rhythm. Soon my skin was the same temperature as the water, and I couldn’t decipher the barrier between my body and the ocean. The pulse of the sea was my heartbeat, the rise and fall of the waves, my breath. I became the sea, the sun, and the heavy humid air. I felt like I could fly. I felt one with God.

We only took LSD a few times, but something changed within me. I don’t know if it was the orange wedge that did it or if I was just ready, but I began to revere all things natural and of the earth. When I got back to school, I stopped wearing make-up: I thought that was disingenuous. I stopped cutting my hair and let it fly in the breeze. I stopped wearing frilly, fancy, or binding clothes in lieu of loose cotton and natural fibers. I strove for a pure version of me; I was one with the earth, like a Native American who had found sacred ground. I felt one with God while I watched the waves come in and crash on the rocky shore. I was spiritually uplifted watching pelicans dip for fish on the seashore or the clouds form into puff balls against the indigo sky.

It had been several months now since I had attended Mass; my white leather missal was left at home, tucked away in my skirted dresser drawer. The ritual of the Catholic Mass—stand up, sit down, now kneel, now stand up—began to feel ridiculous. We were sheep following man-made directives with no other purpose than to prove we were followers. I didn’t think God heard me when I prayed those million rosaries to my savior. I wasn’t saved from my trouble. And besides, if my Catholic God did hear me, I knew he didn’t like me much. I had fallen away and violated his sacred law of purity.

And the guilt, that raw dark wound I felt from failing to abide by the moral code, was all that necessary? Was it perhaps even harmful to my fragile young psyche? Maybe all that I had suffered could be eased. I started to realize that I had to buy-in to the guilt to let it eat away at my self-esteem. Perhaps I could forgive myself and love myself for who I was and what I had been through, and the guilt could melt away.

I started looking at organized religion as a collection of dogma that mostly served to produce guilt and shame, yet I grieved for my loss of faith. I reminisced about my childhood days, when I felt protected and guided by God. I wanted to pray, but when I tried, the words seemed hollow and meaningless. I wanted that feeling of rejuvenation as I attended early Mass before my school day started. But now, nature became my new god; walks in the woods grew to be more satisfying than Latin words and mindless ritual.

I believed in giving love and sweet caring because of how it made me feel, not to please God. I did it for goodness’ sake alone, not because I was afraid of burning in hell. I wasn’t sure what happened to us when we died, but I suspected that we just turned to dust. That was a frightening thought, but if the God I believed in might not exist, then heaven probably didn’t exist either. It was easier to believe there was no hell. I couldn’t believe a loving God would ban people to hell and let them burn forever. Maybe man invented this stuff to manage the congregation. To make them follow the desired path, and to invent answers to the meaning of life.