This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (22 page)

I, on the other hand, was of the belief that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I brought this up to my brother several times. I would tell him over and over that people in the neighborhood were talking. John would always go back to Alite and threaten him, telling him on many occasions that if these rumors were true, he “would be chased, permanently.”

W
e all grow up with nicknames; some that are downright insulting, especially for a teenager. In my case I was called “Vicki Body” and “Brick House.” I was called this because I wore a D-cup bra. You get the picture. To most girls this might have been a godsend, but it wasn’t to me. I became really self-conscious and tried my best to minimize what God had given me.

Every day, I woke at 7
A.M
., for class. I had two close friends, Vickie Estevez and Marie Koumbis. Because it was the early eighties and Vickie was a redhead; Marie, a blonde; and me, then a brunette, we were dubbed “Charlie’s Angels” by everyone in school. It didn’t help matters that we drove to school in a brand-new silver Corvette. It belonged to Marie, a gift from her father for her sixteenth birthday.

One morning, I took my usual shower and found a lump in my left breast. When the girls got there I told them to leave without me. I caught a bus and was nearly an hour late for my first class. For the next three weeks, all I thought about was the lump—and whether it was cancerous. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my mother. I don’t know why but I was embarrassed. I went about my everyday life as if I never noticed the lump. It didn’t go away, but it didn’t grow any bigger, either.

O
NE MONTH LATER
, I woke up with excruciating pain. But even worse was what I saw when I looked in the mirror just before showering—my entire right side, from the bottom of my stomach to the top of my shoulder, had turned a bluish-purplish yellow. I also felt feverish and dizzy. Stupidly, I showered and dressed for school. I had missed a lot of classes when Frankie died, and I needed to get my attendance up.

I was only in school for one class before one of my teachers sent me to the medical office. The nurse called my mother and then an ambulance. Within minutes, I was taken to Long Island Jewish Medical Center. I was diagnosed with having a tumor that had somehow developed into a hot abscess. It burst and was spreading poison throughout my body. The surgery was quick and nothing short of barbaric. They needed to cut me open immediately, remove the abscess, and start drains to get rid of the poisonous fluid trapped inside.

I vaguely remember the commotion in the operating room or the actual cutting and draining, mainly the pain and the sound of my own screams. My mother was at my side, holding my hand. This was difficult, since the nurses had me strapped down to a gurney.

For the next thirty minutes, as the doctor and team of nurses cut open the area, removed the tumor and abscess, and stuffed two
pieces of gauze inside of me, my mother kept wiping the beads of sweat from my forehead. I finally passed out from the Valium the doctor had given me. When I woke up, the procedure was over. I was wrapped with bandages and gauze covering my entire torso. I stayed in the hospital for a few days. It was later determined by a breast specialist that I had the start of breast disease, something that I learned ran in my family on my mother’s side.

Dad was very upset. With each passing day, he became more paranoid that something bad was going to happen to me. He couldn’t bear to lose another child. My brother’s death had a profound effect on him, one that changed him permanently. He began to hover over me and became a real pain in the ass. Everywhere I went, everything I did became his business. I could barely leave the house without being grilled about where I was going and who I was going with. It was driving me insane. If I had any doubts about getting married, my father’s behavior quickly put them to rest. I would do anything to get away from home and away from the constant scrutiny and nagging.

G
rowing up in such a traditional household meant strict rules and regulations, especially when it came to issues like a woman’s reputation. This was a subject not open for discussion, at least where my father was concerned. He believed a woman’s virginity was “her greatest asset, only to be given away to the right man.” Once a woman was spoiled that was the end. She had little or no chance at finding a husband. He instilled these traditions and beliefs in my sister and me at a young age.

Dad used to tell us that “Wild girls with a reputation were used for only one thing: a good time. On the other hand, those young women smart enough to save themselves for marriage, or the
right
man, would always win the brass ring in the end.”

So I practiced what I had been taught and saved myself for the man I knew would be my husband. I was eighteen years old when I lost my virginity to Carmine. I already had an engagement ring on my finger, so I assumed it was safe to sleep with him.

Unfortunately for me, I got pregnant less than a year before the wedding. I had made a mistake. Like millions of other young girls, I believed it wouldn’t happen to me. I walked around for weeks completely numb. I must have bought ten over-the-counter pregnancy tests. Each time the pink line appeared, I managed to convince myself that there had to be a mistake.

But my body was already going through noticeable changes: swollen breasts and growing abdomen, rapid and unpredictable mood swings, extreme fatigue, and crying fits. I could no longer focus on my studies. I even distanced myself from my closest friends and family members. My mother was still affected by losing Frankie less than two years earlier and was not in any condition to sit down and talk to me about sex and teen pregnancy. I was completely lost. The only person I’d told was my fiancé. Of course he flipped out.

The wedding was planned, but I could not bring myself to tell my father about the pregnancy. I felt that I had failed him. I was now, as he used to tell Angel and me, “damaged goods,” I also feared what he would do to my fiancé. I imagined every worst scenario—from my father beating him beyond recognition even to killing him for ruining his little girl. I imagined that the embarrassment of my pregnancy would cause my father to do the unthinkable.

To be absolutely sure I was pregnant, I made an appointment with a neighborhood ob-gyn who had a reputation for being discreet. I made the appointment under an assumed name just in case. He confirmed what I already knew, but there seemed to be a problem. After the doctor examined me, he’d asked me questions like
“When was your last period?” and “Do you notice any pain on the right side?” I had, but I just assumed it was normal and came with being pregnant. The doctor handed me a prescription for prenatal vitamins and a piece of paper on which was scribbled a bunch of different blood tests that he wanted done immediately.

I went home thinking the worst.
Was the baby deformed? Was there something wrong with me?
I had to slap myself in the face to snap out of it. I went about doing my usual chores of setting the table, helping to get dinner served, and cleaning up the dishes. Later that night, a sudden and violent wave of nausea swept over me. I went running for the hall bathroom and threw up. While hugging the bowl, I’d passed out. Thank God my mother had seen me run for the bathroom. When she came knocking on the door and received no answer, she started banging and yelling. Eventually, she picked the lock with a knife and found me on the bathroom floor. She called my father and Carmine and let them both know she was taking me to the emergency room at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

At the hospital I was handed a cup and asked to pee in it. I realized they would certainly run a pregnancy test and so I filled the cup with mostly water. This was stupid, I now realize. Carmine was pacing back and forth in the waiting room. He came in to see me a number of times and asked me if we should tell my mother about my pregnancy. Or he wondered whether or not he should hightail it before my father arrived and things turned “messy”? I said no to both questions, stupid me. I was scared.

The intern came back with the results and told my mother that I was pregnant. She said the nausea and vomiting and stomach pain were all early symptoms of pregnancy. My mother was shocked, to say the least. I remember her saying, “This is something we’ll talk about when we get home.” And then she warned me, “We are
not
going to tell your father when he gets here. We will tell him you
have a stomach virus, perhaps food poisoning. He will kill Carmine.” She was probably right.

By the time my father arrived, I was ready to be released. My mother just shut him up with a quick “I’ll tell you everything in the car on the ride home. In the meantime, let Carmine drive Vicki home in his car.”

When we got home, Carmine asked me if he should come inside. I immediately said, “No. This is something I have to do alone. Maybe you can come back and speak to my parents tomorrow.” Besides I was also starting to feel worse and just wanted to lie down. When I went inside, my mother didn’t say a word about the pregnancy. All she said was “Go to bed.”

Three hours later, after tossing and turning, I woke up and went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and saw that my stomach was four times its normal size and growing. When I peed bright red, I yelled for my mother.

We snuck out like two thieves in the night without Dad knowing and Mom rushed me back to the hospital. The doctors soon determined that I had an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus was growing inside my right tube, and after twelve weeks my tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. I needed emergency surgery. My mother signed all the papers and called my fiancé.

When I woke up in recovery, the first person I saw was Carmine. He was crying and just behind him was my mother, looking utterly exhausted. I remember Mom kissing me on my forehead. I was relieved when both of them told me that I was going to be fine, and that the surgery was a success. Of course neither mentioned the fact that my right tube and part of my ovary had to be removed, yet another obstacle to having children.

Now that I was awake, the doctor came to see me. Dr. Wallace explained that during the procedure they had encountered some trouble with my heart. She’d told me that I’d suffered a few bouts
of arrhythmias and that once or twice my blood pressure had nearly bottomed out, making a complicated situation even worse. Dr. Wallace did her best to reassure us that there may not be anything to worry about, but that I would need to undergo some tests.

After three days of cardiac tests, I was diagnosed with a serious arrhythmia problem brought on by a disease called cardiomyopathy, an infection of the heart wall or muscle.

Using my prior medical history as a road map, the doctor concluded that I must have contracted the disease after a simple dental cleaning years earlier. The dentist was not aware that I had been born with a condition called Mitral Valve Prolapse, more commonly known as MVP. The condition affects mostly women, and is usually more bothersome than dangerous. But the risk of a serious infection is always present. Because of this, women with MVP are usually premedicated with a high dose of antibiotics before any dental procedure. I was put on cardiac medications like Digoxin to strengthen the contractions of my heart and Tenormin to regulate my rhythm.

My real concern was the effect this would have on my parents. They had been through so much in such a short time. I really worried about their well-being. My mother cried, while my father kept his sorrow bottled up inside as usual. He stood stoically as the doctor told him I might need more than medications, and that my quality of life could be affected.

We didn’t talk much about the pregnancy. But Mom did suggest that perhaps the pregnancy was “a blessing in disguise,” as without it we wouldn’t have found out about my bad heart. Maybe she was right. But I was thinking more about the ass-whipping I was spared from. I feared Dad a lot more than I did a bad heart back in those days!

L
ITTLE DID WE
know my father already had his suspicions, having found one of the many pregnancy tests in my room. Being a neat freak, Dad often did a routine inspection to check our rooms as well as the rest of the house to make sure “we were keeping up with our chores.” I’m sure when he found the pregnancy test, he was crushed. Yet, he never even mentioned it to me.

I could also tell by the way he looked at me and the questions he asked me when he came to visit me later that day that he knew something. I found it difficult to even look at him. I’d never lied to him before. But I realized my mother was probably right, telling my father would only further complicate the situation, especially since Carmine and I were due to get married in less than a year.

W
HILE ALL THIS
was going on, my brother John continued his foray into the life, which surprised me. Even though John had the luxury of a formal education at a prestigious military academy, he would always revisit our early years in Brooklyn when we were dirt-poor, while our father was in prison and our mother struggled to raise five children. But then again, watching Dad dress up in fancy suits, having late-night meetings at social clubs, did begin to appeal to John. He saw all the good the life had to offer, and he was always protected against the bad. I’m sure the most attractive part was the respect my father received from everyone around him, and the obvious financial opportunities weren’t bad either.