His anger and derision weren't that apparent when he was sober. True, when we spoke to him directly, he answered us with grunts and monosyllables. And he whistled when he needed something, instead of asking for it. And he'd make comments about women's intellectual inferiority and lack of driving ability. But that was it. When he drank, though, his venom came out in full force. He called us "chancletas" - slippers, things that you stepped on. He said that we should take our mother's surname because we were just borrowing his anyway -- just until we got pregnant and had to get married, at which point we would take our husbands' names. He said that he was smarter than all of us, our mother included, combined. He said we would never amount to anything and he was wasting money by paying for our schooling.
The weird thing is that although he derided us for being girls, he didn't let us be girls. If something hurt our feelings and we cried, he ridiculed us relentlessly. We weren't allowed to show emotion or weakness. That was hard; not just because we were females, but because we were children. And no matter what we did, how much we excelled in school, we knew that it would never be enough, because he had already stamped us "unworthy" by virtue of having been born with vaginas instead of penises.
It was most difficult for my oldest sister, who had a sunny, happy disposition and was built like a girl, soft and curvy. She was also emotional and open and for that paid the steep price of being labeled the "weak" one or the "dumb" one. My brother wasn't as aggressive as my father would have liked him to be; he was soft-spoken and enjoyed music more than he liked sports. But he was a boy and that was enough. My middle sister was loud and obnoxious; but she was funny and commanded attention. Insofar as my father could love anyone, he loved her.
As for me, I was the forgotten child. I wasn't considered weak or dumb, but I was rarely the center of attention, like my other sister. I learned to lay low and not draw fire. I retreated into my books and into myself. I built an impenetrable wall that could withstand the neglect, the mental abuse and alcohol-fueled vitriol.
The wall served me well. When I was harassed at school because of my broken English, I held my head up high and stared the bullies down. Being bullied by another child was nothing compared to being bullied by a grown man at home, so bring it on. And had I been a typical child, I would have fallen to pieces when my sister tried to commit suicide when she was 15 and I was 10. Instead, I knew I had to get her up and walking and gave her water to flush the bottle of pills out of her system. All without alerting our parents, who would've only used the episode as further proof of her "weakness."
The wall also came at a price -- being numb to all; feeling frozen on the inside. I had boyfriends, but I could take them or leave them. My three grandparents and great-grandmother died and I shed not a single tear for any of them. I felt like no one had cared for me, so why should I care about anyone?
It wasn't until my 29th year, when I got the carbon monoxide poisoning in my apartment, that I began to feel again. You see, carbon monoxide adheres to the cells of your brain and robs them of oxygen, killing them slowly. And it just so happened that the cells the carbon monoxide effected in my brain were the ones at the emotional center. For almost a year, I was off-kilter. I cried at anything. I got angry at the slightest offense. I felt like I was losing my mind; and in actuality, I did. I lost my old mind.
One day, sitting in my Murray Hill apartment all alone, I felt deeply in my soul that it was time to leave the old me behind. I fell into a bottomless depression for which I ended up taking six weeks of psychiatric disability leave. I could not let go. I felt embarrassed that this thing had happened to me. To this day, I have never told my parents the facts surrounding my carbon monoxide poisoning or the effects it had on me. When they saw it on the news, I played it off as this little incident at the building. I never told them that the police had to break down my door to get me out because I had passed out. I never said that the firefighter who carried me out -- unconscious and in my underwear -- told me that had I been in the apartment but 15 minutes more, I would have died. To feel fear would have been weakness; and I wasn't weak.
When my disability time was up, I resigned from my firm. The ultimate testosterone-fueled job -- litigator -- was no longer for me. I took the next few years to find myself. I allowed myself to cry when I felt like it. If I felt angry, I gave myself permission to feel it, instead of pushing it down.
As they say, God makes no mistakes, so my being at home at the precise time that the flue pipe in the boiler snapped and began feeding carbon monoxide back into the heating system was no coincidence. My being rescued those 15 minutes before I would surely have died was no mistake (others in that building were not so lucky). And the carbon monoxide targeting and thawing my frozen emotional center was not left to chance. I still have moments where I retreat behind my wall, but I know that I was given a second chance at a normal life and for that, I give thanks to God every day.
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