Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore - The End of San Francisco

When I was twelve, I decided I couldnt wear glasses anymore. I wanted contacts, but my mother insisted that boys werent supposed to be vain. I would drop my glasses off escalators, but they would just get dented. In school I held the frames in front of my eyes whenever I needed to read something on the blackboard. The teacher said: Isnt it more important to see?

Id always liked teachers, except for the ones who didnt like me. But sometimes they said the stupidest things. Eventually I got contacts, but then I lost oneI didnt tell my parents because then we would have to fight about it. For a year I closed my left eye a lot. This was when my parents decided I needed therapy: I was refusing to wear the clothes they picked out for me. I didnt tell them anything. Most of my friends were girls.

My parents wanted me to see a therapist, so he would tell them what was going on. Since my parents were therapists, I knew this was unethical, but kids arent part of ethics unless they do something wrong. I didnt want to be part of kids.

The first time I tried smoking was in the basement of my therapists office, the same building as the pediatrician but you went through the front entrance like you were living in one of the apartments. I liked that part. I also liked the basementit was a fallout shelter, which I never really understood: in the case of a nuclear war, could you really stay safe in a random basement with a cigarette machine and a brown corduroy sofa? I decided to try Benson & Hedges Mentholthe package looked the most sophisticated. I put the cigarette in my mouth: it tasted bitter, not minty like Id expected but I lit it anyway and then inhaled through my nose.

I started coughing: smoking was awful. But I liked going into the laundry room, just because it was the laundry room in an apartment building. Sometimes I would walk back and forth from laundry room to fallout sheltermy therapist had a waiting room upstairs, but usually I arrived early and all he had in the waiting room was the New Yorker , which I thought was the most boring magazine ever created. At least my fathers office had Time and Newsweek .

Maybe thats another thing I didnt like about the waiting roomit was kind of like waiting for my father. The therapist even had a beard, do all psychiatrists have beards? And the same furniture in his office: teak wood, brown hues. But his mother wasnt an artist like my grandmother, because I cant remember what was on his walls. I guess therapists are supposed to have unmemorable art, but I didnt think about that thenI just thought he had bad taste.

Twelve was when my parents sent us to sleepaway camp, that means my sister was ten. I was stuck in a cabin full of boyseach one taunted me in a different way. I wrote a letter to my parents every night: Please let me come home. Please. For three whole pages. I dont know what else I said, something about how the boys were bullying me and one of them broke my tennis racket but I didnt know how to get him to replace it. There used to be a whole shoebox full of letters in my fathers office, but when I asked my mother to make copies the shoebox disappeared. Did they send us to camp for one month or two? At least one letter a day and sometimes, when I couldnt stop crying, the camp administrator let me call my parents but all they did was send more candy. Sour balls. Saltwater taffy. Lemon drops. Firecrackers. Bazooka bubble gum. Bubblicious. Chiclets. Juicy Fruit. Teaberry. Mike and Ikes. Necco Wafers. Now and Laters.

My mother was always on a diet, and my father was always taunting her. He would squeeze her thigh and say Karla, your legs are getting big. If she got annoyed, he would smile like she was a kid and say Karla, dont get agitated. My father looked at a photo of me at age two, framed in my grandmothers apartment, and said: Most fat babies grow up to be fat adults. I stopped eating.

One time I was in the car with my father on the way home from school, telling him about my day. He never listened anymore. He just said okay, that sounds good. So I said: Im just going to get off right here and lie down in the middle of traffic. And he said okay, that sounds good.

Every dinner another battle, that time when my mother put a whole chicken on my plate: Oh, eat what you want. If they fought with heat, I needed to use cold, but if they feigned that casual tone then the only thing I could do was break it: I threw the whole chicken into the trash, rushing into my room while my father rushed after me, pounding on my door. He was always pounding on my door. Maybe this was Tracy Chapman timeIve got a fast cartears in eyes through those not-quite-vertical blinds and hoping one of these days Ill drive drive drive away.

One of these days I do drive away. But then I drive back. We all drive back. But thats later, we havent gotten to Tracy Chapman yet. Lets return to the dining room table, teak, this was when everyone in the family was obsessed with my weight. Maybe this was after we got back from Europe and my grandmother said: You look like a concentration camp victim.

Id just seen glass display cases filled with human hair, but my grandmothers disapproval made me realize one thing: maybe Im succeeding. I wanted to beat my father at his own gamewhen he became enraged, I would stare through him like there was something fascinating on the wall right behind his head: Bill, is there something wrong?

There was always something wrong, except at the dinner table when my father smiled and started laughing even before he spoke: Is that all youre going to eat? Then everyone else joined in: Is that all, is that all youre going to eat? I threw my plate onto the floorreally the floor? This must have been Tracy Chapman time.

Before I started drinking, I liked to say that I didnt need alcohol because I was so happy. Did anyone believe the act? Im standing frozen in the cameras gaze, one shoulder up way higher than the other and Im rail-thin, hair in an overgrown bowl cut and I guess the scary part is the way Im standing, like in shock except this is a pose, a pose for the camera.

And then my eyes: like Ive already left, this is my body Im not here this is. Smile. Sometimes everyone knows what they cant see, and what they can see they dont know. Those first twelve years when I wore the exact same clothes as my father, bronze-rimmed eyeglasses literally the same shape as his, the only difference is that somehow I got away with wearing a womens watch with the skinnier band, my wrist was too small for the mens watch. Probably they didnt call it a womens watch, even if sometimes people would call me she. Adults: accidentally. Kids: on purpose.

Another picture from that same period, slightly earlier because my hair is shorter but they both say 6/85 on the back. Im so glad pictures used to come with the date imprinted, its helpful now. In the second picture Im standing in the exact same position, the light even reflects off my glasses in the same way, rose almostmaybe its the metal. This time Im wearing a beige Izod shirt instead of the green one and it makes me look paler, like Im going to fade into that shirt except for my chapped lips. My belt is wrapped high and tight around my waist like maybe I could get smaller. It makes the jeans hang strangely around the hips, extra fabric.

In the background, the National Geographic World Atlas : Im memorizing all the world capitals. After the picture Ill go back to reading, or wrapping fingers around wriststhumb to middle finger, thumb to ring finger, can I reach thumb to pinky? I worry about the skin I can squeeze, that means Im getting fat. Especially in Hebrew school, where everyone calls me Mental and they dont mean it as a compliment. Sounds like my Hebrew name a river in Israel the same as my mothers dead father and I try to disappear into more words, letters shaped differently: I dont know what they mean, but I can sound them out more clearly than anyone else in the room and they hate me for it.