Heidi Hi, Heidi Ho… Choose a bowl and away you go

I have a step sister for four years. 

Heidi is Eugenie’s daughter. Eugenie and my dad Howard hook up at the Mermaid Cafe on Hermosa Strand, after my mom puts him out, when I am ten. These two new women in his life come to California from the wilds of McHenry, Illinois and seem to be scheming to steal my daddy from me. The black Marks-a-Lot ink hearts inscribed on their ‘fridge pretty much tell the story: “Howard loves Eugenie,” “Eugenie loves Howard,” “Heidi loves Howard," and “Howard loves Heidi.” I read in between the hearts and arrows, “Melinda is chopped liver and doesn’t belong in this family at all.”

Insult is added to injury when Heidi’s perfect skin is compared to porcelain; mine to rusty enamel - the freckles being so country-bumpkinish to her elegant pure white flesh, surrounding turquoise colored eyes.

The cozy threesome live together in Manhattan Beach for a year or so before moving to a bigger house on Salem Circle in a new housing development in Costa Mesa, where all the streets in the new neighborhood are named after cigarette brands... Viceroy Circle, Lucky Strike Lane, and Marlboro Street. Dad is a chain smoker and so is Eugenie. They seem also to be “chain drinkers." Eugenie is a real witch when she's drunk. The Salem Circle address is doubly fitting.

In between the Manhattan Beach home and Orange County, Howard is jailed on child molestation charges, drunken and disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. He spends six months in Los Angeles County Jail, according to my Aunt Nora, and is released for “good behavior.” I guess the kind of love which their fridge professes is in question. I am never told what happened. I only know I don’t hear from my daddy for a long time. 

When at last I do visit the Salem Circle house, Heidi and I get along alright, except that she is sometimes mean, and Howard and Eugenie drink every night, causing us eleven year olds to hide in Heidi's closet. This is familiar, only my closet at my mom’s house is much more homey - as I’ve had years to perfect its coziness and practical elements for long stretches of being inside. Plus, her closet doors do not keep out the sounds of fighting coming from Howard and Eugenie's bedroom.

Here, they have some Mexican pottery dishes. Two bowls in particular I remember from the Salem Circle house. 

Heidi and I arise earlier than our parents and head to the kitchen for Cheerios with milk and lots of sugar. After taking out the stinky trash, which has multiple cigarettes extinguished in the multiple beer and vodka bottles, and washing up, because the smell makes me feel sick to my stomach, we get down The Infamous Two Bowls from the cupboard.

These bowls are glazed earthenware; beige with dark brown edging spilling down the unglazed terracotta outsides. If you whack them with your fingernail, they sound dull, as if they are cracked, rather than the “ping” you’d get from a porcelain vessel. Each bowl has a word in Spanish written in cursive in the bottom. 

“Which one to YOU want,” asks Heidi extending “Fea” (ugly) to me while clutching “Bonita” (beautiful) to her belly.

“Well, I guess I’ll take this one...” I say half-heartedly, suddenly losing my appetite all together, and wondering if Heidi’s porcelain cheek will “ping” if I whack it with my fingernail.

Heidi's ritual asking dance, "Which one do YOU want?" is repeated so often over the three years of visiting the Salem Circle house, that my cousin Debby and I make it one of our go-to instant laugh routines.

Heidi and I eat in front of the TV with the sound turned really low on the Saturday morning cartoons. We both hope her mom and my dad sleep really, really late, while Popeye and Olive, Whimpy and Bluto cavort across the screen.

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I have spent this past weekend at a Growth and Transitions Workshop, which is based on the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. During the course of two and a half days, participants are encouraged, one at a time,  to "externalize" grief, with the use of some simple tools and the marvelous containment of twenty participant/witnesses and four terrific therapists. 

Memories emerged for me which feel much better outside me than inside. The above recollection surfaced on my drive home. Healthy anger arising, I think I'll find a way to replicate the tools I availed myself of at the workshop… a length of rubber hose, a few phone books, on a mattress, and a pair of gardening gloves (to prevent blisters from forming as I whack the yellow pages with the hose), and let my little kid scream out how that exclusion, belittling, and the scary noises felt. It's very cathartic work, but it sure feels gooood! I'm out to crack the beliefs instilled by that "fea" (ugly) bowl, and maybe, just maybe, listen for the crack in Heidi's perfect porcelain skin… which is probably not all it was cracked up to be. (tee hee)

She and Eugenie departed from my life in 1962, when they put Howard out and burned all his belongings - including all the photos and home movies he had of my brother Mel and me. Alcohol can make people really crazy.

I choose the flushing bowl for Heidi and Eugenie. I've already erected an etheric porta-potty over Howard's grave.

Heidi Hi, Heidi Ho, flush the bowl and away you go!

Grief work is so satisfying!