Please Forgive Me I Forgive You

PROLOGUE

It happens in an instant. With only the slightest of chance meetings, your life changes, taking your innocence and hope along to oblivion. The prison we build for ourselves, to protect, to punish, to condemn, does not always have bars. My prison had windows. I could come and go as I pleased, but no matter where I went, I carried my prison with me. What freedom I enjoyed was short lived; it ended when I was five.

My name is Mary Elizabeth Taylor. The name always makes people think of the raven haired, beautiful movie star, but that isn’t me, so I go by Lizi, Liz, Lizard and sometimes Monkey. The only time I was called Mary was when I was in trouble so be careful-you just might end up with a black eye if you call me Mary.

With my Mother’s beauty, shiny dark hair, and an infectious smile, I think she must have been surprised to have a little blonde haired, blue eyed baby. The joke was that I was the milkman’s baby, never mind that our milkman had dark skin.

I was so accident prone, my family didn’t think I would make it to sixteen, and in spite of everything, I beat the odds. I was always getting hurt or ruining something by accident. One time I spilled milk in back of the TV and fried it; I ruined a camping trip to Mexico by stepping on a broken glass bottle and cutting my big toe open. Even being born was a challenge. My parents only wanted two kids, and their firstborn son died during labor. He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

They had my sister, who is three years older than me, but if my brother had lived, my parents would have never had me.

Our family was very small. My Grandmother and her three kids (two boys and one girl) came to the United States from Europe with nothing but the clothes on their back. They had lost everything in World War II. My Grandfather was separated from the family, because he had Tuberculosis and could not come to the United States. Back then, they were not letting Tuberculosis patients into the country.

Both my parents drank and smoked, like most people in the fifties and sixties. The laws in California now prohibit smoking inside public places, but they even smoked in the hospitals when I was born. I always imagined my parents with the doctors and nurses celebrating and lighting up, right there in the birthing room! Everyone is so health conscious today, but back in 1963, people were smoking with their doctor’s seal of approval. There was never any mention of second hand smoke, or even that it was wrong to smoke around children. There were no lawsuits about cancer or asthma. People just assumed that with no warnings, smoking must be fine for your health. I wonder if those same people would run into a house fire and breathe deeply.

My Father was an alcoholic, so my Mom fought with him. Alcohol became the bullet that killed my parents’ marriage. She and my Father divorced when I was three, and after seven years in a toxic, abusive relationship, I didn’t blame her for leaving. It didn’t take very long for her to find a new husband. We moved into a huge house in Laurel Canyon with my first Step-Dad. There was a swimming pool and plenty of room for my sister and me to play. We had free reign to explore the neighborhood and I loved everything about the outdoors. I liked the freedom of running around on a hot day, and jumping into the pool to cool off. With the sparkling water and the smell of chlorine. It was the worst punishment to be banned from the pool when I was in trouble.

We even had a television set, which was a very big deal. Not everyone could afford a set, so we felt very special to have our very own television. It had thirteen channels and was the source of endless fascination amongst my parents’ friends. They would throw huge parties where everyone would sit around and watch that little box, while my sister and I played in our room. We didn’t have many toys, and what we did have, I called boy toys. There were no electronic video games, computers or cell phones. When I did my homework, it was with a pencil or pen, not a laptop. When I played, it was with my imagination, bugs and dirt. I would spend hours playing with Gumby and Pokey, Mr. Potato Head, jacks, marbles, army men, cowboys and Indians. My hands were always busy building and playing.

The hillsides of Laurel Canyon are breathtaking. Driving the Canyon from the San Fernando Valley, you are transported immediately to a magical place. Full of shaded woods, and beautiful mansions, Laurel Canyon was home to music executives, celebrities and artists. This was the place of my freedom, this magical kingdom all my own. I remember exploring my neighborhood with abandon, hunting for insects and creepy crawly critters to put into my specimen jars. My hands were busy, finding caterpillars, bugs, and lizards. I could be anyone my imagination could dream of in these hills. At five years old, Lizi Taylor was in charge of expeditions into the wild, or treasure hunts around the wooded gardens of my neighbors. At five years old, my life should have just been beginning. At five years old, life as I knew it, was about to end.

Mom was happy for a while, they both enjoyed a life style of parties, drinking and smoking. We were typical of a lot of families in the Canyon, except that sometimes, when drinking, my Step-Dad would get violent. My Mother had married yet another man that was abusive, but this time, it was a very different bullet that killed the marriage.

When I was five, parents didn’t worry about child predators. We were never taught to be fearful of strangers at all. If you were lost, you’d walk up to anyone and ask for help. You would take your box of cookies, or charities, and go door to door, with little concern for who might be answering. If bad things happened to a child, it was all handled in secret. No one talked about molestation, or kidnapping, or even parents beating their kids. If anything ever happened in my family, it was all hushed up behind closed doors. There was no danger in letting your young child play outside by themselves. No danger.

I think it happened while I was playing in the hills, but none of it stayed with me…in my conscious self. They found me curled up on my bed, bloody and beaten. My mouth was swollen, but that’s not why I couldn’t speak. My prison was being built, each wall reinforced and sealed to close out everything, even my memory. The assault had been so violent that my mouth was bruised on the inside, and the doctor explained to my Mom that the bruising was from a penis. Someone had shoved his penis in my five year old mouth, then beat me and left me for dead in those hills. All I could do was cry and rock, and build those walls as my mother paced in the Emergency room and talked to the doctor. The way they looked at me. That expression of guilt and pity in my mother’s eyes was, in a second, burned on my psyche forever. Maybe this was just another one of my accidents that was always ruining everything. What it was, though, was the end of me. What that stranger decided to do to me in that moment, in that instant, altered the course of my life forever. What that stranger decided to do to me with his hands was what would kill the biggest part of me.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

CHANGING

After the attack, I was no longer going to explore my surroundings. I became A Walking Dead Girl. I decided to change from a little girl to a little boy. I locked myself in the bathroom, and cut off all my hair. I refused to wear the pretty dresses I used to love. No one would hurt a little boy, no one would attack him, or shove things down his throat. I would sit inside, and watch other kids playing outside my window, angry that I was no longer free and angry at every stranger I saw walking by. I was no longer able to go to my beloved wilderness, my hands no longer able to explore and collect, I no longer wanted the fun hunt. Everything stopped, hell, even time seemed to stop. I was angry; angry at those other kids, playing as if the world was not a dangerous place; angry at my sister, because she could enjoy herself in the pool; and angry at my Mother, because she could offer no protection. My anger spilled over into my family like an infection. Things change. Divorce happens. Lives are torn apart.

We moved into a tiny two bedroom apartment in Hollywood, my Mom, sister and I. My Mom had to work all the time to pay the bills, and at night she went to school to become an accountant, so we hardly ever spent time with her. The unhappiness I was suffering from went untreated and became an overwhelming burden. Even if I had decided to break free of my self-imposed prison, my world had shrunken because we were now latch key kids. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had just talked about the attack. We, of course, didn’t talk. We simmered and sometimes boiled over, but we did not talk.

It was a different life to say the least. Neither my Father nor Step-Dad paid child support, so we were beyond broke all the time, placing more stress on our family. There were no holiday celebrations, no birthday presents, no visits from Santa Claus and because my mom was gone, we would sit alone with TV dinners and contemplate our prison, but no TV to watch since I fried it. Our school, St. Ambrose, was only a few blocks away from our apartment. After school, we had to come right home and lock ourselves in the apartment. My isolation was now so extreme, that my social skills were suffering. I was unable to make friends and depended on my sister for social interaction. I would once again sit at the window and watch the world pass me by and, when the anger would bubble up, I had my sister to fight with. We didn’t know how to act, only react, and often those reactions were spiteful and violent. Growing up in that environment with no parents, no friends and no social interaction did serious damage. It was hard on all of us, especially my mom. Being a single mom of two children was unusual in those days. It took a lot of courage to leave an abusive relationship, even though it meant security and a nice place to live.

My mom did the best she could though, and there were short periods of happiness. Sometimes, she would scrape together enough money for us to get a hotel room in Palm Springs for the weekend. I would spend all weekend swimming in the pool outside, letting the hot dessert sun bleach away my pain. I could be in a world all my own underwater, I could remember the time before when I was OK and the world wasn’t so hard. I remember my hair turning blue from the chlorine, but it was worth it, because these times always ended, and then it was back to the harsh environment where we lived. Back to that apartment prison with the windows looking out to other kids playing in the street and strangers walking by, with us locked inside.

Sometimes, when my mom needed a break, we would go stay with my Grandmother (Omi to me) for the weekend. I have good memories of her in that apartment. The time I spent with her always felt special, because it was a glimpse of what I imagined life in a real family would be like. We would go to the park to play and run around. She would take us on a boat ride, or to concerts in the park. We would play cards, and I always won, even though she may have let me. We baked cookies, or homemade apple strudel from scratch, my favorite. As we would bake, my very European Grandmother would have a beer, and every once in a while, she would let me have sips. I was around seven or eight, but I actually liked the taste of beer, and the warm feeling it gave me as it traveled down to my stomach, and I loved the way the hole in my heart filled with that warm feeling, the feeling of forgetting. I always wanted more, and she always gave me more. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Alcohol at first just took me away from me.

Omi didn’t know I was in pain, she didn’t know she was feeding a hungry monster inside of me. She thought it was cute when I would stumble or act sleepy. In fact, the alcohol was so useful for calming me down, she would give me a little wine to help me go to sleep. All that energy I had was just me, keeping my hands and body busy. Busy meant that there was no quiet, no place for contemplation, no time to just be with myself. I hated me. I hated all of you. And now I knew that there was another way to be busy without exerting all that energy, now there was alcohol.

That year, we went to Europe to see my Grandfather (Opah to me.) His Tuberculosis had gotten worse, and he was in the hospital, so this would be our last chance to spend time with him before he died. It wasn’t a very pleasant trip. I was getting into trouble left and right. We were supposed to go on a boat ride, but when we got close to the boat, I pushed my sister into the freezing water and ruined everything. My sister and I had no clue how to act in public, much less a foreign country. My Mom spent the trip screaming at us to behave, and she was upset anyway because her father was dying. We went to the hospital every day, and I remember selfishly thinking that I would have rather stayed back in Los Angeles with my Grandmother, drinking beer. It kills me to think that we made a hard trip even worse for our mom.

CHAPTER 2

BEFORE THE WARNING

When I was ten years old, my Mom informed us that she met a man, the man of her dreams. We met Stephen for dinner, and instantly my life was changing again. Change is a funny thing to children. Even though we moved out of our prison, and a life of poverty, change was not my friend. I was hanging by a frayed little thread, and my Mom starting a serious relationship started me swinging out of control and to me, control was everything.

We moved in with the man, I would eventually call Popi, to a house in Westwood that they bought together. Once again, there was a pool, and room to breathe. I was given a bicycle and freedom, no longer a latch key kid, and no longer in prison, yet still a prisoner. Once you’ve been to prison, even if it is one of your own making or fate, you become institutionalized. Those boundaries and 10 foot walls and the isolation become the only safety you know, they become home. For all the drudgery of my everyday life in the apartment, I was now feeling ripped away from everything I knew. I could no longer go to my school, St. Ambrose, or my church, because my Mom said they were too far away. I was devastated when I found out my sister and I would be going to separate schools. She was my only friend. All the security in my world was melting away, and we were expected to become a family again after so many years of being left alone by my Mom.

I was even more upset when I found out that Popi had his own family, a son, who would come and stay with us sometimes. I wanted to scream, STRANGERS, my Mom had us living with strangers, and now I was supposed to share the Mom I never used to see with this boy and man. When Popi’s son, would come over on the weekends, he got all of the attention. I hated that he had this relationship with Popi, and I was really jealous. They would play and wrestle together, and I was never allowed to play with them. My Mom would explain that the weekend was Stephen’s time with his son, but I interpreted that to mean that he only wanted boys. I remember, once again, wishing I was a boy so that he would want to play with me too. I didn’t understand any of the dynamics of this new family, I didn’t want to, I hated those weekends and resented wanting something I couldn’t have. Yes, I was angry. I was determined to show them just how angry I could be.

When I was twelve, my Mom and Stephen got married. They had a nice wedding at his Uncle Fredrick’s house. Popi is Jewish, and a Rabbi performed the wedding ceremony. I didn’t know what being Jewish meant, I just knew that I didn’t understand all the words in the ceremony. What I did get right away, was that my Mom re-marrying was going to be permanent. This new family was now, for better or worse, ours. I had a new Dad and a step-brother and new cousins and aunts and uncles, and it was all just too much new for me. My sister painted Just Married on the back window of the car, and tied cans to the back bumper. My Mom didn’t like it, and got angry. I think she was embarrassed by the noise it would make, and all the attention. I was irritated at my Mom for being so pissed about the car. Here she was, changing our lives, and she thinks it’s alright to be angry at us. I wasn’t nice to anyone on my Mother’s wedding day. They were all strangers that I didn’t like, that I didn’t have to like, and that is how I controlled the situation.

I went to Fairburn Elementary school first, which was a public school. Adapting to the change was really hard for me; I didn’t fit in, I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t like anybody anymore. I missed my friends at my other school. I’m not sure why, but I had my confirmation at Fairburn Elementary instead of my church. I was furious that we could no longer go to my church, no matter how far away it was, my friends were there. I kept hoping my mom would find a way to send me back to my old school, where I was comfortable.

After Fairburn Elementary, I went to Emerson middle school. Middle school is difficult, that’s why it’s called the middle. You aren’t a little child, and you aren’t an adult, and those middle years are all about change. Day one was a shock for me, as this new school was three times bigger, than any school I had gone to in the past. It was hard for me to find my way around such a big school. I had to go to many different teachers and travel to different rooms for the various classes I had to attend. I missed my sister helping me in school, and walking with me to and from school. I didn’t adapt very well, I didn’t feel protected. I didn’t have a way to wrap my mind around the fact that everyone was going through this change, I felt all alone, and I blamed my Mom. Why wouldn’t she let me go back to St. Ambrose School? Would I ever fit in? I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t like anyone, I didn’t even like myself. How would I ever expect anyone to like me? In order to show her how upset I was, I was in the principal’s office on many occasions.

My mom did eventually get her accounting license and landed a great job in Westwood, at the Tishman building-it was six blocks from our house, and close to where Popi’s law firm was. Sometimes on weekends, I would go with her to work. She would pay me to stuff envelopes and put stamps on them, it made me feel very grown-up. When I was done, I would get to play and ride on the elevator-that was fun. The only thing I hated was when the adults would get in the elevator smoking their cigarettes. It was hard to breathe, but it seemed that everyone smoked, everywhere. I remember I was always mad at my mom for smoking. I hated the smell of cigarettes.

For my birthday I was given a skateboard, and very quickly, I became enchanted. I loved skateboarding; I loved the freedom, the wind in my hair and the thrill of riding down a steep hill. Back then, they only had the skateboards that had clay wheels on them, and they were very dangerous. They would not go over bumps or little rocks that were in the road, without dumping you on the ground. I fell a lot, but always got back up. My first big accident was in front of the house, and I fell flat on my face. Right away, I could feel a knot on my head the size of