Origin Stories
I was born in January of 1974, and I was left on the doorstep by Gypsies.
At least that’s what my folks told me.
Perhaps that’s how my mother obtained that orange and brown quilted bag she took with her everywhere. If you saw it in a thrift shop these days it would go for at least $50. She had at least two dozen purses, bags, totes, handbags, pocketbooks, and fanny packs. She collected them. Any trip to Mervyn’s or JC Penny’s would result in at least a half an hour comparing purses, checking for which had the most hidden pockets. This particular ugly bag was used to smuggle popcorn into the movies. It had two brown acrylic hoops which served as handles. Pull those hoops apart and there’s enough room for a family sized bag of home popped popcorn. Or a five pound baby girl.
My older brother was also adopted. But nobody ever told him he was left on the doorstep by gypsies. My parents appeared to have gone through proper channels in order to get him. It was odd to me that my brother would just accept that he was adopted. What did that mean? Didn’t he want to know how he got there? Only a simple creature with a total lack of imagination would be content with just “being adopted”.
I completely believed the Gypsy Story. I was not convinced that Dad was “only teasing.” It was obvious mom and dad were hiding something. They never outright told me I was adopted, so I figured there must be a better story. A story so lurid, so filled with danger and betrayal — that they could never tell me the truth. How else would this little brown baby end up with these very pale parents?
So I invented my own Origin Stories. These were fairy tales I told myself in order to understand what nobody wanted to tell me. I could see small, swaddled Baby Me adrift in a heavily reeded river. Or left in a basket with vegetables on the doorstep of an orphanage. (The influence of my forced biblical training is very evident in hindsight.) My favorite story featured me as a Chinese Princess, forced to live with this strange family because my mother, The Chinese Queen, had an affair with a “strange man” and had to give me away or… face death. I know. The drama of it all.
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The fact that I looked nothing like the rest of my family only bolstered my fantasies. My brother was tall and goofy looking. Still is. He stood out for all the wrong reasons. Fair skinned, lightly freckled and in desperate need of braces, my brother’s adolescence culminated in a love of country music, cowboys, and Clint Eastwood. His awkward phase followed him into high school and intensified when he willingly joined not only the school choir, but the cheerleading squad as well. By the time he was a senior in high school (1988) he was 6’3, a yell leader, and a stand out in the school choir, where your only job is to blend in. He was the kid who performed Stand Up at the school talent show. Ladies be shopping!
Me? I was small and dark and chubby. As a baby I was called Apple due to our physical resemblance. And I was brown. Olive according to my mom. If I went in the sun for five minutes I would return like a golden chestnut. My brother, mother and father would burn. Trips to the beach took hours to prepare for because my mother needed a tarp, a hat, a shawl, and an umbrella. Just for herself.
My brother and I shared no common traits or interests. We lived in the same house, our bedrooms shared a wall, but we had absolutely nothing in common. We were, and remain to this day, total opposites.
Before my mom died in 2023 she moved to Florida from California to be closer to my brother. A fact I found out only after it happened. She took everything I had in storage and threw it away. My yearbooks. My photo albums and journals. My album collection. Art. Literally everything. I also found out, after she died, that they all took family vacations without me. I didn’t think I could be shocked but there you go.
Andy is still a loud mouth republican and PROUD Trump supporter. I’m still a loud mouth and PROUD feminist. I don’t really like to label myself but I’m more liberal than most. Andy still has bad taste in music and I still don’t. He is sugar-free Vanilla. I’m Neapolitan. My brother’s favorite things include large gold chains, Tommy Bahama Shirts, alcohol, cigars and Donald Trump. He doesn’t like books and he says racist, homophobic stuff.
How does one reconcile being “related” to people like that? The older I became the more delighted I was to “be adopted”. It meant that I wasn’t actually related to them. It explained why I was nothing like my family. For me “being adopted” became glamourous and mysterious. I could be whatever I wanted.
I claimed every ethnic origin people wanted to put on me. A friend’s mother was convinced I was Italian. “Those dark eyes! That complexion! You are Italian!” So when I was at her house — I was Italian! A different mother said I was Jewish. Had to be! So I claimed that as well. I fantasized that I was Liza Minnelli’s long lost illegitimate daughter born from an illicit affair with either Peter Sellers or Andy Warhol. “Celebrity Mom forced into Betty Ford right after giving birth to a secret baby!” Or maybe my parents were just a couple of teenage kids from someplace like Tujunga, just poor white trash who had to give me away because they were just too goddamned young and stupid.
And maybe Trailer Trash Mom was out there somewhere, snacking on pink coconut snack cakes, thinking of the baby girl she had to give away all those years ago. Missing me in her daydreams, and snapping out of it when her actual child screamed at her from his high chair in front of cartoons on television.
