Author: Marissa Mallo
This isn’t about just me anymore
The convicted felon has been in power for a week now.
He is driven to dismantle the government. He and his band of thugs are driven to remove all the protections and safeguards that much wiser men than he have in place to protect the lesser advantaged of us, the minorities, the marginalized citizens of this country.
His ultimate goal is to remove Democracy, the Rule of Law, Ethics, and Hope and proclaim himself the “king” the United States.
Do you think the convicted felon cares about you, America?
He wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire…
The convicted felon is driven by one force. the same force that has driven him since early in his life. POWER and the influence and money that are associated with it.
You are sitting there thinking that you are so very happy that he is coming for all those people that he has told you that are not equal to you. The ones that he says it is ok to hate. You know who they are; the Muslims, the Jews, the Native Americans, the Dreamers, all the People of Color, the people who have married outside their race, the people who have married outside their religion, the families that have biracial children, the families who have children with chronic diseases, the single moms with kids, the “entitled elderly”, The Gays, The Lesbians, all those weird mother fuckers who are part of the LGBTQ group I call my family, just about anyone who doesn’t fit into his collective vision of a sanitized, nice, clean, white, “christian” America. He told you over and over (with the help of elon musk’s money) that these were the people that were holding you back. That it was ok to hate them and to use whatever violence was appropriate to make yourselves feel like better human beings.
Hitler told post World War 1 Germany the same things..
Make no mistake America, you think that the convicted felon is coming for them?
He is coming for you.
Happy New Year…
That being said, I have to be honest. In my heart of hearts I am deeply concerned about what life will be like for many of us after the orange man takes office. Do I think he will declare open season on anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that he is the second coming?
Yes
What happened to you, America?
What happened to the three branches of US government? To the elected officials of those three branches who would sit down across the table from one another and work together to do the People’s business? The officials that would put aside party politics, who could disregard which PAC was putting the most money in their pocket and do what was asked by the People who elected them? The officials who ask “what is best for the country?” Where are the officials who were willing to compromise, negotiate, listen to what their partners across the aisle really had to say?
They are gone. If you aren’t mourning their passing then you haven’t been paying attention…
All of our elected officials have forgotten who they are supposed to be working for.
Us…the People who put them in office. The People who elected them to represent us. We asked them to be our voice, to speak for us in the halls of government. To represent us fairly, accurately and listen to what our concerns were.
It seems that these days that all our elected officials are most concerned about is peddling their influence to the highest bidder for the biggest personal payoff. Does any of this makes sense to you? If not, I’m not surprised. It’s much easier for you to listen to someone who says “he can fix it”, “that he’ll take care of it”. It’s much easier to let someone else tell you what to think.
Bob Dylan once wrote, “You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows”
If you’re not anxious. If you’re not concerned. You’re not paying attention. Or maybe you think you’ll be exempt because you’re white, straight and voted for him. Think again.
9. Last Chance High
On my first day of class, it took 2 hours and three buses to get to Moses Montefiore High School from where I lived. I lived on the “East Side”, an all white neighborhood near all the steel mills on the south side where I rarely saw any black people. Mom knew what kind of school Montefiore was and where it was located. I think she was happy that someone else was going to be keeping a close eye on my “incorrigible” ass. She wanted them to fix me.
Nothing in my short existence prepared me for life at Montefiore…
When I got off the bus in front of the school that Monday, A face outside the school yelled “what the fuck are you doing here, cracker?”, “Are you lost, white bread?”, ” You better take your honky ass back south, mother fucker”. It struck me like a bolt of lightning that the black kids in front of the school were talking to me. One of the bigger kids walked up to me and said “what are you doin’ here”? I said “I have to go to school here”. He said” Your cracker ass won’t last one day”. I thought, I don’t know any of these kids, why do they hate me so much? Looking back, I guess that we were all frightened of each other and the other kids viewed my appearance as an invasion of their neighborhood, their homes, their space. And they didn’t like it. I was terrified because I was used to hostility at home but not from perfect strangers. A bell rang, everyone started filing into the school, one of the kids shoved me said” get in there peckerwood, welcome to Monte Fi”. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I would to go to school in one of the most violent neighborhoods on the south side.
Once I got inside the school, the atmosphere changed completely. All chatter stopped and everyone began walking single file against the walls. There was a man with a nightstick standing in the middle of the hall shouting “Eyes forward, no talking, keep moving to your class rooms”. I figured he was a plain clothes police officer. It wasn’t until later that day I found out he was one of the teachers. Every 25 feet of so there was another teacher with a nightstick saying the same things. There were no female office employees or female students at Montefiore. As I walked down the hall, one of teachers who bore a striking resemblance to the famous wrestler Dick the Bruiser shouted “mallo, get your ass in my office!”.
He closed the door on his office and told me to have a seat. He sat down across from me. He began, “My name is Mr. Fitzpatrick. Any where outside the four wall of this office you will refer to me as Mr. Fitzpatrick. If we are here in my office, you can call me Lou. You are in one hell of mess, mister. I’m not sure who you pissed off in the school system to end up here but now you’re my problem. This place is your last chance. If you screw up here, if you cut just one class, you go right to juvenile hall, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. If you think this place is bad, juvey is ten times worse. Your life is going to be hard here because, in case you haven’t noticed yet, you are the only white kid here. Just being new here makes you a target, being a white kid here puts a bullseye on your back. All the teachers do their very best to protect all the students from harm but we can’t be everywhere all the time. In addition to being one of your teachers, I am your counselor while you are here. How long you are here is up to you. It’s all on your shoulders. If you act up, don’t do the work, they will send your skinny white ass to juvie. If you listen to me, knuckle down and get passing grades you could only be here a couple months. I am here to help you in every way I can but I am not your babysitter and I refuse to be your guardian angel. You are going to have to find a way to make it here, I can’t show you how. You are going to get your ass kicked, several times probably, just because you’re the new kid. You’re going your ass kicked because you’re the white kid too. There are kids here who will take the opportunity to take everything whitey has ever done to them out on you. If you’re not careful, you ‘ll become the Monte Fi punching bag. Watch out for the stair wells, kid. Those are the hardest for the teachers to keep an eye on. Everything you do, all the choices are up to you once you step outside my office today. I am here five days a week. I will help you but how you survive here is all on you. Good luck. Here is your class schedule. I will escort you to your first class. If you are found in the halls without a pass once class has started you’ll be written up”
I never said a word the whole time I was there in his office. I was having a hard time processing everything Mr. Fitzpatrick had to say.
I walked into class and the teacher handed me a textbook and said “take any open desk”. I tried to be as invisible as possible every class. It seemed most of my classes were on the second floor. US History was downstairs. I started down the staircase, I got pushed into a corner on the landing by about 6 kids and the biggest of them grabbed me by the neck and said “gimme your money”. I said I didn’t have any. He said “gimme that ring”. and pulled it off my finger. Yeah, I had forgotten to take that ring off before I left for school, dumb me. He turned all my pockets out while the other kids pinned me against the wall. He said ” As long as you go to school here you got to pay me everyday, cracker or I will kill your scrawny white ass”. He bashed my head against the wall hard enough I saw stars and they were gone. It was over in a flash, probably didn’t take thirty seconds start to finish. Meanwhile, all the other kids just kept walking down the stairs like nothing was wrong. I stuck my pockets back in and walked to class.
At the end of the day as we were leaving Monte Fi, the same kid grabbed me outside and said “bring me money, mother fucker or you’re dead”
I had the long bus ride home to think about how I had gotten here and what my life in the foreseeable future was going to like.
The next couple months became a kind of routine for me. I would go to school, the same group of guys would roust me for money, they would soundly kick my ass and then I would go to class. I think if had gone on too much longer, I would have killed myself. Something happened one day and I am still at a loss as to how I did it. I was going downstairs for US History and the same guys cornered me in the stairwell. Something snapped in me. When they started their normal pushing and punching, I picked the biggest kid in the group, and I hit him as hard as I could as many times as I could. They kicked my ass badly that day. But something changed after that. They didn’t come at me as much or as hard. At the end of my time at Monte Fi, I had more black friends than white much to the consternation of my entire family. I found that they had the same problems I did, that they were just as unsure, just as frightened, just as vulnerable as I was. My black friends taught me so much. Especially about my own family and how wrong they were about black people. Mom as so proud that I had picked up some of their slang and mannerisms. She called me a jive ass.
So I suddenly discovered that I could be a good student. I decided that I was going to do the very best I could while I was there. Much to my mother’s surprise, I got really good grades. I actually liked going to school at Monte Fi! I was there for almost 2 years when Mr. Fitzpatrick called me into his office one day. He said, you know you turn 16 in a few days, right? I agreed. He said well, we are going to have to cut you loose when you turn 16. I said why? He said that the schools special charter only allows for students to stay at Monte Fiore until age 16 then they must return to their local high school to finish school. I asked if they could make an exception, that I wanted to stay there and graduate. He said that his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do. He told me that he had already contacted my local high school and sent them a copy of all my records. He said that I would report to school the following Monday.
I was devastated…
I should have been happy. No more 2 hour bus rides. My new school was 2 blocks from my house. I was terrified to be the new kid again. Then I thought, I can do this and I made up my mind to be a good student at my new high school.
I reported for my first day of classes at George Washington High School. When I went to the office to get my schedule, the secretary said that I would have to meet with my guidance counselor before getting my schedule. An older woman came into the office and said “are you mallo”? She said “my name is Mrs. Klee, come with me”. she took me down the hall to her office. She sat down at her desk and when I went to sit down she said” Don’t sit, you won’t be here long enough”. She said “I have read your record and I feel that we have no place for a delinquent like you here are at Washington. You don’t belong here and never will. My suggestion is that you quit school now and learn to pump gas. I did not waste my time creating a schedule for you, so get out”. I told her that I had been a good student and had gotten good grades at Monte Fiore and could I at least have a chance? She told me to get the hell out of her office.
I had never felt that small in my life. I went home and told my mother what had happened. Her reply was “I am not surprised by anything she said, I agree completely. I don’t want your ass laying around the house now. Get a job, join the army, do something because I am tired of you being a burden”.
Thanks, mom.
It can’t happen here…
I didn’t start my transition until late in life. I was 65 in January of 2015
Barack Obama was president and I watched as he worked diligently on behalf of everyone including people near and dear to my heart, the LGBTQIA+ community.
I have struggled with living in the wrong body since age 4. Some of you may be shaking your heads and asking how I could possibly know I was the wrong gender at that age? How could I possibly know something like that as a 4 year old child? I felt it then just as I feel it now. That my mind and body were always at war with each other. That nothing felt right, fit right, was right. I found an amazing therapist and she helped me see that I wasn’t screwed up, fucked up or broken. So I began my journey.
There seemed to be such an atmosphere of hope during the Obama years, so much optimism about where we were going as a nation. That all changed in 2016 when the orange man was elected.
Which brings me to the title of this blog. In 1935, an author by the name of Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called “It Can’t Happen here”. One might ask, why is the very old book relevant now? He wrote it during Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the late 1930s. His book, however, told the story of man rising to power in America using the same techniques as Hitler. It’s amazing the parallels that can be seen with Hitler’s rise to power and what is going on in America today. With Hitler, he gave the German people someone to hate, someone to blame all their troubles on, the Jews, the Homosexuals, the Muslims, the Negroes, the Gypsies or anyone who didn’t meet the pure race criteria for Hitler’s plan to make the German people “The Master Race”. He made the German people believe that those people were less than desirable, that they were inferior to the German people, that they didn’t deserve a place at the table that was going to be Germany in the Third Reich. He suppressed and obliterated the Free Press and all Journalism that didn’t tow the Third Reich Line. The Gestapo had free rein to detain, punish, imprison or kill anyone who wasn’t a card carrying member of the National Socialist German Workers party. I’m not sure if Hitler sold Bibles, golden high tops or trading cards. For anyone interested, you can find Sinclair Lewis’ book online at most retailers.
More that half of America watched as he lied about the 2020 election, created insurrection in the Capitol, was tried and found guilty of fraud and deception and most of all rape. And in 2024, they have put him in charge again. Are these people all stupid? No…it’s much easier to live your life if someone else tells what you need to do. Tells you that he can fix anything. Tells that you that your neighbor isn’t as good as you are because you’re white. Tells you hey I’m white, you’re white, I got your back. What about the other half of us who didn’t vote for him? A large part of America decided that they didn’t like either candidate and they chose to stay home on election day. Shame on you all. That’s how Hitler rose to power again in Germany and the orange man is using the Third Reich cookbook to do the same thing here in YOUR backyard.
My goal is to try to tell anyone who chooses to read this what it is like for a 75 year old trans woman living in a very red state and what my fears are for the next four years. I plan to finish my backstory as well. Even if it is from a ghetto in Warsaw.
8. The summer of ’63
In June, the sisters of St Francis washed their collective hands of me when I graduated from St George. Their dedicated work to make me see the error of my ways and show me my place among god’s chosen failed miserably. I gave up asking for god’s help that summer knowing that he had turned a deaf ear to someone as screwed up as I was. My Dad was still MIA and I KNEW it was because of me. Whenever I would ask mom about him she said he was overseas and couldn’t get any leave time.
I was never a participant in school, I avoided group activities like the plague because I just never seemed to fit in. I was the round peg in the square hole. I was never allowed to do any extracurricular activities. I wasn’t athletic or good at any sport. I didn’t make a lot of friends in school because the guys and the girls thought I was weird. I had one friend John who had a paper route and every day after school I would help him with that. It was so odd because we could go hang out in his basement after school and for some reason his mom seemed to like me. It was John who inspired me to learn to play guitar. He started taking lessons at this very cool music academy on Ewing avenue and had this gorgeous guitar that sounded so amazing. I asked mom if there was some way I could take lessons like John and she said she didn’t have any money. So I did odd jobs and saved some money and bought a guitar ($18.50) from a place called Sears and Roebuck (yes, you could buy just about anything from their catalog back then). It came with a case and a book called the Mel Bay Primer for guitar. I was in love from then on. I taught myself how to play and read music. Playing guitar probably saved my life several times. I didn’t need friends or family… I could get lost in my guitar all by myself. One time, I went with John to his guitar lesson just to look around. I was just blown away with the beautiful instruments that all the kids my age had. I just kept playing my old Silvertone and worked at getting better. I started picking up bits and pieces songs on the radio. WLS was the rock and roll station in Chicago and I listened to it a lot. That Silvertone kept me from walking into Lake Michigan a few times.
That same summer, it seemed like most of kids in my class from grade school were going to St Francis De Sales high school. A few had even been smart enough to go to Mendel Preparatory School. I begged and pleaded with my mom to go to St Francis. She said “No, I’m not wasting my money sending you there because you’re not smart enough. You are going to CVS (Chicago Vocational High School) to learn a trade so you don’t starve to death and you won’t live with me forever”
CVS was the largest high school in Chicago. In 1963, the student population was about 2500. It was a vocational high school that taught the fundamentals of several different trades like metal work, wood working, drafting, auto repair, etc. You had to participate in Physical Education at CVS which meant that every week you had to go to the pool. I dreaded that most of all because my entire PE class (about 100 boys) went swimming and it was school policy that no suits were to be worn in the pool. I learned to cut that class early and often. It was also my first experience being around black people. I learned they were just as lost as I was, just as lonely, just as frightened and had just as many questions as I did. They were not the three headed monsters my family had told me they were. We were all just kids trying to find our way…
I hated CVS, I just felt like I was lost in a sea of students and that no one cared. Most of my teachers said I had no business being there, that it was a waste of their time.
So I started to cut class. Instead of getting lost at CVS, I started taking the bus to the L platform on the south side and using my school bus pass I rode the train all day long. From 63rd street all the way to the end of the line on the north side. I found a way to get back on the southbound train without paying so that is what I did 5 days a week, back and forth instead of going to school. I would get home at the regular time and no one ever asked me how school was so this went on for a couple months.
One day, two men knocked on the door and asked for my mother. They asked if I was her son. They went on to tell her that I hadn’t been to school in months and that she was in trouble because of my attendance issues. I knew I was in trouble because my mother was home when I got there. Normally, she would have been at work. She told me that the truant officers had been there to speak with her about me cutting class and not going to school. She said we had to go to CVS to meet with the vice principal to determine my fate.
The following day, we met with the Vice Principal of CVS. My mother started the conversation by saying that I had always been a screwed up kid and she had long since given up hope that I would ever amount to anything. The vice principal added that he knew absolutely nothing about me because I had been in school so few times but he was of the opinion that I was “totally Incorrigible” and “beyond rehabilitation”. My mother agreed completely saying she was totally at a loss at to where to go from here. The vice principal said that she only had two choices, to put me in the juvenile center until I was sixteen of to send me to a disciplinary high school. She said that since I hated going to school so much that I should be made to go to the disciplinary high school from now on.
In Chicago, there is only one disciplinary high school.
It was located at 13th and Ashland avenue.
Moses Montefiore High School
My mother laughed when she heard and said “well, you should have a lot of fun there”. The vice principal reached into his desk and handed me two things. A bus token and a nickel. He said ” Use the bus token to pay your fare and use the nickel to get a transfer. You will have to take 3 buses to get to school and get home. Here is a list of the buses you need to take. When you report to school on Monday do not take any valuables, do not take a lunch, do not take any money, do not wear a watch, rings, jewelry or crosses, do not wear any expensive clothing or jackets. At the end of the day, your teacher will give you 2 bus tokens and 2 nickels to get you home and to school the next day. Do NOT lose these or give them way. If you miss one day of school, a warrant will be issued for your arrest and you will be remanded to the Cook County Juvenile Corrections Center until you are 16 years of age. This is your last chance.”
As we left the vice principal’s office, I was thinking how hard could this be?
7. Michael Becomes a Boy…
I guess I started noticing things the summer I was 13. Before that time, I kept wishing and hoping and praying that I would wake up in the morning to find the last 12 years had been a dream…that I had only been dreaming I was a boy all that time. I prayed every night and I hoped that when I woke that I would be the girl I knew I should have been for as long as I could remember. It never happened and that summer my body would show me just how far from that dream I would be taken.
It began in the middle of the night. I woke up and thought I was dying. My heart was racing, I was breathing really fast and I thought I had wet the bed. When I calmed down, I knew something had happened but I wasn’t sure how or why. I tiptoed to the bathroom to clean myself up. When I started to undress to clean myself up I realized that I hadn’t peed the bed. This was something else. I was so confused and embarrassed that I threw my underwear in the trash. I thought that I had gotten some terrible disease from a public rest room. No one ever talked about anything in my family. No one ever told me what I would go through as part of becoming a “man”.
So I never told anyone…but as time went on that summer more and more things started happening. Things that I had no control over. Things that I couldn’t stop. My body was betraying me in the worst possible way. I went to the library and found a book on human anatomy and development. That’s where I learned about the terrible stage of life I was going through.
I had begun puberty….
My body was at war with my mind. My body was bound and determined to turn me into a boy while my heart , mind and soul were screaming STOP! DON’T DO THIS! I’M A GIRL! CAN’T YOU SEE? I DON’T WANT ANY OF THIS! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!
The changes were a series of relentless, never ending reminders that God had forsaken me, That there was no hope of ever being a girl now. Every time I looked in the mirror and saw the changes taking place I just wanted to die. I wanted to just crawl in a hole somewhere and pull the earth over me and be done with all of it. I hated my hairy armpits, those hanging things that seemed to appear like magic, not to mention the gross hairy thing between my legs that had a mind of it’s own in the middle of the night. Can’t I just die now, please? I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of myself and everything that has happened to me, without my consent I might add, that I would really prefer to just go off somewhere and die. Things kept happening after that. I grew 13″ inches in 8 weeks and got scoliosis as bonus. I grew hair everywhere…everywhere, my armpits got smelly, my face and body got pimples and I started growing hair on my face! FOR FUCKS SAKE, CAN’T WE STOP NOW, PLEASE?
O
h My God, who is this person I see in the mirror? I have always hated you but now I can’t stand to look at you at all. I hate everything about you, How you look, how you sound, the way you walk, the way you smell, the way you act. Every thing that makes you MICHAEL. I look at you and I am completely depressed by all this. All these changes, everything I have had to endure. I want no part of this, of you and what you represent. I’m even more confused about where I belong. I’m pretty sure that I am the only person in the world that feels this way. Why did my life have to get so confusing and complicated? God must really hate me if this is the way he answered my prayers. Why else would he do this to me? I was graduating from grade school and my mother felt the need to buy me a suit to show me off to her friends. So that she could say “see, he turned out normal after all”
6. Movin’ on up…to the East Side
We kept moving around for the next few years. It seems that we moved about once a year or more often if needed due to fear of “Them”. We were all over the south side, Burnside, South Chicago, Woodlawn. You name a neighborhood, we probably lived for a time.
Then my mom heard from some of her coworkers “at the mill”, that the best neighborhood to live in was a community called the “East Side’. She said that she had heard that they were building a few houses in the area and she said that we might move into one. Three homes were being built on the corner of Avenue N and 97th street. When we went to look at the houses, I noticed that we were right across the street from a railroad yard! How cool was that?
My neighborhood was made famous in the movie “The Blue Brothers”. When you see all those weird railroad bridges over the Calumet river, the Skyway bridge, the 95th street bridge and all the other south side landmarks you know what my neighborhood looked liked. Mom liked the center house and so she bought the house and the whole family moved. Mom, me, Granny, Gramps and my aunt Helen.
Something else I noticed, there was a the park right across the street from our new house. The sign on the corner proudly proclaimed the name of the park…Pietrowski Playground. The name that all the kids gave it was “Dago Park”. I think it ended up with that name because the east side was a melting pot of every nationality you could think of. Everyone settled here because of the steel mills. It was a little hole in the wall corner playground that had one side of a basketball court, one softball diamond (depending on what time of the year it was), two sets of dilapidated swings, a teeter totter and a slide. Nestled in the center of this microcosm of kid fun as a a small field house that on any given day could provide softballs, bats, basketballs and all manner of athletic equipment for the use of the kids in surrounding neighborhood. This establishment was cared for by an elderly gentleman by the name of Carl. He made sure the kids had the equipment they needed and that they treated each other well. Carl didn’t tolerate bullies or older kids taking advantage of the younger ones. Carl passed out all the equipment, made sure the ping pong table was in good working order and kept the field house clean. In the winter, Carl would flood Dago Park and turn it into a HUGE ice skating rink. There was always a hot fire going in the pot bellied stove inside the field house so you could warm up. Carl was a kind man. He took me under his wing when I first got there and did his best to not let the other kids push me around. Dago park was a sanctuary for me when I was growing up. It gave me a place to go so I to didn’t have to go home…I hated going home. I hated being yelled at. When we lived in Burnside I would go up to the Illinois Central station and watch all the trains coming and going. I was perfectly happy to watch people come and go. It was a different time…no one ever asked me why I was there. I was on a first name basis with all the ticket agents that worked there. Nobody yelled at me there. I think I was around 8.
It was the summer of 1958, mom informed me that in the fall I would be going to a catholic school called St. George. While I had passed the 4th at my old school, the nuns at St. George though it might be beneficial for me to repeat 4th grade when I started school. Mom said she was sure that the priests and nuns at St. George would be able to help me with my “problem” as she had begun referring to it. She said that she had told the sisters all about me and they had informed her that they could fix me.
St George had received some media attention because it was the first school to install a fully functional fire alarm system and conduct organized fire drills after the horrific Our Lady of the Angels school fire where 92 students and 3 nuns died during the fire. All the students were required to wear uniforms. My mom really liked this idea because she said I looked “normal”.
I was never a great student. I’d grown up being told how stupid I was so I never felt smart enough to learn. I never realized I could be a good student until I was in my mid 30s.
The sisters of St. George were very adept at all forms of corporal punishment when it came to students. I learned to dread simple tools of the classroom like the rubber tipped pointer that sister would use during lessons to point out things on the blackboard. It was a very effective teaching tool when I had to kneel on it for 30 minutes at a time. Wooden rulers became great instructional devices when applied to the face, the back of hands or buttocks of the offending student. Kneeling in the dark coat closet while class continued was always fun. I was told that God does not make mistakes. That I was not worthy of receiving an answer from God or the Virgin Mary because I wasn’t devout enough.
So I prayed to Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. I became an altar boy, learned Latin and served mass several times a week. I know there was a part of me that liked being an altar boy because we wore such beautiful cassocks and supplice, I felt feminine whenever I served mass. So I kept praying, I kept asking for the same two things. I got an answer of sorts one Sunday when I came in to serve 6 am mass and found one of the parish priests behind the altar with one of the other altar boys. They weren’t praying…
One Sunday, the priests had delivered a sermon talking about the dangers of gambling, alcohol use, tobacco use and other sins against God and his church. They had admonished the parishioners to tithe more and to avoid the temptations of the flesh. The following Saturday, all the altar boys were tasked with scrubbing the marble floors of the church and sanctuary on our hands and knees. It took the 12 of us all day to do it. After we were done, Father Jerome, the pastor of St. George, called us all onto the back room of the rectory. He and the other priests of the parish welcomed us and told us what great job we had done. They were watching a football game on a brand new color TV, they were playing poker, drinking beer and smoking cigars. They appeared to be having a great time. When I looked around the room I thought I had wandered into a bank vault because there was money everywhere! There were three pound coffee cans filled with change that were stacked up on shelves all around the room. There was large stacks of paper money stacked up on the shelves too. Father Jerome said that we could reach into any can of change we wanted and grab all the change we could carry in one hand as our payment for cleaning the floors of the church.
I started seeing things differently after that. The child who was convinced the God, The Blessed Virgin and His church could “fix” him began to have doubts. The child who knew if he just prayed harder, worked harder, was more devout hoping God would answer his one and only prayer gave up. The child who had thought of going to seminary and becoming a priest was gone. I had failed God, my family and everyone that loved me. God gave up on me and I gave up on God. I just wanted to die…
I hated the boy I saw in the mirror every day. I hated everything about myself. The way I looked, my body, my voice. Every day, my body was letting me know that there were changes coming and that I was not going to be happy when they arrived.
5. Mom gets a job
When I was about 6, mom decided that she would have to go to work full time. She said that dad had abandoned us and that she was going to have to find a job to keep the wolf from the door and food on the table. It wasn’t until I was older that the truth came out and I realized that all the terrible things she had said about dad were wrong.
In
1956, working women were unheard of. All the men came back from WWII and demanded their old jobs back. During the war, with all the able bodied men overseas fighting the Huns, women lead the workforce in the US, building tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, bullets and bombs. Many women were very disappointed to learn that they would not be able to keep their jobs after the war. Mom found a job at US Steel Southworks in south chicago working in the billing department. She chose the afternoon shift 3:00 to 11:00 pm Monday – Friday. I think she that shift because it limited the time she had to spend around me. When I got home from school, she was going to work, when I got up to go to school, she was asleep and was NOT to be disturbed under any circumstances. So, the only time we really saw each other was on the weekends. During the week, my grandmother and my aunt would get me off to school and look after me when I got home after school. Looking back, I think that this was probably about the time my mom gave up on me ever being a person she could be proud of. I became someone who was tolerated or ignored. After mom had been working for awhile, she started reminding me how much I owed her. The roof over my head, the clothes on my back, the food in my belly, the air that I breathed. She constantly told me how much money I cost her. As I started to grow, she would complain to me about how fat I was, how tall I was and why couldn’t I just fit in regular boy’s clothes instead of the tall boys clothing? When I looked back at the pictures of me back then I just looked like any other kid…nothing special. 
She began comparing me to dad and tell me how I wasn’t worth anything and that I wasn’t smart enough to do well in school. I have searched my memories and my soul my whole life and I can’t remember mom ever telling me she loved me or that she was proud of me. All I ever wanted when I was growing up was to be worthy in her eyes. I just couldn’t make her happy no matter why I did. When I was in school she was always working whenever there was a school recital or event. I think she was too ashamed of me to be seen with me at a public event especially if she might run into someone she worked with “at the mill”. I began to feel that I didn’t belong anywhere or with “normal” people of children. Later in life, when I could talk about this stuff, I would always say I felt like I was on the outside looking in …
Whenever I did manage to make a friend, I was never allowed to bring them over to my house. No one was ever welcome. Mom had picked Gramp’s habit of nicknaming everyone by their nationality. She’s say “don’t hang around with that damn dago kid he’s trouble” or “Why do you have to hang around that pollack kid he’s a juvenile delinquent”. Being invited to my friend’s homes showed me a world that I had never seen before. Until that time, I thought everyone acted like my family did. Until that time, I thought it was normal for family members to scream at one another, swear at one another, treat each other terribly. Visiting my friends , I learned that families could love each other, support each other, care about each other. I didn’t understand why my family was so different, why we hated each other so much. Why did we never say to each other; “I Love You, You’re Wonderful, You did a great job, you’re so special” .
It must be because of me. I knew they would be a lot happier if I wasn’t around…
That had to be it, right?
4. Growing Up Catholic Part 2…
We were all still living the in Gramp’s apartment building in the Burnside neighborhood. Dad was only coming home about twice a year now. He came home one summer and told mom he was being reassigned and he wanted us to come with him. He was being assigned to Germany for five years. He asked mom please come live with him in Germany. He said with his rank and all of his years of service that we could live like royalty. We wouldn’t have to live on post and we could have a house in town. He said that he wanted this more than anything in the world. Mom’s answer to his pleading was a loud, resounding NO. She had thousand excuses…who will take care of my parents? I don’t know anyone in Germany. I don’t know how to speak the language! What will I do there? Where can we send our child to school? What will happen if my parents need me? When dad left after that furlough, it was the last time I saw him…
Gramps was a racist. In his opinion, the only people of worth in the world were people from Hungary, everyone else was inferior. And he had a pet name for everyone…spics, chinks, wops, polacks, dagos, kikes, taco benders, niggers, greasers the list was endless. I found this very interesting for a man who came to the USA in the 1900s. When he had risen to such a lofty position in society? The next year, gramps decided to sell the apartment building and we all moved into a smaller house on the near southwest side. Why? Because a black family had moved into the neighborhood. We moved a lot over the next few years…
When I was six, I broke my Mother’s heart again when I asked her for an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. I got a toy train instead. She was bound and determined to make me want to be a boy even if she killed me in the process. Every time she caught me in her closet, smelling her perfume, cleaning the bathroom, trying her lipstick, trying to cook, she would fly into a rage and grab whatever was close and beat me with it. The whole time she was hitting me she was screaming things like, “see what you made me do?”, “why are you so stupid?”, “I hate you”. I apologized a lot as kid because I knew (probably from being told all the time) that whatever was happening was my fault. My standard defensive position was duck, cover and apologize for whatever I had done…
It seemed to me that no matter what I was doing or how hard I tried, it was never quite good enough for my mom. I think the only time I made her proud during those years is went I had my first Holy Communion.
And in case you wondered, I was the one that tried to scratch out my face on the first communion photo. That kid didn’t look like the girl who lived in my heart.
But I digress…
The Girl Who Lives In My Heart 