Wayward Betty

When I was 19 years old, I bought a pit bull from two shamans on 4^th Avenue in Tucson.

“What’s a shaman?” I asked the women, who sat cross-legged on the corner, wearing patchwork strips of buckskins, suede, and varying leather textures, selling rare gems and puppies, as if they were in the same product line. Their skin also blended into shades of leather, the exchange of absorbing decades of desert sun.

“It’s like a spiritual guru. We understand the alignments of the stars, we see things, we engage a transcendence of the material world and use ritual to access a spiritual world…we understand animals and their connection to the earth…” They went on with this kind of explanation, which was clearly, not going to have a definitive or “material” conclusion.

The taller woman had piercing green eyes, the kind you don’t trust, as if they were stolen, like rare gems, too glaring, too bright, for someone with such dark skin. She puffed from a rolled cigarette and pushed the puppies towards me, starting to haggle, like we were at a street market in a third-world country.

Meanwhile, I was getting sniffed by a leashed potbelly pig with a pierced tail.

The Shamans were in town for the gem festival, an event that always seemed to attract a motley crew of gypsies, vagabonds, and swindlers. The pit bulls were probably too young to be taken from their mother, but looked sweetly helpless, and probably drugged by the desert heat, as most of us were during the barren summer months. We stumbled and wheezed, hence my decision: I was hazily determined that I could not live without one of these dogs.

Somehow I convinced my roommate, Heather, to split the cost of the new puppy with me. She wasn’t a pushover, but she was skinny, and easily swayed by my harebrained schemes. Once I convinced her to go on a date with the wily dishwasher from the bar where I waitressed.

She married him.

We returned to the corner with our checkbooks, where the puppies were panting, hot and desperately trying to climb out of the cardboard box.

Each of us wrote a check for 300 dollars, 600 dollars total, which even now seems ludicrous for any animal, particularly when investing in a notoriously vicious breed from a homeless woman. Still, I made peace with my depleted checking account, parted with my half of the investment and tripped happily home barefoot, holding our baby pit bull.

Like parents of a newborn, we sat on the kitchen floor and watched, admiring every  sniff and stumble, not having any idea what care she would need or how we would successfully rear her into adulthood. This must be what parenting feels like—blissfully ignoring the road ahead, just to get through the day.

Heather and I lived in a poverty-level apartment, a building that demanded I climb to the roof nightly to get to the fuse box to turn the electricity on. Also, I wasn’t allowed to have dogs in my apartment, which I considered only a minor snag in the 10-year plan. Within the hour, we had also considered puppy care through our remaining college years and grad school where we would have shared custody, even if we moved out of state.

After dark, I snuggled into bed with the new puppy we named Luna, Spanish for “moon,” her thin layer of white fur, reflecting a pale light. She draped around my neck, apparently to be close to my pulse, a comforting sound for puppies that miss their mother’s womb.

Before I dozed off, I heard a tapping at my door, first lightly, then with more urgency. I tip-toed across the hardwood floors and looked out the side window where I saw the Shamans standing on my front porch, whispering to each other. They knocked again, this time pounding aggressively, fist to wood. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door– a crack.

When they saw me, they quickly straightened, like marionettes pulled to life. Smiling, their loosened, black teeth seemed to dangle from wide grins.

“Hiiiii,” they said in unison, like it wasn’t strange… like they had been over for tea in the past, like they didn’t just get me out of bed uninvited, not to mention, by stalking the address on my personal check.

Not wanting to seem too incredulous, I waited for them to start talking. I knew they would. Con-artists have a way with words.

“Sorry to bother you, but we are having a bit of an emergency,” the taller one said, almost giddy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, genuinely sympathetic. They already knew I was an easy target.

“We need our prescription medications filled and we can’t cash the checks until tomorrow. Is there any way you could give us cash instead?”

Heather had woken up and was standing next to me, her stick legs protruding from oversized pair of boxers. We both kind of shrugged our shoulders and agreed, wanting a quick and easy solution to the con-artist-shaman-gypsies standing on the front porch. We put on coats over our pajama pants and I slipped on a pair of Converse without socks. The four of us piled into Heather’s Toyota, and  as if trundling along with two homeless women through the desert at midnight didn’t seem like a bad enough idea, we headed towards an ATM.

When we parked, I turned around and made, what I thought was a reasonable request, “Can we have the checks back then?” The Shamans, who we now learned were named, Taliya and Zuzi, looked at me blankly, like they hadn’t thought of this hitch in their ruse.

“Well, you see, that’s the problem,” Taliya said, the tone of her voice arching. She paused and nudged Zuzi who answered, “The thing is… that we gave the checks to our friend who was going to cash them for us, but now we don’t have them. How about we call her? Yes, let’s call her and tell her to rip them up.”

The second part of this plan made no sense to me, even as I stuck quarters into a pay phone, handed the phone over, and listened to Zuzi explain to some high-pitched woman on the other end, that they no longer needed the checks because we were giving them cash. Then she handed me the phone, “Okay, she’s ripping it up. Just listen.”

I put my ear to the phone and listened as I heard the sound of paper tearing slowly and meticulously on the other end, as if precision made it more real or drawing out the sound made it more believable. This was supposed to be the empirical proof I needed to trust that these two pill-popping puppy pushers had innocently given our checks away and now needed cash for prescription medicine at midnight.

While I was smart enough to know that they could have been ripping any paper at that moment, I did desperately want to believe it was our checks. Also, being young and from the Midwest, I was focused on conflict mitigation. I agreed and quickly convinced bony-bones Heather to empty her account as well. We agreed to fork over cash, in addition to the two checks a third-party supposedly and audibly, ripped up, before my very ears.

After handing over the money, we dropped the gypsies on the corner of Euclid and University and stumbled back into the house where Luna was crying and had pooped on my pillow.

*

The next morning, I stood outside of Wells Fargo until it opened and successfully cancelled my check.

Puppy-rearing was not as romantic as I had hoped.  Three days after the Shaman-scandal, I sold Luna (at half-price) to my buddy Nick, who realized that his potential to score increased exponentially when he was weilding a puppy. I remember handing her over to him on the street. Like a break-up, my heart wrenched, but I wanted to get it over with. I gave him the leash and told him to walk away quickly because it was going to be too hard.  Again, I stumbled home barefoot, this time, teary-eyed.

It is always surprising how quickly we can be taken, by love, by attachment, of an idea or hope.

*

There are still puppy mills in New York. One of the shops in Queens happens to be run by Russians: just walking in felt illegal. The men could have been holding machetes at the door and if you got too close to the dogs, you would feel a stern hand on your shoulder and get a Russian reprimand or get escorted out. One day after I had reached into a cage and was shown the door, I wandered about a block, and, saw a man standing in a trench coat. He whistled, sort of discreetly.

Then, “Hey!” he whispered again, “Pshht,” he was trying to get my attention. I looked up and he nodded his head, as if to say, “Girl! Over here.”

Furtively, he glanced around like we had just met on a drug deal, “You looking for a puppy?” he asked. Before I could answer, he opened up his trench coat, where three small puppies slept, tucked away in the pocket lining.

After my pit bull shaman ordeal, I have forbid myself from purchasing a puppy off the street, especially when the seller has a Russian accent.

*

South of San Francisco, my friend’s dog was left paralyzed by a degenerative disease. Chloe, the Corgi, had a wheelchair, but painstakingly pulled herself along the pavement on her front legs. She was 13-years-old this year. Without the kind of self-awareness it takes to sense pity, suffering, and shame, old age doesn’t seem as cruel in animals. Still, it was understood that her time was growing near.

For weeks, there was talk of putting Chloe down, even use of the word euthanasia—swirling philosophical debates on the right to live. But, for those who knew and loved her, it was easier not to think about this, even as her eating slowed, her movements, stalled, her rests, stretched longer into the days.

On the evening before Chloe was put to sleep, there was a solar eclipse. The neighbor came over with a welding mask. I pulled the straps over the back of my head and looked directly at the sun, my eyes focusing through the dark lens. I watched as the moon intercepted the sun, almost perceptively, like you could hear the sound of grinding. I whipped off the mask, and went to grab my camera. The eclipse made crescent shadows dance across the farm house and over the grass.

Excitedly, I passed Chloe on the sidewalk. I wanted to say, “Chloe! Do you see this? Have you ever seen an eclipse?” She looked up at me and blinked twice, sniffed the air, then laid her head back on the pavement.

Earlier in the afternoon, I had heard someone say, “Chloe is going to enter the spirit world tomorrow.” I wanted to tell her to enjoy this moment, this evening, and this light. But, you cannot tell a dog, that the day will be her last.

For the same reasons, when talking to a dog, you cannot articulate the rarity of a solar eclipse.

Before I left that night, I pet Chloe one last time, and touched her ear. She laid still. On the drive back to the city, I thought about the eclipse and I was reminded of Luna, the moon, my pit bull, who would also be turning 13 this year.

I saw Luna a few times before I left Tucson. She turned out to be a bit of a problem-dog with lots of allergies: she wore a permanent lampshade on her head and always seemed to get caught in cacti. Once she was swarmed by bees. At some point Nick could no longer care for her and I heard she was sent to Chicago to live with his mom who had a nice house and a yard in the suburbs.

For dogs, time passes differently. They enter our world, and depart, too quickly. Our intersections in life are often brief, and, endings can startle us, sometimes abruptly, often painfully.

I tried to remember the spirit world described by the shamans. I wished I had been listening. Maybe they would have something to say about this. I hope Chloe’s spirit world is a lot like the Chicago life I imagined for Luna—I hope that the spirit world, has a backyard, with lots of shade and room to run, somewhere out of the desert heat.

A couple weeks ago, I rear-ended an Audi, a mini-van, and a Mexican guy in a Neon. Not in separate accidents: at the same time. I think this is the definition of a four-car-pile-up. It was near the same intersection where I saw the train suicide a couple months ago, about ten minutes after another car was smoked by a passenger train. No one was hurt, but still, we couldn’t help, but rubberneck the demolished car, now resembling a Micro Machine that melted in the dryer.

Accidents happen in slow motion. Life moves at a comfortable pace and halts instantaneously, in my case literally. Though we can slam on the brakes, hoping to prevent an “incident” before it happens, some things cannot be avoided.

In the calamitous moment, sensory perception is off: there was no way of knowing exactly what happened first. I felt my body blow through the seatbelt what seemed like seconds before the actual collision. At some point, my purse and laptop slammed into the dashboard, my chest hit the steering wheel, the back end of the car lurched. The music stopped; the sounds, muddled in my memory.

Smoke escaped from the engine and the air was thick with radiator fluid. In seconds, my car was surrounded. My first reaction was, “Is everyone okay? Am I okay?” I put the car in park and prepared myself.

I didn’t expect what happened next: I opened the door to what felt like a lynch mob.

Immediately, the Audi driver, a middle-aged woman wearing gold jewelry and Pilates pants was fuming like my engine. When I asked if she was okay, she was enraged, “Okay?!  Am I okay?” I was impressed with her on-the-spot rhetorical questioning. Then, she answered herself bluntly, rolling her eyes, “NO! I’m not okay.” I looked for blood, an indication of injury, or even an explanation about what was wrong. While she dramatically clutched her neck and paced the side of the road, it became clear that she was physically “okay.”  She was just extremely pissed off and looked like she wanted to hit me.

The woman in the mini-van pointed her finger in my face and told me not to leave the scene, as if I were some kind of criminal, trying to fly-by-night from a suburban hit-and-run. I wanted to tell her that while there were some criminal actions I would flee from; this was not one of them. Her little boy cried in the backseat, probably because his mother, an older woman with long frizzy greying hair and a wiccan-esque black skirt was terrifying: a hippie-suburbanite with a van full of organic fruit. Ironically, she had one of those “CoExist” bumper stickers.

Rich liberals are the worst.

I got back in my car and waited for the police to show up.

Most of the damage was to my vehicle, which is usually the case in rear-end accidents. The Audi had a few dents in the back and a bent hood. The mini-van had barely noticeable damage to the bumper. According to the mechanic, my car would have been totaled if the air bags blew.

For me, the accident was a blip, but I got the feeling that I just ruined the lives of everyone in the neighborhood. In the end, my insurance premiums will go up, I had to pay the deductible, and generally things since have been a little annoying. I scraped my knee and got a hole in my new jeggings. But was this so tragic? It seemed lucky, given any other number of possibilities—getting T-boned by a semi, choking to death on my morning bagel, careening off Hwy 1, getting smoked by a passenger train, or becoming some random murder-rape, or rape-murder victim (whichever you prefer…I watch a lot of Law and Order-SVU).

I wanted to smile as I watched my car getting towed away. It still felt like we got off easy.

Smartly, the Mexican guy in the Neon agreed. He waved at me and peeled out before the police arrived. Even if he was an illegal immigrant and his car was a piece of shit, I definitely got the feeling that he also realized the insignificance of the event. As someone who has probably seen a lot worse, he looked grateful, and… he probably went to work.

The nicest folks on the scene were the cops who didn’t give me a citation and reminded me not to worry. “That’s why they call it an accident,” one of them told me and winked.  They were probably used to scenes like this: a soccer-mom squealing about her dented Audi and demanding an ambulance.

The guy who fixes my car (I use present tense because he has had to repair damage twice in the last month), says that I am more than a client now, I am a friend. This is a bit of a joke, still, I am not sure if I should be embarrassed. He cringes when he asks for my credit card, the second time in two months. 

“Every time you ask for my card, you act like I’m going to be surprised by the fact that I have to pay you,” I smiled.

“I just hate having to ask people for money after an accident,” he shrugged.

“That’s how it works right?” I answered, “I owe you. You fixed my car.” Despite the fact that the man just drained my checking account for the next two weeks, I still appreciated his candor and friendliness. More importantly, there is no “surprise” in monetary exchange or the fact that my being a shitty driver is going to cost some money.

I got the feeling that this man is used to dealing with a lot of people who are volatile from financial stress. A recent study came out that the majority of consumers feel that their finances are unmanageable. This isn’t to say that there isn’t some legitimacy to the economic issues at stake, but to say that 80% of Americans are uncomfortable with their financial status seems questionable and unwarranted, given the placement of our incomes in the world economy.

Does that mean everyone else in the world should also be unsatisfied and stressed, to the point of finding their livelihood unmanageable? Should we all be on the brink of mental collapse because of financial stress? Is it possible that for American consumers, no amount of “security” will ever be good enough?

It occurred to me that my accident was a marked “incident.” We were in the suburbs where people work hard to insulate themselves against situations just like this. The chaos and storm is too close, too threatening, and too real. I think the idea out here is that, if we just have enough money, we will never suffer from anything. Even the possibility of suffering, creates fear.

Marked symbols of security: healthcare and homeownership.  Not surprisingly, the biggest conflicts in today’s political theater. Setting aside the healthcare debate, consider student debts and housing. Separately, the issues make sense, but the new rhetoric about college graduates and homeownership is getting tedious. Mostly, I think, because this sense of entitlement that comes with education seems fairly new and unjustified.  

The “outrage” that college graduates cannot buy homes is also a feeding frenzy for the media, to remind us of how terrible things have become.

But, why is it that we have a belief that everyone who went to college or who has a higher education deserves to own a home? I have  a lot of friends who own homes—many  have been working since they were 18-years-old and never went to college. They often work what are considered “blue collar” jobs, but they go to work and keep up with their mortgage payments. My 23-year-old cousin just bought a home only a year out of nursing school. There is a reason: she never left her parents’ house and has been saving since she started working when she was 15-years-old.

She probably isn’t reading Foucault on the weekends or day dreaming about some academic conference in Paris, but she owns a nice piece of property in Georgia and she works her ass off.

Choices.

The idea that people can take out $150,000 of student loan debt and that these folks deserve status and homeownership, simply by the act of going to school is not only ludicrous, but self-serving. You went to law school and have debt? The illusion that you would get rich fell through? Get over it and go to work like everyone else.

I am one of the law school student loan “debtors,” but I have always been comfortable with the fact that my “investment” was in education, not property. They are not the same thing, and I am really not sure when one equalled the other. If anything, I would say that they have opposite ends. But, then again, I may be a liberal daydreamer.

Still, education is a resource, not a product. 

My student loans are debts that I agreed to pay, nothing that someone forced me into. I signed the papers and I’ve never been surprised when I see that yes, I still owe the federal government money. Let’s not forget that the federal government subsidized my tuition and rent for three years.

Again, not the tragedy of my life.

Another thing I am not going to cry about: I owe the IRS. As a contractor, it has been difficult to pay out of pocket the nearly 40 percent of back taxes. My entire life I have been scared of the “tax man,” but have you ever been on the phone with the IRS? They are actually pretty nice and forgiving. Some of them even have southern drawls. I called them last week and they agreed to give me two months off of paying my installment because of the accident.

It’s just money and I pay them. Begrudgingly, I fork over the fees and interest because my payments are late, but nothing surprising. It’s debt. And America knows all about it.

The failed American dream or the “tragedy” of renting, foreclosure and anything non-homeownership invokes a fear. Fear that the life you are living is just not good enough and will never be secure. Folks like Suze Orman substantiate that fear: “How much is in your savings? What is your net value? Have you started a college account for your newborn?” The media perpetuates the idea that no amount is good enough, that our paychecks are never enough to keep up with demand, a demand that is ultimately, self-induced.

Either the world is entirely bleak—or we have created a worldview, where nothing is good enough. If 80% of Americans feel they are in need of “financial overhaul,” it is because the chaos of the market creates its own demand. Work creates stress. We need money for financial advisors and attorneys. Our gym memberships are an investment in stress-management.

Everyone profits from the perpetual feeling of dissatisfaction.

Money buys security. Money buys protection. This is still an illusion. I wonder how our grandparents, who actually did have legitimate reasons to fear the economy, would answer the question, “What does it mean to be ‘secure’?” And if we ever reach that status, will it really save us from stress, disease, boredom? …all of the potential we see in our bank accounts…

I am grateful, at the end of the day, when there are enough eggs to make an omelet, that someone gets paid to pick up my trash, that my water is running, that the mailman, though he has a violent way of stuffing mailboxes, always smiles when he sees me.

Things are not so bad.

What we don’t want to become, is that Audi-driving woman, who can’t fathom the idea of a collision, an “incident,” forgetting the very fact that she is flying around at 70 miles per hour in an object constructed of steel and leather, shipped over an ocean and ignited with a key. Taking for granted technological human advances, but also the very reality, that yes, shit happens, and that no savings account, or stock portfolio or 401k is going to insulate you from what you are living—life.