Читать книгу Making Waves - Chris Epting - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

Growing Up

I can still smell that old army tent in the backyard. My father, who had taught swimming while in the army in Hawaii, had rigged one of his old tents into a makeshift swimming pool behind our modest house in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk. It was musty and oily and really sort of rank. Its odor was distinctive, especially when the tent was filled with water. It could hardly be called a swimming pool. It was just a place where my two brothers and I splashed around.

Our house in Norwalk was located in a fairly typical blue-collar neighborhood for the 1950s—a three-bedroom, one-bathroom, single-story suburban dwelling. Any person coming up the walk to the front door would see the dining room table with open bibles and a Russian samovar. The people living here must have been moral and upstanding, right? Wrong. At least, not the parents.

My brothers and I rode a bus to school, which wasn’t that far from the house, but there was a busy street and two cow pastures to pass by. The house was in a relatively rural area (today, like a lot of Southern California communities, the area around the neighborhood has been heavily developed).

I always hung around my two brothers—Jack, one and a half years older than me, and Bill, two years younger. I always felt like Bill was a burden, but I’m sure Jack thought the same of me. We would mostly explore the neighborhood, riding bikes, skateboarding, digging in the dirt, and, of course, fighting. But our parents fought a lot, too, and we were terrified that they would get a divorce. At night, Jack would say, “If they get a divorce, we’re all going to have to go live in a foster home and those places are next to hell.” So we would huddle together, scared, and ride out the storm of their arguments.

Given how gray and shapeless our family life was, I suppose that little pool in the backyard was actually pretty important. It was a chance for us to have a little fun at home, a respite from the usual dreariness and sometimes outright misery that defined my earliest years.

My parents, Jack and Vera Babashoff, were of Russian heritage, and they were true to the stereotype. They were cold and stoic and never really communicated with me or my brothers. It was not a loving, warm, and nurturing environment. On the contrary, it was cold, distant, and, at times, quite destructive.

They were part of the Russian Molokan Church, a strict and unforgiving faith that was taken very seriously in our household. If my brothers or I ever spoke one negative word toward each other, punishments were swift and sometimes cruel. I’m talking about basic disagreements between siblings. None of it was allowed. Understanding the rules early in life, the three of us tiptoed through our childhood, trying not to upset our parents.

My mother was the daughter of a strict preacher. She never really had anything nice to say about the man, only about how he really had nothing to do with her. She grew up on farms in Northern California and in Oregon. I remember her telling us that she had to walk miles in the snow just to catch the school bus. I know that’s like a joke today, but when she said it, she wasn’t being funny. It was real. After she finished high school, she and my dad were married.

When my mom was pregnant with my younger brother, the doctors found a growth in her neck. They removed it, but her health was never the same again. After that, she became addicted to pain pills and whatever else she could get the doctors to give her. From that point on, it was as if she lived in a big, puffy cloud. She was always kind of out of it, and pill bottles were always scattered all over the place. I think it was partly her addiction that prevented her from really being much of a parent.

My father was one of seven boys who were all born in the 1920s. He grew up in Los Angeles and started working as a machinist at Bethlehem Steel when he was just sixteen years old. He never finished high school, but always lied on his résumé about his education and age. In fact, he rarely told the truth, it seems.

My parents spoke Russian when they were hiding things from us. My brothers and I were never taught the language, so we never had any idea what they were talking about. I remember once in the sixth grade, all of the kids were discussing their heritage. Most of the kids in my class had hybrid origins—Swedish-German or French-English or Irish-Italian. I was all Russian, and that was horrible. Once, all the kids in my class called me a “commie.”

At home, being Russian was hugely important to my mom. We went to a church that only allowed Russians on Sundays. On Mondays, we went to a Boys and Girls Club for Russians only. At home, we were forbidden to eat anything that was not kosher. We would pray before dinner in Russian. On family holidays, we spent time with all of our extended Russian family members.

An aunt and uncle of mine had some money, and their home had a beautiful swimming pool that looked like something out of an Elvis Presley movie in Palm Springs. The pool was surrounded by beautiful palm trees, and her home was a classic mid-century modern design. I just loved going there. My family also frequently took short and affordable trips either to local beaches or nearby lakes.

My brothers and I loved the water. Even though my dad had been a swimming teacher, he was not the one pushing us to be swimmers. That was my mother, who had such an extreme fear of the water that she wanted to make sure none of us followed in her footsteps. She was always panicked that something would happen to us in the water, which was why she enrolled us in swimming classes early on.

I was eight years old when I started taking swimming lessons at Cerritos College, which wasn’t too far from our house. While I loved playing around in the water, I wasn’t too crazy about the lessons. To get us used to staying underwater, they would make us hold on to what was called a “shepherd’s crook,” which was basically a long pole with a hook on the end of it. While kids held onto the hook, the instructor pushed the pole to the bottom of the pool and held them down there. I absolutely hated it. Whenever I had to do it, it made my ears really uncomfortable, so I would shimmy up the pole as far as I could to get closer to the surface. This always made the instructors really mad.

I also wasn’t comfortable with the fact that, because I was just a beginning swimmer, I was placed in a group with five-year-olds. That was so embarrassing for me. They were practically toddlers. But it was what my mother wanted me to do, so I didn’t dare speak up. That was the rule. I would just cry.

Since I hated taking swimming lessons there, we switched to the Norwalk High School pool, where the classes were regulated by the Red Cross. In fact, my very first race happened at the end of that summer, when I swam against another girl in a single twenty-five-yard length. I hadn’t even learned side breathing yet, so as we were racing, whenever it was time for me to breathe, I would stop, dog paddle for a moment, take a breath, watch her pass me, and then keep swimming to try and catch up. As ridiculous as that sounds, I actually won the race. But before I even had a moment to enjoy and savor my accomplishment, I was shocked to see the little girl’s father rush over to the edge of the pool, grab her out of the water by her arm, and begin yelling at her for losing to me. “How can you be slow?” he yelled. “She’s not a swimmer. You’re a swimmer! Start acting like it!”

Wow, I thought to myself, is that going to happen to me if I ever lose a race?

My older brother, Jack, was a really strong swimmer. When my mom decided to sign us up for a club team, the coach wanted Jack, not me. But my mother always made me part of the package and explained to those in charge that if they didn’t take me, then they couldn’t have Jack. It was the first of many times that this would happen in my life. Nobody ever wanted me, but they wanted Jack so badly that I got tossed in as the add-on. It was crushing for me was to have to stand there and listen to my mother explain to the coach that, no matter how much they didn’t want me, they still had to take me.

When I was about nine years old, we joined a team called the Buena Park Splashers. Again, they desperately wanted my brother, but in order to have him on board, they also had to take me. I could see how mad it made the coaches to have my mother forcing me on them, but they would always bite the bullet and allow me to swim on the team.

I was a fairly good academic student around this time and actually got to skip the fourth grade, which meant that every day I would be walking to Norwalk Brethren, a private school nearby. It was maybe a half-mile away or so, which wasn’t too far, but we had neighbors who always worried about me. My parents showed no concern, but more than one person living on our street would always tell me when they saw me, “Shirley, you have to be careful when you walk by yourself. You can’t ever talk to strangers. You never know what might happen if you do. You really need to be careful.”

I always listened to them. I understood their concerns. To my neighbors, the streets were potentially dangerous and unkind. But had they known what was happening in my own home, they probably would’ve called the police. At least, I hope they would have.

I don’t know when it started. I didn’t know what it was. But I knew I didn’t like it.

I’m not completely sure when I first became aware of the fact that my father was molesting me. Of course, by the time I was in the third and fourth grade, I knew exactly what was happening. He would creep into my room late at night and wake me up. Then, quickly and quietly, he would remove my underwear.

I told him to stop, but he said things like “This is what daddies do.” Each time I told him no, he said, “It’s what daughters and daddies do.” I told him I would tell Mom, and he said she would call me a liar.

I don’t know how my mom didn’t hear me cry. When I was five years old, I said to her, “Daddy comes into my room at night and touches me.” My father was right—she called me a liar and told me to never say that again. Then she got the bible out and made me read the fifth commandment: Obey your mother and father.

Later on in life, she would say to me, “I don’t know what happened. You were always daddy’s little girl until you turned about five years old. Then you didn’t want anything to do with him.” Well of course not. That’s when I had realized what he was doing to me.

That’s the disgusting monster that my father was. I was so afraid at night. I kept thinking that if anyone found out, I might have to go to a foster home, just like my brother had warned. So I went on, never knowing why it was happening to me.

This is the hardest thing to talk about. But I couldn’t write this book without including it, knowing how many women and children he has hurt. To portray him as something else would be a lie.

It went on for years. I asked my mom to put a lock on my door, but she accused me of trying to hide something. Yes, I was trying to hide something. She was right. I was trying to hide myself.

It was so strange, because I would rarely see my father due to his work hours. He worked all the time. Not just at his job at the plant, but at a drive-in movie theater, too. Yet this was how he chose to spend our time together. He’d wait until the house was dark and quiet. When it would happen, I remember not allowing my mind to even try to process what was taking place. I would lose myself in some other world and imagine myself in some far-off, tranquil pool, by myself—away from the monster that was violating me. I had no other escape.

My own father.

Looking back on it today and analyzing my earliest years, I am fairly sure these horrors began taking place shortly after I was born. When I think about my parents’ behavior, it speaks to a very dark and haunting pattern in my life.

I remember when I was in the first grade, there was a teacher who was concerned about me. Even though these were the days when society was far more oblivious about things like child molestation, this teacher of mine must have sensed that something was wrong with me. I’m sure there are certain telltale signs that a smart teacher can pick up on and begin to get suspicious about.

She called my mother down to the school to have a little discussion about me and what might be happening at home. As I sat there, nervous and biting my nails (which was becoming a bad habit for me), my mother denied anything of the sort. “Mrs. Babashoff,” my teacher began, gently and diplomatically, “is everything okay at home? Shirley gets withdrawn at times, and distant. She’s a very bright young girl. We’re here to help if we can.”

“There is nothing wrong in our home,” my mother insisted adamantly. “She’s just shy. And I don’t appreciate any suggestion that something is wrong in our household. We work very hard at raising our family, my husband and me.”

On the way home, my mother just glared at me in the car, as if I’d had anything to do with setting up the meeting.

I remember once in the fifth grade, I was in the school bathroom by myself when a friend came in. I decided to confide in her about what was happening at home, to see if this was something other people knew about. Stammering once or twice, I finally choked out the words: “My dad takes my underwear off. He tells me that’s what all dads do. And then he touches me. And other things. He says all dads do this. Does your dad do that?”

Instantly, I was sorry that I had said anything at all. Understandably, my friend became very agitated and started yelling at me, “You can’t say that, shut up, that can’t be true, I don’t believe you!”

I regretted telling her, but I was so confused. I just needed to reach out to someone, anyone, yet I was too scared to speak to adults about it. God only knows what my mother would have done to me, had she known I even brought it up to my friend in the bathroom.

Somehow or another, I managed to get up and go to school each day and also keep swimming in a variety of clubs during those early years. As a child, I guess you just get sort of numb. The whole situation seemed so futile that I decided there really was no way out and the best course of action was simply to focus on things I could control. Again, this was long before the days when people looked for things like this or when kids had outlets they could go to and cry for help.

Later on in life, when Sports Illustrated did a feature about me around the time of the 1976 Summer Olympics, the writer came and stayed with us for a couple of days and wrote the following:

They are closer and stronger than the Waltons. They go to church on Sunday and visit their grandparents regularly. They say grace at meals and eschew spirits. The children do as they are told and use no bad language. The parents are self-sacrificing and, as is said nowadays, supportive. Everybody helps out and there are few complaints. Vera and Jack Babashoff are frugal, honest, industrious, and the source of the strength that helps set Shirley apart from her peers.

There was more, about how hardworking and decent and wonderful my parents were. It was just another example of how different the world was at that point. A little research on the writer’s part might have revealed many compelling things.

When I was thirteen years old, I’d had enough. When he came into my room, I decided to just keep kicking him until he left me alone. He never came into my room again. Later, my mom told me, he became a predator to my younger sister. She also told me that she had threatened him with divorce if he ever did it again. But she never followed up on it. Talk is cheap.