Finding Himself

The last time Mark saw his sister, she had stopped at his parent’s house with a shaved head and her girlfriend, a big bold black butch named Bessie, who did most of the talking. Bessie called his sister Julietta like a Mexican: Hueyetta, although her name was Julia.

“Will you be in town long?” said Mark’s mother, placing chips and dip on the coffee table.

“We’re just coming up from Mexico and going back to the Bay area. We’ve been gone for a few years; living with the Mexicans. The men there were all hot, hot for Julietta. Julietta shaved her head to keep the boys away. They were paying her too much attention. She couldn’t even think straight. Now she’s thinking straight,” she said. “Aren’t you, my Julietta?”

Julietta smiled.

His mother sat on her couch and looked uncomfortable in her own living room.

“Have you known Julia, er, Julietta, for long?”

“A few years,” said Bessie. “She was coming out of work one night and a man was following her. He had seen her dancing and wanted to get to know her better, if you know what I mean. I got in his face and he didn’t bother her no more.”

“You were in a show, Julia?” asked Izzy’s mom.

“She was the star of the show,” answered Bessie, “and making good money. But the men were driving her crazy. I said her, ‘Honey, there’s more to this world than men. Come with me to Mexico.’”

“And so you went?” the mom said sweetly.

“And so we went.”

Mark’s big sister had run off when she was very young to Haight-Ashberry to become a flower child less than a week after the family moved to California. It seemed sudden at the time, but it wasn’t. She had begun to dress up like a hippie for months prior. His mom was preoccupied with her new romance and Mark was ensconced in the protective self-centeredness of boyhood and barely noticed. All the while, his sister groomed herself, trying on a peasant blouse, long, straight hair, and going barefoot, as one would put on a Halloween costume. She tried on new words, too, whispering them in her little brother’s ear as if they were planning a jailbreak, turning him against the establishment. “Do your own thing… Today’s the first day of the rest of your life…You’ve got to find yourself.” When they drove across the country to their new home, her head turned at hundreds of hitchhiking kids wearing the same nonconformist uniform. The news on the radio was all about the summer of love. His stepfather repeated Governor Ronald Reagan’s joke: a hippie dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah. Meanwhile, a cheetah was in the back seat, unbeknownst. She rolled her eyes and kept her peace. When they arrived and unpacked their suitcases, she never unpacked hers and no one noticed that, either.

Then at the breakfast table one day, Mark’s mom said, “What are you going to do today, honey?”

His sister answered, “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll hitchhike to San Francisco.”

They had a good laugh. “Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” said his stepfather.

Mark chewed his Captain Crunch and read the cereal box, his stepfather folded the newspaper and went to work, his mother collected the dishes, and his sister stepped out the door and put out her thumb, leaving her packed suitcase behind.

A few weeks later, his stepfather submitted to his mother’s pleas to go to San Francisco to find her. Mark fidgeted in the back seat as they drove past avocado fields and hitchhiking kids. This time the parents were turning their heads. They crept up and down the streets of the Haight; Mark staring out the back window, his stepfather staring out the front window, and his mother staring with her flowered dress, searching for Julia’s face amid the throngs of feral youth. They parked the car and combed Golden Gate Park. Some offered them pot; others, flowers; others, acid. “Don’t touch anything they give you,” commanded his stepfather. They found his sister sitting with a grown man, feeling his face like a blind girl, her expression blank, and her hair, filled with dying blossoms.

When they entered her line of sight, she smiled a vacant smile and said to the man. “Cool, man, I see my mom and brother, and they’re all different colors.”

Mark’s mom snatched her by the hand. “Julia, you’re coming home,” she said.

Julia screamed, freed herself, and pulled away.

“What’re you doing?” said the man.

“She’s my daughter. She’s coming home with me.”

“Mom?”

“She’s not going anywhere unless she wants to. She doesn’t belong to you.”

“She’s fourteen.”

“Mom, what’re you doing here?”

“Quit hassling her,” said the man. “She’s just trying to find herself.”

Julia’s eyes darted and she screamed again, as if she was witnessing a massacre.

“Look buddy,” said the stepfather, approaching the man ominously. “She’s just a child, half your age.”

“Those are just numbers.”

The other hippies closed ranks around the stepfather. “Everyone’s freaking out now. Look man, you do your thing, let us do ours.”

Julia ran off into the woods. “Julia,” screamed her mother. “Julia… Julia… Julia.” The man ran off after her.

“She’s having a bad trip, man,” said a hippie. “Let us take care of it. You’re just making things worse.”

“You’re freaks,” screamed the mother. “You’re freaks, you’re freaks, you’re freaks.”

The stepfather held her. “C’mon let’s go to the car. We’ll get her. We’ll wait for her.”

They sat in the car for hours, the mother crying, the stepfather muttering, and Mark fidgeting, until it got dark. Then they patrolled the streets of the Haight, looking again for Julia. “I’m tired,” whined Mark.

His mom turned around and looked him straight in the eye. “Promise me something,” she said. “Promise me you’ll never do this. Promise me you’ll never run off and find yourself.”

Mark started crying. He could see how much it hurt her. “I promise, Mom. I won’t find myself.”

“Promise me,” she repeated and fell to weeping again. He continued crying, as well, until he fell asleep. When he awoke, they were pulling in the driveway at home.

Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice. Read more of his fiction series, The Narrative Imperative and other stuff