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Authors: Jenny Mollen
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“Oh MY GOD! FUUUUCK! ” he’d howl, then do a Chaplin-esque pratfall and writhe on the ground in agony.
Sometimes I’d laugh at his act, but for the most part, I ignored him and charged ahead—the same way my mom was now doing with me. I never intended it to be hurtful. It just never occurred to me to make a big deal of it. He was
fine.
And he didn’t have AIDS .
“Babe?!” he called again, then jumped out of bed and scrambled toward me.
“Yes?” I said, lying on my back now, staring up at my mom.
I explained to Jason that I was too afraid to stand on my leg for fear of damaging it further, but I needed to pee and hadn’t wanted to wake him. I still needed to pee, but Sid was demanding he be removed from his crib and placed back on my boob. So Jason grabbed Sid while I climbed up my mom’s body like a toddler and used her shoulder as a crutch to the toilet.
“This really blows,” my mom said.
“Is there a doctor on the island who could look at me?” I sat on the toilet, defeated.
“Only on Maui.”
Maui was a forty-five-minute boat ride away. The idea of packing up my leg and heading over to have some nurse practitioner give me an Ace bandage seemed like a giant waste of time. The other pitfall of having parents in the medical profession is that you become a know-it-all medicine snob. Whenever I needed a prescription my dad would write it for me. If I wanted to see a specialist I got right in. I was quick to throw around medical jargon: subcutaneous, anaphylaxis, hyperlipidemia. And aside from the one time I offered my high school boyfriend’s father a Xanax instead of a Zantac, I was fairly adept. In many ways I feel like my entire life has been building to that one watershed moment where I get to storm through a crowd of concerned citizens and say, “Clear the way, people, I’m a doctor’s daughter!”
From the bathroom my mom helped me outside to her new teak lawn chairs, where Sid was anxiously waiting. I nursed him and told Jason that I wanted to hold off on seeing a doctor. The plan instead was to head over to the hotel and ask for a pair of crutches.
Jason changed Sid’s clothes and then obligingly changed mine.
“Chop-chop, Jen!” my mom called out from her personal golf cart, urgent, like an ambulance driver with a half-dead passenger in the backseat.
“I had the governor ripped out of this thing while we were in San Diego last month,” she confessed as she peeled down the road toward the hotel.
“What’s a governor?”
“You know, the brake that keeps you from hauling ass? Fuck that!”
She gunned it over a pothole just to prove her point. Sometimes I would look at her and wish I could be as cool. At her core she would always be that recalcitrant sixteen-year-old girl. The one who endured belt beatings from a brutal mother for sneaking out to see Led Zeppelin. The one who rode topless on the back of a Harley, protesting the war. For as much as she’d hurt me, my deepest desire was still to merge with her, to fully gain her acceptance and finally be let in. But like all the pretty, popular girls of grade schools past, she was always two steps ahead of me, with blonder hair and newer shoes, forever evading my grasp.
My mom parked her golf cart directly in front of the valet and told him not to touch it. She assured him she’d be right back; he naively believed her.
I sat in the cart with one leg propped up, staring at the sun-kissed surfer kid in his wrinkled polo shirt as my mom scampered into the lobby, looking for the hotel manager. I was used to my mom doing as she pleased, regardless of rules. One of the Moc’s most notable quotes was “Rules don’t apply to me,” and for the most part, they seemed not to. She parked overnight in twenty-minute loading zones, cut airport security lines, and scored me a fake ID at fifteen so I could, as she put it, “continue hanging out with me.” There was something so thrilling about being a part of her capers—being
“Oh MY GOD! FUUUUCK! ” he’d howl, then do a Chaplin-esque pratfall and writhe on the ground in agony.
Sometimes I’d laugh at his act, but for the most part, I ignored him and charged ahead—the same way my mom was now doing with me. I never intended it to be hurtful. It just never occurred to me to make a big deal of it. He was
fine.
And he didn’t have AIDS .
“Babe?!” he called again, then jumped out of bed and scrambled toward me.
“Yes?” I said, lying on my back now, staring up at my mom.
I explained to Jason that I was too afraid to stand on my leg for fear of damaging it further, but I needed to pee and hadn’t wanted to wake him. I still needed to pee, but Sid was demanding he be removed from his crib and placed back on my boob. So Jason grabbed Sid while I climbed up my mom’s body like a toddler and used her shoulder as a crutch to the toilet.
“This really blows,” my mom said.
“Is there a doctor on the island who could look at me?” I sat on the toilet, defeated.
“Only on Maui.”
Maui was a forty-five-minute boat ride away. The idea of packing up my leg and heading over to have some nurse practitioner give me an Ace bandage seemed like a giant waste of time. The other pitfall of having parents in the medical profession is that you become a know-it-all medicine snob. Whenever I needed a prescription my dad would write it for me. If I wanted to see a specialist I got right in. I was quick to throw around medical jargon: subcutaneous, anaphylaxis, hyperlipidemia. And aside from the one time I offered my high school boyfriend’s father a Xanax instead of a Zantac, I was fairly adept. In many ways I feel like my entire life has been building to that one watershed moment where I get to storm through a crowd of concerned citizens and say, “Clear the way, people, I’m a doctor’s daughter!”
From the bathroom my mom helped me outside to her new teak lawn chairs, where Sid was anxiously waiting. I nursed him and told Jason that I wanted to hold off on seeing a doctor. The plan instead was to head over to the hotel and ask for a pair of crutches.
Jason changed Sid’s clothes and then obligingly changed mine.
“Chop-chop, Jen!” my mom called out from her personal golf cart, urgent, like an ambulance driver with a half-dead passenger in the backseat.
“I had the governor ripped out of this thing while we were in San Diego last month,” she confessed as she peeled down the road toward the hotel.
“What’s a governor?”
“You know, the brake that keeps you from hauling ass? Fuck that!”
She gunned it over a pothole just to prove her point. Sometimes I would look at her and wish I could be as cool. At her core she would always be that recalcitrant sixteen-year-old girl. The one who endured belt beatings from a brutal mother for sneaking out to see Led Zeppelin. The one who rode topless on the back of a Harley, protesting the war. For as much as she’d hurt me, my deepest desire was still to merge with her, to fully gain her acceptance and finally be let in. But like all the pretty, popular girls of grade schools past, she was always two steps ahead of me, with blonder hair and newer shoes, forever evading my grasp.
My mom parked her golf cart directly in front of the valet and told him not to touch it. She assured him she’d be right back; he naively believed her.
I sat in the cart with one leg propped up, staring at the sun-kissed surfer kid in his wrinkled polo shirt as my mom scampered into the lobby, looking for the hotel manager. I was used to my mom doing as she pleased, regardless of rules. One of the Moc’s most notable quotes was “Rules don’t apply to me,” and for the most part, they seemed not to. She parked overnight in twenty-minute loading zones, cut airport security lines, and scored me a fake ID at fifteen so I could, as she put it, “continue hanging out with me.” There was something so thrilling about being a part of her capers—being
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