Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton Read Free Book Online Page A

ballerina. When I transformed into a well-endowed teenager he continued to instruct me in what was right and wrong, who was good, the girls I could play with, how ladies should dress, how my hair should be combed off my face, and which people were not acceptable acquaintances. Life took on a bleak pallor in our empty mansion. Growing increasingly argumentative and surly, I pulled farther away from my enigmatic mother. I had so many questions and none seemed to be adequately answered. Why, I asked her, was she so bothered by my playing with Jewish girls? They didn’t seem any different to me. They also had pretty brown curly hair and their parents really liked me. But Mama was troubled. “Why do you like playing with Megan Hesterman and Carol Davis more than the other girls?” she’d ask. I didn’t know what Jews believed … how could I? I wasn’t one.
    As Mama continued to fret and query me, I became more uncivil. “Why, are you a Nazi?” I’d shout. I began to argue constantly with the sweet, soft-spoken woman I had once adored, especially when she deferred to Papa about requests I had, like sleeping over at a friend’s house. “Can’t you make any decisions on your own?” I’d yell. I felt betrayed by her for reasons I did not understand and I was confused by my wild anger. I could tell when Mama had been crying after my tirades. She tried to talk with me. She would pack picnics and we would drive into the countryside, just the two of us, to talk, but the moment we were alone I would attack her again or refuse to speak, just shrugging my shoulders.
    In 1968, my older brothers and sister were again causing distress for me. Tom had passed his Ph.D. qualifying exams at Harvard, Annalisa had married a biochemistry professor at University of California at Berkeley, and Larry was involved in an organization doing humanitarian work. I was unable to compete. I wasn’t interested in my classes and got poor grades. Unable and unwilling to emulate the achievements of my siblings, I was losing my status in a family of great achievers.
    It had become almost impossible to please my father, so I learned to deceive him instead. Mama, on the other hand, was becoming wise to my cunning ways and confronted me on several occasions. I believed I was unfairly forsaken and began to search for attention elsewhere, at any cost.

2
Exiled
    My perception that I was an outcast, the misunderstood underdog, began to shape all my actions. I took my uncontrolled anger about things I could not articulate outside my home.
    Formerly the teacher’s pet, I suddenly found myself in detention classes after school, with the tough kids. I forged tardy slips and absence notes, cut classes and played cards with my new and more accepting friends, the Hell’s Angels, whom I had met through my boyfriend. I dyed my curly brown hair raven black and straightened it. I stole Southern Comfort and other hard liquor from my parents’ liquor cabinet and skillfully refilled what I had taken with water. While other kids experimented with smoking dope, I had already graduated to harder narcotics. With my lunch money I was purchasing speed, red-downers, and mescaline. I smoked opium with college kids at lunchtime and dropped acid in math class. My report card showed only D’s and F’s, but for my presentation to my parents I was able to modify the F’s into A’s and, with greater difficulty, the D’s into B’s. Before ninth grade was over, I had been suspended for forging a teacher’s name on a hall pass, I had run away, attempted to convince Papa that my gangster boyfriend needed our financial help so he could go to college, slashed my wrists, called a 911 suicide hotline (but hung up when I heard my parents trying to eavesdrop), and successfully persuaded several friends’ parents to let me come live with them since mine just didn’t understand me.
    I also began to write stories, poems, and letters to my distant parents. In 1966, I wrote:
… Dark