Host: Meg Bowles
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Meg: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Today, we have four stories navigating childhood, surviving loss, enduring the trials of love and understanding the things that haunt us most.
[cheers and applause]
Our first story comes from Talaya Moore. She told it at the Aaron Davis Hall in New York City. Here's Talaya, live at The Moth.
Talaya: [00:00:39] My obsession with Bratz began when I was eight years old and I was gifted one for my birthday. So, Bratz are dolls, kind of like Barbies, but better. They didn't have these unrealistic dimensions. Instead, they stood about 10 inches tall with these huge heads, full lips, curvy physique and they had the coolest makeup. And also, they had these glittery punk rock boots that I loved.
I knew I was hooked and I wanted more. But I could not ask my mom for more, because we were homeless. We had been homeless for over a year, and she had bigger worries, like, if she had enough money for train fare or food, what borough we would end up sleeping in and if I had a clean uniform for school. So, I knew that if I wanted these dolls, I would have to get them myself.
So, in the shelter, I started selling paper fans that I made and decorated to the guards for 75 cents. They would give me more money, because they saw I was hustling. I would take that money and buy pens, pencils, loose leaf and candy and sell it to the kids at school for a markup price, [audience laughter] which I was good at. And I also braided hair in the shelter.
When I saved up enough money, my mom took me to the big toy store on Times Square. When I arrived, I ran straight to the Bratz section, searching the shelves for Sasha. Sasha was the Bratz doll that I really wanted. I had read about her in a pamphlet from the previous doll I had got, and she was this aspiring businesswoman, and she just seemed the coolest and I wanted her. After searching and scanning the shelves and not seeing her, I asked the sales rep if he had any more in the back. He said, “Sorry, kid, she's popular, high in demand, all sold out.” And that day, I left with Jade.
I was disappointed, but-- [audience laughter] I was disappointed, but I was still happy to leave with a Bratz doll. It had been over a year of living in the EAU, which was short for the emergency assisted unit. Me and my mother had been waiting for overnight placement. And it was Christmas Eve. I was sitting there and it was children screaming and making noise, and I was tired. I was hungry. I had been there since 08:00 AM and it was now going on 08:00 PM. And just as I was about to turn to complain, they called us to the triage window for our placement.
As we approached the window, it's this thick glass in between my mother and me and the worker. It reminded me of a check cashing place or quarantine, like, we were kept away from all things clean. Once we received our overnight placement, we went back to sit down. And then, I heard this uproar, this cheering, this chanting from the kids in the rooms next door. So, I peeked my head out the doorway to see what was going on, like, what the fuss was about. I saw the guards dragging these clear plastic bags down the hall. And then, I realized we were going to get donated toys, that it was Christmas Eve. I had almost forgot.
See, I had been here already. I'd been here last Christmas and I knew how things went. We would all be in one room, called one by one to receive a toy. So, as the guards were dragging the bags, I noticed, as clear as day, untouched, unwrapped, a Bratz doll. I knew I just had to have it. I honestly felt I deserved it. I had all As and Bs in school. I stayed out of trouble. I even helped my mom fold clothes at the laundromat, so I knew I had to be first in line.
When the guards came to my room, I jumped up. And they said, “Step right up.” I died digging through those bags. You weren't even allowed to do that. You were supposed to just step up, get one toy and keep it pushing. But these were the same guards that would buy my paper fans, and they were cool enough to let me search. As I'm going through the third bag, I'm digging and I feel the outline of that Bratz doll, [audience laughter] that box, I feel it and I pick it up, and there she was, Sasha. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
I held her up like they did Simba in The Lion King. [audience laughter] And tears of joy ran down my cheeks. Sasha was wearing this ice blue princess gown with the tiara to match. She looked magical like Brandy when she starred in that Cinderella movie featuring Whitney Houston. [audience laughter] I just felt I had met a celebrity, I was starstruck. Like, I met Tyra Banks or Raven-Symoné. [audience laughter] Sasha was beautiful. She was black and I was Black. She was gorgeous. She had this long, dark brown hair, and her clothes were the best out of all the Bratz.
And in the pamphlet that she came with, they told me things about her, like, how she wanted her own urban clothing line, how she wanted to be a music producer. She had two parents and her own room. She just seemed she had it all and I wanted that. I had this carry case where I could keep only one Bratz doll in, and I always chose to put Sasha in it. Inside, it was blue velvet and a spot just for Sasha. And on the other side was her wardrobe where I kept all her clothes neatly stacked. It was like her room. Sometimes I would pretend it was my room. And for a second, I felt like the other third graders in my class had a room and a closet full of clothes. It was me and Sasha's world.
It had been nearly two years of staying in the EAU, two years of waiting, two years of being denied permanent housing, and I was tired. Finally, we were moving to a semi-permanent placement called the Ellerton. Inside the Ellerton, I had one room. It had a bunk bed, a half-top stove, a mini fridge, a dresser and a bathroom. A lot of the times, I sat in the hallway and I would with other kids, but most of the time, I played alone with my dolls. And next door lived this girl, and she always wanted to play with me and my Bratz dolls. But I didn't let her because I saw how she treated her toys, and I didn't need her messing up my girls. [audience laughter]
One day, I came home after school and immediately ran to the dresser where I kept my dolls. As I'm approaching the dresser, I noticed they were all gone. Sasha was gone, my Bratz were gone. I began to panic. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest, like pins and needles all throughout my body. Me and my mom searched the room looking for the dolls. I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed her phone and dialed 911. [audience laughter] I said, “Hurry, come quick. We've been robbed. They took everything. 1/10 Morningside.”
After I hung up, my mom's looking at me in disbelief, like, “Did you just call the cops?” [audience laughter] But in my head, these are my girls. They're missing. Like, “Where's the Amber Alert? [audience laughter] When the officers arrived, I was just standing there, eyes bloodshot red, T-shirt soaking wet, nose dripping. And I said, “It was her. I knew she took my Bratz doll. It was the girl next door.” So, they started their investigation. [audience laughter] They knocked on the door and questioned her. She said no, that she didn't have my dolls, but I knew she had my dolls. They said they couldn't help me any further, because they didn't have a warrant to search. One of the officers bent over and said, “I'm sure they'll turn up. They're just dolls.”
Just dolls? They were more than just dolls to me. They were my family. Especially Sasha, she was my road dog, my ride or die, my best friend. She was the first to know about my crush on Adolphus Butts in the third grade [audience laughter] and how he looked like milk chocolate. She was there with me that night I slept in my coat, and my shoes in this nasty motel and I held her tight the whole night. She was also there when I wanted to jump into bed with my mom, but there wasn't enough space and I would hold on to her.
That night before bed, I was at the top bunk and I just kept looking at the dresser, and it was empty. And I felt empty. I went to bed with my pillow wet and I woke up with my pillow wet. My mom asked me what I wanted for breakfast, but I didn't have an appetite. Instead, I sat in the hallway almost all day between my door and her door, waiting for her to come out, waiting to see if she had my girls in there.
Later that night, I got a knock on the door and there she was, standing there with an attitude, with a plastic bag full of my Bratz dolls. I didn't even have the energy to say anything. I just grabbed the bag, slammed the door and started to spill them on the bed and examine them. They looked like they had been through something awful. [audience laughter] They were all undressed and smelled of chicken grease. [audience laughter] So, I started to dress them and clothe them and put them back on that dresser.
As I was doing so, I was holding Sasha and I realized that when they were gone, that was the first time I actually really felt homeless. And having them back, I felt like home again. That’s when I realized Sasha was-- she there for me. These dolls were there for me. Everyone has someone or something that may get them through the day or even a year. And for me, for nine-year-old me, it was Sasha. It was this Black plastic professional businesswoman, who doubled as a superstar in my eyes. She was a constant reminder that in a world filled with uncertainty, there could be a happily ever after. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:11:50] Talaya Moore was 11 years old when her family received permanent housing. She said the first month she was so scared someone from the shelter system would come and say they'd actually made a mistake.
Talaya worked with Moth director, Jodi Powell, to craft her story. Jodi sat down with Talaya to discuss what it felt like to walk into her very own apartment for the first time.
Jodi: [00:12:17] I'm curious about the first moment you open the house and recognize that, all right, those are my neighbors, it should be the front of the building that I entera and this is home. What was that feeling like?
Talaya: [00:12:26] When we came into the apartment, they had re-did everything. So, it was new paint, new everything and I was just like, “Oh, my God, this is our apartment, and I have my own room.” But I didn't sleep in my own room for three months, because we only had one mattress. So, me, my mom and my little sister slept in one mattress in the living room. We had no furniture. We had nothing. But we were just so happy, like to just know that we don't have to go back to the shelter anymore, that we don't have to fight for a good placement to sleep or share a shower with multiple families.
The story is about the process of being homeless as a child and using your imagination to create your own safe space. And that's what the dolls did. It was like, my time to get away from knowing that I'm a kid in a shelter, knowing that every day I walk, I'm dragging a suitcase with me. Right before I go to school, I have to give the suitcase back to my mom, full of my clothes. Just knowing when you get out of school, you have to go sit back in a shelter. But knowing that you have your toys make you feel like just like a normal, you feel normal again.
So, I definitely feel like this story made me realize that I was a strong kid, a very strong kid. It prepared me for the real world for today. Definitely feel like I have a lot more stories that I can bring to life and find the deeper meanings to it.
Jodi: [00:13:54] Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much.
Talaya: [00:13:56] You're welcome.
[upbeat music]
Meg: [00:13:59] That was Telaya Moore talking with Moth director, Jodi Powell. You can find out more about Talaya on our website, themoth.org.
Coming up, trying to recapture a moment from the past, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:14:34] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg: [00:14:43] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next story comes from author Nikesh Shukla. He shared a story at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Nikesh, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Nikesh: [00:14:57] Hi. In 2010, I get a phone call from my cousin to tell me that my mum has died. And it comes as a bit of a shock, because two weeks ago, she had been perfectly healthy and then she got diagnosed with cancer and she passed away quite quickly. Grief is a funny thing, because me and my mum, we had a very difficult relationship. We both loved each other intensely, and the only way that we could really show our love for each other was by bickering all the time about really small things.
do what a lot of people do when they're faced with problems, and I move to another city. [audience laughter] I leave London, where I've grown up, and I move to Bristol to make a new home. London feels dead to me at this point, because my mum is no longer there. Something has changed. Something either within me or within my family. I just can't be here anymore.
The first time I walk into my new house in Bristol, the first thing I notice, is that it stinks. [audience laughter] It'd been occupied by some hippie students, because it is Bristol. And so, between growing pulses by the kitchen sink and burning incense and lots of lots of cats, it smells like it's a house that belongs to someone else. It definitely doesn't smell like my house. I don't feel like I'm at home. I'm caught in this in between. I'm mourning for my mum every single day. It feels like this heavy thing on top of me.
I moved cities and I don't know anyone and I just cannot wash the cat shit out of the carpet. [audience laughter] I go home to visit my dad. It's been a year since my mum died and there's one weekend where I go to visit him. Maybe it's because I've moved into a new space that I suddenly look at my childhood home with fresh eyes, but the moment I walk into my childhood home, it feels so familiar and yet it feels different. Because in the year since my mum has died, the house has been locked in stasis. There's still laundry in the basket left over from when she was alive. Her dirty clothes are still in the laundry basket. Her handbag is still at the bottom of the stairs. While it looks like my childhood home, it also looks very clean, like nothing has been used. It feels like a museum. Like, say, there was a recreation of our house in the Tate Modern or Tate Britain, which would be a weird thing to see. It feels like a museum to how things used to be.
The kitchen looks unused. The only place that has any life is the lounge area where my dad sits and listens to Bollywood songs really loudly. I go upstairs, and I'm lying on my childhood bed and something feels different this time, because when I grew up, my bedroom was on top of the kitchen. And so, I grew up with the sounds of Bollywood music and I grew up with the sounds of the pressure cooker and I grew up with the smell of onions and cumin and garlic and ginger and chilies in the air.
My mum was a firm believer in me and my sister removing our school uniforms every time we came home from school, because she didn't want our clothes to smell like the food that she was cooking. She said, “Don't give the white people ammunition. Just wear house clothes.” And we respected that. But I was lying there and everything felt stale. It didn't feel like my home. I'm already feeling unstuck, because Bristol doesn't feel like my home. And here I am on my childhood bed in my childhood home, and this doesn't feel like my home.
I'm hungry, and so I go downstairs and I look in the fridge and it's empty, except for cans of Fosters and ketchup, because my dad is now a singleton and his fridge reflects that. I open up the freezer, hoping for some inspiration. I see some Tupperware boxes of my mum's food in there, and I think, oh, my God, here is my mum's food. So, I take out a Tupperware box. It's got Handvo in it, which is this really delicious savory pancake. I put it in the microwave to defrost. I'm standing there waiting for it to heat up, and something happens to that really stale, sterile room. It starts to smell like my mom's kitchen again. The spices are making the air come alive and it feels like my home.
I eat the Handvo and it's delicious as it always was. I think I need to learn how to make this Handvo. I'm disappointed in myself, because every-- I had years and years of my mum trying to teach me how to cook like her. When I left home, she tried to get me to learn how to make basic chana masala and paneer and stuff like that. And I was just like, “Well, I'll just come home and get leftovers. It'll be fine.” And she was like, “No, I won't always be around.” I was an idiot and I never learned. I know that she was disappointed in that. And here I am now ruing those decisions. And I really want to know how to make Handvo.
I remember that my mum told me she got the recipe from Sala Masi. I haven't seen Sala Masi since my mum's funeral. So, knowing that my mum's handbag is at the bottom of the stairs, I go, I look through the handbag to find her address book, so I can phone Sala Masi and say, “Hey, Sala Masi, can you teach me how to make Handvo?” I find a stack of papers in my mum's handbag, and I open one of them and it's a shopping list. It has things like Weetabix and onions and cumin powder and chili and cheese and really mundane things that you get for the big shop [unintelligible 00:21:35].
But there's something about seeing my mum's handwriting that makes me crumble and makes me feel the heaviness crash over me again. Because seeing that ink on the page, that ink came from a pen that was connected to her fingers, that was connected to our arms, that arm that was connected to her brain, and seeing her handwriting and the smell of her food still lingering in the air, it feels like she's a real person. When someone dies and you romanticize them, they become the really good things and the really, really bad things that used to wind you up, and you forget about the really mundane things like when they wrote shopping lists or when they made Handvo.
I take one of those shopping lists home. I phoned Sala Masi, I get the recipe. When I get back to Bristol, I decide I'm going to do this shop. I'm going to do my mum's big shop, which is silly, because we already have cheese and we already have Weetabix, but I feel like I need to do this. So, I go to the shop and I buy all the things that are on the list, making sure that I also add in things that I need to make Handvo, and I go home. I'm looking at Sala Masi's instructions to make Handvo and I think, God, I really wish I knew how to cook. [audience laughter] Okay, let's do this. It just says mix all this stuff up in a bowl. I can do that.
So, I get everything out, because that's how I cook. You cook when you don't know how to cook, you get everything out so you can stare at it. [audience laughter] I put everything in a bowl and I'm following the instructions very robotically. And the last thing you have to do is temper some sesame seeds, and mustard seeds and cumin seeds together. So, I googled temper. [audience laughter] I then google temper cooking. [audience laughter] And for some reason, I decide to get a big frying pan out to temper these sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds. And so, I put the pan on and I light the hob and let it do what it's doing.
I get distracted putting the mixture out into a baking tray. I don't notice that I've been tempering a bit too long. The pan is smoking. The smoke alarm starts to go off and I panic. I don't know what to do. Do I turn the hob off? What do I do? So, I grab a tea towel and I'm between the smoke alarm, trying to wave the smoke away from the smoke alarm, and trying to wave the smoke away from the hob. And the tea towel catches fire, because I'm an idiot. [audience laughter]
Now, I've got a tea towel on fire, the smoke alarm's going off, the pan is still smoking because I still haven't taken it off the hob. So, I open the back door, because that seems like a sensible thing to do. I open the back door. I throw the tea towel out into the garden. I turn off the hob, and I take the pan off the hob and I run outside and I leave it on the ground outside, making sure I don't stand on the smoldering tea towel, then find another tea towel and I try and wave the smoke away from the smoke alarm.
Just a year and a bit's grief just suddenly crashes over me. My mum is gone. She won't be able to show me how to cook this stuff. I can't follow simple recipes, and she's gone and her food is gone and I'm not sure how I'm going to honor her in this new home. And so, I sit down on the middle of the kitchen floor and I cry. The smoke alarm is still going on. I look up, because there's a smell in the air. And somewhere amidst the smell of smoke and burnt sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds, there is also the smell of onions and garlic and ginger and chili. And my house smells like my mum's kitchen. And for a second, just for a second, it starts to feel like home. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:26:23] Nikesh Shukla lives in Bristol, England. He says when he goes home, it still feels like time stopped. His father still lives in the memories of when everything was perfect and constantly wants to know what his mother would have enjoyed about today.
Nikesh thinks his mother would be proud that he can now whip up a successful chana masala, a dal bhat, roti and can make a mean thepla, and probably happy that he gave up his band T-shirts for proper shirts.
Nikesh is the author of three novels, as well as editor of a recent collection of essays about race and immigration entitled The Good Immigrant. You can find out more about Nikesh and find links to his books on our website, themoth.org. While you're there, you can check out our pitch line. Sometimes listening to other people's stories reminds you of your own. And if that's the case, why not pitch us.
Sugar Todd: [00:27:16] I was eight-years-old, I decided to try the sport of speed skating. I was a really athletic kid, and evidently as a little girl watching Olympic speed skating on television, I said, “Mommy, I have big legs like those girls do.” So, when my parents and I saw a flyer for the Omaha Speed Skating Club, we thought, “Hey, why not?”
My parents drove me to these early morning practices for a year, at which point, at the fully matured age of nine-years-old, I told them I need to move to Milwaukee, so I can become an Olympic speed skater. My parents said, “Okay.” I really wish I could remember how that conversation went down, because looking back, it was totally bananas for my parents to agree to that, because seriously, who lets a fifth grader call the shots? But my parents did, and I owe them everything because it paid off.
In 2014, I represented all of you in Sochi, Russia, as a member of the United States Olympic Team. Whenever somebody finds out that I'm an Olympian, they're always super excited and then they always ask, “Did you win a medal?” When I tell them no, they say, “Oh, I'm sorry.” I'm always like, “Why? I went to the Olympics. I'm not sorry.” But if it makes you feel any better, I'm going for the Gold in 2018.
Meg: [00:28:35] Remember, you can pitch your story at themoth.org. Just go to our website and look for Tell a Story. You'll find directions on how to record and tips and tricks for how to craft a great pitch. That's all on our website, themoth.org.
Our next storyteller, Andrew Solmssen, spends his mornings fixing computers, his afternoons hiking, and his evenings telling stories to anyone who will listen. He told this one at our open-mic StorySLAM at Busby's East in Los Angeles,- [audience cheers and applause] -where we partnered with public radio station KCRW. Here's Andrew, live at The Moth.
Andrew: [00:29:12] Hi, everybody. I'm Andrew and I'm a nerd. I got a Nexus 5 and an iPhone 5 in my pocket right now. I love them both. I'm platform agnostic. [audience laughter] The other day, I got asked to participate in a show that a friend of mine does called Crapshoot. And the idea behind Crapshoot, is that people just do interesting, unusual things. What I did was I got up on stage and I yelled at people for three or four minutes to back up their hard drives. [audience laughter] I'm good at that, “Back up your shit. [audience laughter] Hard drives are mortal things.” My least favorite thing to do is to tell somebody they've lost everything. My refrigerator is covered with magnets from dead hard drives, and every one of those is somebody's baby picture or unfinished script, and now they're on my refrigerator. [audience laughter]
Anyway, I did that, and it went well. People laughed. I was in the lobby at the end of the show, and this girl came up to me and she started talking to me about Harlan Ellison. I may not know a lot about women, but when a woman is talking to me about the man who wrote "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman and City on the Edge of Forever, which is the best episode of Star Trek ever made, [audience laughter] that's a girl I can talk to. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
We did talk very seriously, very intently for an hour. I'm a big dude. I'm heavy. I've been 500 pounds. I'm not now. And I get it. She was obviously heavier than she'd ever been and uncomfortable with that. I'm comfortable with it and not comfortable with it in a lot of different ways and we connected. We talked. At one point, she said, “Let's get out of here.” We went to a party some friends of mine were having, and we sat on the couch in the living room there. And after about 15 minutes more of really serious conversation. She grabbed my head and started kissing me. Like I said, I don't know a lot about women, but I read the signs [audience laughter] and I invited her back to my apartment. [audience cheers and applause]
And she came. We got back there and we had a glass of wine, and one thing led to another and we found ourselves in the bedroom. We were lying in bed there. And from her side of the bed, I hear her say, “Does this mean we're boyfriend and girlfriend now? Just kidding.” [audience laughter] And I was terrified. No question about it. But she wasn't kidding. I was okay with that. I liked her. She was interesting. We’d, during the course of the evening, become friends on our phones. And the next day, I wrote her a message and I said “What a wonderful time I'd had and that I hoped we could see each other again.”
A couple of days later, I got a message from her. And it said that she was embarrassed by what had happened, that she wasn't usually so impulsive, that she thought she might need to get her medication checked. I thought about that. That stung a little. But I liked her, and I just wanted her to be happy and she wasn't. And so, I wrote her back and I said, “Look, whatever you need to be happy is what I want you to have. Just know that I found you funny, smart, charming and beautiful. Be well. Be kind. Be kind to yourself and let others be kind to you. It's hard. Lord, I know it's hard. But in the end, it's the only thing that ever really matters. Best, Andrew.” And then, she blocked me on Facebook. [audience laughter] Thanks very much.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:34:48] That was Andrew Solmssen. A few years ago, Andrew surprisingly matched with the girl from the story on Tinder, which opened a new line of communication which then eventually fizzled. But they're on good terms now and Andrew's happily in love with someone he describes as simply amazing.
These days, Andrew is even more of a backup evangelist, especially now that the backup options are easy. So, he says, “There's no excuse for you not to back up your hard drives.”
Coming up, a tale of two kidnappings, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:35:44] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Meg: [00:35:55] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. And our last story comes from Caitlin Fitzgerald. She shared it in front of a sold-out crowd at Lincoln Center in New York City. I just want to note that this story contains some graphic descriptions of violence and is not appropriate for children.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Caitlin Fitzgerald, live at The Moth.
Caitlin: [00:36:18] So, I was in Los Angeles for my first pilot season as a young actor. I was staying with some family friends, a lovely couple named Brian and Pam. I was home in the house one night. It was just Brian and I. I was upstairs in my bedroom. I was feeling really, really sorry for myself. On this particular evening, I had the flu. I'd been on nine million plus unsuccessful auditions and I had no money.
All of a sudden, there was a knock on the bedroom door. And Brian said, “Caitlin, I need to come into your room.” Before I could respond, he opened the door. And behind him was a very large man wearing a ski mask and holding a taser and a crowbar. I screamed and leapt out of bed. And the man in the mask said, “If you do anything stupid, I will kill you and I will kill him.” I was immediately compliant. I believed, naively, that if I just did everything that this man asked me to do, everything would be okay.
He wanted money and jewelry, neither of which we had. I had $3 in my wallet, which I gave him. He handcuffed Brian and I together, and he had us lie face down on the bed. At some point, Brian's wife, Pam, came home, and she didn't have any money or jewelry either, so the man in the ski mask decided that the best course of action would be to take us to the ATM machine to get cash.
So, we all got in the car. Pam was driving. We got to the ATM machine and parked the car. Pam was sent out with our debit cards around the corner to get money. And the man in the ski mask got in the driver's seat. I felt my fear like click up about six notches, because I could tell that he was off his script, that he hadn't planned this part of the evening. He was afraid, and his fear felt really dangerous to me.
A few minutes later, we heard sirens and we saw flashing lights. And unbeknownst to us, Pam had called the police. And the man in the ski mask turned to Brian and I in the back seat, still handcuffed together, and said, “That's the cops. You guys are dead.” He peeled the car out of this parking lot and onto Sepulveda Boulevard, going against traffic, and cars are screeching around us. It has started to rain in LA and the tires are squealing and I know with absolute certainty that I am going to die.
He turns the car into a residential neighborhood, and then down a dead-end street, we hit a tree going full speed ahead at the end of the street. And the man smashes the windshield of the car with his forehead and then gets out and runs. And suddenly, the car is surrounded by police with their guns drawn. I start screaming for help.
And the next thing that I really remember, I'm in the back of an ambulance, strapped to a stretcher, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, never again for the rest of my life will I feel safe. But in the weeks and months and years that followed this incident that turned out not really to be true. And yeah, if I hear a weird noise in the night, sometimes I'll jolt awake in a way that I didn't before, or if a cab driver revs his engine at a particular frequency, I'll feel this adrenaline rush that it didn't used to happen. But for the most part, I was okay. The whole thing came to seem like this sort of bad Hollywood horror movie, like just enough fear to sort of titillate and make a good story, but not enough to actually traumatize me. So, untraumatized. Did I appear to be that multiple members of my family have said to me, “You know, I forget that even happened to you”? And I really did too for the most part.
A few years after this incident, I finally booked the TV show that I'd been longing for. As it shot in Los Angeles and I was living here in New York, I had to move west. It's really important to know that while I lived in New York, I lived in some of the worst shitholes that New York has done. Truly, you think you've had bad apartments in New York? I have had bad apartments in New York, like the dregs of New York real estate. So, when I finally got the TV show and was moving west, I was like, “This is it. I'm going to get a great place to live.” And I did. I found this amazing apartment. These converted loft space with walls that actually met the floor at a right angle, and marble countertops and a washer and dryer like grown-ups and the rest of America have, and a security guard downstairs. I felt so happy and I felt so safe. I slept through the night just lulled by the dulcet tones of the 101 freeway outside my window.
And shortly after I moved in, I was hanging out in this back courtyard section of the building where all the dog owners and the cool kids hung out. I was a dog owner and I really wanted to be a cool kid, so I spent a lot of time back there. And this particular evening, I was sitting with the cool kids, and we were drinking some artisanal cocktail someone had made, I was thinking, God, I've really arrived. Isn't this amazing? And someone said, “Hey, what unit are you in?” I told him and there was this silence. The cool kids started to look at each other a little uneasily, and one of them said, “Do you know what happened in that apartment?” I felt my blood go absolutely cold and I said, “No, I don't.” And he said, “Well. I'll tell you what. You have to promise not to Google it, because there are some things you can't unsee.” This is not a promise that I kept.
It turns out that my beautiful building had been a hotel long ago. And in 1927, a young man very famously had kidnapped a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker and brought her to this hotel. He'd sent ransom notes for a few days to her father. And then, there had been a botched exchange where the kidnapper had seen that the police were present and whisked Marion back to the hotel, at which point he must have decided that she had become a liability, because he put her in the bathtub and he strangled her and then he proceeded to dismember her and disembowel her. He wrapped her limbs in towels and hid them in Elysian Park across the street. This is how the cops later found him because of the logos on the towels.
The cool kids take turns telling me the story. I remember being aghast by the strange pleasure they were getting in recounting this tale. And the way they were depicting Marion as this like monster figure, the stuff of nightmares, the stuff of scary stories. One of the kids said, “You know, I had to move units, because I couldn't even look at your unit from my unit.” And the other kid said, “Can I come stand?” When I opened the door, she was clearly disappointed that there wasn't a blood stain on the floor or a ghost hovering around.
A couple days later, I discovered that my apartment was on a famous Murders of Los Angeles tour. Vans of tourists would pull up and take pictures and then zoom off to look where the Black Dahlia killer did his work. But I couldn't zoom off. I couldn't go anywhere. I had to live in this apartment. My beautiful, safe apartment no longer felt beautiful or safe. I felt this creeping darkness invading all the corners of my life. It colored everything. I started to have this reoccurring nightmare that I would wake up and Marion's limbless torso would be hovering over my bed, like the perfect horror movie motif. It wasn't just at night. If I went out into the city and forgot about Marion Parker for a moment, when I came home at night, I had to turn on Marion Avenue to get to my apartment, and the whole thing would come flooding back and I just felt awful.
For the first time in my life, I really understood what people mean when they say they feel haunted. I mean, I was the girl who had survived kidnapping, living with the ghost of a girl who hadn't. I found myself really hating Marion Parker, and hating her for her naivete, and hating her for her fragility, and hating her for the burden of being female in this world and what that means, and hating her for being so totally compliant and for believing that if she just did everything her kidnapper asked, everything would be okay. And that feeling that I had in the moments after my own kidnapping, that never again would I feel safe, was coming horribly, horribly true.
And then, one night, I had this dream. And in the dream, I was in my apartment. It was the sketch of my apartment. Out of the bathroom door was streaming all this really beautiful, bright white light. I knew that Marion's body was in the bathroom. I was terrified, but found myself walking into the bathroom anyway. And sure enough, there she was, her limbless torso in the bathtub. She was dead, but also, in the logic of dreams, somehow still alive and very aware of me.
I found myself walking up to the bathtub and kneeling down. I put my hand on her face. And then, I put my hand on the place in her chest, over her heart. And then, I touched the place where her arm had been cut away from her body. I remember her blood being on my fingers. I realized in this moment that she wasn't a horror movie motif, she wasn't a monster. She was just skin and bone and blood. She was just a little girl.
I very tenderly, very carefully picked her up and I held her, and I awoke just in floods of tears. After this dream, my fear, it just broke like a fever. I felt at peace in this apartment and I felt at peace with Marion. I came to feel really protective of her. When I would hear someone in the building talking about her in any salacious way, I would remind them that she was just a little girl who'd been really, really afraid.
These days, I do sleep through the night for the most part. I pay attention to my dreams. They seem to know a lot of things. I turn down most of the horror movie scripts that my agents send to me. [audience laughter] I really get it. I get why, as a culture, we need to tell these stories and we need to relegate our deepest fears to the screen or to the pages of a book. I don't know for myself if I am more afraid or more free, because I know that sometimes the man in the ski mask can walk off of the screen and in through your bedroom door. I suspect a little bit of both, probably. I do know that safety has come to mean something very different than it did before.
I don't live at the apartment on Marion Ave anymore. I'm back in New York. But every time I drive by, I give a little wave to Marion and I tell her that I'm thinking about her and that I care about her and that in my own deeply ineffectual human way, I am protecting her. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:48:53] Caitlin Fitzgerald is an actor, director and writer. She says, “Uncovering the stuff we hide from ourselves is the work of a lifetime and I suppose I will never be done. But I do feel like I've done a lot in the last few years to dig deep and to look at the monsters under the bed.”
I asked Caitlin if she still turned down the horror movie scripts her agent sends to her. And she said, “Yes, not only because of my history, but do we really need more horror in the world?”
You can find out more about Caitlin or re-listen to her story or any of the stories you heard in this hour on our website, themoth.org.
That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Jay: [00:49:47] Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show along with Jodi Powell. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness and Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Emily Couch.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our pitch from our pitch line came from Sugar Todd in Salt Lake City. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour From Boombox, Shiva, RJD2 and The Elf Tones with Rhiannon Giddens. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.