WEBVTT - Love, Mommy Dearest 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.880 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:07.160 discussion of suicide and self harm. 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:17.759 Listener discretion is advice. For twenty years, I told no 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.840 one her story. I tucked it into me like a 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:25.520 grotesque treasure, a cold gem that I guarded with ferocious pride. 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.480 Uncertain who else knew. Mom and I never talked about 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:33.280 it again, and no one, not my father or his parents, 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.640 or any of my mother's friends, ever asked me about 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.040 the fire or what sense I, as a young girl, 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:44.160 had made of it. People ask about my relationship with fire. 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.839 You must be afraid of it, they say, I'm so sorry. 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.760 My college roommate says, after she burns toast to a 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.120 smoky crisp in the kitchen, releasing plumes of smoke. Who 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.720 smell lingers for days? Does this trigger you? It's okay, 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:03.840 I shrug, It's just toast. I have no relationship with fire. Really, 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:10.480 relationships are cultivated, nurtured. This I inherited. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:19.399 That's Nina Saint Pierre, culture writer, essayist, editor, and author 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:24.039 of the recent memoir Love Is a Burning Thing. Nina's 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.360 is a story about surviving the people who precede us 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:32.280 those we love but cannot emulate those we wish to protect, 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.720 but not at the expense of destroying ourselves. It's a 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:54.880 story of tenacity, resilience, and hope. I'm Danny Shapiro and 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.200 this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.080 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:09.080 keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood. 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.160 It was sort of a roving landscape. I'd say, it's 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:19.000 kind of always in motion. And you know, I was 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.120 born in a small Transcendental meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa. 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:28.120 My parents sort of split but remained geographically close to 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:30.640 each other and co parented for the first few years 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.280 of my life. But my mom was, as my father 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:39.079 puts it, constantly taking off. So we were pinging between 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:43.240 Iowa and Washington, d c. In Detroit, where her family 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:47.600 was from. She was deeply involved in the Transcendental Meditation movement. 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:50.640 So there were these TM centers sort of all over 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:52.800 the country, and so we would kind of go to 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:55.639 those for little stints because she was working on projects 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:59.320 with them. Then at four years old, four going on five, 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.360 I'd moved to California with her, and from that point on. 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.720 Our travel was sort of restricted to California, but we 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.600 moved around a lot up and down the state, to 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.920 little towns and cities, and we were just always on 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:13.280 the move. 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.800 At one point, you describe, I love this sentence you're write. 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:20.240 My real memory begins in motion. 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:24.440 I was living with my mom in the Tenderloine in 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.320 San Francisco, was nineteen eighty six by then, which if 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.480 you know anything about the Tenderloin in nineteen eighty six, 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.720 it was a rough and colorful place. It was really 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:40.400 a triangle of social services. Most people were living on welfare. 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.520 We lived in what they go on SRO, so it's 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:47.720 a single room occupancy. Most of them don't have kitchens. 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:53.280 They were converted hotels, so people were really scraping by, 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:57.480 and we had a very colorful life, you know, living 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.720 in this sort of European style of hotel was sheer 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.800 back through the hallways. Our neighbors were drag queens. They 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.640 were queer day black Asian, straight white like my mother. 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.640 There were many other single parents, mothers in particular, and 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.840 their kids kind of became my friends. So it was 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:21.720 sort of a bright, vivid, grimy world filled with colorful characters. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:25.480 We were really living a pretty broke life at that time, 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:30.839 and she had gotten me into this private school called 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:35.360 White Pony, which was in Walnut Creek, sort of a wealthy, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.320 primarily white suburb of San Francisco, and we would take 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.400 like two buses and a bart. It was about an 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.360 hour long trip each way to this kindergarten that was 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.120 run by a branch of what they call Sufia's and 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.479 Reoriented and it was just this very pristine, calm environment 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.839 where everything felt sort of white and washed and everyone 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.800 spoke in low tone. And so every day my mom 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.880 and I would travel between the chaos and clatter of 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.320 the Tenderloin and take this hour long trip to my 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.440 school in the suburbs, and it was it was very calm, 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:14.480 and I kind of settled in there, and then every 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.600 day we would go back to the clatter of the Tenderloin. 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.400 So I think that was the time that I really 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:21.640 started to like hold this duality. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.120 And that was just the one year, right because after that, 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.520 your mom, when you're in first grade, you know, said 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:29.120 something to the effects of we're out of here, We're 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:29.640 heading north. 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:33.279 That was just the one year. And so it's interesting 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:35.840 that is so outsized in my memory. But I think 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:37.760 it was that age, you know, around five years old 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.279 or they say you really start to have concrete memory, 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:43.799 and because it was so full of contrast in life, 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.960 it really stood out. But then yeah, at the end 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.119 of that year, she was pregnant with my little brother 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.719 and a friend had told her there was a cosmic 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:58.479 mountain up north, and she said, now doesn't that sound cool? 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.560 And five six years old, what did I know? So 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:03.359 we were off again. 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.760 Nina and her mom moved to the remote area of 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:14.120 Siskiyou County, which is halfway between San Francisco and Portland. 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.600 Siskiu is at the foot of Mount Shasta, an active volcano. 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.800 Could there be a more perfect metaphor? Nina's mom has 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.799 moved them here to be closer to the mystical mountain 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.839 she's heard so much about. This is not new to Nina, 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.520 her mom putting her spirituality at the forefront of their lives. 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.440 There is something very cloistered about childhood. You just understand 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:41.240 your life to be the way it is, so I'm 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.039 sure there was some of that, but I think being 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.000 born into a transcendental meditation community and it wasn't Camm 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:50.719 you like in the way that some people might imagine. 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:52.920 But it was a small town in which people were 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.240 all practicing TM toye a day, and my parents were 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:02.040 both very united in what they felt was their contribution 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:07.240 to creating world peace and before so I think, before 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.080 I even remember, that's kind of what I was born into, 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.360 and I'm sure I was surrounded by this sort of language. 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.320 My mother got into tarot and astrology and things like 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:21.800 channeling very early on. That's part of why she left TM. 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.520 So I think even if I don't remember this language 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:29.960 consciously much before we got to Mount Shasta, it was 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:34.120 sort of in me through osmosis, if nothing else. So, 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:38.480 and she kind of had this great adventurous spirit. And 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.880 much like my life in San Francisco, which felt like 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:46.840 in a juxtaposition between this gritty, grimy, bright city life 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:50.520 and the sort of calm, meditative tones of White Pony, 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:55.040 my mom contained that duality as well. So you know, 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:56.920 she could kind of like run with the people in 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.200 the street and talk a little shit, but she is 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:04.960 always reading about the saints and sort of spoke about 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:11.200 the cosmos and enlightenment and angels in the same sentences. 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.400 In the meantime, Nina's dad remarries a woman named Beth. 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:19.640 While Nina and her mom live at the base of 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.800 this magical mountain, her dad and Beth end up in 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:26.800 the hill country in Texas. Living a spiritual life is 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:29.840 important to her dad too, and he and Beth are 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:33.840 part of a meditation community. But back at the volcanic rock, 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.800 life goes on for Nina and her mom. Nina's mom 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.239 has another child some years later, Nina's younger brother, Christopher. 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.360 Finances are tight for the family, and Nina's mom, for 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.840 better or worse, is not exactly shy about sharing this 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:50.880 financial precarity with her daughter. 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:54.040 It was sort of like, you know, the ticker on 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:56.600 a news show was just the running tally. She she 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.480 was always working out her finances on little pieces of 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:02.840 paper at a cafe. And I knew, you know, very 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.920 early on, what each little treat cost us. So I 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.439 really learned not to ask for those things, and I 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:11.839 knew that if I if I didn't I received them. 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.000 There could sometimes be blowback because she, like most mothers, 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.000 you know, I'm sure she wanted to treat me, so 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.680 sometimes she might buy a pizzaen set of paying the 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.080 electric Bill, but there was always a fallout for that. 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.760 Yeah, there's a really arresting moment where she's having trouble 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.880 with a tooth and she just says, well, it's time 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.600 to go to Tijuana because that's that's where you go 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:33.960 for dentistry. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:35.280 Ninety nine dollars root canal. 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:39.560 And so you were privy to all that, absorbed that 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.920 as a child, and then you had your dad and 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.480 Bess in Texas in this TM community. But it seems 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:54.320 also in a more day to day stable life than 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:55.120 your mom's life. 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:58.200 Mm hmm. I think you know my dad from what 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.320 I understand, it is own natural procurity at times, and 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.520 they all did because they were very dedicated to this 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.080 movement that they had made the center of their life, 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.760 which was ultimately a movement toward, you know, achieving world peace. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.640 So no one was rolling in the dough. But the 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.160 life that they eventually built, and as I came into, 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.840 you know, being in second, third, fourth, fifth grade, was 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.680 one that was very sort of quiet and stable. They 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.880 lived in a rural sort of subdivision that they had 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.000 all built as a community, and that was the place 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.520 I would say I had the closest to an Americana childhood. 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.480 I mean I had a little bike with the banana 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.520 seat and the streamers. I would write it to my 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.840 friend's house. And it was not a wealthy life by 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:44.800 any means, but it was very comfortable. I mean, it 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:49.280 felt kind of protected in middle class. After my mom 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.439 and I moved to California. Most every summer from I'd 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.839 say age five or six through toward the end of 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:01.480 high school, I would fly out from California and go 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.520 stay with my dad and Beth in Texas for the summer, 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.439 maybe a month or so, and then after that I 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.280 would fly to his parents' home in Miami for a 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:14.120 couple of weeks and my grandfather, his father was a 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:19.680 renowned surgeon, and they lived a very different life. Again, 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:23.560 it wasn't ostentatious, but it was definitely the wealthiest environment 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:26.200 that I was ever in as a child. 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:51.839 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.240 When Nina is in the fifth grade, about ten or eleven, 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.400 her mother says to her, I am a walk him. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.440 Her mother, whose name is Anita, also says something about 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:09.360 the Anitas Anita one and Anita two. Nina isn't sure 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.719 what to make of any of this, what is her 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:12.920 mom talking about? 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.240 That must have been, you know, the early nineties and 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.480 on OPRAH there was a lot of talk shows doing 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:25.080 segments on like past life progression, sort of memories of 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.560 abuse emerging. Do you remember this? Yeah? Yeah, So I 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.640 feel like this idea sort of was born of that time. 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.160 So a walk in too, and you can find you know, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.160 sort of communities online that feel that they are Walking's 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.480 Ruth Montgomery, I think sort of wrote a seminal book 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:47.560 about that, describing what it is a person that feels 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.280 like they are walking. It is a pre agreed upon 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:56.760 contract that your soul makes with another soul before you're born. 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:03.680 And that agreement is that at some point in your life, 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.800 when your soul has completed its its tasks or its 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.520 lessons or whatever it came here to do, so to speak, 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.760 then your soul will exit the body and this new 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:20.120 soul will enter it. So you will essentially be outwardly 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.880 the same, but this new soul is in the body 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.240 and it has its own sort of karmic lessons that 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:29.200 it needs to learn and things that it needs to 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:30.640 follow out. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:35.000 So your mom explains this to you, and what did 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.400 that feel like for you? I mean, your mom was 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:39.800 essentially saying to you, I look the same, but I'm 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:40.439 a different person. 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:45.440 Yeah, I mean terrifying, Like that is just I felt 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:47.680 like I was in a horror film. You know. It 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.000 just was so spooky. I remember that very viscerally, and 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.160 but just remember having chills and being both scared and 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:58.680 confused because the way that she presented it to me 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:02.839 was sort of in this calming, assured way, like oh no, 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.280 it's better now, you know. And because she said, you know, 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.400 I was Anita one and now I'm Anita two, and 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.120 looking back, I feel like she was trying to distill 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:18.599 it into child terms. But that was terrifying, because you 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.400 know what, Anita too is not my mom, who the 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.640 hell is she? But the way she was explaining it 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.440 was a very matter of fact and straightforward and like, 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.240 you know, it's better now. Anita one wasn't doing well 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:32.240 and Nita two is here, and she's like, you know, 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.680 she has her stuff more together, she's healthier, she's grounded, 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.160 she's going to take better care of you guys. And 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.320 it felt, I don't know, like just a total schism. 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:44.360 I just didn't know how to make sense of it. 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.360 It was both like really frightening. But then what was 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.840 I to do but just trust this new old person. 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.200 By the time Nina is in the sixth grade, her 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:00.320 mom has managed to scrape together a little money bought 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.240 a house in a town called Weed, So in one sense, 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.920 life is a bit more settled, But there's an undercurrent, 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:12.720 something lurking. Up until that point in Nina's life, she's 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.040 been aware of her mother's burns. She knows her mom 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.120 wears turtlenecks no matter what the season, to cover the 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.200 burns on her neck, but Nina's never known exactly what 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.600 happened or why. Now her mom decides would be a 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.440 good time to tell Nina the story of how her 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:31.840 burns came to be. 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.360 So that conversation, and I remember sitting on the couch 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:40.080 with my mom, you know, we had these like kind 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:44.440 of like dusty, old second hand tweed couches, and I 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.280 remember sitting there with her, and she just said, it's 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.280 time for me to tell you the story. And I said, 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:55.680 the story of what? And she said my burn and 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:57.760 I kind of brushed her off, like you were in 0:15:57.840 --> 0:15:58.200 a fire. 0:15:58.440 --> 0:15:58.560 You know. 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.520 I knew that I didn't know anything else about it, 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:05.080 and I had honestly never thought about it, which people 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.160 think seems strange. But as a child, you're like that 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.800 frog in boiling water. You just accept what is. Often 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:14.320 we don't question these things until much later in life, 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:18.360 unless something really catalyzes that inquiry. So she just sat 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:22.160 me down, and she just kind of launched into this story, 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.280 which in retrospect was like, oh my god. I didn't 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:28.360 ask for this story. But she told me how how 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.760 she grew up in Detroit, and she had been a 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:36.640 student at University of Michigan and after her freshman year, 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:38.480 I think it was the summer before her sophomore year, 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.640 her and some girlfriends decided to dig a road trip 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.680 to Colorado. You know, it was nineteen seventy one, and 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.240 you know, there was a lot going on politically. The 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:52.600 Vietnam protests were happening. All these Buddhist monks had been 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.080 self immolating. There was a lot of angst and sort 0:16:56.120 --> 0:17:00.360 of rage in the youth culture, and so they went 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.800 out to Colorado to see what was happening. And it 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.520 was a couple of her college roommates and then an 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:07.680 older woman who at that time I think was like 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:11.639 twenty five or twenty six, and this older woman named Rayelle. 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:13.320 I don't know how they were friends. I don't know 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:14.800 how they were connected, but you know, it was a 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:17.359 university town, so who knows. So they all take this 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:21.000 road trip to Colorado, and toward the end of the summer, 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.080 they're coming back and Rail starts telling my mom these 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.920 stories about these men that are after them. And my 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:29.800 mom is telling me this as I'm sitting on the 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.439 couch with her, you know, knees to chess, just listening, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.040 thinking like, where is this going? You know, what does 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.879 this have to do? Is my mom's burns but kind 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.480 of wrapped. So she tells me that Rail's has this 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.239 story that these men are after them. I'm like, oh 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.719 my god, you know, and that most of the other 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.679 girls go home. They're kind of getting freaked out by 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.400 Rail's stories. But my mom and ray all go back 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.880 to ann Arbor and by that time it's the fall, 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.879 but my mom never rear enrolls in school. They're just 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:04.680 kind of wandering around town and Rayel is getting increasingly 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.119 paranoid and saying, not only are these men after them, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.400 but if they find them, that they're going to torture 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.520 them and eventually kill them, and my mom is getting 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.159 really freaked out by this, and she just can't imagine this, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.439 and somehow she starts to believe this too, and then 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.200 Rayelle says, you know, we should kill ourselves. It would 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.760 be better to do that than to be tortured. And so, 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.840 you know, my mom goes along with it, and they're 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.200 staying in some kitchen and ann arbor, and you know, 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:35.920 as my mom is telling me this, I'm thinking like, 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.160 oh my god, who's this woman? Like what do you mean? 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.920 How could you believe this? But I'm also really freaked out. 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.879 And then she says, they found a roll butcher paper 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.920 and just wrap themselves in it and let themselves on fire. 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:52.800 You know, I've come to find out a lot later, 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:54.960 a lot more about it as an adult, but in 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.480 that moment, that's what she told me, and I just 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:01.040 was like, you know, shell shocked, could not believe what 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:04.040 she was telling me. And then by that point, you know, 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:06.919 she'd been telling me the story and her the language 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:08.600 was getting more frenetic, and I was just kind of 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.080 getting caught up in it, sort of like full body 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.520 chills and kind of like a not in the chest 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.320 kind of sad and scared for my mom and confused 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.639 and wondering who this wild lady was. And by that 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:22.639 point she has kind of a far away look in 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.879 her eyes, and then she says, you know, then the 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:29.680 firemen came and they wrapped us in wool blankets. There 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.280 were fire blankets. They wrapped us in fire blankets. It 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.359 took us to the ambulance and rushed them to the 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.480 University of Michigan Burn Center. And I think the last 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:41.840 thing she said was something like, you know, he saved 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.679 my life. That fireman saved my life. It was an 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.840 eerie moment. I mean, I just didn't know what to 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:49.280 do with that. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.600 I mean, how would you characterize what you felt at 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:56.679 that time? And I know it's so hard because there 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.399 are layers and layers, but I mean it was mostly 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:03.960 concern for your mother? Or was it fear for yourself? 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:04.399 Was it? 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:06.560 I mean, in a way, I'm kind of connecting it 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.040 back to Anita one and Anita two in the sense 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:11.919 of like who are you Innita one? 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.280 Anita too, that was felt like the first sort of 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:16.320 like split. You know, my mother and I had been 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:21.080 very tight. I think a lot of kids who are 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.880 raised by single parents, I mean, maybe mothers in particular. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:26.440 I can't speak to it. It might be the same 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.720 for any parent, but especially when you're raised by a 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:32.320 single parent and you don't have much money, you kind 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.959 of become their little partner in crime. You grow up 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:38.239 with them in a way you know much more than 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:43.040 maybe is healthy or appropriate at times, because they're just 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:45.280 getting by and you're doing it all with them. They 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:49.280 don't have the privilege of protecting you from information that 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:54.000 maybe a broader or more stable or moneyed household might. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:21:00.159 So I don't begrudge her taking me along for for 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.560 those things. I think some stories she told me were 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:07.520 too psychologically advanced for the age at which she shared them. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.600 But the walking thing, yet, that was the first sort 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:12.800 of glitch, like, oh my mother and I are not 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:17.040 there's a divide between us. And then with this story, 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.840 it really felt like, oh my god, my mom has 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.679 this whole which we all experience at some point, right 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.200 when you first start to understand your parents as a person. 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.080 You know that moment comes for us all in different ways. 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.040 But this was something more than that. Not only was 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:37.800 my mother a person on her own who had lived 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.480 this whole other life, but she'd been involved in something 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:42.560 that just who could even wrap their mind around that. 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:47.040 So I think that it created this sort of dissonance 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.600 for me which became a part of my life as 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:54.200 a person, as a thinker, as an artist, in which 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.239 nothing was ever as it seemed. Not only was there 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.000 always something below the surface, there was many, many lays 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.640 and that was both sort of intellectually interesting, but as 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:08.000 a person and as a child, it was totally destabilizing. 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:13.560 Right, And it's happening as you're entering your teenage years, great, 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:16.600 like right on the cusp there, and your mom came 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.120 extremely close to dying, which she tells you at that time. 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:23.720 And this woman, Rayel does die. 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.320 Right, she dies, not that night, but they end up 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.480 in the University of Michigan burn unit in two months 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:34.600 in November, and two months later around the holidays, Rael dies. 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.480 I'm not exactly sure from what I think it was 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:41.920 complications in infection or something. And then my mom is 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:44.000 in the burn unit for six months total before she 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:44.520 gets out. 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:52.040 It's a lot, in fact, it's too much. By the 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:54.919 time she's in high school, Nina distances herself from her 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:59.040 mother as much as possible. She doesn't exactly run away, 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:04.280 she just doesn't come home, and this escape from home 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:08.280 extends to other things, a kind of escape from herself. 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:12.560 She drinks, does drugs, all the typical high school stuff, 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:17.120 except Nina is rebelling with more than the usual teenage gusto. 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.840 She's hell bent on self destruction. She's in this phase 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:26.320 of CouchSurfing at friends homes, relying on the kindness of 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:29.960 other people's families. When her mother decides that enough is enough, 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.800 she insists that Nina come home, and in a way, 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.560 Nina wants to come home, but once she does, she's 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:40.760 overtaken by a rage she hasn't allowed herself to feel 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:44.040 up until now, and she writes her mother a letter 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:50.960 that begins with the salutation mommy dearest. Now, Mommy Dearest 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:54.840 was a film, a biopic about Joan Crawford who had 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.479 been a nightmarish mother, and Nina and her mom had 0:23:58.560 --> 0:24:02.000