The Illuminati Garden Club

Chapter 1: Gardening at Night

I'm standing there reflecting over the past year of my life. Nevermind that the standing is more like kneeling, and the reflection is quite literally in a pool of blood. My head is starting to spin as I realize what I've just done. And what I have to do next.

But before we get to all of that, you should probably know what's going on. I've lived a lifetime not knowing myself. To understand where it all started you have to go back to Berkeley, California. Alta Bates hospital, June 3. Mom had come out West to be part of the hippy movement. Of course she missed it by twenty years, but that didn't seem to bother her. Berkeley in the 90s was a weird mish-mosh (emphasis on the mosh) of hippy, punk, preppy and grunge, with a few street hustlers in there. That's Berkeley. They lined Telegraph Avenue selling everything from jewelry to oils. In just one block, your nose was assaulted by greasy pizza joints, patchouli clouds, always a tinge of Ganga. Mom worked as a buyer at Rasputin Records, and absolutely loved to tell get into good-humored arguments about what was "real music". Yep- my mom was a music snob, but beyond that she was a loving, and supportive woman who considered herself a traditional mom. Sort of.

My mother had come from old money in the south. Savannah to be exact. She'd been raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, the model child of Southern etiquette. Hers was a childhood filled with cotillions, private schools, and trust funds. Most people would have loved that, but not my mom. She saw it as the source of all her problems in this world, and somewhere along the line during college she met my dad who was playing bass in a band. They fell in love, ran away together. Three thousand miles away to be exact.

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The literal dead weight of the body was too much for me to drag across the cellar in one motion. I had to stop to regain my strength at least twice. Meantime, it was dark down there, with only the hint of light coming from down the passage, so I hadn't noticed how much blood I had on my hands. That little fact caused me to fall flat on my ass as I attempted to haul her one last time. Somewhere between wanting to finish, and wanting to vomit, my mind flashed to where I was only a year before. 

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My mother never had to work. She wanted to, and the place she chose was Rasputin Records in Berkeley. I guess after my dad took off, the allure of the music business stayed with her. I never knew my dad. By the time I came along, he was long gone. Oh, he wasn't dead, and he was out there somewhere. I just hadn't found him yet. And I wasn't likely to have him find me. Not after the way my Mom told him to get lost. She always regretted that, but he did as she said (or as she screamed, from what I understand). There was no way he was going to come looking for me. Like, ever. So all I ever really knew as family was just Mom and me in an apartment off of Claremont Avenue.

It was a cute place; a white building with red Spanish tiles. Dreyer's Ice Cream was literally behind us, so it wasn't unusual to wake up smelling whatever flavor they were making that day. Rocky Road was my favorite. To get by, Mom cashed in stocks and bonds, and all sorts of funds that her father had set up for her. Of course she'd never admit that to her hippy friends who came over for drum circles, or political debates, and current events. No, Mom kept it to herself that her family was the very sort of people she and her friends despised. My mother's family were the kind of people that ran the country, and had buildings named after them at impressive colleges. Yes, that's sarcasm you're sensing. You see, I always saw my mom as being a hypocrite. She was a trust fund baby. She had family in high places. She hated it.

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Sitting there in the dark; in the blood, still a little in shock... I understood Mom's rejection of it all; this 'family in high places' business, but before I knew anything about the Westcotts, I was just as ignorant as the rest of the world. Back then  I looked at the wealthy people my mother despised, and saw them for what they were. People. Sure, they might wear pearls, and suits, and shirts with tiny reptiles on them, but that was their choice. Not hers. Good for them that they went to fancy colleges, and drove nice German cars. That's what they liked, just as much as my mother liked her hemp dresses. Truth is, I thought clean and pressed looked nice. What's wrong with conservative? I kind of liked it. Mom and I fought about that a lot. In fact, the lowest blow I could give her was to remind her that she was a Southern blue blood. Got her every time. She hated it. But she was.