Dead Dad, 6:50

You may be glad to know that I’m taking photographs of this infamous house that first you, and now, years later, yours truly is living in, and I’m curious to know how much its changed since you lived here. When was that? ‘45? ‘46? I’ve approached one of the historical societies in town that doesn’t exactly want to plant a plaque on it, but they are willing to foot the bill to have the wooden steps in front saved. 1903 this place was built in. The same year the Americans invented Panama. And I’m letting a Peruvian boy sleep here when he needs to, which isn’t too often so far. I’ve drafted him to be my lighting man for my photo shoots. He holds thing well, what can I say? Manuel Labor, I think, is his name. Actually, it’s Jo-Jo. He and his girlfriend Blanca live next door with a bunch of girls out to right the world’s wrongs. Noble savages who laugh at the wrong things but still try to put their hearts when their mouths are. This is a newspaper Article that Blanca gave me about some friends of theirs.

THE STORY OF BIANCA AND PETER: A BOND IS SEVERED

By Rick Hampson, AP Writer

NEW YORK - Bianca and Peter clung to each other through the tragedies of their young loves: The Columbia flood that swept away their moth and baby brother; the Bogota orphanage where they were the least adoptable residents; the Long Island plane crash that killed 73 other passenger.

Bianca and Peter were pulled from the wreckage of Avianca Flight 52 on Jan. 30, 1990, along with Bill Heidt, a 51-year-old American who had gone to Columbia to adopt them.

When it was clear her husband and the children had survived, Aleta Heidt predicted the crash would bond the family: "We will be closer now, for everything we’ve gone through together."

But before the year was over the Heidts had turned Bianca over to an adoption agency, saying the Colombian orphanage never told them the girl was seriously retarded.

Since then the wispy 15-year-old has lived with three different foster families, spent several weeks in a psychiatric ward and almost been sent back to Columbia. She and her brother have not seen each other in nine months, and reportedly have no desire to do so.

"After all she’s been through she craves attention and love," says Nancy Ballesteros, a woman who befriended Bianca, "and she’s been bounced all around."

Bianca and Peter Heidt began life as Bianca and Pedro Beltran Urrea, children in a poor family in the mountains north of Bogota.

In 1985, they were crossing a river when a flash flood swept away their mother and baby brother. When rescuers arrived, they found Bianca holding onto Peter.

They wound up in the orphanage where the Heidts found them in 1989. The Heidts had married in their 40s and wanted an older child. But the orphanage said if they wanted either child they had to take both, b/c Pedro, 10, and Bianca, 13, were unusually close.

Bill Heidt flew to Bogota in January 1990 and spent a week with the children. They were small, the result of early malnutrition, and their eye problems forced them to wear glasses with incongruously thick lenses. But they overwhelmed their new "poppie" with hugs and kisses.

"It won’t be a honeymoon," he told Aleta over the phone. "But, they’re fine, they’re beautiful. They just need a home." The Heidts renamed them Peter and Bianca.

After the plane crash, Bill, Bianca and Peter all wound up in separate hospitals. Bill had a broken neck, two broken legs and broken ribs. He couldn’t speak, but when Aleta arrived at his bedside he scrawled a question: "2 kids?" She told him both had survived, and he cried.

Peter’s first question was "Where’s my sister?." When he was reunited with her, the nurses had to push their hospital beds together so Bianca could hold Peter’s hand through the night to calm him.

Peter’s arm was broken, but Bianca’s injuries were more severe: Two broken hips, a broken leg and a two-inch cut above her upper lip. She underwent seven hours of surgery, and left the hospital in body cast.

Finally, the family settled together in the Heidt’s comfortable house in the New York City suburb of Wykoff, N.J. Peter was soon in school, but Bianca remained home in a wheelchair. When he came home, Bianca’s eyes lit up. "I just want to stand and walk again," she said. "Then I can go to school with Peter."

Everything, at last, seemed to be working out. People magazine published a glowing profile, and a producer talked to Bill about a television movie.

But in May 1990, the Heidt’s saga suddenly veered away from a Hollywood ending.

The Record of Hackensack, N.J., reported that the Heidts wanted to give up Bianca and were threatening to sue the adoption agency for misrepresenting her. They said tests showed her IQ to be between 40 and 60 - significantly handicapped.

"They told us we were getting two healthy children," Bill told the newspaper. "We’ll have to take care of her for the rest of her life, and we’re too old for that."

The adoption agency said that there was nothing seriously wrong with Bianca; that Bill Heidt had ample opportunity to evaluate her in Bogota; and that if the Heidts gave up Bianca they should give up Peter, too.

"If we felt it would be too traumatic, we wouldn’t do it," Bill insisted.

"But, we’ve talked to Peter himself, and to his psychiatrist. He feels Peter has adapted well, has developed bonds with us and enjoys his life here."

The Heidt’s attorney, Silva Barsumyan, says now that the couple were bewildered by Bianca’s extremely temperamental behavior but said nothing publicly to protect her. The girl’s psychological problems, the lawyer says, "will require a tremendous amount of care and years of therapy."

Bianca left the Heidt’s home in the fall of 1990. After a few weeks with a family in Nutley, N.J. she was placed with a foster family in Baltimore.

But in April 1991 the foster parents said they were giving up Bianca b/c she was "too much to handle." Although they wouldn’t be specific, her departure apparently was related to her reaction to the birth of a baby in the family a few months earlier.

Shortly after that, Bianca was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a county hospital in New Jersey, where she stayed for more than a month.

Last month an adoption agency that accepted Bianca form the Heidts was about to send her to live in a group home back in Columbia. But Bianca had become a rallying point for Colombians I the area, and a county political official intervened and blocked the girl’s departure.

Under an agreement between the state and the adoption agency, Bianca has since been placed with another foster family in northern New Jersey. But Marie Shukaitis, director of the adoption agency, told The Record that Bianca was ready to leave.

 

 

Pretty wrenching stuff, huh?

The mother of the girls next door is my landlady, Piper, who lives upstairs from me and doesn’t remember you. She’s only lived here 34 years, and she’s losing it. Bother her mind and her house. Her daughters are trying to get her interested in going to Orlando with them so at least she can go and die in the sun next to the flora & fauna in the merry weather. This is the first actual poem I’ve written in ages:

The Woman Upstairs

There’s something simple about the girls next door.

Something real about the woman upstairs.

I hear the laughter

all around the yard

I feel the sun start to tease

I watch the water make its way downtown

I help the daughters weave.

Through the window

she nods down to me

calling through her tears.

There’s something simple about the girls next door

something real about the woman upstairs

Nails and sugar

in her basket of fruit,

spiked punch in her hair.

Chains rattle when she opens her door,

when it slams they disappear.

Sometimes she claws,

sometimes she crawls

over to where I just can’t stare.

There’s something simple about the girls next door

something real about the woman upstairs.

There’re selling her flat

they’re moving east

they can’t leave her on her own.

She won’t mind,

she never puts away

what she doesn’t own.

Their rings of roses surround me,

their tongues are all that I hear.

Their mothers silence was their only risk,

But if I didn’t laugh, I wouldn’t be here.

Greensleeves and Bloody Mary’s,

Devils Food Cake and angel hair.

There’s something simple about the women next door,

something real about the girl upstairs.

Hmmmm. More like a song , I guess.

But, enough about me...How is your heart? And just what does this gradual weakening feel like? IS it harder to stand up? Are you walking still? Does that help?

I just sent off a letter to Carolina in Chicago. She asked about you and what plans you might have for the Checker. She has a friend who’s just moved from NYC who needs a reliable old boat if you haven’t already earmarked it for one of us. Fine with me, cuz I just bought myself a 1965 electric blue Mustang that says "Gettyup" on the license place. It needs new spark plugs, but the points are okay. Fanbelt is looser than two fingers, but that won’t cost anything. 700 dollars in cash I paid, plus one of my prints of "The Bully and his Father," plus: I know the girl’s mother, who is my boss at the shelter. She’s the one who rubber-stamps the supply requisitions for the hard-core medicine. The suicide pills for the ones who can never get to sleep. She says she’s never actually in her own dreams, she’s always just listening to a guy at a fair who tends to the strong man machine, greasing it down and winding up the generator in the dirt in the back. And I think my job is tough. All I dream of is getting up from a night of passion and going to the mailbox b/c the bathtub is overflowing.

Yeah, this bathroom door has been ripped off its hinges more than once. Did you know that? (I like to think that one of those times was when Mom was changing Zeda in there when she slipped on the rug and you broke in to help her up.)

You do know that Zeda’s boy, Zach, was just killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting, don’t you? The car the shot came from was a ‘59 Futura, just like we used to have when she cut the cord herself on the floor of the garage in the first house. And she is your first born. Dot dot dot.

I’ve been writing a letter to Mom, in my head. Probably b/c I spy with my little eye, a biological clock beginning with E. Suddenly summers are missing something that not even Brasso can shine up, and it gets me to thinking about the day that I was born, which I can’t seem to recall, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I don’t know. I mean, the day you’re born, way before you can even pronounce Mama, let alone Nietzsche, you sign a pact with death. One day, you agree, it will all be gone. So, you start running. God only hopes time is on your side, to finally rise above whatever happened before. And finally the sweetness of an apricot is just the sweetness of an apricot. That’s the moment, right there. That’s when you’ve kissed the heart of it all. Everything after is just sharing that. And getting burned. And sharing that. And getting better. Funny how, with love, as soon as you search for the reasons why not, they seem infinite. But the reason why, only one.

One thing I keep meaning to mention to you: This mail order bride from Bangkok. What, is there a catalog for things like that? Is the photographer for the advertisement her father, of the boyfriend or brother to be left behind? Does the mother approve or is she alive or awake still? What will be their cut?

Anyway, if you wish you can come and stay with me. Depending on what you want and expect. Expect me to have stayed Estrelica. A little heavier than my jeans, but a lot lighter in my dreams. Take care of yourself, enjoy your jasmine tea, and stay away from those lashes of bacon you always liked to fry up with the last of the Limburger cheese.

Love

Estrelica