Sunny: The Hippie Chick

By Dawn Natelle

Reviewed and Edited by Eric

Sunny – Chapter 5 -- Sunny in the Sky with Diamonds

The next week of December was fairly routine. Sunny spent four days at the news stand, and the other one, which was rainy, she spent with Maria, babysitting her kids. She took her guitar, and alternated reading with the small tots surrounding her, with two on her lap and the others cuddled in on either side. After several stories, she switched to her guitar and played for them. They loved her renditions of Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. Puff the Magic Dragon was their favorite, but they also loved Lemon Tree, If I Had a Hammer, Blowin’ in the Wind, Tell It on the Mountain, and The Times they are A-Changin’. She also added a few folk songs, and some Religious tunes, like Amazing Grace.

Maria used the morning to do her shopping. She noted excitedly that Mario had decided that she should look after the money in the family and was now giving her all the take from the stand, less a bit of pocket money for himself. Sunny merely smiled. She had laid into Mario the other day pointing out that in America the husband and the wife shared the duties, unlike in Italy. That seemed to have more impact on him than when she had pointed out that his family could have starved when he was delirious with fever the week before. To Mario it was acting ‘American’ that seemed more important. Apparently, the discussion had borne fruit, and Maria said she now was responsible for paying rent and the bills and getting groceries from the rest.

In the past she would have bundled four of the five kids up (one was in Grade 1 and at school) and taken them with her to the market. Even on a dry day it would have been difficult with kids clamoring for treats not on her list. Having Sunny come by on a rainy day meant she could go alone and shop more efficiently.

Maria was back before lunch and taught Sunny her special tomato sauce recipe for the spaghetti lunch she had planned. After lunch, when the tots were napping, the two women baked, making cookies with Sunny’s recipe while Maria taught Sunny how to make biscotti and cornetto, both of which she intended to make for her boys in the apartment.

The kids woke up before the baking was done, so Sunny made icing bags with colored icing and the older ones decorated the sugar cookies she had made. Maria held the baby on her hip and Sunny looked on with envy, hoping that soon she would have hips that could hold a baby.

After the baking and decorating was done, the kids, each with a cookie in a tiny hand, gathered around the pretty blonde and she sang for them again. To the surprise of the kids, their mother joined in, singing some traditional Italian songs and lullabies. Sunny listed to her pure, sweet voice and soon was able to strum a simple accompaniment to the tunes. Again, when it was time for her to go all four cried for her to stay. She had to promise to come again next week in order to get them to stop.

Of course, I heard all of this when she got home. I had tidied the place up a bit, but not well enough for Sunny. She went over the entire apartment, and I had to admit that it did look noticeably better.

While she made another batch of sourdough (I had eaten the last of it for lunch) we talked about Christmas, only a few weeks away. I had no choice but to travel back to Eureka or my mother would come and drag me home. But I left Sunny the choice as to whether she would come. My family knew I had a girlfriend and had left an open invitation for her to join in.

You have to understand my family. My Mother had four sisters and had three girls plus me. I was the baby of the family, with my sisters from three to 12 years older. Thus, the girls were all married and had kids of their own. And my aunts had nine adult daughters among them, and they had over 20 cousins. Thus over 40 people would be at the Christmas dinner, depending on whether the pregnant ones gave birth before or after. Plus, there were husbands: only one of the girls was a single mom.

I guess the summary of all this is that our little house in Eureka was always crowded at Christmas, and I had no desire to throw Sunny into the middle of all that chaos. We would stay in the little 12 room motel at the edge of town, a healthy walk to Dad’s house. I phoned and found that they only charged $8 a night for a double bed. When I booked for Dec. 23 to 26 I was told that if I didn’t want maid service on Christmas day, it would be $2 less, or only $30 for the four days. That suited me fine and I booked the room. I know Mom would be furious, thinking I should stay in my old room. But I also knew she would not allow Sunny to bunk with me, and I didn’t want to risk her exposing her secret if she stayed with one of my sisters. And this way we would be able to get away from the madness if we needed to.

“What about Ben?,” Sunny asked as I explained all this to her. “He can’t be here alone on Christmas Day.”

We asked him when he came in, and he said that he had no plans. His parents were separated, and Ben didn’t think much of his father’s new girl. His mother usually went down to San Diego for the day, with his siblings, and he didn’t want to do that. So Sunny invited him to join us.

I felt it important to give out some warnings. “Eureka is a pretty white town,” I said. “I don’t know if there are any Negroes there at all. There weren’t any in my school. The motel is under new management. The old owners were as racist as they come. It's not like there was a sign over the door that said, ‘Whites only’ but everyone in town knew about it.”

“What about your family?” Sunny asked. “Will they welcome Ben?”

“My parents are cool,” I said. “Dad was in an integrated unit in the war. And Mom said her school was integrated. The little town she came from was too small for separate school systems, so she had negro girlfriends, even back in the early 50s. There might be some of the aunts and uncles who are put out by sharing supper with a negro, but my parents will deal with them, I’m sure.”

“I can put up with quite a bit,” Ben said. “You get used to that kind of people. I try to ignore them.”

We then checked out ways to get to Eureka. When I came down to start school I had to go to Sacramento first, making the five-hour drive take eight hours.

“We can probably hitch-hike faster,” Ben suggested. “We take a bus out to the edge of the city, then hitch from there.” At that time hitch-hiking was popular and many people would give rides. It had grown during and after the war, when soldiers would hitch home on passes or when discharged and it was fairly safe, if you were careful. By the 60s there were a lot of veterans paying back for rides they had gotten. A lot of kids would hitch to San Francisco for the following Summer of Love. And Sunny had hitched west from her bad home life a few years earlier. Now it would be easier for her, looking like a beautiful woman instead of a runaway boy.

With travel plans solved we decided we would all go to the Avalon tomorrow. Christmas was on Saturday, so no concert was booked for Christmas Eve that week. Friday would be the last concert of the year, other than something called an acid test on New Years Eve. A special guest act was being brought in from Los Angeles: The Mamas and the Papas. They were a new band that just released California Dreamin’, a song Sunny had just added to her act. Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Grateful Dead were also playing.

The night started off well, with dinner at the Pizza Place Sunny adored. We then got to the Avalon, and there was already a line, although we got in near the front. The foursome just in front of us were smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that had a strangely sweet smell to it. They shared it, passing it around until it was too small to hold, then used a paper clip to take some final puffs on it.

Someone pulled out another, and one of the guys, who had been staring at Sunny while waiting for his turn offered her what he called ‘a toke’. Sunny was game for anything once, so she took a long puff, holding the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could before exhaling, like the other group had been doing. She handed it to Ben while she was holding her breath, and after inhaling he passed it to me. With my background in Pharmacology I was a bit leery, but finally decided to partake, although with a shorter puff that I exhaled quickly.

I passed the item to the first person of the other group, coughing. By the time it got to me again I had witnessed the others and tried to emulate them, passing the toke on without exhaling. When I finally did, I still coughed. I found out the cigarettes were ‘marijuana’ although the others called it Mary Jane or weed. Two more cigarettes were shared around and by the end I was not coughing any more. It seemed to be enjoyable.

Then the doors opened, and we entered. Or tried to. I found that when I raised my foot to the first step, it moved away from me, and I had to chase it around. Finally, I caught it, but the second step disappeared entirely, and I stumbled. Luckily Ben caught me before I fell, and with his assistance I was helped up the other steps and into the hall. Ben led me to a nearby table and we sat. Sunny had floated off to mingle with the friends she had made here, and to find some of the Kool-Aid. I had no interest in LSD, being totally buzzed on the weed.

I found I was more popular than normal. Having a negro guy sitting with you seemed to make a difference, and all of the friends I made wanted to sit at the table to soak up some of the negro coolness vibes. Most of Sunny’s friends came by and I introduced them to Ben, who disappointed them when they learned he was a student/laborer and not a musician. They already thought I was a square, but Ben didn’t get that label.

All the acts were great and the finale by The Mama and Papas was special. You could tell that they were going places. There was a tall guy wearing a Russian looking hat, and a shorter guy. The Mamas were two girls. One was pretty with long blonde hair, although not as long and not as blonde as Sunny. To my eye she was not as pretty either. She sang and played tambourine (both the guys had guitars). The other girl made the band, in my opinion. She was heavy set, nearly fat but she had a voice that harmonized with the others at times but dominated when she soloed. She didn’t play anything; her voice was her instrument.

They got a standing ovation, a rarity at the Avalon, especially for the last act of the night when everyone was stoned on something. I think I was coming down from the marijuana high when we left. At least the steps were behaving normally. Sunny was quite out of it. I don’t know how many Kool-Aids she had, but I suspected it was more than two. She was floating down the street, singing California Dreamin’, pitch-perfect in spite of her condition.

We got on the bus with Sunny sitting on my lap so Ben could sit beside. She sang all the way home, wiggling her little butt into what turned out to be an embarrassing erection when we finally got off at our stop.

“Did I do that?” she giggled, looking at the tent in my trousers. Even Ben smiled. Probably more at my discomfort than anything else. If he ever had an erection like that, he would have split his pants. I made a vow that Sunny would not sit on his lap while she was my girl.

When we got to the apartment, Sunny towed me into the bedroom and then pushed me to the bed in order to give me some relief. She joked, saying my sperm tasted better when she was stoned. After wiping her mouth, she got her guitar and started to play softly while I fell asleep.

I awoke to a scream. It was Sunny, sitting on the side of the bed, holding her small tummy.

“What’s wrong, love,” I said, getting up to hold her.

“It’s the baby,” she sobbed. “There is something wrong with her.”

I was flummoxed for a few minutes until I realized in her drug-high she again thought she was a real woman and this time was pregnant. “It’s like those babies in your picture book. With no arms.”

Again confusion, but I soon realized she was referring to the pictures of Thalidomide babies she had seen in my Pharmacology text. The book used that disaster as an example on how some drugs could cause birth defects or side effects.

I held her for a half hour until she started having labor pains and she pulled away. She went over to her shelf and took down a baby doll she had bought at the swap meet. At the time she told me it was because she couldn’t have one when she was little.

As she walked back she tore off the arms and legs, and finally sat next to me, bringing up the baby torso from her legs. “Look Mitch,” she sobbed. “She has no arms or legs.” After that she went to her side of the bed, lying down. “Don’t worry honey,” she said, “I will still love you and look after you forever.” Then she put the baby under her nightgown to her chest, and mimed breast-feeding. I sat up for a few more minutes, but Sunny closed her eyes and looked asleep, so I quickly fell under again.

The sun was shining through my window when I woke up again. “Did the baby wake you?” Sunny asked, still nursing the limbless doll. “When you are out of the bathroom, I want to give the baby a bath.”

It was noon when Sunny finally crashed from her bad trip. Apparently, she had not slept during the night, so it was eight p.m. when she finally woke again. She stared at the doll, and its dismembered limbs as I led her to the other room to finish up the pizza before Ben ate it all. She was hungry and ate four slices, cleaning up the order, before speaking.

“It was horrible, Mitch,” she sobbed, and I put my arms around her. It started out so well. I was a real woman again. And I remember you making love to me, and your thing was in my thing and it felt so perfect having you inside of me. Then I got morning sickness. Did you hear me dry heaving at the toilet? Next I grew bigger and bigger and I could feel the baby moving around in my womb. Then it all turned horrible.”

“That was when you screamed,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t remember that,” she said. “But the baby grew and grew inside of me, and I got labor pains. I pushed you away. Fathers have no business at a birth. I got the doll, and when I put it between my legs it became real. When I pulled it up it was a real, life baby. But without arms or legs. It had tiny hands right at the shoulder, and little feet where the legs should have started.” She sobbed.

“It was horrible,” she cried. “I gave birth, something I can never do, and I did it wrong. I did something that made a monster instead of a baby. But I couldn’t help but love her. She did nothing wrong. It was all my fault. I nursed her. I had real big, natural breasts, and she suckled from them. It felt perfect if my eyes were closed. I put my little finger out and she grabbed hold of it with her tiny little fingers. Perfect fingers. But on an armless hand.”

“It’s all right,” Ben said. “It sounds like you had a bad trip. Acid can do that. I hope it won’t happen again.”

“I won’t,” the blonde vowed. “No more Kool-Aid for me. I’ll share Mitch’s canteen in the future. I never want to go through that again.”

The next day was Sunday, and we all went to the swap meet and split up to buy Christmas presents for each other. We would all go to the apartment and hide our gifts, and then head down to the deli to wait for the others. In an hour we were done and had finished our sandwiches and headed back to the meet to buy presents for others that would be at Christmas. I suggested Ben just buy something for my parents, his hosts. Sunny picked out a pretty paisley scarf for my mother, and he found a box of golf balls for my father. Sunny got my mom a set of cookie cutters, and a pipe stand for my Dad, although that might also count as a gift for Mom, because she was continually complaining about the mess his pipes caused in the ashtray. I got Dad a new handmade pipe from a hippie at the swap meet. It was a corncob, like Roosevelt used to smoke in all the old pictures, so I thought he might like it.

I had a lot of other presents to get. My aunts and the sisters and their husbands were in a Christmas Club thing where you drew names and bought something for one person in the group and got one gift in return. I had always considered it totally unfair, because my sisters all bought their husband’s gifts, and I, with no wife, had to buy for whichever brother-in-law my Mother said she drew the name of in my place. It was always a little game at the gift giving where an uncle would say thank you to another uncle for a present he gave, but had never seen before.

But this time I had Sunny with me, and after I described Uncle Frank to her, she said she would find something. And she did, getting him a nice tie: he was a banker.

It was all the little nieces and nephews that were the big part of my shopping. Christmas was their special time and they all expected a gift from Uncle Mitch.

Sunny shone at this. Kids were her specialty. She bought books for each of Mario’s kids, and a book in Italian for Maria. I bought Mario a gift. Sunny found it. It was a little cash box like the one the man had been using, probably for 22 years. This one was like new, and had slots inside for the coins, and an area underneath for the people who bought magazines and such with bills.

There was a great book stand at the swap meet, and we were able to get presents for a dollar or two. That was important because there were a dozen little ones to buy for. Sunny gave me her last five dollars after buying books for Maria’s brood. We worked together in buying like new books for the kids in the family. I spent my last dollar on a package of wrapping paper. The kids and the people at Christmas had to have wrapped gifts. We decided not to wrap our presents to each other which would be bulky to hitch-hike with. Ben bought tape and we went home to an evening of wrapping presents.

I pretty much just wrapped the presents for my parents, Mario, and Frank’s tie. Sunny wanted to do all of the kids’ books. I think she could envision the little ones opening them, even the kids she hadn’t met yet.

Finally, we had most of the presents wrapped in our knapsacks. Ben and I would each carry one, and Sunny had stuffed a few in her guitar case, including Frank’s tie and some smaller books.

On the night of the 22nd we three exchanged gifts. I bought Sunny a used stereo record player in good condition. She bought me a set of WWII combat fatigues at an army surplus booth. And Ben (who I had told what I was getting Sunny) hadn’t gone to the market at all. He bought her the new Beatles album, Rubber Soul, and a Peter Paul and Mary album containing Puff the Magic Dragon. He also got me a record, the new California Dreaming single and an album from the Grateful Dead that would have become a collector’s item if I had managed to keep it. Sunny got a canteen for Ben from the Army Surplus guy.

We all loved our presents and admitted that we loved each other more. Then we headed to bed, with Ben promising to wake us early for our hitch-hiking trip.