Sunny: The Hippie Chick

By Dawn Natelle

Reviewed and Edited by Eric

Chapter 10 – God damn, god damn the pusher man

Sunny handed me $5 for her share of the rent money at the end of the month. “You don’t have to pay,” I told her. “I know you aren’t busking anymore. I can cover your share. It’s what I paid before you moved in.”

“Yeah, but I still want to pull my own weight. I’ve saved up over $500 from when the busking was easy.”

“Really? Rich as well as beautiful?” I said. “I guess you can afford to sing for the kids every day.”

“Yeah, and I feel like I am doing good,” she said. “It gives the kids a break every day from all the shit they have to go through. And one of the nurses said that some of the kids seem to do better after I come visit. I don’t know if it the music, the distraction I provide, or my prayers. God has no business putting little kids through all that.”

“In the spirit of irreverence, maybe we can do your film for the doctor.” Sunny’s doctor (the one prescribing her hormones) had asked her to do a film of her progress, now over four months along. He was only expecting her to do front and profile static images without her face showing, but Sunny being Sunny she went a step beyond and did a little dance routine wearing only her briefs to tuck back her boy bits. With her long hair flying it made quite a little act, taking nearly two minutes. The 16 mm films held about five minutes of action and we usually filmed two minutes or so. We could easily get two sessions per film, but the doctor wanted to process them as quickly as possible, so I took them to his office the day following filming and got another reel.

At supper that night I mentioned Sunny’s cash stash, and the fact it would be safer in a bank account.

“I can’t get an account,” she noted. “I got rid of all my boy ID stuff when I came to the City. I have absolutely no identity materials.”

“I know a guy,” Ben said between mouthfuls of food. “Do you want girl ID or boy ID?”

“Girl,” Sunny said immediately.

“Let’s talk this through,” I interjected. “It might be better to have boy ID for now, until you get through your operations.” Sunny frowned. “Then you can get girl ID later after everything is changed.”

“Will that be possible?” Ben noted. “They aren’t all that willing to make changes to official records. And even if they do, they might want to put something on the ID, like “originally male” in the gender section.” I admitted defeat on this point. “The next question is name.”

“Why Sunshine Aquarius, of course,” Sunny said.

“That won’t be easy,” Ben said. “My guy has access to the state files in the government somehow, and he will find names of babies that died in the year you were born. You will get that child’s ID after he makes a few little changes so that the baby didn’t die but grew up into you.”

“And it will make more sense to have a square name,” I was even starting to use hippie lingo. “I mean, what are the chances that parents in 1943 would have named their daughter Sunshine, let along Aquarius? You could get the ID in some other name, and then just say you changed it. You could even change it to Sunshine with a legal name change.”

“You would need a lawyer for that,” Ben said. He did not have a favorable opinion of lawyers. “So, I will have my guy search and find out the best name he can come up with. Once he is done, he will have a birth certificate printed out that I can pass on to you.

“And once we know the name, you can type out a blank envelope addressed to yourself with that name and mail it to yourself. Most banks will take that as a second form of ID for opening an account. The bank information that is mailed to you will give you a third form of ID.”

“I could get a library card,” Sunny noted with glee.

“Or take a class at college,” I suggested. Sunny was not so much in favor of that.

“I don’t have grades from High School. And I really don’t like the idea of going back to school. I mean it is cool for you, Mitch, but I could pass on that.”

Again I conceded defeat. Sunny’s ID was going to cost her $100, making a bit of a hit on her savings account but in the end all three of us agreed that it was a good idea.

Over the next few weeks Sunny did the hospital thing every morning. One day when I came home, I found her in what can only be described as a funk. Apparently one of her kids had died the night before. The little one, only five, had been fighting all her short life, and finally just gave up. Her parents came up to Sunny after her somewhat muted session for the other kids and expressed their appreciation for what she had done for their daughter.

“She loved you,” Jennifer’s mother said. “She talked about you all the time, and how much she wanted to be with you always. Anyway, we would like you to come to her funeral on Friday afternoon. Maybe sing a final little song for her?”

“I would love to,” Sunny said. “I loved her. Maybe not as much as you two, but as much as anyone else. She was in pain so much. I am just glad that I could make her smile sometimes.”

“For a year before you started coming, I don’t think she ever smiled,” her father said. “We will never forget what you meant to her.”

“And I will never forget what those wonderful smiles meant to me,” Sunny replied.

After hearing that story, I agreed to accompany Sunny to the funeral. Both of the professors who I would be skipping out on were decent people and would accept a card from the funeral home as bereavement leave.

Sunny then went into the bedroom and started strumming sad notes on her guitar.

I made dinner that night. Sunny had started to teach me a bit about cooking, and I made bacon burgers while she worked away in the bedroom. When I finally came to get her, she gave a sad smile and said: “Listen to this Mitch.”

Jesus Needs Her

Fly away, our sweet little white dove


We hadn’t enough time to give you love


Your smile brightened us like the sun

And your life was so short of fun

But Jesus needs you, we don’t know why


But we will always remember you and cry


We don’t know why he took you so early


But now you are within the gates so pearly

Your pain is gone, and that makes us happy


And makes the pain of mommy and pappy

Easier to bear. Jesus needs you just so

That makes it time for you to go

Fly away, our sweet little white dove


We hadn’t enough time to give you love


Your smile brightened us like the sun

And your life was so short of fun

“That is beautiful, Sunny,” I said. There were tears in my eyes, and Sunny was full out crying. “Come along now. I made dinner and I want you to eat some, even if you don’t feel like it.”

“You made dinner?” She looked at the clock beside the bed and seemed surprised at the time. “It has been that long? And you made me dinner?” She swept me into a hug, and we went to the other room, when Ben was setting the table.

We ate, and then Sunny went and got her guitar and played her song for Ben, who also loved it.

On Friday Sunny dressed in her most somber looking dress, and made me put on a suit and tie, which I hadn’t worn since late last year. We went to the funeral home where there was a small line of mourners in the small room. We proceeded through the line to offer condolences to the parents, and Sunny and the mother both broke down into tears. There was a tiny white casket along the wall, and we proceeded over to it, with Sunny still holding Jennifer’s mother tightly. They wailed loudly looking down at the little angel. The morticians had managed to add some color to her face, and make it look like she was sleeping peacefully, but you could still tell that she was a frail little thing.

After Sunny took the mother back to the receiving line, we took seats near the rear of the small collection of chairs. Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer’s father came and gathered us up, moving us to seats in the front row. Both sets of grandparents were there and some aunts and uncles, but Jennifer’s mom insisted that Sunny sit next to her. They held hands and held back tears through most of the service until the minister announced that ‘a friend of the family’ would sing a little song. Sunny got up and sang the song from memory, and she had tears running down her face as she sang. All the women in the small crowd were also crying when she finished, none more than Jennifer’s mother. Many of the men in the group were also holding back tears. Jennifer’s father was not even pretending to be strong. He was sobbing as much as anyone.

After the service we were invited to the graveside service, where a small hole had been dug. The tiny casket was moved by four uncles as pallbearers, although it was small enough that two could have sufficed. It was lowered into the ground as Sunny sang her song again.

Halfway through the song, a small leaf was caught in an eddy in the wind, and slowly rose, wafting to and fro, gently rising until it reached the top of a nearby tree and was lost to sight just as Sunny ended her song. Sunny had not noticed the leaf, although all the rest of us had. She came back to the girl’s mother and embraced her, both with tears streaming down their faces. “I feel better now, a little,” the mother said. “I know she has gone to heaven, and no longer feels the pain. I will love her always, but she is in a better place. Thank you so much for that song. I will sing it over and over when I am missing her.”

Her husband came up to Sunny and handed her a small white envelope that had ‘Suny’ printed on it in a child’s scrawl. Sunny opened the envelope and took out a small scrap of paper. ‘I luv you’ was all it said, in that same five-year-old scrawl in crayon.

Sunny broke down again, handing me the envelope and pressing the note to her chest. It was not until we were halfway to the gates of the cemetery that Sunny was able to walk without my assistance. I was about to hand the envelope back to her when I felt something else was inside.

I looked in and found a $100 bill. I showed it to my girl, and she burst out in tears again. “I didn’t do the song for money,” she wailed. “It was for love.”

“Well, I guess it is normal for singers at funerals to be paid,” I consoled her. “Accept it as a gift. We can hitch hike down here to visit. You can buy some flowers for Jennifer and we can leave them on her grave.”

Sunny was low for the next week, although she went to the ward every day. She had other kids there and would not stint them in her grief. That helped her too, with each day getting a little easier and a little better. Three of the nurses had gone to Jennifer’s funeral and had heard her play. They insisted that she play the song for the other nurses, and it became a tradition that she sing it at each performance as the last song, usually leaving the nurses with tears in their eyes, both for Jennifer and for other lost little ones that they had known before Sunny had started coming in.

I think the next time Sunny really smiled was the day that Ben handed her the birth certificate he had acquired. “Caroline Mary Lamotte,” she read. “And my birthday is May 24. I am five months younger. I hope that Caroline had a better youth than Lyle did.”

The next day Sunny got a library card and opened a bank account, getting a little book that said she had $522.53 in it, written in the neat hand of the teller who opened the account and accepted her savings and the money from Jennifer’s parents in it. She had kept $20 cash in her purse. The teller gave her a packet of blank checks.

It was that week when I got my first job. Well, volunteer work. A medical clinic was being opened on Haight, two blocks towards Ashbury from the apartment, and one of the professors at the university was working there. I was the only undergrad student asked to volunteer, along with a couple dozen grad students. Thus, I was initially little more than an orderly, fetching and sterilizing instruments for the doctors, one of which was on duty at all times. I took three two-hour shifts in the weekday evenings, and a four-hour shift on Saturday, which meant my study time was crammed into Sundays.

This went on for three weeks, and during that time I learned a lot, especially on Saturdays when the female doctor on duty discovered she preferred working with me instead of any of the grad students, who were already prejudiced against female doctors and treated her badly as ‘only a woman doctor’. It was to my benefit, because she used me as her assistant rather than just an orderly.

We dealt with many cut feet, as the kids who came in insisted in being barefoot in areas where others had been less than careful with beer and soda bottles. It was a shame too, since there were dozens of kids running around looking for empties to cash in to get food or weed. But some people, especially when drunk, enjoyed smashing the bottles against walls, leaving more glass for us to dig out at the clinic.

I also assisted in delivering a baby about a month in. Dr. Mary actually made the delivery, but I assisted and wrapped the tiny bundle in a clean blanket and finally laid him on his mother’s chest, where he quickly learned how to breastfeed.

Thus, on one Sunday two weeks later I was working hard on a term paper for Chemistry. Ben and Sunny had gone out to the flea market and I heard them coming home on the stairs. I had the TV on, not watching it but using it as a way to focus on my paper, which I hoped Sunny could type out later in the week.

I had finished the paper, but knew it needed a revise and work on the references, when Sunny and Ben entered. Not two minutes later there was a banging on the door followed by the words ‘Police. Open up. Now” being shouted. Ben turned to go to the door, but suddenly it was opened, and two large, overweight white policemen entered and jumped on Ben.

“Stop resisting,” one cop yelled, and hauled off with a punch to Ben’s stomach, even though he was not resisting at all.

As they were cuffing him, I got an idea, and reached over to turn on the movie camera. If they beat him, I could get up to five minutes of it on film. I worried about the whir of the camera being heard, but I guess the sound of the television covered it up.

There was one more unnecessary punch before they got Ben into handcuffs. Sunny just stood there amazed as our friend was roughly hauled to his feet. “Don’t worry Missy,” one cop said. “You are safe now.”

“I was safer before you busted in to attack my roommate,” she said.

“Roommate? Is that what they call pimps these days,” the other cop grunted.

“Pimp!” Sunny nearly screamed at them. “He is not. I am not … that is my boyfriend,” she waved in my general direction.” Thanks for directing their attention at me, Sunny, I thought.

“Oh,” one cop said. The other looked confused for a second, and then smiled. “We will just take a quick look through the apartment and then let him go if there is nothing wrong.” As he spoke, I saw him take something out of his front pocket. He then strode off, first into my bedroom and then into the bathroom.

“Lookie here,” the officer said holding up a foil-wrapped package that I was pretty sure was what he had pulled out of his pocket seconds earlier. “Looks to be a good ounce of weed. Which one of you three is responsible for that?”

For a moment we were all stunned into silence. Then Ben said. “Neither of them have anything to do with that. They didn’t know it was there.”

Sunny gasped. She had not seen the cop pull the drugs out. “Where was it?” she asked.

“Taped to the back of the toilet,” the cop said. “Dealers often hide their stash back there.”

“But I clean back there twice a week,” she said. “I would have noticed.”

But the cops were not listening. They started hauling Ben away.

“Where are you taking him?” I asked in alarm.

“He’ll spend the night in the cells at our station. Then a hearing will be held tomorrow at the bail court. No visitors at the station, but you can come to the hearing. Phone after nine to find out when he is scheduled.” With that they yanked him out the door and headed down the stairs. I followed until they got to their cruiser, wanting to make sure no one ‘tripped’ and Ben got hurt further. I then headed back up the stairs.

“I can’t believe Ben was dealing drugs. He must have put it there after I cleaned on Tuesday,” Sunny said.

“He’s not dealing drugs,” I said. “The cops planted it there. I saw the bigger guy take it out of his pants.”

“But he admitted it was his.”

“No, what he said was that the two of us didn’t know anything about it. He was protecting us.”

“Why would he do that?”

“For you Sunny,” I explained. “If they had arrested all of us, we all would have been spending the night in jail. And after a strip search, there is a good chance you would have been labelled as male and wound up in a cell with god knows what kind of men.”

“Oh my,” Sunny said visualizing what might have happened.