Sunny: The Hippie Chick

By Dawn Natelle

Reviewed and Edited by Eric

Chapter 14 – I look at the world, and I notice it's turning While my guitar gently weeps

Sorry for the long delay on this. I’ve had a bad back. It’s better now, and hopefully the next chapter should be within a week: Dawn.

Once the weight of the case that had been bringing Ben down was gone, he tried to get his life back in order. But it was not easy. First, he went to the grocery store, hoping to get his job back collecting shopping carts and bringing them back into the store. But there was a new manager there, and he had no interest in hiring a black man. Union rules kept him from getting on full time at the wharf, but he was able to pick up some days when the union men had called in sick or were on holiday, which meant he averaged two days a week there. But the $20 a week he was netting was far short of what he needed to live on.

Mary had gone after the university for expelling him without a conviction, and her tenacious work got him re-admitted to his undergrad school. But he had lost a term, and most of the courses he needed to finish his year would not run again until January. Besides, his United Negro College Fund scholarship had been cancelled when he was expelled, and as a result he could no longer afford tuition and books, let alone living expenses.

Ben did get a few mechanic’s jobs but when he went to the local hardware store, he took along a few of the old tools he had refurbished to show the store owner. To his surprise the man had no interest in offering refurbishing as an option, preferring to sell people new tools. But he did look closely at some of the tools that Ben had sharpened. Both knives and tools like scissors and shears often went dull and the man thought that having a sharpening service would bring new business into the store.

“So now I just need to drum up some business,” Ben told us at supper that night. “we are going to charge a dollar a tool, or six for $5. I get half of that.”

“I’ve got some dull knives in the kitchen, at least five, and a pair of scissors,” Sunny said.

“And we can make up a sign or poster for you,” Mary added, wanting to aid her new boyfriend.

“Are there any scissors or shears left in the shed?” I asked. “If you were to clean up and sharpen one side of a pair and leave the original in the rusty state it will really show what you can do.”

The girls made a poster and Ben went down to the shed before it got too dark, finding an ancient pair of sewing scissors. The poster was not too large … the store wouldn’t give up too much counter space, but Mary wrote the words and Sunny pretty much depleted a black marker writing it out in her neatest writing.

Ben came up with the scissors, now separated in two pieces. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “I won’t do the work up here normally. But it was getting too dark in the shed to see, and I wanted to get these samples cleaned up for tomorrow morning. That is a great looking poster.”

He worked through the evening cleaning up and sharpening one side of the scissors and reassembled the tool. As I had thought it really was attention grabbing.

The next day he went to the store and was showing it to the store owner, who was having cold feet on the idea until Sunny entered the store, read the sign she had made herself and dropped off her five knives and a scissors. That clinched it, and the shopkeeper agreed to offer the service. Ben left with Sunny’s tools, promising to have them done the next afternoon.

When Sunny went in the next day, there were another four knives to be done from people seeing the sign, and three pair of scissors.

Several weeks later there was a steady number of about 20 tools to be sharpened, giving Ben another $10 a week income, allowing him to pay rent again after several months of being carried by me.

Mary was living in our tiny apartment by that time. She had done well in defending Ben, in spite of it being pro bono work. The other people entrapped by the bent police officers were offered legal services through the ACLU, which hired Mary as a junior lawyer to head the re-trials. She was given a salary large enough to get an apartment of her own, but she was in love, and stayed with Ben, sharing his fold-out bed.

In October Sunny told us at supper that there was a free concert being planned in the nearby panhandle park. The Love Pageant Rally would have Big Brother and the Grateful Dead performing to commemorate the Oct 6 banning of LSD in California. Until then the drug had not been a controlled substance and thus was essentially legal, to the dismay of the police and politicians. The rally on the day the drug became illegal would be a way for the hippies to thumb their noses at the state. Copious amounts of LSD would be available and given away at the event.

I knew that I would look like a narc or policeman at the rally. I had gotten my hair cut in May, and twice since then so I could look professional when I went to Dr. Killensworth’s plastic surgery clinic to advise women considering the treatment. I earned $10 per woman who signed up for the surgery with the doctor and discovered that long hair and hippie clothing would turn off the patients. Sunny was thrilled to iron my white shirts and knot my business-like ties when I went to the clinic three days a week in the summer and twice a week once school started again.

Ben also looked a bit square. Mary had made him cut his hair in September for the trial, and it really hadn’t grown out much. Mary; well, Mary looked like a lawyer, even when Sunny had her kitted out in a tie-dye dress. Sunny was the one of us that looked the part of the hippie in her tie-dyed maxi sun dress. Her hair was now only three inches long, but she was able to weave some daisies from the garden into it. She wound up being the only one of the four of us who was offered a tab of acid. A man working through the crowd placed a little tab of paper inside her cheek. After he turned to another person, Sunny reached into her mouth and pulled the paper out. She was still afraid of another bad trip, but still seemed to get a half dose. It was enough to send her on a trip after the concert. She stayed up all night playing her guitar and singing but had no negative dreams this time.

Two weeks later Mary and Ben were off somewhere and after we finished the dinner dishes, I sat Sunny down on the sofa. “I can’t take you to the clinic for a consultation, since we aren’t paying for your implants,” I explained. “But there are some things you need to know about the procedures. I thought we could do it here. First, are you still certain you need the implants? You seem to be being doing well with the glue-ons. And I absolutely love your natural breasts. They seem to be a B-cup now.”

“Yes. I want them,” she said. “I just feel more female when I look down and see them poking out. To have them inside of me, instead of just glued on would be perfect.”

“Okay. But this is a major surgery. Dr. Killensworth is doing about 15 of these a week now, so you don’t need to worry about him. But it is a full surgery. You will be under an full anesthetic during the surgery. He will make incisions at the base of each breast, where the skin fold will be. He will insert a new pair of implants under your natural breast tissues and position them there. When everything is set, an operating room nurse will sew up the incisions. That is actually a good thing, since she takes her time and makes much smaller stitches than the doctor would. This will make the implants much harder to detect, except when you are naked. When you wake up it will hurt, but they will give you some pain killers. I’m going to get you scheduled for an appointment early in the day so you will have time to recover. Some women spend the night in the hospital, but that is expensive. Do you have someone who can drive you home?”

“My boyfriend, I hope.”

“Of course. Sorry. That is one of the questions I have to ask. They don’t want you driving for a week after the operation. Not a problem for you. You will be in pain for a few days and will definitely feel some tightness. But a week to 10 days later you will be able to have the stitches out. That is something I can do here. Normally patients go back to the clinic so a nurse can do it. You are going to be bedridden during that time. So, no visits to your cancer kids.”

“Oh no,” Sunny sobbed. “I will miss them.”

It turned out that Sunny only missed four days with her kids. She made me go in in her place, starting on the afternoon of her operation. The next two days I gathered up ‘get well’ cards the kids made and brought them home for her, causing her to burst into tears. On the fourth day I had to take a big card from Sunny that she had made for the kids. Sunny was not an ideal patient. After the second day, even as the pain was continuing from the huge incisions, she became bored laying in bed, even though I had moved the TV into her room. On the fifth day, even though she still had the stitches in, I had to practically carry her to the clinic. That night I risked taking the stitches out and used a medicated solution on the scars to keep infections down. It was a month later when the scars fell off and she was able to wear a bra again instead of a camisole.

It was early December when I came back from the Anatomy exam for the midterm and got off the bus to get my papers from Mario.

“Something happening near your house?” Mario asked. I looked up and saw an ambulance double parked in front of the apartment. I dropped the papers and the change Mario was trying to give me and started to run. My first thought was that something had happened to Sunny. It was more than a month since her surgery, and she had seemed to be healing well. I racked my brain trying to think of what might have happened to her.

It was then that I realized how badly out of shape I had become. The last few yards to the house saw me staggering more than running. Ben was just going in as I reached the steps and staggered up to them.

“Sunny?” I said, hardly able to speak as I gasped for breath.

“She’s inside with Mrs. Horley,” Ben said, confused at my concern.

“Who?” I gestured at the ambulance speeding away.

“That was Mrs. Sullivan, the downstairs tenant,” Ben said, supporting me as I panted like a dog. “Sunny was bringing her some tomatoes from the garden and found her door locked. They knocked, but there was no answer, so Mrs. Horley got her key. They found her collapsed on her bed and called for the ambulance. The ambulance workers couldn’t say what was wrong but guessed that she had a stroke. Mary and I helped get her into the ambulance, while Sunny comforted Mrs. Horley, who was pretty shaken by it, as you might imagine. The two were close friends.”

By that time, I had gotten my breath back and went into the room where Sunny was wrapped around the weeping older woman, gently hugging her. Mary, ever the lawyer, was rooting through a box next to Mrs. Sullivan’s bed, looking for legal papers.

“It looks like she had a husband who died in the war,” Mary said looking at some forms. “She was getting checks from the VA. They probably will provide medical coverage for her.”

I guess I was the prototypical med student too, as I asked which hospital she was taken to. Ben told me the ambulance workers told him but said we shouldn’t go visit until the next day, when she would have had a chance to be examined.

It was a somber supper. Mary made sandwiches for Ben and me upstairs and Sunny didn’t leave Mrs. Horley, who she fed soup and toast. She never even came up to bed, spending the night curled up next to our upset landlady.

The next morning, she got Mary to sit with Mrs. Horley so she could do an early session with her kids and came back at about 10. Mary had called the hospital and got an update on Mrs. Sullivan’s condition. It was a stroke, and she was going to be in the hospital for at least a week, when they hoped she would be well enough to go to a VA treatment center. What was not mentioned was what would happen if she didn’t improve. At any rate, she was not coming back to her room in the house.

Shortly after that three of us went in the van to the hospital. Sunny insisted on coming. Mary said she wanted to come in case she needed to pull her lawyer credentials out on troublesome doctors or staff. And I wanted to go for the medical experience.

Surprisingly Mrs. Horley was happy to stay with Ben. She considered him to be like a son to her, with all the work he had done on her house. She was in a better state anyway and said she would make Ben a lunch. He spent most of the morning chatting with her, although he did clean up Mrs. Sullivan’s room. The lady had soiled her bed clothes while incapacitated so Ben made up a bundle and moved them out with the trash.

At the hospital we were first held up at the admissions desk, where Mary and I worked through the admissions paperwork. When we finally finished and they gave us the room number for Mrs. Sullivan we discovered Sunny was missing. It turned out that she had peeked over the nurse’s arm to find the room number and had headed there immediately.

Sunny was hugging Mrs. Sullivan, and apparently a nurse had started to tell her to not touch the patient, until she noticed that the old woman’s eyes had lost the look of fear that was in them and started to show signs of contentment in spite of her condition. After a half hour or so, she fell asleep and Sunny joined Mary and I, who were talking to a doctor. Mary assured him that the woman was on a VA plan, which should get her better treatment than indigent patients would. Once I had told the doctor I was a pre-med student, he changed his vocabulary with me, and started using terms I had yet to learn. I mentally memorized these terms and planned to look them up in the library tomorrow. I was able to get the gist of the message though. He was saying that Mrs. Sullivan would not recover from the stroke, and the next week would be telling.

When we got back to the house, Ben and Mrs. Horley were chatting. We explained that Mrs. Sullivan would never return to the house.

“Oh my,” Mrs. Horley said. “That means you will have to find me another tenant, Mitch. Another young nurse would be nice. It must be a woman. Mrs. Sullivan was paying $20 a month, but I think we should try for $25.”

“That’s rather a lot,” I replied. “It is just a room with a shared bathroom and no cooking facilities other than the toaster and hotplate in the room. But I will try.”

“I may be able to help,” Mary said. “I would be interested in taking the room, but only if I can have Ben stay in the room with me.”

“Ben, yes,” the landlady said. “He is a sweet boy. But if you break up with him, no other men.”

“Well, I’m not planning on breaking up with him ever,” Mary said, and Ben beamed. “And I’ve learned a lot about cooking from Sunny over the past few months. If you want, I’ll take over your kitchen and make meals for the three of us.”

“The three of us,” Mrs. Horley repeated. “That would be so nice. Like having a family with me again. Forget about looking, Mitch. I have found a tenant. You can put your first month’s rent towards some paint to clean the room up a bit.”

It took Ben more than a week to clean up the room, but soon the young couple were living there and Sunny and I had to get used to having only two of us around the table. Once a week though, Sunny made Sunday dinner and invited the three from downstairs up. Mrs. Horley wasn’t able to do the stairs on her own, but Ben sat her in a chair and carried it, and her up to the second floor for the meal.

“We need to decide about Christmas,” I told the group after Mary and Sunny cleared the table. “Last year we, the three of us went to Eureka with my parents. They say that Mary is welcome to come this year. Would you like to come with us, Mrs. Horley?”

“Oh, thank you dear, but no. Every year my three sons take turns taking me to their homes for the family Christmas. I will be gone for nearly a week, coming back just before New Year’s. They never seem to visit other times, but at Christmas they step up. It is so nice to see their little ones. There will be a new baby this year.” At the mention of a baby, Sunny sighed.

“I have to opt out as well,” Mary said. “All hell will break loose if I don’t go to my mother’s for Christmas. Ben can come with us, and I can introduce him to the family. But he might prefer to go with you guys.”

“No, love, I’d love to go with you. Where is your family?”

“Mom and Dad are in Santa Rosa, just north of the city.”

“There will be no hitchhiking this year,” I said. “I’ll take the van and drop you two off at your Mom’s and pick you up on the way back. We were planning on heading out on the 22nd and coming back on the 28th. Does that work for you?”

“That’s perfect for us,” Mary said. “My trips home in the past were shorter when I was in school and Mom always complained. With almost a week she’ll have nothing to complain about.”

When the dishes were done Ben and Mary took Mrs. Horley downstairs to their apartment. Sunny and I snuggled in bed that night.

“I’m going to have to go shopping soon to buy gifts for all those little ones that will be there,” she said. “I hope I have enough money.”

“Why don’t you buy gifts from both of us,” I suggested. “I made good money over the summer from the clinic and saved a lot of it. Can you buy everything for … say $200? That way you can buy new stuff instead of just recycled books and stuff. You know those kids will treasure anything coming from Auntie Sunny, no matter what it is.”

“$200?” she replied in a stunned voice. “Are you sure? That is a lot of money. You worked hard for it.”

“It is our money,” I insisted. “And it is going to my family. Our family, I hope. If you need more, let me know.”