'The Billionaire's Woman: A Memoir' Excerpt

The following is an excerpt of ‘The Billionaire’s Woman: A Memoir’

I am a child of divorced parents. I have two sisters who look nothing like me. We’re so different all I do almost every day of my childhood is to wonder if I am adopted. My daydreams are full of fantasies that often take the form of having my mother take the wrong baby home by mistake.

My real mother, the one I yearn for, the one that resembles the mothers on TV, I cling to the hope that one day she’ll burst through the front door, reclaim me as her child and hold me close to her where it is safe and warm and loving.

Meanwhile, the mother I’m stuck with who beats me with her fists with hate contorting her face, and who whips me with a belt while she screams, and tells me how horrible I am, until welts cover my body, and who allows her boyfriends and the other men who pay to rent a room in our apartment to touch me in my private places, this mother decides early on that of her three daughters, I am the one most likely to succeed in finding the ‘right man’. A euphemism she uses for rich man. So, she stops short of killing me because I will, someday when I am grown up, I will do right by her and prove to her that I am not the despicable unlovable child she has made me believe I am.

At 14, she figures I don’t need an education for this, so I am taken out of school like my older sister was 14 years earlier to help mom with me when I was born. This put an end to my sister’s education and would poison her heart against me for the rest of our lives.

Handing me a broom, mom orders me to start sweeping. “One day,” her voice is shrill and angry. “You’ll marry someone rich and buy me a yellow house.” I swear she made me believe I owed her something. And I paid. With my life, with my body, and with every broken shred of my young soul, I paid.

Fortunately, I suffer a mild heart attack. I am in bed for six months, and it is here in my bedroom, with the wall of infirmity keeping her at bay that I discover I can push her world away and disappear into my own. I’ve been a reader since I was a toddler, and now left alone, I devour my schoolbooks. I lose myself in daydreams. I want to become an archeologist, or an actress, or a writer, or a business tycoon. I begin to feel better and know I’m not meant to stay in this hell sweeping floors.

When her lover, the neighborhood doctor, comes in to examine me, always closing my bedroom door for what he calls “privacy,” and unbuttons my pajama top to take a look see at my newly formed breasts cupping them before pressing the cold stethoscope against my skin, I know it is the only chance I’ll have.

I’m frozen and terrified as I feel his hand cup my right breast and try to avert his unblinking stare that is waiting for get a response from me. I can feel his breath on me. I stare right back. Almost defiantly.

My words come out slowly. “Mommy… doesn’t… want me… to… go back to… school. Please… talk her… out… of… it. I want to go back… please...” At 70, he still has a full head of hair. It’s the color of snow. His clear blue eyes and wide grin don’t disguise the fact that he’s a dirty old man. From the time I was teeny he’s been part of mom’s life. He’s a Zionist and he’s taught me about the holocaust and how he and his family made it out of Russia only to find themselves victims of the Nazi’s. I’ve spent many afternoons learning how to type in his office, drafting letters for his patients, and I’ve seen up close the dark tattoo numbers on all of their arms. What a crazy world this is. Some of them are even drug addicts. They’re all suffering from different illnesses and despite the fact they all look to him as if he’s a god, he’s always frightened me.

I used to believe my mother was in love with him. I didn’t know she was using him as she would use me in years to come. But that day, when the dirty old guy was busy feeling me up in my bedroom, I got lucky. He must have said something to my mother, because after that day I was allowed to go back to school.

I am even given the opportunity of skipping a grade because the months spent studying in bed have gotten me past 11th grade requirements. But I opt to stay with my class. I am happy to be among my friends, and even more grateful that for a few hours every weekday I am not home with her.

. . .

“You’re just like your father!” My mother’s face has that look. I brace myself for another beating - one I know I don’t deserve. I’m a good girl. I’ve proven myself to be a good student. I am even shy. Too shy and withdrawn to look for ways to displease her, but somehow, I always do.

I wonder why my younger sister, who’s only one year my junior, is treated differently. Why is she loved and I’m not? The answer waits for me far into the future, when I’m a grown woman and inadvertently learn the truth. My younger sister is my mother’s love child, and I indeed am just like my father. I won’t know for decades to come that she married him only because she needed a husband to care for her and three children from her first marriage. Her first husband died of tuberculosis when she was only 21 years old.

When I finally learn this truth, I’ll realize that I remind her of a marriage to a man she didn’t love. I will go back in time and try to make sense of the fact that when she looked at me, she saw him – in the twinkle of my eyes, in the slope of my high cheekbones, in my quest to be creative, in my generous spirit, and in my resilience. However, as much as I fight to be nothing like her, I realize that in her womb, through the DNA she’s imprinted on me, like a stamp in a passport, I have inherited her ability and her will to survive.

. . .