Eleanor Rebekah Brickman, was born to Jennifer and Tomas Brickman, on May 08 1986, in New Haven, Connecticut. Leni, as she was nicknamed, was a wild little girl with an attitude problem and rebellious streak to match. Her parents were laid back and didn’t know how to discipline their child, nor did they feel like they had to. They hired a nanny for a reason. She didn’t like being told what to do and despised rules, reveling in the “rules are made to be broken” quote as if it were water in a desert. The only person she listened to, besides her nanny - on occasion, was her grandmother, who was the typical opinionated, mildly offensive bubby who has her nose in all of her family’s business. Mainly because she thought she was funny. And because she wasn’t afraid to smack Leni on the ass if she was sassing back.
School was tough for Leni, not because she wasn’t smart enough to learn, but because she didn’t care and hated listening. The Brickman’s spent more money than they wanted to to make sure she wasn’t kicked out of schools, teachers dreaded the moment she’d be in their classes more than the trouble making boys. Leni’s greatest talent was finding a weakness and using it to get under their skin. All of the shrinks she was sent to, and there were a few, told the family she just had too much energy. So at 13, when it was acceptable, she was sent to Utah to an outdoor educational school for troubled teens.
It wasn’t all chopping firewood and nature walks, which she probably would have preferred, but the group and music therapy really ruined the setting a good majority of the time. Once she realized that the “supervised” excursions with boys were only offered to the well behaved girls, she started to act a little better. Some might call it manipulative, but she preferred wily. Her first co ed camping trip at 14 led to a pregnancy scare and a ban from anymore co educational activity for the rest of the year.
Leni assumed that it was just school and always being under someone’s watchful, or more usually neglectful, eye that she disliked, because upon graduation, no one was more surprised than the family, she took a gap year and began traveling with money given to her by her paternal grandmother. She started in Europe, spending months in London, Manchester and then Perth, Scotland. She then made her way through the countries, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Romania, and Ukraine before heading East through Thailand, Malaysia, and The Philippines before she settled in Australia for a few months. While she traveled, she worked, getting waitressing jobs where they paid under the table, finding older boyfriends to let her stay with them while she toured around, making friends, and living the life she always loved. She always had a new name, a new story of her life in the US. She was many different people, a different version of herself, everywhere she went and it felt good to be someone else.
At the age of 21, while in Australia, she met an Argentinian man, Valentino, whom she fell hard for. He was going to school abroad for the year and when he returned to South America, she went with him, the two getting married before crossing the Pacific. Living in Argentina wasn’t a dream, especially when she realized that he and his family both expected her to stay home, cooking and cleaning while getting pregnant fast. Her miscarriages, two of them, were both a blessing and curse. They upset her husband and his family immensely, but she didn’t want to start a family with him anymore. At this point, she was 23 and no longer happy. Val was getting angrier and more and more violent.
She left one night after he had passed out from too much tequila and maybe a few pills she’d crushed into his drink. She moved to Costa Rica for a year, until she knew it was time to go home, but she didn’t want to head to New York. Instead, she ran to her cousin in New Hampshire, crashing on her couch for a week before making some real life decisions. She decided to go to school, yuck, but for cosmetology. She took makeup and hair courses, surprisingly doing well in the hands on classes. When Nora moved to Massachusetts and told her how much better than New Hampshire it was, well, Leni moved too, finding a place in an upscale salon where she was given the opportunity to do hair and makeup for rich ladies with nothing but time on their hands.
The Brickman’s, Tomas’s parents and Leni’s very neglectful paternal grandparent’s found out about her impending move and informed her that their close friend, Silas Rumy, a well known or rather cult classic type of Sci-Fi author, was looking to rent out a floor in his home in Back Bay. Initially she agreed, trying to show her family she was no longer a bad, troubled person, hoping to only stay for a few weeks before she found somewhere permanent, except that floor became her somewhere permanent and weirdly enough, Silas and his dog became family. Although she’d deny the part about the dog.
In 2015 a Private Investigator found her and bribed her to sign the divorce papers so Valentino could get married to someone else. She didn’t need money or coercion to sign them, since ridding herself of that time in her life was her best bet to moving on, but she took the money anyway. As she heads into 2018, Leni is working on herself, working for a real piece of work, and maybe even writing a book.
School was tough for Leni, not because she wasn’t smart enough to learn, but because she didn’t care and hated listening. The Brickman’s spent more money than they wanted to to make sure she wasn’t kicked out of schools, teachers dreaded the moment she’d be in their classes more than the trouble making boys. Leni’s greatest talent was finding a weakness and using it to get under their skin. All of the shrinks she was sent to, and there were a few, told the family she just had too much energy. So at 13, when it was acceptable, she was sent to Utah to an outdoor educational school for troubled teens.
It wasn’t all chopping firewood and nature walks, which she probably would have preferred, but the group and music therapy really ruined the setting a good majority of the time. Once she realized that the “supervised” excursions with boys were only offered to the well behaved girls, she started to act a little better. Some might call it manipulative, but she preferred wily. Her first co ed camping trip at 14 led to a pregnancy scare and a ban from anymore co educational activity for the rest of the year.
Leni assumed that it was just school and always being under someone’s watchful, or more usually neglectful, eye that she disliked, because upon graduation, no one was more surprised than the family, she took a gap year and began traveling with money given to her by her paternal grandmother. She started in Europe, spending months in London, Manchester and then Perth, Scotland. She then made her way through the countries, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Romania, and Ukraine before heading East through Thailand, Malaysia, and The Philippines before she settled in Australia for a few months. While she traveled, she worked, getting waitressing jobs where they paid under the table, finding older boyfriends to let her stay with them while she toured around, making friends, and living the life she always loved. She always had a new name, a new story of her life in the US. She was many different people, a different version of herself, everywhere she went and it felt good to be someone else.
At the age of 21, while in Australia, she met an Argentinian man, Valentino, whom she fell hard for. He was going to school abroad for the year and when he returned to South America, she went with him, the two getting married before crossing the Pacific. Living in Argentina wasn’t a dream, especially when she realized that he and his family both expected her to stay home, cooking and cleaning while getting pregnant fast. Her miscarriages, two of them, were both a blessing and curse. They upset her husband and his family immensely, but she didn’t want to start a family with him anymore. At this point, she was 23 and no longer happy. Val was getting angrier and more and more violent.
She left one night after he had passed out from too much tequila and maybe a few pills she’d crushed into his drink. She moved to Costa Rica for a year, until she knew it was time to go home, but she didn’t want to head to New York. Instead, she ran to her cousin in New Hampshire, crashing on her couch for a week before making some real life decisions. She decided to go to school, yuck, but for cosmetology. She took makeup and hair courses, surprisingly doing well in the hands on classes. When Nora moved to Massachusetts and told her how much better than New Hampshire it was, well, Leni moved too, finding a place in an upscale salon where she was given the opportunity to do hair and makeup for rich ladies with nothing but time on their hands.
The Brickman’s, Tomas’s parents and Leni’s very neglectful paternal grandparent’s found out about her impending move and informed her that their close friend, Silas Rumy, a well known or rather cult classic type of Sci-Fi author, was looking to rent out a floor in his home in Back Bay. Initially she agreed, trying to show her family she was no longer a bad, troubled person, hoping to only stay for a few weeks before she found somewhere permanent, except that floor became her somewhere permanent and weirdly enough, Silas and his dog became family. Although she’d deny the part about the dog.
In 2015 a Private Investigator found her and bribed her to sign the divorce papers so Valentino could get married to someone else. She didn’t need money or coercion to sign them, since ridding herself of that time in her life was her best bet to moving on, but she took the money anyway. As she heads into 2018, Leni is working on herself, working for a real piece of work, and maybe even writing a book.
MEMORIES
