The Girl in the Treehouse

by Jennifer Asbenson

  I laughed; I thought it was funny that he ran right into her. My mom, on the other hand, was not happy. She brought my sister and brother into the house and grabbed the fly swatter. I was confused but at the same time terrified by the look on her face. I had stopped laughing by now and tried to explain, but she just started coming after me. I was in disbelief. My mom had come unglued. She cornered me on my twin-size bed and swatted me with the fly swatter on my arms, legs, and anyplace I couldn’t cover. I hid my face. I felt the worst fear of my life. I was horror-stricken. She used all of her strength with each swat until she finally lost her breath. Then she left the room.

  I sat up and scooted back into the corner as far as I could. I looked at all the marks on my body. Everywhere I looked, they were there. I became angry and slammed my back and head into the corner and started to cry. I was hollow. I felt sadness, guilt, shame, anxiety, worry, and fear. There is one other emotion I felt that scared me the most— hate. I felt hate. I thought she hated me. I thought I hated her. I knew I hated myself. My existence caused me too much pain.

  I decided to pray: “Dear God, if you can hear me, please make my brother better or please make my mom die or please make me die because tomorrow is picture day, and I know I will be forced to go to school like this.” I crammed myself into the fetal position in the corner and stared at my hands and thought about life. I had to pee badly but held it. I smelled food cooking but was not going to leave that room. I wanted to pray and feel safe.

  How could a mother do something like this? Upon further research, I believe this incident was due to family stress and emotional health. The other explanations I had to choose from were of no relevance, considering my mom had a proper upbringing without abuse, did not do drugs or drink, and had a good family support system.

  I questioned everything I knew about life in my partially-developed brain. Why did some kids act happy at school? Why did some kids have immaculate clothes and so many of them? Why did some kids have cute lunch boxes and cool lunches? Why did some kids have lovely hair and parents who would kiss them when they dropped them off at school? Why was I different? What did I do to be different? Why did I have to go to the office to explain why I had no lunch? Why did I beg kids for their coleslaw when they were about to toss it off their trays, only to have them laugh at me after giving it to me? Why was my hair thin and ugly? Why did I have the ugliest legs with white spots all over them? Why was my name Jenny? Why couldn’t I see the words on the chalkboard at school? Why was I too afraid to tell the teachers I couldn’t see well? Why couldn’t I read? Why did I pee the bed? Why was I shy? Why did I stare? Why would no one listen to me? Why was I alive? I had no answers for any of these questions and hoped I would die in my sleep. Thus far, this had been the worst day of my life. And it wasn’t even over yet.

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE night, the door crept open. I didn’t peek to see who it was; I was too scared. I pretended to be asleep. The person sat on my bed. I held my breath; I heard a sigh. My body tensed up. I still pretended to be asleep. Then I heard my mom say the most beautiful words I had ever heard her say in my life: “I love you.” She didn’t touch me. She just said, “I love you.” After a moment, she stood and quietly closed the door as she left. Tears started to roll down my face. I didn’t move because I wasn’t sure if she would come back into my room. I curled into a ball and wept. I was now sure this was the best day of my life.

  I prayed to God again: “Dear God, please don’t make my mom die. She is being nicer. And thank you for having her say what she said to me. Also, I don’t want to die anymore.”

  I fell asleep for a while, only to be woken up by a wet bed. I didn’t mind peeing the bed because when I did, I would gather up my wet sheets, put them in the dryer with my clothes, and wear a towel. I would lean up against the dryer and pretend it was like a mom. I liked the warmth and the sound of the machine. I felt safe, at times, as I leaned on the dryer. Oddly enough, the dryer was in the kitchen, and no one ever bothered me while I was there. I don’t know if they even saw me there. I never saw anyone, but I was usually sleeping.

  It was awkward to see my mom the next day. I didn’t want to look at her eyes. I was still scared. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and pants underneath the dress I wanted to wear for the pictures. At school, I was called into the office. I don’t remember what the principal asked me, but it had to do with my parents hurting me. I automatically said, “No.” I felt like it wouldn’t happen again, so I didn’t want my mom to go to jail. I also didn’t know what would happen to me. I think I was mainly ashamed, worried everyone would find out. I just kept saying everything was fine. They let me go, and they never called me into the office again, and I didn’t mention the incident to anyone at home.

  I DIDN’T HAVE MANY FRIENDS. I usually chose to play with the kids no one liked, the ones others teased and taunted. I was certain these kids wouldn’t say no because they had no friends of their own. I had one friend in Sky Valley. I stayed the night at her house once. It was stinky and dirty. Besides that, I played with my cousins at the compound. We had a great time together. We wandered into the canyons where it was fun to escape from the adults.

  I had one cousin who seemed rich, and I always burst with excitement when I visited her house in Los Angeles. Her name was Julie. She was an only child and seemed so different from the rest of us. She was a few years younger than I was. She had beautiful, curly red hair and large, doll-like brown eyes and porcelain skin. Everything about her was perfect.

  Her closet overflowed with cute new clothes, and I was sometimes allowed to wear them. I felt wealthy and beautiful. She also had all the new toys you would see on commercials. We played house and made potions. She had a perfume-making kit. I loved to make perfume because she let me take what I made home. When I was sad or lonely, I would close my eyes and sniff the sweet perfume and feel hope for the future.

  I wanted to be like Julie. She was very nice. We were like best friends. We bonded instantly every time she would visit, no matter how much time had passed.

  Julie received a lot of attention. No one seemed to notice me, so I liked the attention she was given. Emotionally, I fed off the tender loving care her parents gave her because it was a rarity for me to see adults treat a child with such kindness.

  Julie and I were movie stars. We rehearsed together and put on little shows. Everyone would watch if Julie was involved.

  I felt like a princess when I was around her. I even imagined having a daughter one day. I thought about how I would make sure she had lovely things to play with and movies to watch that would not make her feel scared.

  When it came time for me to go home, I always asked Julie if I could have some of her stuff. “Don’t throw any of your things in the trash ever!” I told her. “Save them for me.” I only said this because I occasionally found whimsical little treasures in her garbage. Pieces of broken toys could no longer perform in her world, but they could be the center of attention in mine.

  Once, when her mom dropped me off at home, she said, “Jenny, if you want to keep coming over, you have got to stop asking Julie for all of her stuff.” As I walked away, I thought about acting like I’d forgotten she had said that the next time I visited.

  LIFE WASN’T ALWAYS BAD. Early in the morning, my dad would open our trailer window and yell, “Good morning!” to everyone using a microphone with a super-loud speaker connected to it. We watched The Jetsons and The Flintstones. My dad enjoyed cartoons. When he was around, I could be a child because there were two adults to watch Jay Jay.

  We also learned how to barricade the doors and rig a window like a drive-through. My cousins would cruise up in their invisible cars and order fake food from me. That way, I could watch my brother inside and play at the same time.

  Jay Jay took off a few more times while we lived in Sky Valley. Lucky for me, his escaping escapades didn’t happen on my watch.

  One day, my grandpa came home with a Sit-N-Spin. Jay Jay sat and spun for hours. I felt dizzy wat
ching him, but at least he wouldn’t run when he climbed off because he would be falling all over the place.

  Gina and I continued to go to church with our cousins, but my parents no longer attended because they were told my brother was disruptive. My mom told us God cursed her. That was the first time I thought she was crazy. The second time was when we were all going to the store. My older sister and I began to fight in the backseat, and my mom pulled the car over and yelled for me to get out. She told me to get out—on a long, paved road surrounded by dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. I continued to sit in the car, but she started yelling at me to get out, so I did. I stood between the car and the door, and she said, “Hopefully somebody else will take you, since you can’t behave yourself.” Then she peeled away. I knew then that my mom didn’t like me.

  I didn’t cry. The anticipated fear of being left on my own suddenly turned into hope. Maybe a kind stranger would swipe me up and offer me an exceptional life. I stood there for a while, kicked the dirt, and waited to be whisked away. When no one came, I began to walk along the lonely asphalt road back toward home. Cars passed; no one stopped.

  About an hour later, my mom pulled alongside me with her window down and asked, “Are you gonna behave? Get in!” For a second, I just stood there. Dread filled my blood and made me feel heavy. She would have chased me with the car if I tried to run, so I chose not to. Reluctantly, I climbed into the back and stared out the window and wished I could be somewhere else with other people. The view of her eyes watching me in the rearview mirror made me want to jump out of the car. That was the first time I had thought of death as an escape.

  WE DIDN’T STAY IN SKY Valley long. When second grade ended, my report card said I failed and would be held back because I couldn’t read well and never participated. My mom didn’t even get upset, though I could never really tell because she always spoke to me with venom on her breath. Like a pit bull about to fight a chihuahua, she savored her position of power. She glared at me from behind her thick, tortoiseshell glasses. “You are lucky people think you’re cute, or you would go nowhere in life.”

  She told me that some kids were just slow. And she reminded me that I might have brain damage from when I was dropped on my head as a toddler. She frequently said I was a numbskull, so I figured the hospital reports showed that my skull was numb from the incident. Come to think of it, she never called me by my name. Nitwit and twit were often used to get my attention. I felt angry when she called me nincompoop because it had the word poop in it. Imbecile was also the name of a medicine, but it didn’t bother me. The funniest nickname she gave me was dingbat, which I didn’t mind because I thought bats were cool. She often suggested that I was dumb.

  My mom didn’t know I had white spots all over my legs. She was not informed, for obvious reasons. To avoid negative attention, I wore pants or pulled my socks up to my knees when I wore dresses. I went to great lengths to hide my vitiligo. God forbid anyone saw my spots, or I would be considered ugly, and I would go nowhere in life.

  One day, two big-rig trucks pulled up to our trailer; the trucks had huge boxes on the back. I thought the drivers were lost. The entire compound community gathered around, wondering what this was. Then my dad said, “That’s our new house.” It was a Geodesic Dome Kit in boxes! He told us he was going to show the guys where to deliver the boxes because he wasn’t building his new house in the compound.

  We were confused, but when my dad returned, he explained how he planned to build our house in a small town a few miles north. When the weekend arrived, he drove us to see the location. I don’t know why I ever imagined something normal. This new spot was far from normal. I thought we lived in the middle of nowhere in Sky Valley, but at least we had electricity. Now, we were literally making our own road by driving over some trail. I wondered when we were going to stop. We were not near any houses. There were no electric poles. It was desert, just dirt and bushes. We finally stopped about a mile from civilization. A tractor parked nearby, nothing else—no water, not one single thing. There was a large, cleared area with two gigantic boxes. My dad got out of the car and said, “Welcome home!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Where the Grass Is Greener

  They say the grass is greener on the other side, and it was because all we had was dirt. We had no house, no water. But I suppose no grass is better than dead grass.

  Our minds tell us that where the grass is greener, life is happier, that problems and troubles do not exist. People always smile and laugh; life is better where the grass is lush. My mind tricked me as yours did you. Envy and deprivation brewed inside me. To have less meant any happiness was impossible to grasp. Wherever this place with more was, I wanted to be there someday. And one day when I found it somewhere else, I’d see for myself that it was all true. Once I arrived to the other side, I would look back and see where I came from, and feel appreciation.

  The moral of my thought is this: Make do with what you have, even if all you have is dirt and rocks. Maybe your dirt is better than their dirt, and maybe your rocks are stronger than the rocks where the grass is greener. Or better yet, perhaps where the grass is greener, dirt and rocks do not exist.

  One week later, we drove again on that bumpy road in the middle of nowhere. The dirt road was long and dusty, a one-way road too narrow for cars to pass each other, probably because it wasn’t officially a road yet. It was more like a wide trail people used to hike up the mountain. There was also horse poop on it, hence a horse trail.

  We were out about a mile from civilization. My dad seemed to be excited. He told us that we had our own mountain, and a house on the hill would enable us to see Jay Jay if he ran away. Our plot was surrounded by land owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). No one was allowed to build on BLM land, my dad said. We would have privacy and wouldn’t have to worry about nosey neighbors butting into our business. He was very happy about that. My feelings were just the opposite. I was already emotionally detached from society. Now I would be physically separated as well.

  We drove up the mountain to our destination. There was a large, circular lot ready to build on, and two huge boxes that contained our yet-to-be house inside. I stared at the boxes and wondered what kind of future they held. I was quiet. I didn’t feel optimistic, so I tried to use my imagination. One thing I disliked about using imagination was sometimes too much reality would put a halt to it. The truth of some situations would settle in my mind, or I wouldn’t be creative enough because I lacked knowledge and experience. I tried to see if there was anything to get excited about, but I couldn’t because my eyes were taking in and trying to process what was real.

  My eyes were blank as was my mind, but there was something across the valley I could not stop looking at, no matter how hard I tried. The view lit up my soul and saddened my heart at the same time. I was intrigued.

  I couldn’t see with my imagination, like I usually did. I couldn’t create a fantasy world for escape. I could only see reality as it was, and the reality was dirt. Dirt was everywhere, with bushes and hills. We stood there, as if we had been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and were told to start from scratch. I felt naked and empty. I never had many material things, but what little I no longer had was sorely missed and much appreciated.

  The noon sun shined high in the sky. Our station wagon sat on the dirt lot with all the doors opened. I stood and held a shopping bag with my entire life inside. My mom was busy with my brother in the car, and my little sister, Janna, amused herself with an exploration of the land. My older sister, Gina, had already disappeared. She was very independent. She probably set up camp somewhere on the mountain, or had an escape car waiting to take her away.

  Confusion and disappointment shown on my face. I stared at the lot with my lips sealed and my teeth clenched together, tightly. I didn’t blink until dirt finally blew into my eyes.

  My dad examined the boxes. At times, he made various sounds that must have represented internal thoughts.

  With a
shock-induced nervous stutter, I asked, “Where is the water?”

  He laughed. “There is no water.”

  His nonchalant attitude did not amuse me. I was worried we might die. In my mind, we were about to attempt a feat no one else had ever tried or succeeded at, something dangerous and stupid.

  Then, as if it was not a problem to him at all, he said, “We will have to find a place in town to fill up some jugs with water.”

  Dread started to overwhelm my mind as I stood in silence. I thought of another question. I cleared my throat. “What about baths?”

  “There will be no baths.”

  My head tilted with sadness. My eyes widened, and my lips began to quiver. I didn’t argue, and I couldn’t because we never disagreed with my dad. It had been hard enough to gain the courage to ask him about the water. We respected my dad and even became nervous when we spoke to him. He didn’t speak unless necessary. He wasn’t mean, but he was intimidating.

  There was a flashlight packed in the car. When I saw it, I knew we wouldn’t have electricity, at least not for some time. There would be no lights to illuminate the darkness as we slept in the middle of nowhere.

  “Girls,” my dad said as he pulled the flashlight out of the car. “This belongs to me. The flashlight is not to be used for play. Understand? We will only use this for emergencies.”