The Girl in the Treehouse

by Jennifer Asbenson

  My dad referred to the rain as a “free shower.” Whenever the clouds gathered and the drops started to fall, if the weather wasn’t too cold, I would squirt blue dish soap in a cup and find a private spot on the mountain for a proper shower. The rain wasn’t exactly dependable, though, and I once ended up with soap in my hair and no water to rinse it out. Still to this day, I have a very special appreciation for the rain.

  Dish soap was also used to wash our clothes. We hung them to dry on a sturdy clothesline my dad had built. Every six months or so, we would go to the Laundromat in a nearby town, a real treat for us. Once, I attempted to steal a petite woman’s clothes. My sister blocked the view as I put her clothes in our basket. When I began to put the clothes in our car, the lady came outside with a red face and a loud voice, and I had to pretend I didn’t know what had happened. I was so embarrassed. I always longed for nice clothes, and they were always worth the risk of trouble.

  EVENTUALLY I SAW TYLER’S LEGS, and they were free of vitiligo. When I gained the courage to show her my legs, the white spots were gone, to my surprise! Since I wore knee-high socks all the time, I never noticed when the disappearance occurred. God had answered my prayers and made the spots go away.

  When the middle school years arrived, I finally mustered the nerve to invite Tyler to my house. My brother would commit an act toward her that terrified me, and Tyler’s reaction would be one I could have never imagined.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Geodesic Psychedelics

  I was in a panic. Objects were thrown into piles and covered with sheets or blankets, a creative and convenient way to make instant couches. This was how we cleaned. My dad had built closets; they were perfect for last-minute decluttering. I cleaned fast when life demanded it.

  I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. Tyler had accepted my invitation to spend the night. The few days I gave myself to prepare were not enough. At school, all I could think about was getting home to clean. I didn’t want my house to look fancy, just normal. All throughout my childhood, I went to extraordinary lengths to seem normal. I was an actress, famous in Jay Jay’s and God’s eyes only.

  I had been an actress ever since a school trip to a popular movie studio. Not one word was uttered from my mouth the entire trip. The other students’ reactions to the actors reminded me of how my parents used to stare at the TV, when we had one. If we made any noise while they watched a show, my mom would turn with angry eyes and place a large crooked finger over her lips. “Shhh! We want to listen to her tell her story.”

  They would tell us to be quiet because they wanted to pay attention to the little people in the television instead of us. Until our visit to the movie studio, I did not know these people were real. Upon this discovery, I fantasized that I would one day become one of them, someone who captivated the hearts of perfect strangers from different households all over the world. A person who fascinated minds and absorbed attention was the kind of person I ached to be.

  The solitude and elevation of my current environment gracefully reminds me that the spotlight is one childhood abstract I do not currently desire at all times. However, I do have an infinite fascination with all aspects of movie production and sets.

  When I was young, I heard about a child who purposely got lost at Universal Studios. He was embraced by everyone and later became famous. That child was Steven Spielberg. The difference between Steven and me is that I lost myself for only an hour on our school field trip, but I got scared and found my class. Steven stayed there forever! He basically lived there.

  Risk has always been an important aspect of success. For me, trouble came with risk. Steven was braver than I was, and his fearlessness provided me with endless inspiration that I would eventually transform into action.

  Many years later, I snuck into Paramount Pictures and immersed myself in the prolific world I was too frightened to explore as a child. There are times when one does not wish to attract attention. My self-guided tour was one of those times.

  The entire lot was explored. I saw movie stars but did not recognize them. I walked right onto sets and watched the filming. A spark ignited inside me. I “acted” like I was a movie star, and, apparently, I did a good job. The people in charge began to look for “the lady that paid for the studio tour” but who disappeared from the holding room before it began. I walked tall and smiled at the people who passed by me. I even said hello to some people and waved at the guy on the golf cart who occasionally drove by. I walked through the streets of “New York.” It was beautiful. I walked out of “fake stores” and imagined what it would feel like to have all cameras on me while filming a major movie. This was heaven.

  Eventually, I grew bored and decided to go back and get on the tour. The guy on the golf cart now had another man with him, a very important-looking man who spoke on a walkie-talkie. When I tried to find my way back, I became even more lost. Finally, I decided to flag the golf cart driver down. I asked him if he could give me a ride to the front. Both men looked confused but agreed to give me the ride. Then I told them I was late for my tour and, before I could finish, they abruptly looked at me and color filled their faces. They were apparently looking for me the entire time, but because my mind is so amazing, I tricked them to believe that I was, indeed, what I pretended to be. They were beating themselves up. “I thought you were … What? Okay. Wait … How?” I just “acted” oblivious to the whole situation, like I was lost.

  We returned to the entrance, but the bus had left several hours prior, so I asked for my money back. I had been acting since I was a small child. I acted like everything was normal at home. That takes a lot of skill. It is hard to cover marks on your body and pretend your parents care about you.

  I cleaned with haste and shoved all our junk into nooks and crannies. Thank God the house was more standard now. We had a kitchen that functioned and water that ran through pipes to some of our faucets. Our electricity came from the generator and our water from a bus stop spout. Although I was still nervous, I knew we had enough to seem like an ordinary family.

  There was a knock at the door and when I opened it, my friend walked in with a huge smile on her face. Everything was going well. But my optimism was destroyed within hours of Tyler’s arrival.

  I sat on the floor resting my butt on the heels of my feet, hunched over and out of breath. I tried not to cry as I scrubbed as hard as I could. A bottle of Windex sat next to me. I started to mutter a random mix of profanities and my brother’s name. As I scrubbed, I began to imagine losing my friend because of what my brother had done. My head filled with questions and thoughts and more questions. Why? Why would he do this? Jay Jay had taken a blue ballpoint pen to Tyler’s brand-new, white LA Gear shoes—only the most expensive and equally popular shoes around. They had been a Christmas gift. They were still in the box when she showed me.

  I knew my brother got into stuff and moved all over the place, but what were the odds of this? Now what? Is my mom going to come in and hit me? Tyler probably wondered why I flinched when people reached for things near me. I couldn’t help it. I began to pray aloud as the ink started to come off.

  After a while, I could hold the shoes away from me and see only white again. The pen marks were gone. There were ballpoint impressions in some areas, but the blue was gone. I took the shoes back to Tyler and hoped she wouldn’t see any trace of the disaster. She barely looked as she put them away. She said it was okay. Then she hid them, of course, so Jay Jay wouldn’t get them again.

  I figured she wouldn’t be able to deal with my living conditions without imagination, so I brought her out of my house to explore the property together in safari-like fashion. I told her about the water situation and the generator. The added sense of adventure made the lack of basic utilities seem more exciting than anything else.

  We slept on the roof. The air was cold, but that didn’t bother us much. We gazed at the sky and talked about everything beneath it.

  When the topic of favorite foods came up, I told her
mine was pizza. This spawned an epic fantasy that became increasingly real with every word. We imagined a ginormous pepperoni pizza, the size of a UFO, which seemed to manifest itself into reality and come down to the roof. Tyler and I climbed on. We crawled under the pepperoni for warmth and flew away from my house. Beyond the crust of that enormous flying pizza, we saw the world in the form of tiny city lights beneath us. The wind blew through our hair. It was as real as the laughter we failed to contain. When we got hungry, we simply pulled massive amounts of dough up from our soft and warm bed and ate as much as we wanted. It was spectacular. The scenarios we dreamed up were as potent as psychedelic trips.

  Surprisingly, my mom didn’t butt in often during Tyler’s stay. She asked my friend a few questions early the next morning. I tried not to talk to my mom because my voice sounded ugly and because I didn’t want to provoke her to hit me right in front of Tyler. Tyler left soon after, which was good because I didn’t want her to witness what went on in the dome on the mountain during the day. I didn’t know who I was going to get, my mom or Alice. My voice sounded ugly when I talked to my mom because I didn’t know how to speak pretty to her anymore. She had said and done so many things to me that my voice changed toward her. I didn’t like the sound of it, but I could not change it. I tried many times. Around Tyler, I worked hard to adjust my voice. With Alice, I could speak with kindness, but not with my mom.

  Tyler would come over again and again. She liked my house. She loved everything I did to decorate my room. She said I was creative. I thought that was a beautiful word to describe someone who could create necessities that didn’t exist.

  TYLER REMAINED MY BEST FRIEND year after year, from elementary school through middle school and into high school. School was okay, but it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. Even though I was friends with Tyler, I was still timid. I had anxiety. The report card was never my friend. Terrible grades were marked in most classes because I never had eyeglasses. When I walked, my back was hunched, and I looked at the ground. On the days Tyler didn’t show up to school, I would eat lunch in the bathroom stall with my legs up. I was never beaten up in school, so that was one positive aspect.

  On certain days of the week, I would walk to my brother’s bus stop and get him when my mom couldn’t. His little yellow bus had a powerful air conditioner unlike the bus I rode on. He attended regular school but stayed in a special class all day. He could not be left alone because of his fast feet. The rope I carried daily was used to walk him home. Around his waist, it wove through his belt loops and held him tight. These extreme measures insured he would not escape on our long journey home.

  One day on the bus, a loud and rebellious teen boy went through my backpack when my attention was elsewhere. He started to badger me and make fun of the yellow rope I had in there. My face became hot with anger. He held it up high and declared that I was a crazy person. He proceeded to make fun of me, while the others whispered and laughed. My eyes filled with tears. Finally, the bus stopped. While I scurried to gather my belongings, I looked out the window and saw my mom preparing to fill the tank on the flatbed truck with water. My heart dropped. As my tormentor began to take notice of her, I grabbed the rope. He yelled out: “Jennifer’s mom is stealing water!” I dashed off the bus in shame and embarrassment.

  My dad arrived home a few hours later, and I demanded his full attention. The well he had often mentioned would not escape my mind, and I needed answers. He told me that a well is a hole, a bottomless hole. He explained that a tunnel would be dug deep into the ground, and water would eventually be hit. He said the process was costly, and we didn’t have the money. Naturally, I began to dig every day after school. While other teenagers did homework, I dug. Dug and dug and dug. A ladder was eventually needed to enter the hole because I dug so much. When I imagined the look on my dad’s face after I told him I struck water, I felt proud. My progress would impress him for sure, so I brought him out to show him what I had accomplished. He was genuinely impressed. Then he said, “It is not humanly possible to dig a hole deep enough to strike water.” To prove him wrong, I dug a few more days. Then I quit and filled it in.

  HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION WAS AN accomplishment I had no interest in. In twelfth grade, I dropped out of school. When I turned eighteen, Alice and I took classes together to become Certified Nurse Assistants. If we accomplished the course, we would be employed in a house with “crippled” children. Alice said it was a shame anyone would use that word in the name of their business. There were four different houses in one town. The job was excellent for me because of my experience with Jay Jay. And if I saved enough money, I could move off of my parents’ property. Alice and I eventually graduated. We were not assigned to the same house because the management didn’t want to place family members together for any job position. That rule was fine with me.

  Alice drove me to work because I didn’t have a car. Although I was technically an adult, I never felt like one. My shyness never dissipated, and I viewed people older than me as authority figures. Like a child, I followed directions and tried to avoid trouble.

  This job would change my life forever, in ways I never expected. Never once did I imagine that a position to help people with disabilities would disable me permanently. I had already been through enough bad stuff in life, but I would soon find out my challenges had only just begun.

  My dad working on the dome

  CHAPTER TEN

  Angels with Tiny Heads

  When God created the human race, he handed out brains. My mom would tell you I thought he said trains, and I asked for a slow one. If that was indeed the case, I wonder what the children with the shrunken brains believed God had to offer. Because my brain is idle, the pursuit of answers proves difficult. At last, I’ve come to the conclusion that the size of one’s brain does not implicate an abnormality when another one of God’s gifts is given to compensate. That gift is the heart.

  Bloodcurdling screams came from inside the house on the pitted asphalt road. They were high-pitched. Two girls screamed loudly, and I was the cause of it. Light was scattered throughout the house. We had taken yet another ride in the dark. As the captain of the wheelchair, I turned left and veered right, whenever necessary, to avoid a crash.

  They squealed with joy and tried to laugh while catching their breath. I always took them on this adventure. It was ten o’clock at night. It was my shift. I worked alone.

  I took care of six girls. Their ages ranged from one to fourteen years. The children were small, and the baby looked like an infant. These girls were familiar. They resembled my brother: innocent and beautiful. This job was second nature to me. My position was to clean the house while the girls slept. Nursing skills and CPR were also part of my training just in case there was an emergency.

  The facility I worked at used the word retarded in documents to describe the girls. My mom taught us to never call a “special” person retarded because it was not nice and would hurt their feelings. Every time I saw this word at work, I felt uncomfortable. These girls were special.

  Two girls were in each of the three rooms. In the first room were two sisters a couple years apart: Linda and Christina. Linda was older. Compared to her sister, she was thin and tall, but she wasn’t really tall. She looked tall because she was thin. She was thirteen but looked the size of an eight-year-old girl.

  Her sister, Christina, was the opposite—short and round and a ball of absolute joy. She clapped her hands when she saw me and always had a huge smile on her face. She tried to talk but, like her sister, could really only say “no.” Linda took longer to say it because she was afraid to open her mouth. Her teeth were always clenched tight, and she walked very stiffly. When I hugged her, she was like a board, with her arms tight and hands in fists by her sides. We encouraged her to drink her nutritional protein drink because she would never eat food. Christina, on the other hand, ate everything in sight. The sisters had microcephaly, and they were special.

  In the second room were two gir
ls who were not related: Sasha and Ashley. Sasha had been in an accident when she was little that left her physically and mentally disabled. Her bed had rails, and she had a wheelchair. She always popped her eyeball out, so we had to tape socks on her hands. She was special.

  Ashley was one I would watch out for. She was twelve. She liked to rub herself against her bedpost. Then she would grab my arm, and her hands were always wet. It grossed me out. She constantly had her hands in her mouth. She also drooled. I didn’t really like human secretions of any kind, so I held my hands up, like I was under arrest, any time she came near. Ashley had microcephaly and was special.

  Finally, in the last room, were the little ones: Tess and Violet. Tess was six but was the size of a three-year-old child. She was adorable, with huge blue eyes and soft, curly brown hair. She was like a little monkey; she would climb everywhere and get into things. She had microcephaly and was deaf, and she was special. She understood some sign language, though. She also had a temper, but that just made her more lovable for some reason.

  Last was Violet. She was one year old but looked much younger. She would lie on her back in her crib, cooing. She stared at the ceiling while thrashing her arms and legs. She couldn’t sit up or crawl or walk. She, too, had microcephaly. She was also blind, deaf, and special.

  The kitchen in the house had two sides, one for dairy and one for meat. The dining room had two tables, one pink and one blue. One was for breakfast, the other for lunch and dinner. The girls had strict dietary rules and were only allowed to eat kosher.

  Their parents lived in New York and brought them to live here. Only Linda and Christina’s parents would ever visit. They came about twice a year, and they sometimes called too. The other children’s parents never came or called. Ever.