by Lauren Jayne
“I’m done. Where to next?”
Glancing at Mom, who never looked to me for suggestions, feeling uneasy without my Noah safety net, I shyly shrugged my shoulders and looked out the window.
“Where should we go? You hungry?” she asked, with her arm on the bench seat and her body turned towards me, her small yellow shirt lifted so her stomach popped out a little. “You know, the doctor told me you would start to talk when Noah goes to school and can’t talk for you anymore. I know you can, so just tell me where you want to go.”
“B.Y. Chook,” I said in a voice just above a whisper as a car sped by. To this point, Noah had been my voice, and I preferred it that way.
“What? I can’t hear you. Get your hand away from your face.”
“B.Y Chook,” I said, one click louder.
“Perfect. Sounds great!” she said.
Then she reached into the glove box, lit a smoke, and turned up the radio as she sang along, moving her body like a dancer on TV. “I feel the earth move under my feet,” she sang until we pulled up to the long row of matching doors.
Bumping the car door closed with her hip, she said, “Come on.”
Pulling open the glass door to the restaurant, the bell that hung from it chimed, and a warm, buttery breeze greeted us. I could pick this rich, dense, mahogany aroma out of a thousand and seven smells blindfolded. Standing in line with people screaming out their orders to the man leaning over the high counter, who screamed them back to the kitchen area, I saw chicken after golden chicken spinning on metal spits.
When it was our turn, Mom said, “We’ll take one, with stuffing please.”
“OK love, right away.” He got very chipper when it was our turn.
I tugged at her tight shirt, “What about Noah and Hope?”
“Better make it two; we’ll have leftovers.”
“No problem, love.” Then he screamed back, “Two, stuffed, take away!”
When we pulled up to our longhouse, Noah ripped the door open and ran out in his tiny swim bottoms. “I saw you guys pull up; is that what I think it is?” he yelled.
Popping the crisp, buttery brown skin of the juicy chicken in my mouth, I closed my eyes and wondered what they did to make this chicken taste like no other chicken in the world. When we were done, I ran down our never-ending hallway and dove into the egg-shaped bamboo chair that hung from a chain in the corner of our tiled room. Twisting around in the red cushioned chair, I saw Noah run past me outside and stick his tongue out. I flung myself out of the chair, leaving it spinning behind me and ran out onto the hot white ground and ripped off my dress. With my undies on, I jumped into our tile-bottomed pool, Hope grabbed her knees, screaming “Cannon Ball!” and jumped in behind me. The sky got dark in a blink and rain the size of golf balls pounded us as we played in the pool.
As I climbed the steps while Noah counted down, the rain left marks on my shivering body. “Three, two, one, Marco…”
I jumped in and yelled as loud as I could so he could hear me over the storm, “Polo!”
When Mom came out, the curtains whirled behind her as she squeezed through the door with a pile of books in her arms. Underlining and highlighting, folding down different pages, she headed back in when the wind blew her books off the covered table.
“Listen to the rules!” Noah screamed. “When you see the lightning, run around the pool; whoever gets the furthest before the thunder cracks, wins. Got it?” as he jumped into the pool. “Go, go, go!”
When the sky lit up, I pulled myself from the water with my tiny arms and started running over the slippery tiled floor as fast as I could. When the crack made me jump, I threw myself into the pool. After endless games in the best storm we’d ever seen, Noah said we had to head in when the pool spilled onto our lawn.
That was the last time I ever really felt like a kid.
Chapter 2
Stateside
The swirl of energy that seemed to surround our family since we had arrived in Australia, almost two years ago, felt like it was losing speed fast. From my room, I heard Mom screaming at Dad, “You’re never home! I’m here, half way around the planet with three kids, alone!”
He screamed right back that the club they owned wouldn’t run itself and that Sid, Dad’s fancy-looking boss, had brought him here to do a job. “You don’t mind sailing in front of the Old Opry House and all the fancy perks, do you?” Dad left in a hurry, slamming our thick, wood door so hard it shook the leaves on our houseplants. I followed Mom into her room as she flopped down on her bed and started sobbing. Mom seemed to be more down than up on the roller coaster that mimicked her moods. Her pain ripped through my body worse than the time I’d gotten bitten by a crazy Australian spider and my arm swelled from my hand to my chest.
Straightening her room around her, I walked over to the stereo and carefully put the needle down on her favorite album as she sang along with Carole King in a slow, low voice, “I feel the earth, move, under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down,” tears falling from her emotionless face onto her sheets. Walking out of her room and closing the door, I would have traded every birthday wish in the world to see the light surround her again, but I was starting to wonder if it ever would.
Noah and I poured cereal into our bowls for lunch and dinner until Mom came out of her room, stepped over our bowls and said, “We’re leaving.”
“Where are we going?” Noah asked.
“Home, we’re going home,” she said in the same lifeless voice.
“Aren’t we already home, Mom?” he asked.
“We’re going back to America. Dad’s gone. He had to leave, and I’ve got a few days to close down the club, rent out this house and pack. You’re going to the neighbor’s in the morning,” she said in a monotone voice, sobbing as she kicked her bedroom door closed behind her.
When our neighbor brought us back a few days later, she hugged us and helped Mom carry our bags that were by the door. “That’s it?” our neighbor asked.
“Yep, just these six suitcases,” Mom said as she turned out the lights.
*
Back in the States, lying in the room Noah and I shared in our dreary apartment that Dad had found us in Troutdale, Oregon, I hid under my blankets as Mom and Dad screamed their way through the day, my body jumping each time the door slammed.
In our kitchen with its speckled, torn floor, I sat pushing my food around on my paper plate when my arm hit my milk cup, sending it flying and covering the table, dripping into my lap. Dad’s pasty hand slammed down on the table; it shook so hard I thought it would fall to the ground.
With gritted teeth and narrowed, crystal clear eyes he said, “Careful, stupid,” as he got up and threw a roll of paper towels at me.
The next morning, I stared out the rain-covered window, watching Noah and Hope walk down the cement stairs to school. I quietly walked through our dark apartment and crawled back into the scratchy sheets and lay looking for animals in the smoke-stained popcorn ceiling above our bed, the way I’d always done with clouds. I impatiently waited for the afternoons when hearing Noah and Hope’s voices outside, I’d peek through the bent metal blinds and run out to greet them after school, wishing that I’d turn five and finally be old enough to go to school with them.
This evening, Dad was in the kitchen and asked, “What do you want for dinner? Shit on a shingle or salami and eggs?”
“Whatever Mom and Noah want,” I said in my quietest voice, never wanting to send him into one of his rages where he banged on things like a caged tiger.
“They won’t be home ‘til after dinner,” he said in a soft voice that I hadn’t heard since Australia, giving me an instant stomach ache.
“Eggs, please,” I said, as he stared at me from the kitchen waiting for an answer.
Hating the smell that filled our tiny apartment, I sat with him at our rickety table and watched him shovel in hot salami and eggs as I pushed mine around my plate and tried not to spill. When he got up, I headed to
my room to get my pajamas on.
Darting from the bathroom across the hall in my nightgown covered in little pink flowers, I tiptoed into my room as Dad said, “Wanna watch some TV?”
He never really talked to me, and I preferred it that way. Not wanting to make him mad, I slowly walked out and sat uncomfortably on the couch. Dad got up and flipped off the TV; music was playing. When I jumped off the couch, he walked over to me and wrapped me in an awkward embrace. Lifting me in his arms, he swayed as the music played; my heart jumped into my throat. His hands rubbed my back, and I froze as they ran down to my bottom, up my back again, and over my bottom, rubbing and squeezing me. Unable to breathe, my heart was pounding in my chest. Please let Noah and Mom come home, I thought. When his hand touched my bare leg, I jumped and hung frozen in his arms. Dad’s fingers were in my undies, his hand over my butt, when he felt a string from the pink elastic on my undies, shaking him out of his foggy state.
“What’s this?” he asked gruffly.
Free from his grasp, I ran to my room, closed my door and sat on the other side of it as tears streamed down my face.
On the first sunny day after months of gray, I sat on the toilet daydreaming - the only place that I felt safe in that dark, cold apartment - when the door ripped open. Dad charged up to me, pushing me back on the seat, my back jammed into the knobs on the seat cover. His face a breath away from mine, I moved my head back as far as I could to try to get away from him.
He screamed, “What are you doing?” his spit landing on my face.
When I went to speak, I realized my thumb was still in my mouth. He grabbed it out and twisted it back until it was touching my wrist, as his body shook.
His blue eyes blazed with anger and hatred as he screamed, “If I ever see you sucking your fucking thumb again, I’ll break it off!”
He let it go and walked out of the room. As he turned out the light he spat, “Stupid idiot!” and slammed the door.
Chapter 3
You’re Gonna Love It
Dad didn’t stay down for long. His life’s dream wasn’t going to be derailed by whatever happened in Australia. He was going to get back on the fast track, no matter what. After six months in Oregon working for his step-dad, Morris, selling meat packing machines, Dad followed up on a tip from one of his adoring clients and ended up in Seattle.
A few days later he came back to our dingy, dank Troutdale apartment and announced that he’d bought a house in a suburb about twenty minutes east of Seattle. Re-energized, he had that old look of fire back in his eyes. Dad was like a two-faced card. One side was the matted, rabies-ridden dingo, baring his barbed teeth and frothing at the mouth, ready to rip you to shreds and watch you rot, or eat you alive. The other side was a sweet-talking prince, with a smile that could light a city and charisma that converted even the sharpest minds. Everyone is his path wanted to help him get from prince to his rightful spot as king of the castle. Dad headed to Seattle a dingo and returned a prince. Lit from the inside, everything he said seemed to make sense.
“Mom,” (he called her Mom, which I always thought was weird and creepy. When we asked why they did that, they said, “We did it so you guys would know what to call us.”) he said, “This is it! I have a good feeling about this guy. He and his family built a new house and didn’t have time to sell this one, so he said he’d give it to us for next to nothing and leave most of the furniture. I think he can help us get back on track and definitely out of this dump. If we don’t take a chance, we’ll be stuck here under Morris’ oppressive watch forever.”
Then he gave her that thousand-watt smile that only flashed when he was high on adrenaline and hope, and we were off.
With what little we had after our late night move from Sydney to Troutdale, we made our trek to the promised land. Crammed between Noah and Hope in our wood-paneled station wagon, I was in my designated seat; being the youngest and the quietest meant that I lived in the middle seat. Gazing out the window, there was an excitement in the car that felt like a volcano ready to erupt.
Dad was bubbling with, “It’s three stories, and kids, we have a huge yard to play in and maybe we can even get a dog. You guys are gonna love it!” His tone went up and down like the wind. The way he explained the house made it sound as if we had just won the Lotto. I sat in the back seat, dreaming of my brand new, pink-carpeted room.
As Dad flipped the blinker and turned into our new neighborhood, our excitement grew and grew until we were bouncing in our seats. Soon we’d see the dream house that he had been talking about non-stop for the past two and a half hours.
He hadn’t wound down a bit when we pulled up the driveway of a dark green and brown house with peeling paint and dirty windows. I knew we had probably gone down the wrong cul-de-sac and that this scary looking house was just a place to turn around. Then Dad turned off the engine.
All at once, like looking up to find a hole in your parachute at five thousand feet, it was over. The rush of excitement, the joy of listening to my dad tell us about our dream house was over with a turn of the key. It looked more like the Munster’s house than a dream home. We stepped out and Mom backed up into the cul-de-sac behind us in silence. Dad stood and stared at her with raised eyebrows as if he was waiting to see if his mom liked the sloppy mismatched macaroni necklace he’d been working so hard on for weeks.
With her hand over her mouth, she looked up at the big dark house and started to sob, crying over and over again, “I hate it. I hate everything about it.”
Dad led us up the overgrown, shrub-covered walk to the splintering door and stuck the key in the lock. Our balloon that had been drifting higher and higher finally popped when Dad pushed the door open to a sea of brown: brown walls, brown fake-wood carpet, brown furniture that Denny had so kindly left in the house. A waft of wet mildewing clothes and hot garbage greeted us like a punch in the face. The house felt like it looked: dark and brown.
I peeked into the kitchen; half of the cupboards were open with old boxes of cereal in them, and a few dishes dotted the sink. The black wrought iron handrail that separated the kitchen from the living room below was wearing a sweater of dust. The woven, floor-to-ceiling curtains held a unique odor of their own. As quickly as I could, I ran up the stairway that was completely encased in metallic brown wallpaper, including the ceiling.
Opening the door to my room, I was nervous. There it was, the wall-to-wall pink carpet I’d been hearing about, except the “kitten soft, fairyland pink” had somehow been replaced with stained, multi-colored pink straw. I never let my bare feet touch that carpet.
The sobbing coming from Mom’s room made my heart hurt. My wiring was a little off, and somehow I could feel other people’s feelings more than my own. Pushing her door open, I gasped. Not quite the “almost-too-big master suite, draped in satin and fit for a queen” I was picturing. It was big, but every square inch of it was plastered with deep, dark brown, cork wallpaper with bits of blood red showing through. To top it off, there were matching, shiny, floor-to-ceiling, blood-red curtains battening down every window. If they had put thousand-watt bulbs in every lamp, the room still would’ve been shrouded in perpetual darkness.
When Dad saw that even Noah was a little disappointed, he turned off like a faucet. He was right back to acting like a caged animal: screaming, slamming doors behind him, and kicking empty boxes down the stairs. Mom was hiding in her bedroom crying, waking up just long enough to grab a self-help book from the heaping pile on her hand-me-down nightstand and underlining hidden clues that could somehow save her from this life.
The feeling of never knowing where to go to be far enough out of the way not to bother anyone drove me out into the yard. Exploring the enormous island that sat in the middle of our front yard, an opening in the trees appeared that was just large enough for me to squeeze through. Pulling the long branches back from the towering evergreens that surrounded me, I discovered a clearing. A few snaps of branches and shrubs and I was inside. Grabbing a fallen limb off the g
round, I started to sweep and organize. When all of the pine needles were swept away, leaving only a packed mud floor, I climbed onto a boulder I had dusted off with a big green leaf. It had just enough of a bend that when I laid back on it with my head up, it felt made for my body. Lying there under the umbrella of trees, I stared up at the late summer sky as the white, whispery clouds drifted by. I thanked God for this place and that my dad finally told the truth about something: this yard was amazing.
A few weeks later, Mom told us to get dressed because we were going to meet our new neighbor. I was excited since Mom hadn’t really left the house, or hardly her room for that matter, since we’d moved in. But today she was dressed up and wearing perfume and looking like her old self again. We quietly waited as she rang the doorbell to our neighbor’s house. Noah, Hope and I stood on the cramped stoop in front of the glass storm door. Someone yelled down, “Come in,” but Mom didn’t budge, so neither did we. The door popped open, and a lady with a short pixie haircut framing her heart-shaped face greeted us.
“Hello, it’s so nice to see you again…” She had forgotten my mom’s name and was waiting for her to fill in the blank; I hated the awkward silence.
“Sandy…hi.” Mom had a way of making people feel like they were inconveniencing her in some way just by opening their own front door. “I was wondering if you could watch the kids for a little while.”
“Of course! Hello kids, my name is Mrs. Miller. Welcome to the neighborhood. My kids are dying to meet you. Why don’t you run out back? They’re waiting for you.”
By this time Dad was in the car in front of their house, waiting. Mom headed down the steps and hopped into the front seat next to him. Running from behind the Miller’s fence, I tried to catch her to say goodbye, but their car was too far down the street.
Noah led the way as usual; he looked like he was heading back to play with his old best friend. Shoulders back, a knowing smile, he had a look in his bright blue eyes that said, “I know something that you want to know.” I followed shyly behind, looking and feeling like I was walking into a lion’s den. The oldest girl was picking blackberries and looked over her thin shoulder past her long, curly, perfectly coiffed brown hair to see us. With the posture of a prima ballerina, she greeted us formally, but sweetly.
