I hooked my arms through Hope’s shopping bags. “We’re fine. No one can possibly know where we are.”
“You can’t know that!” she yelled.
“I made the reservation from a coffee shop and paid by check with a new account. We didn’t pack a thing until the day we left, and I didn’t even tell you guys where we were going. You didn’t know until we pulled up and unloaded the car. I stopped several times along the way in remote locations where I would have seen anyone following.” Instantly, I regretted telling them so much. “We’re safe.” They were wide-eyed and still, processing what it all meant. Calculating our level of danger. Code red. Severe.
Roman tugged at my pant leg and I hoisted him onto my hip. As much as I wanted to believe he was immune, he could sense the fear and anger flowing thick enough around our ankles to float his little boat.
By trying to reassure them, I had let them know that we really could be in danger and, more important, had made hiding feel necessary. Was there such a thing as too much truth? I believed there was, and I had just crossed a dangerous line. Then again, if they didn’t know about the danger, they wouldn’t be on guard. Life had gotten too complicated, too gray. I missed the good old days when I was young, I knew everything, and the world was drawn in stark lines of black and white.
Drew and I carried the groceries to the kitchen and loaded the fridge.
“I bought ice cream,” Hope said, “and a brownie mix. Let’s pig out tonight and drown the fat in holiday food tomorrow.”
“I’m dying for ice cream,” Roman said with a dramatic hand to his forehead. The surface tension broke with our laughter even if the wires underneath were still tight with fear.
I went up to talk with Jada while they finished stowing the groceries and started baking the brownies. When we came down, with Jada more quiet and subdued than any free-minded hippie child should ever be, I noticed that all the shades and curtains were closed. The kitchen window was covered with a sheet of newspaper.
I wanted to scream and rip it all down. My kids shouldn’t have to be afraid. They shouldn’t have to hide like criminals. They deserved to feel safe in a Thanksgiving cabin in the woods. They deserved to feel safe at home. I squeezed the nail in my pocket until it dug a hole in my palm. Next I’d be fashioning a crown of thorny sticks. I didn’t want the nail to turn me into a sacrifice, a victim; I wanted its magic to save us. But what if there wasn’t enough magic in the world to keep us safe?
Four bottles of white school glue lined the edge of the table by our model house. Jada sat down and piled tiny twigs into a stick figure. I ripped a napkin into the shape of a dress. She took it without meeting my eyes. If her tiny people had faces, they would be weeping.
Drew sat next to her, his eyes alight, anxious to try out the glue. Instead, he flipped to the upstairs page of our mutely drawn house plans, pointing out Jada’s initials on a bedroom. He sketched a tiny bed in one corner, then sketched a huge circle next to it and wrote, “Hot Tub.” She nodded, and stretched her lips sideways in what she may have thought approximated a smile, and then went back to her stick figures.
I ripped out a piece of Hope’s notebook paper and handed it to Jada with a bottle of glue. “We’ll have to clear this away for our feast tomorrow. Anything you want to keep will have to be glued to something mobile,” I said.
She nodded, silent and no doubt imagining scenes I didn’t want to see. She made globby white lines and began moving her stick person to the paper. I found scissors in the kitchen and gave them to her with a floral paper towel that would make more fashionable dresses than the plain white napkin I’d started her out with.
Drew began gluing the stick house together in an exact replica of our plan while I stacked firewood into a crude newspaper-filled pyramid in the fireplace and lit it. I had the impression we were in for a long, sleepless night. The fact that we were about to load up on peanut-butter ice cream and brownies with fudge swirls would barely contribute to the insomnia, but we would all blame it on that in the morning.
Honesty was a skill we’d all have to work to master. It was as big a challenge as banishing the ghosts.
–4–
Fall
What I Learned in First Grade
It takes years to build a mind-set of defeat. Girls are at a higher risk with lower pay, lesser jobs, and even many gods declaring them a step or two lower than their male counterparts. But if you toss a few bullies in the mix, anyone can declare themselves powerless.
My brother and I grew up swinging wildly from the branches of young pines on forty acres in rural Wisconsin. John was three years older than me, so he was allowed to do more things. But he was never a match for kids his own age, always a step or two behind in strength, lessons, and social behavior.
None of that mattered to me before I joined him at elementary school, though. We were Tarzan and Jane with our black poodle mix, Snoopy, running along the forest floor beneath us. Forty acres was Mom and Dad’s claim, but—land titles be damned—John and I staked out hundreds of country acres as our personal playground.
For practical and survival reasons, our most prized possessions were matching pocketknives. Dad had melted our names into the fake bone handles in crooked cursive. With these sharp little marvels we whittled spear tips, sawed ropes, and dug animal traps. And when the blades bent sideways, we hammered them flat on the anvil behind the garage. Occasionally, when our adventure demanded a larger blade, John snuck a rusty hatchet into our afternoon picnic satchel.
On the surface, it was an idyllic life start. But like passengers on the Titanic, I learned that the surface view can be a bitch of a liar.
The year I turned six I stole a book titled Make It Yourself from Mom’s book-club mailing. I expected my pocketknife to be the only tool needed to make the sweaters and turquoise afghan on the cover, so I was disappointed to learn about knitting needles and crochet hooks. I found a ball of white cotton string Dad used to mark vegetable rows in the garden. Then I eventually created makeshift knitting needles out of long, skinny paintbrushes and hid in the basement with them, terrified that I’d be caught while I followed the step-by-step pictures. I’d never seen a six-year-old knitting. I’d never seen anyone knitting. But in cartoons it was for wise old women in rocking chairs. Like staying up late to watch horror movies or drinking beer, knitting was not for children.
John caught me knitting and told Mom, who immediately bought me a set of emerald-green knitting needles and gave me a ball of orange yarn that had been her mother’s. A skinny child with knitting needles turns invisible in the shadowed corners of a room, so I spent a lot of time listening and thinking that fall of my first-grade year.
My grandma Laura, Mom’s mama, had just died, and our family dynamics had shifted. Mom was sad in an aching sort of way that I could see even when her back was to me. Her head was lower, curtaining her brown eyes with her long dark hair, and her shoulders slumped; but it was more than that, more than just the heaviness of grief pushing down. As she canned tomatoes that autumn over the old gas stove, every lift of her arm, every step from the stove to the sink was lighter, as though she were growing transparent and would soon float away to wherever her mama had gone.
From the dining-room table I kept watch through my clicking emerald needles, careful not to drop a stitch. The way the string looped, tied, and held everything together was soothing. I believed that if I could tie enough knots it would hold us all together.
First grade had put me in the same school as my brother, and that changed everything. It taught me to hide, to stay quiet, and it taught me to hate. Not the gentle you’re-not-my-friend hate of finicky first graders, but the real, vehement thing, ugly, dark, and lasting. The fullness of hate took me by surprise, since my mom was a fanatically religious woman who drove me to church three times a week and carried her Bible into the grocery store and on walks down deserted country roads. “You have to forgive no matter what,” she told me, “or you’ll burn in hell.”
B
urning in hell sounded a lot less pleasant than snuggling up in front of our fireplace, but I couldn’t fully subscribe to the idea that my hate was wrong. Mom said even if the truck that had hit my brother and almost killed him that year would have actually taken him from us, she would have forgiven the man who was driving. God commanded that. I tried to be as light and good as she was and believe that suffering was all for a bigger purpose, for some plan, but I wanted a more immediate answer.
As luck would have it, Dad was an atheist. This was really convenient whenever I wanted to subscribe to an alternative view, but less than pleasant for the enormous weight of tension and disagreement between my polar-opposite parents. My childhood self most resembled a tightrope walker dodging projectiles. Every spoken word was up for debate, every activity; even my thoughts had to be weighed and weeded to a middle ground that I hoped might be acceptable to both. The atmosphere turned me into a listener, a thinker, and a careful negotiator.
But most of all, I became a dreamer, creating magical realms of Wisconsin winter igloos or summer forts that gave me an escape. And if I wasn’t able to sneak away to one of my hideouts, I availed myself of books. I read about aliens, elves, and unicorns; I spent several years believing I could develop telepathy followed by several more pretending I lived in Middle Earth. In the realms of my books, people understood one another at the end. Everyone compromised. Every problem was wrapped up nice and neat.
The endless conflict and my adopted role as negotiator had little to do with my discovery of hatred, though. I found that on the school bus and in the halls of Lemonweir Elementary School. Antibullying wasn’t a thing then. In fact, even teachers and bus drivers were bullies, and no one ever called them out for it. Maybe they had the idea that it was a way to toughen the weak, but I doubt it was anything so noble. Humans have traditionally picked on the weak to make themselves feel powerful, and there is nothing noble about that. In my mind, there is nothing forgivable about it either.
My brother was weak. He was small and his head was misshapen from a premature birth and a host of problems that went undiagnosed in those days. Getting hit by a truck while we played in a flooded, closed street had set him back even further, with a limp and less confidence. The poor kid never had a chance.
As we stepped on the bus every morning he was tripped, smacked in the head, spit at, and slammed against seats and windows. It was a ten-mile ride into school on gravel country roads. Ten miles turns out to be just the distance needed to destroy a small boy for good and take a decent chunk of his little sister along with him. The bus driver vacillated between ignoring the bullies and essentially joining them by punishing my puny brother for the disturbances. At one point she had a seat belt installed at the front of the bus to keep him safely seated; unfortunately it also served to hold him still for the poundings. There was no escape.
School was more of the same. I watched my brother’s face crack against the porcelain water fountain when he leaned in for a drink. I saw the torture on the playground and his fear of going into the bathroom, where anyone might be waiting. His glasses were continually broken by fists, feet, and flying books. He was sent to the office for punishment. He was a tiny, quiet problem.
And when we got home, the punishment continued, because his glasses were broken, because the school called again, because he might get kicked off the bus, or because he stole twenty dollars from my mom’s purse to try buying a friend for just one day of peace.
Mom was powerless, not allowed to own a car because it would take her to more religious activities. I was the smallest, skinniest kid in my class, too shy to speak, too weak to fight, a failure at the telekinetic powers I needed to attack the bullies.
The most important lessons I learned in school were how to be powerless, how to take a punch, and how to hate in silence. I learned that being a tattletale makes the bullies hit harder, and no one, not even your family, can save you.
–5–
Rise
Truth Tellers
Since sleep wasn’t on our menu at the Thanksgiving cabin, but an enormous meal was, we spent the night alternating between the stick-house design and helping Hope prepare green-bean casserole, a swanky eight-cheese macaroni dish, and a pie. For our feast the next day we would just sit back and smell it baking alongside the peppered ham. We had a lot to be thankful for.
Drew and I worked out the lower level of the house, spreading extra glue on the structural pieces and spending an inordinate amount of time getting the staircase right. I made doors with pieces of cardboard, and hinged them in place with loops of thread from the sewing kit. My library had French doors with glass panels made out of plastic wrap from a block of cheese.
Roman handed Drew a chunk of bark the size of a domino. “Swing.”
“I’ll put it right here,” Drew said, “so Mommy can watch you from her library window.”
“No. Here.” Roman moved the bark swing deliberately to the side of the house, sounding exasperated, like Drew should know where the swing belonged.
When the first floor was mostly complete, we carefully slid the structure onto a cereal box that had been cut at the seams and spread flat. I moved it to the hearth, where the fire would dry it quickly. Roman had fallen asleep by then, so it was safe from his drummer hands.
We started on the second floor while Hope and Jada made furniture out of sticks, cardboard, and anything else they could think of. A milk top made the coffee table, and water-bottle pieces had been turned into bathtubs and television screens. When I stood up to stretch at one A.M., I went for a glass of juice. I laughed at the state of the refrigerator. Foil casseroles filled with Thanksgiving treats filled the bottom two layers, which was normal enough. But on the other shelves and in the door, every container was missing bits and pieces that had been cut away and turned into furniture or decoration. The covers were gone from the mini tub of butter, the milk, and the juice. Labels were peeled away from the mustard and mayonnaise, and the entire top of the egg carton was gone. If this went on much longer they would be carving lounge chairs from blocks of cheddar.
Crafts and projects had always been part of our lives, but never like this, never so focused and certainly not with a purpose that captured the girls and Drew with equal and united energy.
I sat across from Drew and straightened a bedroom wall, but my energy was sapped and no amount of juice revived me. Jada had crashed more than an hour ago, one arm and one leg draped off the sofa. She was the only morning person in the family, so she was always the first to fall asleep, sometimes even before Roman. “I’m fading, guys. Roman will be up in a couple hours so I’m going to sleep awhile.” Drew and Hope made distant “Umm-hmm” noises without looking up. The design and division of labor were remarkably organized even though we rarely said a word aloud. We were united with a single, cohesive vision and purpose.
I climbed in the bed next to Roman, expecting to crash fast. But the night noises in the middle of the forest were foreign. Every scrape and scurry made me wonder if Hope had been right, if maybe someone had followed us after all. Recurring nightmares pulled me into a state of semirest with an unwelcome familiarity. The location and small details changed, but I was always inside a house, trying to lock a door that wouldn’t lock. Either the lock would be broken or it would spin back around and unlock itself. With slow, methodical steps, the danger crept closer to my unlockable door. I woke at sunrise in a cold sweat with an irrational level of terror.
I slipped my shoes and coat on and grabbed my car keys and cell. The covered windows and locked doors were making me more afraid, not less. I needed out, even if it was just for a few minutes. Using the residual nightmare adrenaline, I ran full speed up the path, tugged open the driver’s-side door, and sat, tucking my hands under my arms in the cold morning air. Then, to keep from crying, because I hated crying, I started straightening things in the car. Dorito crumbs, napkins, earbuds, I worked over anything out of place—and there was plenty of it to keep me busy.
I ran
across the stack of mail I’d grabbed on our way out of town, and the ordinariness of the gas bill and preapproved credit-card applications first calmed and then angered me. I didn’t want same-old, same-old. We needed something new. Something big. Something that changed the way we saw ourselves. We needed to replace the victims we’d become with heroes. No matter how hard I tried to see that possibility as the truth, it felt like make-believe, like another lie I would start and the kids would dutifully repeat.
I threw open the car door and jumped out, snowing bits of napkin and Doritos onto the leaves and gravel. Slowly, I walked back to the cabin. By the time I reached the porch, the idea had grown larger. We’re free. We can do anything.
But before I went inside, I still checked the window to see if I could see in around the shade. It was sealed tight, and I left it that way. The door was unlocked, which reminded me of my nightmare even though I knew I was the one who had left it unlocked. Okay, so we were on our way to being free, but we weren’t there yet.
Jada was awake. I could hear her cards slapping the coffee table in a game of solitaire. She would cheat and win every game, and Hope would be shocked every time. I joined her, happy that Roman was sleeping in. We worked together, tossing cards in place like it was a timed, world-record-setting event. “Hope is afraid,” she said, illegally sliding an upside-down card out from under a king.
“When we don’t understand what someone is thinking, it can scare us,” I said, hating my pretending after vowing that I wouldn’t cover up for anyone anymore. But what could I do? You can’t ever unlearn a thing. I was still pretending that it wasn’t too late, that I could protect her. It was one of the last big lies I ever told myself.
“What are you thinking, Mommy?”
“I’m thinking after breakfast we should go for another treasure hunt while Thanksgiving is in the oven.”
Rise--How a House Built a Family Page 4
