My mother is thirty six. Wait. No, she's fifty seven. Knowing your mother's age shouldn't be a hard question yet for me my mother is always thirty six. Thirty six with ruby red lips. Being brought up in Texas it was an unwritten law that you don't leave the house without your lipstick. Actually considering Texas is just might be an actual law. She has jet black hair, olive skin and an ethnic worldly look. I look just like her only just a shade darker than albino. Same person, different filters.
Our second house in Minneapolis was a bitter blue grey. Nothing cheery or inviting. Whether it was the position of the house to the other homes around it, the trees or just mere coincidence, the sun never shone on it. The color of an unforgiving November day. We'd moved from Butternut street. Who couldn't like the sound of Butternut? It had a ring of Grandma's perfume and gooey dessert all rolled into one. Our new house was on Columbus avenue. Columbus; a new world, forging uncharted terrain, the unknown, danger. When you entered there was a little porch with a screen door I kept locked. My brother and I were alone so often that the dead bolt didn't seem enough to keep the bad guys out. Keep him out. My mother shrieked at me many times to stop locking the screen door because he was mad he wasn't able to get in.
This day was different. I sensed her nervousness. Telling me that he insisted on access to our house at any time was nothing something she wanted to tell me.
"It's not his house."
"Kimberly, just do it!!"
"No."
She glared at me shaking. I could hear the words going through her head near audibly. "You're going to ruin everything! Why can't you just shut up? Why can't you just do what I say?!" I stared back defiantly yet behind my scowl I tried to will her to hear what I was truly feeling. "I'm your daughter! Pick me! Love me! How can you do this to me? How can you choose him over me? How could you let this happen?"
She had nothing to bargain with to gain my compliance. Take away allowance? There was no money. What can you possibly do to threaten me? What could you take away? There will be no prom, no SAT test, no college, no boyfriend, no car and no dreams. Life was now generic cream of chicken soup with noodles every night. Don't think about Butternut street with new clothes, concerts and hope. All the wailings of your soul can't bring it back. I realized my insolence could very well mean our lives and I didn't care. The pot was at full boil and trying to blow down the foam was useless. There was no way to take it off the heat.
Just months earlier I'd decided to commit suicide. Planned the date, wrote some good bye notes and even packed a few boxes of specific things I wanted to go to certain people. I was going to overdose on pills. Definitely wanted to die but I also wanted it pain free. The date came and went and due to my immaturity with it's forgetfulness, or all the weed I was smoking, I forgot to do it. "I am worthless! What kind of loser forgets the day they are supposed to off themselves?! What a fucking idiot!" After forgetting the date I was too infuriated at myself to get an alternate date on the calendar.
If the grey haired old biddies at the women's prayer meeting could hear this they would pounce on it with vicious glee; yet all done in the name of concern and Christ. If they liked you then your situation was one of God teaching you something. If they felt there was some sin in your life, that they of course deemed as wrong, then the problem was a punishment. "God won't give you more than you can handle." I could hear this well worn cliche being uttered at any event no matter the calamity. White suburban pastor's wife has affair with a black prisoner; a murderer no less. This was right up there with Jimmy Swaggert and the prostitute. She intended to save the prisoner only to be come imprisoned.
It was an emotional rape. A spirit splintering tilt a whirl...
I went to that house a few years ago, though I knew it would be a triggering hell, because I wanted to see if it was how I saw it in my head. Sun was shining and the house looked lovely and light. I looked up at the upper window of my old room remembering the isolation and agony. I knew it was the same house yet the dangerous energy was gone. I asked myself if I could leave it behind, and decided I could a just a little but not everything. It was a pivotal age in my life and a time I can't seem to get away from. I find even at the age of 50 people still ask questions about high school, college and younger years. Why the fuck do we still have to talk about this!?! I suppose for the same reason I still talk about my child's birth, the marathon I ran, or trips I've taken, because they were happy moments. I was even advised once to come up with a lie for it all. Something I can say in social situations to get people off my back. But lying isn't me...though it would give me an out.
Sometimes I think my pain and past are the driving force that keeps me tenacious and moving. It's also what can make me feel invisible. So I write. I write about it because I need to let it out. I write because someone else needs to hear it. Maya Angelou said, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Maya was always right.
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