by CeeCee James
We made clay marbles, and dried them in the sunshine on the hot asphalt road. After they dried, we chose the ones with the least cracks and raced them down the road to see which marble rolled the farthest. The clay was also perfect for me to squish and form into tiny bowls and plates. I baked them in the sun for my flower fairies.
Johnny came over one rainy day while his mom left for the store. We raced upstairs to my bedroom. It was the first time he had been in my house, and he gazed about my bare room with his eyebrows up. He pushed the baby carriage back and forth with one finger and then bent down to examine the springs. He looked over at me with a bored expression, the freckles standing out on his nose like cinnamon sprinkled on eggnog. I shrugged my shoulders in a weak apology. “Well, what do you want to do?”
A game evolved into us playing house. He was the daddy and I was the mommy, and we spoke to each other in made up voices.
“When are we going to clean the house for the baby?” I warbled in a high pitched voice.
He answered, in a deep, gruff voice, “I don’t know, I have to go to work.” He pretended to be at work and stomped around my room, while I hummed a silly high pitched tune, and cleaned air dishes. And in an instant, the whole day had passed in, and Johnny opened the pretend front door, “Honey, I’m home!”
We ate a pretend dinner, and had pretend arguments. We competed with one another as we tried to come up with the more interesting story line, telling each other what to say and do. At one point, we both lay down on my bed, fully clothed, and he told me to roll on top of him. Right at that instant, my door was flung open as Mama stormed in.
She gasped and screamed, “What are you doing?”
We scrambled apart, I wasn’t sure what we had done, but we both knew we were in trouble. “Out!” Mama’s eyes narrowed into slits, and we ran for the door. Mama moved to block me in the doorway, and leaned down close to my face. With her lip curled she said, “You just think you’re so smart. Say that you are smart. Say it! Go on, say it!”
I was confused, so I mumbled, “I’m smart.”
Mama slapped me hard across the face. I stumbled against the door frame, my face scratched by her finger nails.
“How dare you backtalk me,” Mama hissed, and then she spun away and stamped down the stairs. Johnny stood there staring, his posture stiff and unnatural. I looked away, so humiliated that he saw Mama hit me. He slunk down the stairs and ran home to wait for his mom.
He didn’t come back over to play for a few weeks. I didn’t know if he wanted to be friends anymore. I didn’t understand what we had done wrong, and there were no explanations given.
I tried to have fun playing outside by myself. I dug in the red clay bank and talked about my dreams, like Johnny was there listening to me. Inside my heart was a horrible ache. I dropped the clay back to the ground rather than work it into marbles. After brushing myself off, I sat at the end of my driveway staring down the road towards his house, wishing he would come.
I saw him walk up the road, his blue baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. I couldn’t help but laugh as I jumped up and ran down towards him. When he saw me running, he ran too, both of us stopping a few feet apart and smiled. We didn’t talk about what happened, instead darted out into the woods to our club house, and began prospecting for gold again.
Another neighbor boy from up the hill joined us, and we all played with little cars in the dirt. The two boys kept involving my car in their horrible car accidents. I was indignant.
“Hey! My car is trying to get to the mountains for a picnic! Stop smashing it!”
For my seventh birthday, Mama and Adam gave me a white rabbit, and I spent the entire summer in trouble because of her. I named her Princess, because she was so beautiful. She sat on my lap while I hummed a little song, running my fingers through her soft fur.
“Sweet, sweet bunny, beautiful bunny. Love you, love you, love you Honey.”
Adam fenced in a small patch of dirt with chicken wire for her out by their vegetable garden, and out of sight. I forgot to feed Princess one night, and Mama yelled at me in front of Adam. I felt so bad I couldn’t look at Adam.
“How is it possible for you to eat your dinner, when you didn’t feed poor Princess? I hope she starves to death so you can see how you made her suffer by being so neglectful.”
I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me that I forgot to feed her. It happened over and over again, until every time I saw the bunny I filled with nausea and dread.
Mama yelled at me, even after I fed her. “She’s digging CeeCee. She’s so desperate for food and attention that she burrowed in the dirt to get to the garden. Wow!”
It seemed every night when I was allowed to come back inside, Adam and Mama were waiting for me at the door. I wanted to run as soon as I saw them.
“We’ve been watching you for the last few hours,” Mama said. “We wanted to see if you’d ever go check on your poor bunny. And you didn’t. We knew you’d forget.” Mama laughed, and shook her head. “I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I’m disgusted. You don’t deserve her.”
Tears ran down my face, “I’m trying Mama!”
“You don’t try, you do it.”
Soon after the school year began, they gave her away to a girl while I was in science class. I looked at her empty cage, and cried. Mama said the new owner was a better girl than me, and would take care of the bunny.
A few days later, I discovered that we were about to move out of state.
I had overheard Mama talk to Adam after dinner that we would be moving to Arizona at the end of the month. Mama wanted to follow her parents, who had moved there six months earlier.
Dad and his girlfriend took me out for pizza so that they could talk to me about the move. Dad shared that Mama taking me out of state was illegal, and that Mama was a criminal.
“I’m sick of her always taking you away from me! She knows this hurts me.” He rubbed his palm over his face, and then made me practice, over and over, how to make a collect call on the telephone. He played the operator, as his girlfriend nodded solemnly, and stuffed the corner of a piece of the greasy pizza into her mouth.
“Your Dad loves you,” she said.
Dad had wet eyes when we hugged goodbye. He dropped me back off at home, and I felt muddled, and tired.
Mama laughed when I told her Dad cried. “Serves him right. Let’s see him try to stop me. What an evil man.” Two days later, she said I was just like him.
The house became a bustle of chaos as Mama packed. I tripped over boxes that were stacked in every room, and couldn’t find anything I needed. Adam marked the boxes with a black marker, and Mama tore packing tape off with her teeth to seal them. She gave me a cardboard apple box. “Pack all your belongings in here. Be choosy, because whatever doesn’t fit isn’t coming with us.”
We had a huge yard sale, and while the sale was going on I played in the creek with the Smith kids.
“Watch out for the leeches!” my friend’s parents warned us.
What are leeches? My friends and I laughed as we splashed up and down the creek, looking for leeches. We didn’t find any, but we did find an angry crawdad that came out from under a rock snapping at our stick. We squealed and poked at him until he disappeared down an underwater hole on the side of the bank.
When I returned to the house, I saw that the entirety of what was left over from the sale had been tossed into the back of a truck to be taken to the dump. I cried out when I saw my baby carriage buried under a pile of black garbage bags, one wheel spinning, along with my stick horse and doll house.
Mama said, “It’s gone, you don’t need it.”
I was glad that Peter, my miniature figurine, was small and fit inside my box.
Johnny didn’t come over to say goodbye, but the boy up the street came down and gave me his mom’s mouse pin with one pink sparkly eye.
“Remember me,” he said.
I accepted it awkwardly and wished it was from Johnny. I was hurt and
bewildered that Johnny didn’t come say goodbye.
Adam and Mama bought a new car to take us to Arizona, a shiny penny colored two-door Honda. When it was time to leave the sales lady opened the door, and I climbed into the back seat by stepping on the front seat.
Mama wiped at the front seat, sweeping hard at dirt that wasn’t there. She had her nice smile on when she said goodbye to the sales lady. Fear raised its biting head inside of me. I didn’t want her to get in the car.
She shut her door, and Adam drove off the lot. Mama turned around in her seat, her smile replaced with ugly lines. “How could you do that? The sales lady thought you were disgusting that you would do such a shameful thing. It’s a brand new car.” Her eyes were hot on me and I didn’t dare move, in case that activated her hand. She continued, “You made it dirty. A brand new car and you already made it dirty.”
Every time I climbed out of the car, I regretted that first step. My shoe had branded the front seat with my dirt. For years, Mama told the story to anyone who would listen, about how I stepped on the front seat of a brand new car.
We camped at KOAs each night as we traveled through the states down to Arizona. Mama and her boyfriend were occupied with each other, hugging, and holding hands, and laughing together. I wandered all over the different campgrounds.
Watching other families fascinated me, even though it made me feel more alone. I stood on the outskirts of the camp sites, trying to stay unnoticed. The smell of cooked hamburgers and hotdogs made my stomach turn over on itself and squeeze hard. No one noticed a scrawny seven year old, with dusty toes that hung over the tops of her sandals, and tight clothing. There was a dad who laughed with his children when they returned from swimming. They were wrapped in striped towels with wet hair that stuck up in all directions. I saw a mom juggle her fussy baby on her hip while the baby reached out for a bag of potato chips. Her two preschoolers jumped up and down, and clamored for the food piled on the picnic table.
She said, “Ok guys, give me a sec.”
Another family gathered by their camp fire in lawn chairs, with marshmallows stuck on sticks.
My family was different. If I could be a good girl, I could fix it. I meandered back to my camp where an uncooked hot dog waited for me in the cooler for dinner.
For the first few months in Arizona we lived with Adam’s childhood friend, Jeff. It was strange to live there, Mama tried to be “on” whenever she was around Jeff, acting interested in me, but as soon as Jeff left the room she stopped talking as though she had been unplugged.
I was enrolled into second grade and, for the first time ever, I was an ethnic minority. I worried that the other kids wouldn’t like me--Mama was very prejudiced and always made comments-- but when we stood up to say the pledge of allegiance one of the girls beckoned me over. I skipped over to her and admired her new bracelet. After that first day it didn’t seem as different as I expected.
After school I had to walk home. The morning walk to school felt adventurous and fun, but things looked different now. Was I supposed to take a left at the last street? Where was the church I passed this morning? The adobe houses all appeared the same, with their long chains of dried red peppers that swayed by their door. The air smelled spicy from the hanging peppers, and seasoned meat from family dinners. I walked quicker. -At the end of the street I’ll see where I am-. My heart pounded when I got to the corner. I turned in circles, not sure which way I should go. I’m lost! I’m lost! I didn’t know our phone number. I started to run.
There was a woman standing at the end of her driveway gathering her mail from the mail box. Somehow, by a miracle, she showed me the way home. I was crying when I burst through the front door, over an hour late. Mama was surprised. She didn’t notice I was missing.
She shrugged, “Well, you’ll pay better attention next time.”
I set my books down in my room and then hurried over next door to my friend’s. She was a year younger than me, with long brown braids. When she came to the door she held an extra set of red buckle roller skates. She handed them to me as we walked to the edge of the sidewalk. While we strapped the plastic roller skates over our shoes, I told her what happened on the way home.
“I’ve never walked home by myself. My mom always drives me,” she said.
I considered that for a minute. I wanted her mom to drive me too, but knew what Mama would say.
We talked about what skating game to play.
“Circus?”
“No! Ballerinas!”
My friend stood up and showed me how she thought a ballerina would skate. She roller-skated in a slow circle while balanced on one leg with her arms flung out. I wobbled when I tried to circle, so I skated in a straight line, holding my hands above my head in a ring, while my skates went “bump-bump!” over the cracks in the sidewalk.
Afterwards, we sat in the shade of a tree and played hand games, clapping our hands together in perfect time as we sang ‘Miss Mary Mack!’ or, ‘Say! Say! Oh Playmate.’ She had a giant chalk collection, so we drew tic-tac-toes, funny cartoon characters, and hopscotch, wiping the chalk dust from our hands onto our shorts. She made me a chalk drawing in a pretty blue frame, and I hung it on my wall. Whenever we moved again, it went first in my cardboard box, next to Peter.
Sometime, soon after we arrived in Phoenix, we visited Grandparent’s house (on Mama’s side) for a few weeks. Mama and Grandma were in the kitchen getting dinner prepared, while I watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Grandpa in the living room. He studied me for a minute, and smiled when I met his eyes. He waved me over to sit on his lap. I skipped across the living room and climbed up into his lap. He tickled my back as we watched the lion roar and chase a gazelle. Just as the lion attacked, his hands crept to my front. My eyes flew open and I pulled my arms tight to my sides. Maybe he did it by accident.
He did it again, and I whimpered. He whispered in my ear that if I want to be special to him and have his love, I needed to let Grandpa tickle. What am I doing wrong that he is doing this to me?
Every night I hoped he’d forget, but he always called me over. I barely breathed, trying not to cry. Mama and Grandma laughed in the kitchen as the dishes clattered, and I sat frozen on Grandpa’s lap while he worked his fingers under my pinned arms.
Mama came around the corner and saw me sitting there. “Oh, you are so spoiled, CeeCee. Such a Grandpa’s girl!”
Grandpa smiled at her, “Yes, she is very special to me.” I was caught between the two as they stared at each other, and Mama walked out of the room.
The next morning Mama, Adam, and Grandma set off for a day of shopping, and I was left behind with Grandpa. Mama and Grandpa smiled at each other before she shut the door. The house was quiet after they left. He walked over to me, and sat down on the creaking leather couch and put his hand on my knee. He said he loved me, and I was going to learn to play fun games with him. “You are my favorite grandchild. You want to be a good girl, don’t you? You do as I say, and you will be a good girl.”
That night I climbed out of bed, and found Mama taking her makeup off in her room. My hands twisted together, sweaty palms and white knuckles, and I tried to tell her what happened. Her face was shiny from lotion, and she waved a Kleenex at me.
“Stop, stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
There was no way out, there was no escape. I was trapped in the car on the ice all over again.
During that visit, Grandpa killed a rattlesnake in the yard with a shovel one night. The sun was setting behind the horizon, and we watched his black shadow form ferociously chop down from the back deck. Mama clapped her hands as though he were a hero.
That same night, Grandma brought me into her room and taught me the Lord’s Prayer. She repeated it over and over until I had it memorized, her finger dragging along the words written in red in the bible. She gave me a white cross with a crucified Jesus contorted painfully on it.
I frowned and said, “He looks different than in my bible picture.”
> Grandma ran her thumb over the smooth cross, and said, “The cross is special and made of elephant tusk. This is Jesus. His eyes are always on us.”
“Always on us?” I asked, and my stomach knotted.
That night I studied the man on the cross by the moonlight coming through the lace curtain window. A tear slipped down my cheek, and I whispered, “I’m sorry Jesus. I’m trying.”
Chapter 11
~The Adobe House~
During the months that we lived in Phoenix Mama continued to look for a house to buy. They searched all around the city with a realtor.
One Saturday we drove an hour into the desert to see a new listing. The realtor insisted that Mama and Adam would love it. “It’s priced well under your budget, because, sadly, the owner died in the home.”
The house was a brown adobe, still furnished with all his old furniture and belongings. I peeked through the door at a piano in the corner with interest. There was also a pair of blue jeans wadded up by the front door.
Mama told me to stay outside while they toured the house. I discovered a container of bleach with a weathered green label that sat tilted in the sand. Standing next to it, I scanned the horizon, and as far as I could see there was nothing but sand, and more sand, and a few rolling tumbleweeds. I pictured the three of us living there; where I would go if I needed a hiding place? Goosebumps went up my arms, I’d be like the bleach container, fully visible and exposed to Mama’s critical eye.
On our way back to the car the realtor told my parents, “You know, they say there are ghosts living inside the home.” My ears perked up. I was thankful my parents turned that house down, along with another one that had a yard filled with old rusty cars and trucks.
In one strange city, my parents pulled over and told me to get out of the car. I scrambled out from the back seat, and quickly scanned up and down the empty street. There was a jungle gym in the middle of an empty city lot, and as the car drove away Mama yelled out the opened car window, “Go play, we will be back in a while.” They didn’t return for a few hours. I waited for them, hanging upside down from the hot metal monkey bars.