A Map of My Childhood
So here we are. My hometown: a few square miles of Southeast Texas known for rice elevators, ill-timed trains, a Sam's distribution center, and a couple of state prisons. It's probably been 10 years since I was last here, and I didn't picture coming back. Some say you can never go home again. I can't seem to leave.
South of town, about 2 miles past the old high school with the wrong-colored tiles, there will be a street on the left. It used to be called Oak Lane and was gravel, but now it's paved and goes by a different name -- as most things do when they've been upgraded. This house on the left at the dead end, this white brick one, is where I moved the summer before 2nd grade. That's the spot on the street where I fell off my bike on my 7th birthday and got stitches in my head. Right there by the trees is where we buried our Siamese cat.
This is where I first learned about utility bills, and how the city could shut off your electricity in the middle of winter. For a week the four of us slept on a fold-out couch in front of our fireplace to keep warm -- that's the chimney in front. One night while we slept the chimney clogged up and coated the house in a fine layer of soot. My mom heated water on a Coleman stove so I could wash off the black streaks. I was in 4th grade then; my brother and I did homework by candlelight and Mr. Meacham yelled at me for not focusing hard enough at the chalkboard. The bank took the house about two weeks into my 7th grade year, and half of our belongings went with it.
Up here near the center of town is Arcadia Street. I lived here from 7th grade through at least the end of 8th grade. I remember having my 8th grade graduation photo snapped in front of a neighbor's house because I was embarrassed of my own home. It was a run-down, avocado green rental place with wooden floors that had gaps between the boards wide enough to fit a toothpick. In the hallway, anyway. The kitchen was bare plywood.
This is the house that had no central air conditioning during the sweltering 98-degree Texas summers. Sometimes we slept in the living room beneath the one window AC unit to get some relief. See that short sidewalk in front? My dad used to have us stand there and spray the AC unit with water from the hose to cool it down. We shared the house with roaches most of the year, so I got good at smashing them with my hand as they crawled along the wall. The house had no heat, either, so in the winter I slept with the next day's clothes folded under the sheets with me, and dressed in front of the open gas oven where it was warm. I don't remember exactly when or why we left -- though I'm certain it had something to do with falling behind on the rent. It doesn't matter anyway. The house was torn down, and all that's left of those years is that blank cement slab right there.
We moved northeast onto East Linney, right across the street from the old black cemetery and the larger, nicer white cemetery. See that spot to the right of the trees, where the ragweed isn't quite as tall? That's where the trailer house used to be. I lived there from 9th grade, I think, through the middle of 10th grade. The trailer had no steps for the front door, so everybody used the back door. It was just as well, because there was a rotted hole in the floor just beyond the front door, about the size of a dinner plate. You could see straight down to the ground beneath. For safety, we put a piece of scrap wood over it.
I learned a lot at that house. About sex: Once I had to wake my mom from a nap so she could tell my dad to turn off the porn he was watching on the living room TV. Another time I had to have my mom remove my brother from my room, where he was having sex on my bed with one of my classmates. (I yelled at him to leave but he told me, "We're not finished yet.") Yet another time, my brother walked into the bathroom while I was bent over the sink brushing my teeth and said, "Mmm-mm. If you weren't my sister I'd fuck ya." About drugs: My brother and his friends used to smoke weed from a Coke can in the living room. At least I think that's what it was. And about rock-n-roll: I bought my first CD when I lived in this house. Alanis Morisette's "Jagged Little Pill." Christmas 1995. Man, she was angry. I understood.
That was the place where my dad had a screaming match with my brother about whose tools were whose in the tool box. My dad always claimed my brother thought he knew it all. This time he got down on his knees and proceeded to genuflect before my brother, reciting the line "I am not worthy! I am not worthy!" Neither one of them ever really grew up.
This is the place my dad left when my parents' marriage finally broke off. Ultimately the decision of whether or not my dad should go was thrust upon me. He told me everything that was wrong with my mother, I told him to leave, and then I watched as he gathered his things into three plastic bags and walked out. For months after that he'd sit in his car in the Burger King parking lot and witness me drive past to high school each morning.
This is the place I lived when I started to bury myself in band practice at school rather than come home. That's when I met Gary Monroe, my high school band director, whose family would eventually save me.
Anyway, we moved south off of Winfree when I was in 10th grade and my mom came into a bit of money after my grandpa died. She and my brother bought a brand new trailer with no holes or roaches and it was parked here where this pasture is now, on the corner of Lovers Lane. It smelled like new wood and clean carpets, and was heaven for a while. My mom paid the hefty down payment on the trailer, and my brother paid the monthlies until my mom could get a job. Except that she never found a job she could hold down, and within a year my brother sold or gave his stake to a friend and left town. That friend promptly moved in with the two of us, evicted my mom from the master bedroom, and brought his German shepherds, his guns, and his little brother...who was on probation from juvenile detention in Houston. Those new brick houses over there? That used to be an empty lot where the guy's brother threw my purse after he stole all the money out of it. The money I was saving from my job at Sonic to buy my drum major uniform my 12th grade year. Right before summer band started, he poured some caustic substance on the head joint of my flute and ruined it. I moved out of my mom's house the day before my senior year started because I was no longer safe.
The school counselor got involved, my mom signed me over to foster care, and the bank came and took the trailer on Lovers Lane. About 15 miles northwest, in a different school district, is the foster house where I lived after that. I've shown you there before -- that place that calls itself a farm because there are a couple of horses. Let's not go, it upsets me too much. I spent most of my 12th grade year there, off of Highway 321, until the day the foster father gave me a neck rub with a side of sexual overtures. The family denied it and called me a liar, said I was trying to plot against them and they should have known better than to foster two teen girls at the same time (the foster father had also made inappropriate advances toward another girl).
I couldn't move back with my mom. By then she was living alone in an abandoned trailer out in Woodland Hills that didn't have running water. State social workers wanted to place me somewhere even further away. Instead I was taken in by a different family: The Monroes, who had been looking after me off and on since Linney Street.
They lived up here off of County Road 644, I think it's called now. You've seen it, you've sat in the sunshine in the yard. It was my home, my safe and steady place, until I could breathe again. Until my sophomore year of college, when I got my first apartment and could stand up by myself.
These places are my childhood. What I've worked to rise above and recover from for more than 20 years. That chimney is the bones of my spine. The renamed roads are my new last name. The tall ragweed is how I've blossomed. The empty slab is what's left for me here. They are who I am, and maybe they always will be.
this old house creaks
like an unsettled matter
in the mind of a generation.
I live in southeast Texas
where grass and lies grow thick.
do you want me to tell you this is easy?
I'm running out of fingers to
county my addresses on
and I can't find you in the dark.
do you want me to tell you I love you?
as if my heart wasn't sacrificed
in the bloody war against my childhood.
I don't know what I'm doing.
how many times have I said that now?
don't try to help me -- just go away
I've got two skinny legs
and some comfortable shoes,
don't tempt me to walk away.
5-10-98
South of town, about 2 miles past the old high school with the wrong-colored tiles, there will be a street on the left. It used to be called Oak Lane and was gravel, but now it's paved and goes by a different name -- as most things do when they've been upgraded. This house on the left at the dead end, this white brick one, is where I moved the summer before 2nd grade. That's the spot on the street where I fell off my bike on my 7th birthday and got stitches in my head. Right there by the trees is where we buried our Siamese cat.
This is where I first learned about utility bills, and how the city could shut off your electricity in the middle of winter. For a week the four of us slept on a fold-out couch in front of our fireplace to keep warm -- that's the chimney in front. One night while we slept the chimney clogged up and coated the house in a fine layer of soot. My mom heated water on a Coleman stove so I could wash off the black streaks. I was in 4th grade then; my brother and I did homework by candlelight and Mr. Meacham yelled at me for not focusing hard enough at the chalkboard. The bank took the house about two weeks into my 7th grade year, and half of our belongings went with it.
Up here near the center of town is Arcadia Street. I lived here from 7th grade through at least the end of 8th grade. I remember having my 8th grade graduation photo snapped in front of a neighbor's house because I was embarrassed of my own home. It was a run-down, avocado green rental place with wooden floors that had gaps between the boards wide enough to fit a toothpick. In the hallway, anyway. The kitchen was bare plywood.
This is the house that had no central air conditioning during the sweltering 98-degree Texas summers. Sometimes we slept in the living room beneath the one window AC unit to get some relief. See that short sidewalk in front? My dad used to have us stand there and spray the AC unit with water from the hose to cool it down. We shared the house with roaches most of the year, so I got good at smashing them with my hand as they crawled along the wall. The house had no heat, either, so in the winter I slept with the next day's clothes folded under the sheets with me, and dressed in front of the open gas oven where it was warm. I don't remember exactly when or why we left -- though I'm certain it had something to do with falling behind on the rent. It doesn't matter anyway. The house was torn down, and all that's left of those years is that blank cement slab right there.
 | |
| All that's left of those years |
We moved northeast onto East Linney, right across the street from the old black cemetery and the larger, nicer white cemetery. See that spot to the right of the trees, where the ragweed isn't quite as tall? That's where the trailer house used to be. I lived there from 9th grade, I think, through the middle of 10th grade. The trailer had no steps for the front door, so everybody used the back door. It was just as well, because there was a rotted hole in the floor just beyond the front door, about the size of a dinner plate. You could see straight down to the ground beneath. For safety, we put a piece of scrap wood over it.
 |
| That spot on the right where the ragweed isn't as tall |
I learned a lot at that house. About sex: Once I had to wake my mom from a nap so she could tell my dad to turn off the porn he was watching on the living room TV. Another time I had to have my mom remove my brother from my room, where he was having sex on my bed with one of my classmates. (I yelled at him to leave but he told me, "We're not finished yet.") Yet another time, my brother walked into the bathroom while I was bent over the sink brushing my teeth and said, "Mmm-mm. If you weren't my sister I'd fuck ya." About drugs: My brother and his friends used to smoke weed from a Coke can in the living room. At least I think that's what it was. And about rock-n-roll: I bought my first CD when I lived in this house. Alanis Morisette's "Jagged Little Pill." Christmas 1995. Man, she was angry. I understood.
That was the place where my dad had a screaming match with my brother about whose tools were whose in the tool box. My dad always claimed my brother thought he knew it all. This time he got down on his knees and proceeded to genuflect before my brother, reciting the line "I am not worthy! I am not worthy!" Neither one of them ever really grew up.
This is the place my dad left when my parents' marriage finally broke off. Ultimately the decision of whether or not my dad should go was thrust upon me. He told me everything that was wrong with my mother, I told him to leave, and then I watched as he gathered his things into three plastic bags and walked out. For months after that he'd sit in his car in the Burger King parking lot and witness me drive past to high school each morning.
This is the place I lived when I started to bury myself in band practice at school rather than come home. That's when I met Gary Monroe, my high school band director, whose family would eventually save me.
Anyway, we moved south off of Winfree when I was in 10th grade and my mom came into a bit of money after my grandpa died. She and my brother bought a brand new trailer with no holes or roaches and it was parked here where this pasture is now, on the corner of Lovers Lane. It smelled like new wood and clean carpets, and was heaven for a while. My mom paid the hefty down payment on the trailer, and my brother paid the monthlies until my mom could get a job. Except that she never found a job she could hold down, and within a year my brother sold or gave his stake to a friend and left town. That friend promptly moved in with the two of us, evicted my mom from the master bedroom, and brought his German shepherds, his guns, and his little brother...who was on probation from juvenile detention in Houston. Those new brick houses over there? That used to be an empty lot where the guy's brother threw my purse after he stole all the money out of it. The money I was saving from my job at Sonic to buy my drum major uniform my 12th grade year. Right before summer band started, he poured some caustic substance on the head joint of my flute and ruined it. I moved out of my mom's house the day before my senior year started because I was no longer safe.
 |
| This used to be my home |
The school counselor got involved, my mom signed me over to foster care, and the bank came and took the trailer on Lovers Lane. About 15 miles northwest, in a different school district, is the foster house where I lived after that. I've shown you there before -- that place that calls itself a farm because there are a couple of horses. Let's not go, it upsets me too much. I spent most of my 12th grade year there, off of Highway 321, until the day the foster father gave me a neck rub with a side of sexual overtures. The family denied it and called me a liar, said I was trying to plot against them and they should have known better than to foster two teen girls at the same time (the foster father had also made inappropriate advances toward another girl).
I couldn't move back with my mom. By then she was living alone in an abandoned trailer out in Woodland Hills that didn't have running water. State social workers wanted to place me somewhere even further away. Instead I was taken in by a different family: The Monroes, who had been looking after me off and on since Linney Street.
They lived up here off of County Road 644, I think it's called now. You've seen it, you've sat in the sunshine in the yard. It was my home, my safe and steady place, until I could breathe again. Until my sophomore year of college, when I got my first apartment and could stand up by myself.
These places are my childhood. What I've worked to rise above and recover from for more than 20 years. That chimney is the bones of my spine. The renamed roads are my new last name. The tall ragweed is how I've blossomed. The empty slab is what's left for me here. They are who I am, and maybe they always will be.
this old house creaks
like an unsettled matter
in the mind of a generation.
I live in southeast Texas
where grass and lies grow thick.
do you want me to tell you this is easy?
I'm running out of fingers to
county my addresses on
and I can't find you in the dark.
do you want me to tell you I love you?
as if my heart wasn't sacrificed
in the bloody war against my childhood.
I don't know what I'm doing.
how many times have I said that now?
don't try to help me -- just go away
I've got two skinny legs
and some comfortable shoes,
don't tempt me to walk away.
5-10-98
You are such a beautiful writer - so much soul and depth
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