December 7, 2004

• part deux…

  
  

  My dad was going to be the accountant for the University of North Dakota.  He’d be starting the first of the year.  He and my mom went up there over Christmas to buy a house.  We spent the holiday at home then mom stayed there with my sister to sell the house while dad and I moved to Grand Forks to start work and school.

  
  

  It was the middle of third grade.  I loved my old school, Park Hill Elementary.  It’s a gorgeous old school.  I still dream about it.  My teacher was Mrs. Brunner, one of those older women who’s harsh and strict but she LOVED me, and I loved her.  We were just starting muliplication when I left, and I had read every Bill Peet book in the school library.  I was in advanced math, reading, and science.

  
  

  I don’t remember the first time I saw our new house.  I don’t suppose there was much to remember, it was a plain ranch house with a plain yard and not a stick of furniture anywhere.  Nice enough, I guess, but nothing special.  We slept in sleeping bags on the floor.  I was nervous about starting school.  I should have been terrified.

  
  

  I got to the new school and just kind of started.  The kids weren’t friendly like they were at my old school.  They were insular, and mean.  They scared me, and I decided that the less I said, the better.  The teacher was a nice enough man.  They were doing division.  I didn’t know how to do division so I got all the problems wrong and couldn’t understand when he would explain it to me.  So he decided I was a moron and put me in remedial math, which was still division, but with dumb kids.

  
  

  It was so cold there.  People hooked their car engines up to heaters all night just so they would start in the morning.  It would snow a foot overnight and school was never cancelled.  People had hockey rinks in their yards.  In fact, we played hockey at recess at school.  I made a tunnel through our back yard that started at the eaves of the house.  The snow was so deep that you could stand up inside my tunnel.

  
  

  It wasn’t too long before dad was coming home really late at night.  Then sometimes he didn’t come home till morning before I left for school.  Then, well, he didn’t come home at all.  Sometimes he’d take me to his friends’ house, the Dunns and I would spend a few days with them.  They had a daughter my age, Annie, who was in my grade but not in my class.  She wouldn’t talk to me at school though, kids can smell social failure a mile away and know better.  Still, most of the time it was just me in that empty house.

  
  

  I didn’t want to go to school and I didn’t want to be home that badly either.  I started saying I had a sore throat so they’d send me home.  Then the school called my dad at work and from then on they just gave me aspergum to chew whenever I wanted.  So instead I prayed for a blizzard.

  
  

  I checked out lots of books at the school library.  I would go home and read a book every day.  I went from picture books to chapter books in short order.  I read every single Nancy Drew book.  I read them locked in the bathroom.  There’s a safe feeling about a bathroom.  There’s a lock and there are no windows.  To this day, most of my nightmares revolve around trying to fortify whatever house I’m in to keep something aweful out.  I don’t like to sit with my back to a door.

  
  

  At a certain point I didn’t want to come out of the bathroom even when my dad was home.  I’d sit in my locked bathroom and read every waking moment of my time at home.

  
  

  I’ll fly away, fly away, to glory
  I’ll fly away
  When I die, hallelujah by and by
  I’ll fly away

  
  

  The one bright spot at school was music class.  I remember that REALLY well.  Singing made me feel whole.  I felt real at those moments.  Everything else was trancelike and unreal, but when I sang it was like none of it had ever happened.  Oh yeah, and I liked P.E. because I got to peg kids in the head with those red playground balls during dodgeball.  heh.

  
  

  more in a few…

  • 4:42 pm
  • 7 Comments