Kicking And Screaming

The world will hate you for being yourself. It's just a fact of life for those of us born kicking and screaming. I learned this first hand growing up in an adoptive family who detested the enthusiasm and bravado I brought with me in that tattered black garbage bag along with all my worldly belongings. Yes, I was the kid you hear about on the news; the soiled and confused child you see wandering around a filthy trailer in the background of a 90's episode of Cops. The smelly kid all the others whisper about in class and on the playground.

My parents were deranged from generations of abuse by the very systems that ravage our family to this day. My father was a pedophile and meth addict who talked to god through the television set. My mother was a free spirited hippy with loose morals, a heart full of resentment and a nasty addiction to cruel men and drugs. My father was one of those men and he supplied the drugs.

One of my earliest memories is of the warm evening sun reflecting off the sepia river where my mother, the rest of my siblings and I were bathing. I was far away-too far- from my mom whose golden brown hands gripped my baby sister's fat tummy as she dipped her in and out of the water playfully before sending her loaded diaper downstream. Even at my age - too young to be aware yet of how old I was- I was disturbed by the sight of the seeping and bloated refuse floating down the picturesque river. My mother too far away to touch or go to for help looked divinely radiant smiling to the small round white baby she had created for our family to love. But my mother would never know her own divinity and the baby would hardly know love.

I suppose there is something beautiful about observing your mother from afar in this way. Something magical about seeing the light shine off of the water into her mud colored eyes; specs of amber glinting in the sun. There was something holy about her sun-kissed skin and her dark straight hair barely past her naked shoulders, wet at the tips from the river. Although we'd often be without food, hearing her laughter from afar nourished me. I never thought to go to her for a hug or comfort in these moments-never realized it was an option. Perhaps I knew even then that she resented me for the devious favor shown to me by my father. Or maybe I was just so used to caring for my own needs since she was rarely around to tend to them. I held fast to the reeds and rocks as the water pushed my small body causing it to bob gently up and down as I watched the scene of one of my first conscious memories unfold in the twilight.

My first friends were the tick-covered puppies who lived in the splintered dog house in the yard by my family's rented trailer. Brownie - a very original name for a dark brown fluffy dog- was a joyful, yippy little ball of exuberant mischief and joy. I cared for him devoutly before school in the best way I knew how at the age of five; belly rubs and games of chase through the overgrown weeds of the side yard. We had no gate so he would inevitably escape and I'd dutifully go and collect him from the playground across the street. How lucky it was for a studious child of neglectful parents to live directly across the way from the school.

I've often thought of returning to Wyandott road in Oroville, California to see how it has changed since I was a child. Is the run down trailer still there? Is the school? Do the monkey bars remember me hanging upside down in a cheap, poorly fitted wig and hat as the other girls gasped and giggled at my head-lice inspired hairdo? Do the hop-scotch squares recall my filthy little rubber soles skipping across them over and over again as I focused intently to hone my balance?

Where are the other children now? The girls who pointed and laughed at my bizarre clothing and awful smell-did they move into neighboring towns and marry their high school sweethearts? The kids from my street-did they follow in the footsteps of their parents and grow up slinging drugs and stolen bikes to make ends meet in the ever-increasing pressure cooker of poverty that enveloped our homes and threatened to swallow us up each night as we slept on our urine-stained mattresses?

Did their lives change that day as they watched from the schoolroom window as my siblings and I were rounded up in the street like feral animals? Did the teacher distract them while our mother screamed in the middle of the road begging for them to let us go as the police and social workers ripped the baby from her arms and loaded her into the back of a squad car? What did they have for lunch that day as my sister and I huddled terrified in the back of that black sedan which carried us away-far away with no idea who these people were or where they were taking us?

I was a relatively content child until that day. But as the unmarked car whisked us further and further from my golden-eyed mother, from Brownie, from the little girls who laughed and from the hopscotch squares which grounded me I let out a sound which caused the grown-ups in suits to shudder and cover their ears. I was certain if I screamed loud enough and long enough they would dump us on the side of the road and we would be free to find our way back to our disheveled trailer in the overgrown weeds. So I called the piercing alarm all the way up from the center of the earth through my bones and up through my five-year-old vocal cords. And I sustained it for the entire two hour trip north until finally we arrived and my voice gave out. And just like that, the one thing I could control about this nightmare-my voice-left me. The limits of will power; this was my first lesson in kicking and screaming.