(This post is a personal essay that I wrote as a memoir for my senior final in world literature. It's a huge piece of me. And still needs work. But if you're going to read this I want you to know that, I warn you of the emotions that it might invoke, and I apologize for them in advance. Whether it's anger or sadness it's not intentional. I just needed to purge myself of this and get it all out on paper. Thank you.)***
Adrift & at Peace
“I'd listen to the words he'd say, but in his voice I heard decay. The
plastic face forced to portray all the insides left cold and gray. There
is a place that still remains...It eats the fear it eats the pain. The
sweetest price he'll have to pay the day the whole world went away.”
Trent Reznor
“It’s going to be okay,” I heard as I focused on my fingers laced together in my lap. The vision of them blurring behind the droplets forming in my eyes. My tear streaked face too ashamed to make contact with my mother’s. I could hear her whispering to me. Her voice is so comforting sometimes, that same voice that can make me cower with the slightest change of tone. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. Just a victim. What if she thinks I’m lying? But why would I go through the effort of fabricating something like this? And six years after the fact. “It’s just so much to take in...”
It’s 1995; I’m just about four years old now. I’m so excited for our summer vacation. I started packing a week in advance. We’ll be going down to Richmond, Virginia to see aunt Ruby and uncle Ricky; or “uncle Icky” as I called him, just because I couldn’t pronounce my r’s just yet. Though the name seemed to stick long after I learned. A tall man, towering over me at around six feet four inches, his salt and pepper grey hair and big toothy smile is what made him so pleasant to be around. But you can see in his stress ridden eyes, there is still a burning image of war. My aunt is a decent height, a little heavy set. Her short black hair hugging and nestling her perfectly rounded face, kissing her golden skin, her hands rough from years of gripping paint brushes, and filing paper work. Seven years older than my mother, aside from ethnicity you would never know that they were sisters. We always made the drive down from New York. Leaving just before the break of dawn only to arrive at our destination in the mid afternoon.
“Jenna, wake up, it’s time to get on the road,” my mother called from the doorway of my room. She’s rather tall for an Asian, still almost as slender as she was in college. Shoulder length black hair and a perfectly oval head. Her nails were always done nicely; she kept them a lacquered shade of off white to match her toes. My mother is beautiful. As she peered into my room of eggshell white with carousel horses painted along the top, prancing in and out of the tiny satin ribbons that bordered the walls. Till her eyes met what she was looking for. There under the navy and white sheets was a ball of crumpled toddler. Crawling out of bed sluggishly, rubbing my big brown eyes with my tiny fist, as my black mushroom like hair fell into place, to chase away all the sleep that was lingering still. I had laid out my clothing for the day at the foot of my bed the day before, with the help of my mom of course. If it were up to me I would never match. Slipping into my clothes I scurried across the hard wood floor to the bathroom to hop up on my red plastic stepping stool and brush my teeth.
As soon as I was done, I pulled my Pocahontas roller suitcase out of my room and into the hallway. Along with my huge black duffle bag busting at the seams, filled with Beanie Babies. I can’t wait to show aunt Ruby all the new ones I got. After school sometimes my dad would take me to the card store and let me pick out the beanie baby that I wanted, and then we’d go next door and have ice cream together at Baskin Robbins. He’s a short stocky, but very capable man with rounded shoulders and tight black kinky hair. A thick black bushy mustache to mask his thin turtle like lips; it fit perfectly between them and his rather large nose. I’ve always loved the way my dad’s forehead stayed wrinkled even when he wasn’t lifting his eye brows. It’s amazing. His hands are rough and tattered from years of physical labor as a mechanic and technician. And even though I would debate and shuffle through all the flavors, scoping out which one looked most appealing, I always got the same thing, mint chip in a small cup.
I waited in the creaky hallway at the top of the stairs, for my dad to come in and grab my bags to take to the car. Only to abandon them with out a care, and run to the bottom, to put on my lion king sneakers with the red flashing lights on the bottom; make a teepee. Come inside. Pull down tight so we can hide. Around the mountain... here we go! Here's my arrow. Here's my bow. Grabbing the last of our things before we were to head out the door. I took my mom’s hand as she led me outside; my blanket firmly wrapped around my other hand .The same one I was wrapped in when I was an infant at St. Vincent’s. Pale yellow, but more of a grayish white from years of vigorous cuddling and tumble washes. My cheeks have always had trauma on them from sleeping with the thermal blanket pressed against my full cheeks.
I settled into the back seat and pulling my seat belt over my head as my mom got herself situated in the front passenger’s side. Dad pulling the last bit of luggage out to the car, before tossing it violently into the trunk, and slamming it so hard and abruptly that my ears pop inside the car. I hate it when he does that. It’s like when there is a change in cabin pressure on an airplane. He climbed into the driver’s seat, and off we were. Eight hours in a cramp car. My parents blasting their best of Beatles album the whole way. It wasn’t too bad since I would disappear into the back seat and slip into a deep slumber, like a new born, lulled by the calming motion of the moving car. I would be out for about six of those. When we hit Maryland, we made a pit stop. Though only out of the car for a few minutes, to run to the restrooms and stretch our legs and then back on the road again.
It’s about two in the afternoon when we arrive there. We pulled up in front of my aunt’s small ranch style home. Pines and combs littered all over the half dying front lawn, from all the pine trees that tower around her house, creating a boarder from her property and her neighbors’. Lining the grey gravel driveway where an old boat is parked in front of a white rusted tool shed. Rusted from years of rain and humidity, perfectly aged by the elements of the south. We parked in the shade of a tree along the curb behind my aunt’s red Honda CRV.
She was waiting patiently in front of her screen door, and then proceeded to walking down the slate stone path towards our car to help us unpack. Slowly awaking from my car induced coma, I leaped from the car and gave her a hug.
After we carried all the bags inside, my mom unpacked all of our clothing, and placed it orderly into the dresser in the guest room where we were staying. The blue air mattress on the floor is where I would be sleeping. It was grown up time now, and time to unwind from a long road trip. My mother and father decided to catch up with my aunt and uncle in the kitchen, over a cup of coffee. While I wandered off on my own exploring my new habitat to get my bearings. Shuffling across the sand colored rug, I looked up at the walls, as if I were in a museum. All of my aunt’s oil paintings littered the walls in the most gorgeous way; tucked between old deep sea diving equipment and ocean maps that belong to my uncle.
Drifting along the hard wood floors in my socks, to the doorway of the kitchen where, I can see them sitting around the bar style chairs leaning against the tall brown and white kitchen counter. They’ve decided that we’re going to go fishing and crabbing, and everything we catch would be tonight’s dinner. The dock and bait shop aren’t far from the house at all. And my dad always let me bait my own hooks, even though I usually ended up playing with the blood worms and squid rather than precisely pushing them onto fish hooks. Or throwing them to the seagulls hovering and bobbing overhead.
I caught my first fish that summer, a spot. My uncle informed us that it was mating season for the crabs, as he reeled in the wire case lined with crustaceans. That meant the females were full and oozing of tiny yellow eggs. As soon as we got back to the house my aunt and my mother went to work in the kitchen. Scaling, gutting, and washing. I marched up the wooden oak stairs to the bathroom in order to shower off a hard days work. That lovely salt water scent, like nature’s perfume, it always seems to seep into your clothing and hair and rest there till washed away. And I was rich with it.
Dinner was messy, but there’s no real way to eat crabs besides with your hands and a large garbage bag for all your scraps and shells.
It’s dark out now, I could hear the crickets outside chirping in the humid summer air. I slipped past the dinning room and into the living room, continued on my quest to the guest room where I had parked my things. In the closest there were coloring books and a large selection of children’s reading books. The kind that are so large it takes you and the person reading to you to hold them up. Full of colorful pictures and large white print, for visual affect, and probably to aid the visually impaired grandparents that might want to read along with their grand children. Also residing in the closet along the top shelf, like prized possessions, my aunt’s Barbie collection. Still in the boxes, as new as the day she first got them, she even had the dolls from the 50s. Fuller proportions, big full red lips, little hour glass waste, and giant beckoning blue eyes. Wearing nothing but her black and white striped one piece bathing suit and white framed cat eye sunglasses. She’s perfect.
I picked out a book about the sea lion, which I had got on the trip prior to this one. We went to the aquarium the summer before, that’s where I picked out the book that came with the tiny brown plush sea lion. As I went to sit on the large brown couch in the den across from the fires place my uncle appeared in the doorway. Smiling at me warmly, the way he always does. I opened the book and started to flip through the pictures, as he sat down beside me. My feet dangling above the floor as I smiled up at him, I offered him one side of the book to hold. He sat me on his lap and began me the story.
“You don't recover from a night like this. A victim, still lying
in bed, completely motionless. A hand moves in the dark to
a zipper. Hear a boy bracing tight against sheets barely whisper,
"This is so messed up… Up the stairs: the station where
the act becomes the art of growing up"”
Brand New
The room darkening around me, all I could zero in on was the thin paper fans and mounted on the wall. I wonder how gentle the painter’s hands have to be not to tear the skin thin paper. The red crowned cranes performing their favorite dance for a very attentive audience member.
Like dragging thorns through the finest sand in the world, I felt a cold chill as his fingers burned their way along my flesh. Snaking in and out around my belly button and across my thighs. Lingering in tender areas. My eyes locked to the left. Refusing to look anywhere else; keeping my lips firmly pressed together, I said nothing. All I could hear was my own breathing echoing through my hallow head. There was absence of thought. Just fear and uncertainty. Waiting for every grain of sand to fall to the bottom of the hour glass can feel like an eternity depending on how you look at it. It’s happening again...
I’m ten years old now. Every summer for the last seven years of my life. The slow death of innocence, every ounce of it ripped away from me, when I was only a child. All I could do was wait for it to be over now. For him to finish his monstrous deed and ask me, “How does that feel?” it’s uncomfortable. It’s not natural. I swore it was the last time, something isn’t right. This isn’t normal behavior. But who knows. If I didn’t like it, he might just hold me under the sheet again, pulled tautly over my face, till I screamed in fear of the small space, unable to escape. Gripping bedspreads for leverage and gasping for air is no use. All I would receive is a mouth full of cotton sheets pulled even more firmly around my body. Crushing, trapping. It’s like hell under there. From then on I’ve never been able to face the crushing darkness of small enclosed places again. Claustrophobia.
I kissed my aunt goodbye that summer for the last time. Every time she wanted to see me she would be the one to make the trip.
It wasn't till I was sixteen; sitting in a white washed classroom full of girls I only met last year, that I realized.. The girl in the novel Speak was raped. If I thought it didn’t feel right then, I’ve never had anything hit me so hard. Like running face first into a brick wall. I needed to excuse myself to the bathroom so I collapse to the floor with my face in my hands, at the sad realization of what I endured when I was a little girl.
Waking up in bed, it’s Saturday morning, I slept in late again. I hate it when I do that. I always feel like I’ve missed out on the day. My crushed velvet maroon curtains are still drawn, shielding my new fragile eyes from the high afternoon sun. My room is still dark, between the coal black walls and the deep crimson ceiling; it doesn’t leave much room for light. Trudging through the hallway into the bathroom, letting the cold water pool in my tightly cupped hands. Pressing it to my face, allowing the water to settle around my lips, nose, and eyes. Releasing the bottoms of my hands to let the water drain away slowly. Coming up to take a breath. Opening my eyes gently, to stare into the aqua blue porcelain basin of the sink... I’m ready. I’m going to tell her.
I made my way down the stairs reluctantly. Moving slowly across the red and white oriental runners to the kitchen, where my mom was finishing up her second cup of coffee. Inhaling deeply, holding it inside my chest; allowing it to linger, swallowing the air, like a dry lump in my throat... I prepared myself for what I was about to do.
“Mom, I need to tell you something... It’s about Uncle Ricky…” She looked at me over the brim of her yellow coffee mug, patting the cushion of the chair next to her motioning for me to sit down. As soon as I was seated next to her, she scanned my face. Immediately she could tell I was carrying something heavy on my tongue. My lips felt like lead, and I could feel the storm of emotions swelling beneath my calm exterior. “What is it baby?” she asked. Twenty minutes had to have passed before I was able to muster up the strength to tell her everything. We then sat in silence, as she laid her hands across my shoulders pulling me close to her chest, as I sobbed uncontrollably. My heart sank into my stomach; I could feel it breaking... “There’s nothing that can be done...” she said as she released me from her chest, to look me in the eyes. “I know...” I whispered catching my breath, my voice still shaking… “But it’s going to be okay, I promise” she reassured me.
“I'm cold, I'm ugly. I'm always confused by everything I can
stare into a thousand eyes. But every smile hides a bold-faced lie.
It itches, it seethes, it festers and breathes. My heroes are dead,
they died in my head. Thin out the herd, squeeze out the pain.
Something inside me has opened up again. Thoughts of me
exemplified. All the little flaws I have denied. Forget today,
forget whatever happened. Everyday I see a little more of overall
deficiencies. I'm nothing short of being one complete catastrophe.”
Slipknot
A lot of emotions come to mind when I speak of the dark secrets buried inside myself. At first only anger and pain. Blame, I was enraged. But in the end I needed this. And along came my sad realization of the truth. Innocence dies somewhere along the line. The decaying of our hearts and the progression of the pain we carry. We also learn to over come the hardships we will face. I’m a strong person. The events of my past have helped mold me this way. There is nothing I can face now that compares to the emotional toll of my childhood. My uncle will never be a good man in my eyes. Washing his hands so many times, scrubbing till the skin cracks and blisters; he’ll never be clean. But I’d like to thank him, for helping me grow; to gain the courage and perseverance that I need to survive.
“Life for you, has been less than kind. So take a number,
stand in line. We've all been sorry, we've all been hurt.
But how we survive, is what makes us who we are.”
Rise Against
