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2002:February:21
Shame. I remember my brother coming into the room I shared with my sister. I had the front of my shirt over my head. I was 5. Exposed skin was never seen in my family so, of course, my brother reported back to my parents that I was in bed with my shirt off pretending to be asleep. My cheeks flush, I pulled my shirt back over my head and slipped my feet into my flipflops. We were a flipflop family I am afraid. The kind of flipflops that were sold in a nest of 3 adult and 3 child pairs, clustered together and found at the entrance of TG&Y or the PX. Luckily my brother was in the bathroom so I missed his hateful glance that was surely waiting for me. I turned on the TV just in time to sing along to Felix the Cat.
Texas, government quarters, long rows of identical houses banked concrete ravines. I was never allowed on the front lawn because my father was afraid he would lose his yard of the month status. On the concrete driveway, when my dad was at work, my mom would put out the plastic pool for me to sit in. Deena, the preteen from across the street, my sometimes friend, sat in the pool with me. She always asked me why I would not take my shirt off. I always answered by asking her if she just peed in the pool. We laughed so hard whether she had or had not. She almost taught me how to ride a bike before we moved again.
The day before we left Texas, I had just started the 1st grade. On the way to school, I was beat up by a big group of neighborhood girls that lived around me and had always disliked me. I hid in the drainpipe all day. I stared at the quick,slimy stream that ran behind and was a conduit for all the houses in the neighborhood. I walked as far as I could without getting out of earshot of the interstate so that I could hear my classmates coming home. I thought about the 7 other Michaels in my class and I wondered what they might have done. Nothing. Something else will happen to them.
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