Sam

Last June, which was exactly one month after my eleventh and a half birthday, Mom moved us to Tucson, Arizona.  This was the beginning of the end of my childhood.  I was disappointed to discover the end of childhood didn’t mean the beginning of adulthood.  If I’d known all this before everything happened, I would have tried to enjoy myself more when I was younger.

             The day the taxi dropped my mom, Audrey, that’s my sister, and me in front of the Oasis Apartments, the asphalt on the drive was spongy and so hot I thought my Jellies would melt.  I looked around for the swimming pool promised by a big sign above the office on which a woman in a faded red bathing suit is diving into blue neon.  The glare of white, peeling paint made my eyes water.

 “Where’s the pool?” I asked.  Audrey picked up on the whine in my voice and kicked me in the leg.  She was wearing the yellow flip-flops that matched her toenail polish, so it didn’t hurt my leg as much as it hurt my feelings.

            Mom didn’t say anything, didn’t defend me, scold or try to make a joke out of it. Just lugged the single suitcase stuffed with everything we’d brought from home through the door of our unit.

            “But there is supposed to be a swimming pool,” I whispered.

            Audrey pinched me on the arm.  “Just deal with it,” she said, giving me the look, head tilted to one side, eyes bulging, that was supposed to make me consider Mom’s feelings.  But back then I had no clue how Mom might be feeling and only a vague idea of why we’d left my father and our perfectly nice home in Santa Rosa.

            In the dim light coming through the dusty windows, I saw the ratty furniture, chipped Formica dinette, broken-down couch, balding overstuffed armchair, all of it smelling like accumulated old crud, and I was painfully aware of how far down we’d fallen.  I was also aware that it had been my mother’s choice to leave, not mine, that it wasn’t my fault, but I was being punished for it anyway, that I had feelings too, but nobody was being particularly considerate of me, and that I had just been pinched for no reason.  I started to cry.

            Mom has a little scar just under her lip where she sliced it on a chipped glass.  It’s about the size and shape of a fingernail cutting and it turns from white to pink when she’s hot or happy or sad or about to explode.  It was turning pink right then.

             “I’m sorry, Sammy,” she said.  “This is the very best we can do.  It’s just temporary.”  But she didn’t sound sorry, didn’t hug me, or hold my face between her hands like she sometimes does.  Audrey glared at me and flopped down on the couch,  dust poofing all around her.  She pretended not to notice.

              That very day I began keeping lists in a notebook I’d tucked in my back pack along with a half dozen paperbacks I’d already read, but could reread in case of an emergency, which this clearly was.  At the top of the page I wrote Santa Rosa.  On one side I wrote advantages and on the other disadvantages.  On the advantage side, I wrote Dad. Other things on that side included my kittens, Willy and Nilly, Tammy Gardener and her swimming pool, and my stuffed animal collection, which was resting on my four poster bed back in Santa Rosa.  On the list I put my bedroom filled with early American style maple furniture, my desk with a lamp shaped like a spinning wheel that really spun when you turned the handle.  The desk had a matching chair upholstered in pale blue velveteen to match my eyes.  The walls were lavender, my favorite color, and the dresser was covered with a crochet scarf made specially for me by my grandmother.  My closet was full of clothes, lots with cool labels.  Most of these are still hanging there because we left in such a hurry, taking with us only the one big old suitcase.  Mom promised we’d get new clothes when we got to where we were going.  That was a big fat lie. 

On the top of the disadvantage list, I also wrote Dad.  From time to time that summer, I would add and subtract and rearrange the items on this list.

            In the motor court apartment there’s only one bedroom.  Audrey and I sleep in the twin beds there and Mom sleeps on the Hide-a-Bed in the living room.  For awhile, this sleeping arrangement, me in the same room with Audrey and Mom so close by, was the only item on the advantage side of the Tucson list that I also started keeping that day.

            In back of the apartment, which Mom calls our bungalow to make it sound all cozy, there’s a little yard, just blank dirt, not even fenced in.  In front of the court there’s a kidney shaped island, the missing swimming pool, covered with white quartz rock and cactuses and scraggly bushes covered with gray fuzzy balls the exact size and shape of belly button lint.  Eventually I learned the names for all of these plants, but that first day, all I knew was I could not touch them or climb them or smell them the way I could the trees in Santa Rosa.  I also learned that between the hours of ten and four, it hurts to look at that white quartz rock, and plants you don’t have to water provide very little shade and no comfort.