eight years old

i was frozen in time at eight years old. that was what an aunt told me once after she spoke with my parents about how they treated their teen-aged daughter. she didn't know the half of it.

i was a teenager in a fairly well-to-do part of town with a large group of classmates and very few friends. we'd moved in three years before, but i'm not one to make friends easily and was still pretty-much an 'outsider'. i've said it before, but i was very much like ally sheedy in 'the breakfast club'. aloof, moody, painfully shy, smart but not aware. i hid in layers of homemade clothing and tried to melt into the walls. writing became my salvation and school my shelter. i loved school, but hated the people.

my parents didn't understand teenagers. they weren't exceptionally old when they had me, but perhaps a bit older than some. remember, in their eyes i wasn't a teenager anyway, but an eight-year-old.

i was not allowed to have store-bought clothing. this was at a time when jeans were the thing to wear to school. preppie was far away in years. jeans should be grungy looking, too, and have large bell-bottoms - bigger the better. if you wore skirts, minis were in. i wore home-made jeans that looked homemade. i didn't wear skirts often, because i would have to go to school and roll them up at the top to make them short enough to be acceptable to the others. this was uncomfortable and didn't look very good unless you had the right top. i was incredibly tall and incredibly skinny - about the time twiggy came into fashion. i know now that i was pretty, even behind the coke-bottle glasses and the bad skin. i couldn't see it then.

i would sit in my room for hours rocking back and forth in a rocking chair - a hold-over from my childhood days living with my grandparents when i would sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and rock. i would stare into a mirror over my dresser while i rocked and try to see into my soul - to see the evil i was sure must be there, for why else would my parents treat me so?

i was not allowed to leave my house for most of my childhood. when i was very young, my mom would kick me out of the cool basement into the heat of the summer and tell me to 'get some fresh air'. i would go out and plant weeds in my sandbox and play with my dog... waiting until i could sneak back into the basement with my toys and my music.

when i was a bit older i was allowed to take my dog for walks each day. that became my escape.
when home, i had chores like picking up all the rotten apples that fell off the tree in the backyard every day. cleaning up the dog poop out of the yard. taking out the garbage. weeding the vegetable garden (the very large garden).

saturday mornings meant cartoons and lazy pajama breakfasts for most kids. i never saw a cartoon on a saturday until i was married with kids. saturday was cleaning day. my mother was a perfectionist. i am too, but now i try and control it. the house was cleaned from top to bottom and bathrooms were scoured with toothbrushes. by afternoon, if i was lucky, i managed to sneak into the basement and watch american bandstand for 30 minutes before being whisked away for some other task.

as a teenager, my parents became even more protective. i was sitting on the front step one beautiful afternoon doing my homework when my mother came out and accused me of 'flaunting myself' and 'watching for the boys to go by'. i was sent to my room and for several months never left the house except for school. i went to a sleepover at a girlfriends' house one time and one time she came to mine. that pretty much did it. i loved it. she hated it. big surprise.

i walked to school. no matter what. no matter if the neighbor lady offered me a ride when it was -10 degrees. no matter if it rained, sleeted, snowed, beat down 102 degree sunshine. i walked to school. one time i actually counted out how many blocks it was when i was an adult. it was 12 blocks. that doesn't seem like much until it is one of those mid-west blizzards and you are huddled in an extra 20lbs of clothing and your glasses fog over with each step. god forbid you should cut across your backyard and along the empty lot behind your house to save yourself a few steps.

on top of the walk, there was the time limit. 15 minutes. no more, no less. if you weren't to school in the allotted 15 minutes, you'd be tardy. if you were later than 15 minutes coming home you were punished. punishment ranged from screaming to slapping to worse. once i had to stay after school for a special project and got home 30 minutes late. that was the time i got knocked into the kitchen cupboard, my glasses spilling off into space.

i started to lie. again.

i wasn't allowed to wear makeup, so i began sneaking around - running most of the way to school so i'd have time to slip into the bathroom and put it on before school, and running most of the way home so i could wash it off before i left. i was allowed to get a part-time job after school (as long as my grades stayed good) and saved enough to buy my first pair of jeans and a crop-top. my mom wouldn't allow me to wear them to school, so i would sneak them, too. finally, i asked my mom if i could shave my legs. remember, this is when i was in 9th grade. she said no. you never asked 'why not'.

i was in band one day and happened to wear a skirt when one of the 'cool' girls noticed that not only was i not wearing hose (another inappropriate thing, according to my mother) but oh.my.god. look at the hair on her legs. if i could have made myself invisible at that moment i would have. i took an old-fashioned razor from my parents bathroom that neither of them used (the kind that uses the double-edge blades) and shaved that night. cut the hell out of myself. got found out. tried to explain, then gave up. that was usually what happened. i just gave up.

one thing after another. i finally was able to get contacts. the craters that were errupting on my face decided to ease off a bit, and a boy in band noticed me.

i stayed after school to talk to him. i got in trouble. i lied.

'wait 'til your father gets home'.

father got home. at 16 years of age my father took me in my bedroom and told me to strip. everything. naked in my shame, he made me lay on my bed and beat me with his belt. i bit into the bedspread, tears pouring out of my eyes as i swore to myself i would not let him hear me made a sound. i know it made him angrier because he couldn't get me to respond, so he hit me harder and faster. i could hear the effort he was making in the grunts. the pain was unbelievable. i don't handle pain well. i amazed even myself.

i swore i would lie whenever possible.

i never forgot.