The Beginning

There was an apartment. Kind of small, it has been pointed out to me since, as proof of the people we all were then. The apartment was in Chamblee and all I really remember of it is the ice cream truck, neighborhood friends that I hated and once got me a spanking by lying to my mother about me saying curse words about one of their mothers. Stupid little bitches! I wish I really had cursed their mother. Instead, I was spanked by my young mother, not much older than I am right now and made to apologize through steaming hot tears of indignation.

I remember my sister used to stand on her head against the wall and I never could do that. I had a pair of superman pajamas and I absolutely needed the velcro-on cape before I could fall asleep at night. I still sucked my thumb then, and my mother used to make me peanut butter and honey sandwiches in the morning. Or maybe she just did once.

I don’t much remember my father, grandmother or uncles from those days although I am sure they were around all of the time. I do remember that my parents would go out on a date every once in a while to a restaurant called Baby Doe’s. I thought that place was the absolutely coolest place ever. I think I hated it that they would go out without me but someone must have explained to me that it was important because I remember knowing that too.

We moved from the small apartment to a house on Hoy Taylor drive in the suburbs. Some twenty odd years later I started to have childhood flash backs while jogging down the street with Hugo, when it was still new to spend the night over at his old apartment. They were intense visual memories and by the time we actually reached the street that said Hoy Taylor Drive, I was already in breathless tears having left him jogging behind me as I ran ahead full speed ahead, searching like a moth for my flame. There I stood in the drive way remembering the way I used to sit in my window and count all of the Trans Ams that would drive by. That was the house they brought my little sister home to. I remember not liking her at first because she was ugly and weirdly colored. Then I fell hopelessly in love and stayed that way until she got old enough to kick and bite me. I’ve never really stopped loving her with that same adoration I’ve just gotten better at keeping it to myself over the years so she won’t kick and bite. Although sometimes it still happens.

I remember that we had a milk man that actually delivered milk to our door in glass containers. When I was good for the week my mother would let me leave a note asking the milkman to please leave chocolate milk for me. It was on one of those mornings that I fell while skipping back inside with the milk and scrapped my knee. I was standing screaming crying on the patch of concrete in front of the door with a bloody knee and empty container of chocolate milk that had spilt all around me. I remember being afraid that my parents would be angry with me for being so clumsy but instead my mother looked horribly afraid of my pain and nursed me to health instead of reprimand me.

I remember that sometimes I would take naps with my father and because I have always been such a wiggle worm he would make us lay butt to butt until I fell asleep. HE was young then too and still drove big trucks that lit up my entire universe when he would pull them up in front of the house after being gone for some odd days. He was not a diabetic then and we didn’t know the little one was either. That all came later, at the second house…the further move into suburbia, the house where it all started to come undone.