chapter 14
Momma got a full-time job at a local drugstore selling cosmetics and so, after about a month of staying with Ruby and Steve, we were able to move from Ruby’s to our own little house. It was only a few blocks away and it was even on the same street—Lake Street—but it seemed a long way away. In fact, in my mind the three blocks that separated our two houses seemed to be covered with a large black cloud, almost making the section of Lake Street that Ruby and Steve lived on invisible to me.
Just before we moved to our own house, Sandy—the cat I loved, the cat who’d kept me company when I was home alone all day in Ceres—was found dead in the backyard. I cried and cried. Momma tried to console me but I pushed her away.
No one seemed to understand why she died. Steve said that sometimes animals just die like that—for no apparent reason— and that we should never feel like we own a pet. He said animals belong to themselves, just like people do. I didn’t know what he meant, exactly, but it sounded right to me.
Years later I’d discover that sexual perpetrators often kill pets, or at least threaten to do so, in order to keep their victims from telling about the abuse. It was only then that I realized Steve probably killed Sandy as a warning to me about what would happen if I told anyone.
I felt so relieved to be out of Ruby’s house. Not just because I was away from Steve but because I was away from Ruby as well. I no longer had to face her every day—no longer had to face what I had done to her.
I tried to make all that had happened in Ruby’s house disappear, and I was fairly successful. Some of it vanished immediately—in the moment—as I left my body to deal with the atrocities that were happening to it on its own, like a sergeant deserting his troops in the midst of battle. What was left in my consciousness, I shoved to the back of my mind as quickly as it emerged. So I wasn’t haunted by memories as much as I was haunted by troubling, weird thoughts and behaviors. I started picking at my fingers until they bled and I developed the strange practice of rolling up the inside of white bread slices into balls and then eating them. I also became obsessed with penises. Whenever I saw a man I focused on his genital region, trying to see the outline of his penis.
I was permanently changed. The nine-year-old who had arrived back in Bakersfield stronger and more confident than she had ever been in her life; the child who had been buoyed up by the kindness of Uncle Frank, Aunt Opal, Mrs. Maynard, the cookie lady, and Mrs. Green; the child who had been encouraged, respected, and, most important, not continually shamed had been knocked down once again.
I walked around in a daze, as if I was sleepwalking. I remember Momma enrolling me in school again—the same school I’d been to from kindergarten through the third grade, Horace Mann Elementary. It was about five blocks away, on the other side of Niles Street, the busy street we had lived on at Ruby’s court. I remember that my teacher’s name was Miss Peterson and everyone loved her. And even though I was coming into the class halfway through the year, there were many familiar faces, including Pam’s.
But I don’t remember much from that time period and I couldn’t feel anything, not even joy at seeing Pam once again. And Pam seemed to be as different as I was. I didn’t know what had happened to her since I saw her last but it seemed like she might have experienced something bad too. Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t afford to really connect with me this second time around for fear of losing me all over again.
I still went to her house after school and on some Saturdays, but I suddenly felt too old for dolls and stuffed animals and too claustrophobic to stay in her bedroom. Where once it had seemed like our safe house, it now felt more like a prison. Her bedroom had always been rather dark but suddenly the darkness felt dangerous and reminded me too much of Steve and Ruby’s bedroom. And I felt so overwhelmed by my own pain that I couldn’t afford to take in Pam’s pain as well. I had to block it out—and I’m sure Pam must have felt the difference in me. I was behind a wall that even she couldn’t penetrate.
I needed to be out in the open, where dark and ugly things couldn’t happen without someone seeing them—out in the open, where there was lots of room to breathe. So we went outside to Pam’s gigantic backyard and I showed her how to be a horse, galloping and whinnying around the yard. I decided it was better to be a horse. Being a human was just too painful. Horses were free, horses were strong. Horses were also bigger and faster than humans, so even when a human tried to bother them they could get away. I’d seen a movie once that showed a man trying to capture a horse. He made a lasso from a rope and threw the lasso at the horse, hoping to get it around its neck. After many tries he finally succeeded, but the second the rope went over its head the horse reared up on its hind legs and almost trampled the man—who immediately backed off. Yup, it was better to be a horse than a human.
I hated the little house we moved to from Ruby and Steve’s. It was
