part four
looking for myself
“Unless we learn to know ourselves, we run the danger of destroying ourselves.”
—Ja A. Jahannes, WordSong Poets
chapter 26
Toward the end of that summer, my mother moved us once again. I was going to be entering high school in the fall, and the neighborhood was closer to my school. She’d also gotten a better job at Brock’s Department Store in downtown Bakers-field, and the bus ride from our new place would be much shorter for her. Although she never spoke of it, I think she felt so humiliated by my behavior on Janice Drive that she welcomed a reason to move.
Just like it had been when we left Lake Street, escaping the country slums of Janice Drive felt like another chance for me to start over. I’d humiliated myself and my mother with my shop-lifting fiasco, but the truth was I didn’t really care all that much what any of those people thought of me. I was just relieved to get away from the neighborhood with all its bad memories and bad influences. I hoped Brown Street would save me from myself.
We brought Cubby with us, but he skidded and faltered on the hardwood floors, and then, after one night of being confined to the house, ran away the first chance he got. I was devastated. We checked the pound, but to no avail. A few days later, my mother heard from the owners of Friendly’s Market that Cubby had managed to find his way clear across town, back to Janice Drive. The lady told my mother that one night Cubby had barked and barked so long they’d finally checked out what was going on and found that someone was trying to rob their store. She assured my mother that they would feed Cubby and watch out for him; after all, he’d watched out for them.
“If Cubby wants to be back on Janice Drive that badly, he should be allowed to stay there,” my mother said, and I agreed with her.
Cubby had been a thief just like me—a chip off the old block, so to speak. Almost every day, back on Janice Drive, I’d find a new flip-flop, house slipper, or other shoe on our back porch—an offering of sorts. But Cubby had redeemed himself by saving Friendly’s Market from being robbed. I hoped I’d have the chance to redeem myself with my mother by proving to her that I had changed.
The apartments we moved to were the nicest we’d ever lived in, and so was the area. It was an older section of town, full of Victorian houses inhabited mostly by retired couples, a far cry from the criminal- and animal-infested streets of Janice Drive. Our complex consisted of five Spanish-style stucco apartments laid out in a squared-off U shape, similar to Ruby’s court, and the landlord even kept up the small grass area in front of the apartments. I wasn’t as ashamed when people drove me home, and Mom said the place had class. This helped us to regain some of our pride.
Mom was making good commissions at Brock’s on the ultra-expensive line of cosmetics she was selling, Alexandra de Markoff. I was amazed that anybody would spend $100 on a bottle of makeup. I imagined how many new school clothes I could buy with $100 and I resented these women for spending that much money on something that seemed so frivolous. But Mom explained, “Some of those farmers and ranchers around Bakersfield are raking in the dough. Their wives, with their weather-beaten faces, will pay anything to look better.”
I started high school with the same kids I had known in grammar school—kids I had more in common with, kids who weren’t always getting into trouble like the ones on Janice Drive. The problem was that, since I had gone to a different junior high school, I felt like the new kid at school.
During my first week of school, I saw Pam in the halls. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in two years. She was walking hand-in-hand with a boy who seemed to be as shy and dark as Pam was. They both looked like they wished they could disappear.
My heart raced with joy as my eyes met with Pam’s. But I was shocked with what I saw—or rather, what I didn’t see. I saw a look of recognition in her eyes but there was something missing, something I can’t quite describe. I smiled at her and she smiled back but it was clear that we were miles away from each other. We passed each other without saying a word—all that passed between us was a nod.
I felt sad that Pam and I had grown so far apart that we couldn’t even stop to talk to one another in the halls. I wondered how and where she had met this boy, who seemed so much like her, and I was glad she had him.
I also saw Charlene. By now, her mother had renamed her Cherie. Charlene was embarrassed by the new name but her mother thought it was more sexy and sophisticated. I went over to her house after school a couple of times that year, but she was so overloaded with schoolwork, on top of all her housekeeping, that she couldn’t really spend time with me. And she worked in the school office during lunch hour—since her mother refused to give
