father said. The only safe place was home. Now, nearly twenty years later, I know that sometimes it is dangerous to be safe. Sheltered-that’s how my friends and colleagues put it. My childhood, that is. Fiercely protected by a father I respected and feared as much as I loved, I grew up in the shadow of rules and regulations, of ‘Don’t do this’ and ‘Don’t do that.’ When other children were going to birthday sleepovers, I stayed home. It was dangerous at other people’s houses, my father reasoned. You never knew what was going on, what hurtful games children played, what danger parents either ignored or allowed.
Afraid of my being molested, my father taught me about sex when I was old enough to understand the word ‘no.’ By the time I was seven, I knew I was conceived by a bodily function, not delivered by a stork. There were other disclosures, too. When other kids believed in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, I knew neither existed. My father tried to rob me of an imagination. Instead, he created a girl who would conjure up worrisome events that never happened, who would dream of disaster before it occurred, who would lie awake at night with a tummy ache and a headache and her mind in a whirl. Nothing was safe, although much was sacred. The body, especially. And the mind.
I remember wondering what a normal childhood was all about. I remember trying desperately to make friends. I remember being told to keep secrets, to protect my honor. Even with a lie-although I didn’t lie, not early on. I remember these things the way some people remember a drunken relative or an abusive parent. With fear, with avoidance. But running only makes the past easier to find you. It is better to stay still and let history wash over you and cleanse the pain.
‘Everything is dangerous’ my father told me. ‘Trust no one.’
The year Summer and her family moved in was the worst. I broke promises. I told lies. I kept secrets. I woke with tummy aches and headaches from fear of discovery. Sometimes it is easier to be caught and to deal with consequences than to escape. For the prison of your mind holds no escape, and your heart does not forget.
Everything is dangerous, my father said. Trust no one.
How then shall I trust you?
It was July 1979, the year before Reagan and voodoo economics, the year before my cousin Ken bought his first suburban house, the year my mother returned to work full-time, the year I started babysitting my two younger sisters and taking on more and more responsibility around the home.
Summer and her family, a group of vagabond hippies, moved into the house at the end of the block. ‘Renters,’ my father told me. ‘Just as bad as criminals,’ he said. Of course, they were not to be trusted.
Curious as any eight-year-old, I spied on the new neighbors. I crept up to the front window and peered into the living room. Nothing telling of what evils awaited me there. The room was empty except for a tattered brown recliner and a standing lamp. Not even a TV. The house seemed lonely, sad. A little lost. I didn’t think about it anymore until school started and the bus picked up one of the new neighbors, a tall, thin girl with stringy golden- brown hair and dreamy eyes. She wore floral and tie-dyed dresses and open-toed sandals even in the rain. She smiled and laughed a lot at things other kids did not find funny. She did not curl her hair or wear jeans when everyone else thought it was cool. When kids called her names, she made a sign with her hands. ‘Peace and love,’ she’d say.
I was enchanted.
She was a year older than I was and every bit as mysterious as her name. Summer. A promise of warm weather and clear skies and swim parties and suntans and lazy afternoons at the beach. When she waltzed by the playground, her long hair drifted like seaweed. On the jungle gym bars, she was the only girl unafraid of swinging upside down with a skirt on and letting the boys see her cotton underwear. There was a lack of inhibition about her, an I-couldn’t-care-less about the judgment of others, a spring in her step. Everything about her, from her unkempt hair to the silver beads on her wrists, spoke of magic. When she confided in me that she knew witchcraft, I believed her.
I grew to trust her like I trusted my sisters, implicitly, without words.
One day, Summer invited me over to her house after school. ‘I can show you my record collection,’ she said. When she smiled, I knew I would say yes, even though I knew the answer from my father would be no.
But I was still my father’s daughter, honest and obedient, eager to please. I asked him when he got home from work. He took me aside and closed the door to his bedroom and said, ‘I don’t want you playing with that girl. She looks like a tramp. I bet her parents make her walk the streets at night. She’s not a good influence for you or your sisters. I do not want you going to her house.’
My mother offered a compromise. ‘Invite her over here to play.’
But I wanted to see her record collection. The color of her room. The width of her bed. The closet that stored her clothes.
A week later, when Summer asked again if I could come over, I said yes. I did not tell her my parents forbade it. It was my first lie, my first secret, and the power of it burned in my stomach like a hot fist.
I jumped off the bus and headed across the street and into the empty living room of Summer’s home. A warm sweet scent arrested me. Summer grabbed my hand and led me down the hall through a beaded rainbow-colored curtain and into her room. I sat down in a beanbag beside the unmade twin bed with its rumpled sheets and strong odor of dogs and urine and something else, something I did not recognize. Summer opened her closet door and withdrew albums I had never heard of. She gathered the ones she liked best and we stepped into the family room where a teenage boy lounged on a sofa with his arms around two teenage girls. ‘That’s my brother, Sky,’ she said. ‘And his girls, Tina and Lori.’ Another young man with long hair and a beard sat cross-legged on the shag carpet strumming a guitar. ‘That’s Hunter,’ she said. ‘My mother’s brother.’ An older woman with a long braid down her back rocked in a hammock. ‘That’s Nina, my father’s mother.’
Without asking permission. Summer proceeded to play Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Manic Depression,’, ‘Break on Through to the Other Side,’ by the Doors, and Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb.’ Hunter stood up and retreated to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of steamed vegetables and a glass of water, which he passed around the room. Tina stood up and adjusted her bikini top and said she was going to make an alfalfa sandwich and pour herself a glass of goat’s milk. Sky paused from kissing Lori and patted Tina’s bottom and said, ‘Go get us something, too.’
Tina glanced down at me. ‘Would you like something to eat?’ I remembered my father telling me never to eat or drink anything at anyone’s home: The food could be poisoned; the drinks could contain alcohol; I could get sick, maybe die. ‘No, thank you,’ I said.
From across the room, Nina beckoned me. I expected to be reprimanded. But she gathered me into the hammock and wrapped her arms around my chest and said, ‘I want to tell you a story. About how we came here.’ Her deeply bronzed skin creased when she smiled. ‘We started in New York – Brooklyn, to be exact. Nothing to talk about there. Just smutty skies and mean-spirited people. Summer’s father met Yellow Bird at a concert in Central Park, and they decided to run away together. That was the year Summer was born. I went with them. There was nothing in New York for me. Nothing worth mentioning, that is. We packed our belongings into two duffel bags. We had a roll of quarters and hearts full of love and hope. After spending the night on a park bench, we found a trucker going west. Said he’d drop us off in Chicago. We didn’t like it there, too much like New York, and we wanted to see the Grand Canyon, so we found another trucker going west and headed out again. Never did make it to the canyon. Got stuck somewhere in Idaho. Walked twenty miles in the snow. Don’t ask me how. We were young and invincible.’ Nina hugged me tight against her chest. ‘Tell me, child, do you believe in magic?’
I thought of the life-size statue of Jesus nailed to the cross, and the promise of eternal life. I guessed it must be magic. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘When we die, we live forever.’
Nina nodded and looked entranced by the thought of eternity. ‘We come back sometimes, you know. Depending on how good we are and what we’ve done. I was an eagle once. I flew so high I could kiss the clouds. I bet you were a coyote or a wolf. You have the hunter in you, child. A brave soul. Of fire and water. A daughter of the moon.’ She touched my eyelids with her fingertips. ‘Even your eyes are like crescent moons.’
I thought of my father saying I was nothing because I was a girl. In China, girls are bad luck. A curse on the family. I knew I was lucky. I had been born in America to an American woman and allowed to live, not forgotten and drowned in a well.
But I liked Nina’s story better, of how I was the daughter of the moon, a brave soul, a hunter.
Nina twirled a brown beaded necklace around her neck. The beads clacked in time with the rhythm of the music. Nina’s skin creased into folds above her eyebrows and beside her mouth. There was a peacefulness about her, a quiet consistency that echoed in the room. I wanted to know her better, to feel her leathery skin against my
