The Door Girl, Part 20

Part 20

After foster care, I did what I could to become a responsible citizen. I promised myself I would never be like my mother. I worked three jobs, and took fully loaded semesters at school. Through the good fortune of befriending my Linguistics professor, I started teaching the English language to those who hadn’t yet learned it but needed to. I taught classes at a college, I taught in Myanmar, South of China. I spent time in Italy. I learned to speak another language. I rode my bike through the mountains and swam in the Mediterranean Sea.

Have you ever burned your legs in the Mediterranean Sea? The salt is healing for your wounds and I had a million I didn’t even realize until I stepped foot in to those healing waters. I sat on a rock and let the water wash over every last one.

But my insides were broken. I was damaged and as I laid my head down in the water and tasted the salt on my lips, I wished that I could drink it in like a healing elixir. Something to make all of those jagged little edges smooth—the way rocks are whittled down and crafted over time.

        Italy was a healing balm—a place of respite. I stood on the Alps on the Italy-Switzerland border and listened to the gentle whisper that the Bible speaks of. I heard it. I’ve heard it a time or two since, but I don’t think as loudly as I did that day. The only thing I felt, heard, saw and knew was that I was alive and my life was a work or art in the making.

I graduated with honors in English. I was becoming the girl that no one expected me to become having grown up the way I did. I did my hair and make-up perfectly and I dressed modestly. I smiled broadly and became the girl people question how she turned out as well as she did coming from her type of background. And that made me feel good. Because I was what people refer to as trailer trash. And I was a survivor. And the perfection was burning me from the outside in.

The Door Girl, Part 19

Capabilities of love, I didn't have--I was an anomaly. Like someone born without a foot or a hand; it doesn't happen often, but it does happen

 And unfortunate or not, the way the dice was rolled, my heart was pulled out at a very young age. 

I became the tin man and was afraid I might rust if I shed a tear. 

A few months after I moved in with Lucy, I became a ward of the state. I was moved to foster care and given lye soap to wash with which burned by body from head to toe. 

Have you been to foster care? It was one of the most horrific experiences of my life, to say the least. Being shifted around like a pet that everyone wants and then decides they were looking for something a little better, a little more malleable.

In my dreams, I woud fantasize about being kidnapped. At first the kidnapper would hate me and plan to kill me. But I would win them over with how charming I was. And they would parent me and adore me the way every child deserves to be.

Instead I was placed with chain-smoking Sheila and truck-driving Joe. They had three other foster children younger than me. Two were black and one was white. "Mama and Papa" would threaten to make me sleep in the hay loft with the animals if I talked out of turn.

The other orphans were lavished with attention and bought gifts. I was made to love them. To smother them with affection and if I didn't, I paid the price. 

One day, that very thing happened. I didn't move fast enough getting a sippy cup filled. 

Sheila quietly and very calmly requested, "Please go get the bag of rice out of the pantry.
And so I did.
"Now pour it on the floor."
And I did.
"Now kneel on the rice."
And I did.

I stayed there for what felt like hours. Nothing could win them over. The tin man could not captivate her captors, no matter how deeply she let the rice grind in to her knees.

The Door Girl, Part 18

https://www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/4260-20452733

That was the second time that I was taught that people never stay.  Including myself. If everyone was going to leave, I had learned that I should be the first to go.

The bond we had at the trailer park, the late nights, all of it...it was gone, a dream.

So please don't judge me later in the story (because I judge myself and you very may well) that walking away was a learned behavior.  Like using a fork when you eat or brushing your teeth in the morning. 

As people came and went, I remembered the story of Sarah in the Old Testament of the Bible. She was warned not to turn back to see her old city or she would be turned to salt. But what did she do? She turned around and was turned in to a pillar of salt. 

I learned to laugh at her and how soft she had been to do such a thing. I would never be like Sarah; I would never love something so much that I would allow it to hurt me.

Twice had been enough and the wisteria clogging up my heart was in full bloom.

I am a hydrangea!

My hydrangea plant looks like it's dying. I wonder if it needs more water than your average plant.

Isn't it funny how certain types of plants need particular amounts of water, more or less sunlight, etc.?

People are like plants. We are all diffeernt requiring different amounts of nourishment. But it's expected that as human beings we should all require the same things. My guess is that hydrangeas necessitate a differing level of nourishment. Unlike, say, a butterfly bush which needs very little care.

Then the plants have the luxury of being categorcially assigned. Wouldn't it be refreshing to know what "zone" you are in?

Instead, it's a lot of figuring things out for oneself. It's a lot of being self-aware and always doing the hard work to stay nourished...because I'm one of the high maintenance plants.

I thrive in areas with dark. moist soil and gentle rains and quiet. I grow in places where the sun glows warm, but not too hot, mind you.

The kicker: I googled hydrangeas as I was writing this. Hydrangeas:

-Are best planted in areas with afternoon shade or the sun will scorch the leaves.
-Must be planted in moist, rich soil.
-Need to be watered deeeply--they need a lot more than other plants to establish a strong root system.

I am a hydrangea and I never even knew it.

The night I saw the sky for the first time...

The Door Girl, Part 17

Days that should have been filled with mediocrity never were-and honestly, I think I liked it that way. I didn't know any other way.

Aunt Cassie let us do things none of the other adults did. Probably because she was busy smoking pot all day and grieving the loss of her beloved.

Regardless, my comrades and I slept in sleeping bags in the back of her station wagon. We never had to check in from morning until the streetlights came on at night. We caught frogs. We had impromptu Halloween parties. In a way, my life was magical.

One day, and now, I can laugh at it, Aunt Cassie picked me up from school with my mattress strapped to the top of the car and asked me where my 13-year old self would like to live. She didn't have any money so she had to move in with my grandma (they didn't have room for me).

So I said, "Lucy." Just as casually as I would answer "Fries," if you asked me what I wanted at McDonald's. I was used to this shit by now. Lucy was my friend at school and apparently her mother had no problem with my mattress being dropped off at their house, because I never heard a word about it.

So, there I was at Lucy's without ever having said goodbye to my trailer park family. "People come, people go, " my mother would always say, so I never got my panties in a bunch.

That was the second time it was engrained in to me that people were transient. They came, they went. And this time, it was time for me to go.

Chalk Drawings....