My family keeps photo albums. Well,
my family tries to keep photo albums.
The only extant ones taper off somewhere between Anna coming out of
side-ponytails and baby dolls, and Kayley getting into high heels and boys.
There’s a gaping hole between this time and my early college years because my
mother, bless her heart, wiped out a hard drive by accident. I think it was a
blessing. A providential keystroke snuffed out my awkward adolescence and
ushered me straight into profile pictures and posing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my
childhood recently, the time before the great blackout. In one of the albums,
there is a picture of me sitting on an old couch. In my lap there is a think
pink book the size of a dictionary spread wide and resting between my legs. I
used to read stories to my brother and sisters. Not that they couldn’t read, we
were all wonder children and bright little academics. But when I read, I did
voices. If it was a favorite of mine, I’d do motions. And if it was Jack and The Beanstalk, there was no
couch that could contain me.
I would open the book reverently,
the pages crackling with age and dust. Tape bound the edges of the spine where
the old laminate was slowly peeling away. I had to be gentle with the pages,
and not pull them out of the jury-rigged binding. The story began without much
excitement or violence, but I got to make a few animal noises and twang out an
Alabaman peasant[1].
The peddler’s voice was hard; I went as low as my seven-year-old lisp would
allow. Formalities, really, all this beginning stuff. My sisters and brother
would listen and look at the pictures, but we all knew it was just a means to
an end. They were waiting for the giants.
This
particular picture was taken during the “fi-fie-fo-fum” portion of the story.
In the picture, my legs are high in the air, kicking straight out from under
me. My siblings cower in the cushions mostly to evade the dramatic thrashing,
but also from fear of the camera. I have no such fear. I stare at the camera,
mouth agape in a giant roar, teeth scattered at random like jutting Styrofoam
cups[2]
in my cock-jawed thespian epiphany.
I
was a precocious little snot.
I
quickly grew out of that stage. My mother thought it was cute enough the first,
second, and even the third time. After that, Jack and the Bean Stalk became a lot harder to find. But, I found
other books. I found lots of other
books. My mother liked to decorate the house with vintage quilts, pictures, and
books. The shelves and flat spaces of
my home were littered with books of no particular genre or subject. She bought
them at yard sales, auctions, and markets, not ever expecting anyone to open
them again. They’d serve as makeshift coasters and end-table arrangements to
the end of their days.
Not
if I had anything to do with it.
I
started in the upstairs hall. There was one collection of large brightly
colored leather books. I believe it was for meant for children in a sturdier
generation than mine. There were Grimm’s fairytales (the actual bloody
versions) and myths, and wives stales, and the superstitious suppositions of
dead secret societies. I devoured the books in the corner of the hall and in my
large bean bag chair. Next, I went to the basement where I found a treasury of
Poe. I knew I liked him, because he made my mom shudder.
Oh, no, you don’t have to read
that.
What, mom?
Just ignore this assignment, we’re
skipping Poe. His stuff is just creepy and dark. Y’all don’t need to think
about those kinds of things.
As
my teacher, she vetoed poor Poe, but now I sucked him down along with Jack
London and Edgar Rice Burroughs. We used to listen to audio books in our car as
we drove about our day. They were best for road trips. We listened to more than
thirty books over my childhood. It was
just a matter of time.
I
began to write stories in my head, though I didn’t write them down. I acted out
my stories with little plushie animals and plastic horses. I repurposed any
small object I could get my hands on, down to my actual hands. If I wasn’t
telling, showing, or seeing a story, I felt like I was dying. That’s when I
began to notice there were stories happening all the time. Cars whizzed by, and
right there inside the cab, was a ten second soap opera. The mall was Times
Square and there were plays in abundance.
It
got harder as I got older and staring was no longer cute and unobtrusive. I’ve
scared a lot of people. But the selling point for me was that, in all of those
stories that I saw and acted out alone in my room, the people were the same.
Even as a seven-year-old I knew that there were stories written on the bones of
the universe. They’re written in the very blood of human kind, and something
that powerful and intimate doesn’t deserve silence. I don’t know how people
don’t explode from all the wonderful things inside of them. I just know that I
saw them as a child, and I see them now again as an adult. I have to keep
writing for the little girl sitting on the couch screaming Fe-fi-fo-fum! She’s got to be allowed to scream to the world, “Come;
come back to the place you used to be. Come, come to the place you’ve never
been, where you’ll never be again.”
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