One of my first memories of any type of view was the sagging wooden third floor balcony of our shabby tenement apartment. I lived in fear of this view, because every time I stepped out of the house it was a certainty that our neighbor would be lying in wait. She was this loud old Italian lady with the most enormous breasts I had ever seen in my short life, and every time she would see me, she’d chase me down the hall and hug me until I was sure I’d suffocate in her cleavage. I don’t know what terrified me more: that woman, or the idea that that whole ratty building would collapse around us. But with no child support from my father, not one penny, ever, we were lucky to have any type of roof over our heads at all.
From there we moved into what would now be called HUD housing. It was a duplex on a corner lot, and I always assumed the yard was as big as a baseball diamond, because I’d watch my sister play kickball out there on what seemed like a daily basis. Imagine my shock when I came back to see it as an adult and saw it was about 20 feet square at most. But the lilac bush that my mother planted is still there. As an interesting side note, my other sister’s first boyfriend lived in the other half of the duplex. Then, he liked to play the drums along with Beatles records. Now, he’s in prison for serial rape. Go figure.
From there we soared to the pinnacle of my residential life, for my mother remarried. We moved to a mansion, and we each had our own room. The place was called, ironically, Climax Heights, and it looked out upon a sweeping green expanse and towering trees that were perfect for climbing, and a babbling brook down the road which led to an artist enclave where they all grew to know me by name. We had a fireplace and my mother began to smile because she was finally able to get her teeth fixed. What a heavenly period. Granted, my stepfather gave me the creeps, but I was too young to understand why.
It was from there that things went to shit. My stepfather’s boss was relocating to Florida, and told him if we followed, he’d have a job there. So we decided to camp our way from Connecticut and down the coast. About the time we hit Virginia, the boss died, and no one wanted to give a job to a 350 pound old man with questionable intelligence. My stepfather briefly got a job managing a crappy apartment building that was in such a horrible neighborhood that I was not allowed to go outside. Ever. Having been uprooted from the only state I knew, my grades in school plummeted. My view was of the train tracks across the street, and the mattresses had to be burned because they were covered in some form of parasite. Needless to say, that job didn’t last long.
So next we lived in our tent. It was all we had. My view for the next 7 years was the campground, with its ever changing neighbors. To this day I can’t stand baked potatoes, which was sometimes all we had to eat. My mother sent out one last plea to my biological father, but no help was forthcoming from that quarter. So we went on welfare yet again. That’s when I started working. At age 10 I grew and sold houseplants and from that income I was able to buy school clothes. In the mean time I learned, to my everlasting regret, exactly why my stepfather gave me the creeps. Suffice it to say he was a horrible man who stole my childhood, and my ability to feel safe in this world was forever destroyed.
My goal in life after that was to go to college and get away from my stepfather. Just as I was about to do that, my oldest sister, who had joined the Air Force, bought my mother a house. My view from there was the back door of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. I was always confused as to the day of the week, because I’d keep forgetting that they held their services on Saturday. But the library was two blocks away and I had a room with privacy again, and that was all I cared about. And besides, I was about to go to college. Free at last!
To be continued in Part Two….
Leave a Reply