There were a number of things on my Christmas lists that I never got: an easel, a remote control car, a bike. They all paled in comparison to my desire to own a piano. I took piano lessons after school, following a free trial lesson at Afton Oaks the summer before 3rd grade. I practiced at home, first on a tiny blue Casio keyboard that played only one note at a time, and later on a larger, mediocre keyboard. I must have been the only child in that class whose family didn't own a piano, and likely the only one who begged her mother to pay for piano lessons.
In 4th grade I participated in my first and only piano recital. It was held at a piano shop in the area; I ran around it with Valeria and Elisabeth until Mrs. A's assistant told us how much the pianos cost and that we would have to pay if we broke any of them. Everyone had to bring cookies; no one ate the ones we brought so my mom took them home when we left.
A month or so later I visited Elisabeth's house and was fascinated by the dusty piano in the corner. I sat at it and played in a trace-like state. It was the first time I could sit at a piano and play whatever I wanted, and it is one of my fondest memories.
1/15/07-
Although I liked having time off from school for Spring Break, it was sometimes a burden on my mother because she had to leave me somewhere during the day while she was at work. In 4th grade she left me at a place across from Sharpstown Mall called "Whiz Kids". It was next to the dollar store (the red-headed girl referred to this as "the store") and had cartoon characters painted on the glass walls. I had a bad feeling about it from the start. I had never been acquainted with children in my neighborhood prior to Whiz Kids, and they were very different from what I was used to. Lunch was included in the overpriced charge for childcare, a 10-cent bag of ramen noodles which I never ate. I imagined the place was named "Whiz" Kids beacuse of the horrible smell that wafted through the air.
All of the children were black, except for the red-headed girl, a brother and sister, and a Mexican girl. I was the oldest by at least 2 -3 years and felt rather silly being there. But the teachers liked me because I was more mature and better behaved than the other children.
During "recess" one day the teacher had the children sing "I am an Abraham" for me, the blond girl was up near the front. I had never heard the song before, but it still gets stuck in my head from time to time.
1/5/07-
I enjoyed going to Dr. Cohen's office, he was always nice to me and my mother, and I liked waiting in the examination rooms covered in children-themed wallpaper from the 60s. He would always tease me and ask if I was kissing any boys, and on the way out I would get to pick a lollipop that said "Dr. Cohen loves you" on the stick.
But one day I noticed that there was a collage of children's photos on the wall across from my examination room, and that my photo was not in it.
12/16/06-
Sometimes my dad would lay in bed and stare at the wall. Once he laid in my bed, staring at my bookshelf. I would ask him what he was doing and he would say nothing, but it always bothered me. And yet, several years later, I would find myself doing the exact same thing.
Soon after my parents had seperated, my mother and I stopped by the townhouse, I forget why. I found an open package of Pecan Sandies on the dining room table, and I ate one or two. Every time I see Pecan Sandies I think of that day, I think of my father and his isolated nature that is enveloping me.
11/29/06-
In 5th grade we were required to go to camp for a weekend in October. I looked for an excuse out of it. Brent Carter was able to avoid it because he was dancing in The Nutcracker that weekend, but everyone else, including me, went. Despite the harsh cold, the ghetto black girls that scared me, the disgusting food, the television withdrawl and overall boredom... at night our cabin's camp counselor strummed on her guitar and sung us to sleep. Of course, I can never go to sleep to music, and I took even longer to fall asleep because of the snoring girl to the side of me, but everyone else seemed to fall asleep to her songs. She sang "One of Us" and I recognized it from Joan Osbourne's version that I had heard on the radio (weeks before it became well-known). I told her this the next day and that night she sang it again, "A little girl told me she heard this song on the radio". And it made me feel like everything would be ok afterall.
11/16/06-
Extended Day was brought inside when it was raining, so that day we went into Mr. Plumber's classroom and drew all over the chalkboard. Chris Watts starting telling yo' mama jokes and, as it was the first time I had ever heard of this, I was insulted and told on him. Mr. Plumber spent the entire hour or two slouched in his desk chair, whatever we told him he would respond with "ok". I didn't get the satisfaction of seeing Chris get in trouble.
When we came back to school the following fall we had learned of Mr. Plumber's death. No one wanted to tell us how he had died, but all the parents knew it was AIDS and many tried to keep this information from us. It would be the first of two AIDS deaths at River Oaks Elementary, the second being the assistant principal Mr. Talbot, a tall bald man everyone admired and loved.
9/26/06-
It was Christmas break and I would pass my days sleeping in, watching tv and playing video games until my mom got home. Every Monday through Friday from noon to one I would listen to the lunchtime request blocks on 107.5 The Buzz while I played Nintendo. This was how I first discovered Tori Amos. The block consisted of three songs, only two of which I can recall with certainty: "Cornflake Girl" and an amazing cover of "Little Drummer Boy" that to this day I cannot find a copy of.
I was truly beginning to connect to music at that point in my life. Filled with an insatiable thirst for more, a junkie of radio stations and music videos, the connection between these sounds and my spirit was indescribable and overwhelming. This period would last a few years before sadly and unwillingly fading away, although I still have hope that it might one day reincarnate itself back into my life.
9/17/06-
Although I thought my parents had prepared me as best they could for my first day of kindergarten, what with the pre-packed school supplies purchased days earlier in the school cafeteria and the general excitement after learning that I was accepted into the school, there was one thing that either slipped their minds or was never mentioned to them. I don't think I slept the night before.
And so I showed up and Ms. Paris helped me find my name tag on the board outside of her classroom. Since this was kindergarten, it couldn't just be any boring old name tag. Instead, our names were written on laminated brown teddy bear cut-outs, which were attached to yellow yarn that went loosely around our necks. Teddy bears would be a recurring theme to the school year, as I would later come to find out. I walked inside to see that most everyone had brought a teddy bear to class, like Ms. Paris had requested. I may have been the only child without one. Ms. Paris suggested someone share a bear with me, and I was already starting to feel left out, but before tears could come out of my eyes Whitney came over and let me borrow a second teddy bear that she had brought to class. It was white and somewhat ugly, but greatly appreciated.
A number of other children in the classroom were crying, but for me this was a fresh slate. No longer would I be the little girl in the classroom, the youngest and the quietest, the girl who's name no one knew. That day we were all equals, except now that I was one of the children who hadn't cried I suppose I had a bit of upper hand. Things were beginning to look up.
6/19/06-
I frequented my grandparent's house during my first few months, after my mom got off of maternity leave and struggled to find (or pay for) a sitter. I have no recollection of crying while there. After drinking my bottle of milk I would drift off in the comfort of my grandparents' bed. Sometimes Mima would leave me there alone to stare at the tiles in the ceiling; to determine their pattern. I wasn't exactly alone, I had Colcha wrapped around me.
"Colcha" was one of my first words, but I had no concept of one word for several, similar looking items. To me, Colcha was not every blanket, but rather the old woolen one with pink roses that covered my grandparents' bed. Perhaps for several years it was etched that way in my mind, as my language skills progressed in English alone. I guess you could say that Colcha marked the beginning of my attachment to inanimate objects.
In some way or another Colcha ended up in our house, and in my father's possession after the divorce. I found her in the bottom of the hallway closet the other day, in a sad state. I was afraid to even put her in the washer. But her cigarette burns and faded roses reminded me of Mima in her better years, may she rest in peace.
5/20/06-
Elisabeth invited a few of us over to her house for her birthday party. A sleepover. My father never let me spend the night at anyone's house, and this was no exception. I went with the girls to Baskin Robbins (where Valeria and I asked for the ice cream containers for extra credit in Ms. Nelson's class
[they told us someone else had beaten us to them]) and to the haunted house. But Elisabeth's dad wasn't going to pay over $100 to get all of us in, and I didn't
blame him, so it was back to her house for the night.
The other girls were in their pajamas when my mom came to pick me up. They all tried to convince her to let me stay the night, but to no avail. I came home in a bad mood, I was tired of being the only girl who could never go to sleepovers. I resented my parents for the remainder of the weekend.
That following Monday, I asked Adrienne what I had missed. She told me that shortly after I had left, Elisabeth had asked who was happy that I was gone, and they all raised their hands, except for Adrienne.
Initially I was shocked, but I never doubted if it were true or not. I did, however, doubt whether or not Adrienne had really refrained from raising her hand, as I knew she wasn't the type to want to stand out. But whether she did or not was irrelevant - she was a real friend because she told me the truth, whereas the other girls feigned a friendship with me.
Our days at River Oaks Elementary were coming to a close, and we were all growing up. It was a good time to realize who your real friends were, and to prepare for the future awkwardness that would lie between yourself and the others.
4/25/06-
Four of us sat on the wheelchair ramp handrails, the other girls started talking about what their fathers did for a living. When I was asked, I told them my father owned a grocery store, just as my mother had told me to say. "You mean like Randall's?" Jennifer asked me.
No, not like Randall's. He worked in the ghetto area of Houston far away from River Oaks Elementary, scattered with faded and ripped billboards for Newport cigarrettes and textured hair products. Before urban sprawl was common amongst the white middle class, minorities were the ones who were pushed to the outskirts of town. He sold mainly liquor to poor black people for a living, alongside his cousin and Saudi friend that he met during his Aramco days. My mother had lived with him for a year in the house that was connected to the back of the store, where she put up the Christmas tree that stayed up until July. I had practically grown up with him in that store, for the first four to five years of my life it was like a second home to me. I played for free on the Mrs. Pacman machine while the little black boys had to pay. There were two gas pumps in the front of the store that never worked during my lifetime, and no one was in a rush to fix them.
"Yeah kind of, but it's smaller"
Booger, a store regular, would be the first person I personally knew who died. But it wouldn't phase me then. I want to say my dad helped pay for the coffin, but I can't say this for sure as my memory fails me. One day someone came into the store with a gun to steal beer. That night, my mom told my dad that from then on he should just let them take the beer and not try to fight it, because a few cans of beer aren't worth dying over.
"My mom likes shopping at Randall's". Jennifer's response sounded stupid at the time, too. But it got us off the subject of what our dads did for a living. I was relieved that I wouldn't have to answer any more questions about the "grocery store".
Eventually the store would be run solely by my dad's cousin and his wife, who would then sell it to another Arab and buy a dollar store with the money. I heard that the Arab who bought it thought he had won the lottery and burned the store down to get the insurance money. But as it turns out, he matched only 5 of the 6 numbers, and his insurance had been canceled much earlier. Every time I think about The Store existing as dark ashes on an abandoned lot it makes me want to cry. Where do the black people buy their beer now?
4/15/06-
At that moment my mother told me to pack up my things, we were leaving. Leaving the house, and my father (who had left for the casino that weekend). She never explained why. I would spend the rest of my formative years thinking she divorced my father because he had a gambling problem (and always doubting). Practically the whole extended family had come to help us load boxes into my uncle's pick-up truck, my cousin had a stupid smirk on her face the whole time. There was a point when we questioned taking all of the dishes; it was my grandfather who insisted we take all that we could.
But none of this really affected me, at least not as much as what I felt when I went down the stairs as we were leaving. The juxtaposition of the ugly copper carpet against the cut of the entrance of the stairs and the dark brown handrail. It would be the last time I would go down those stairs in our house.
I was both right and wrong.
They say a man's home is his mind. I lost mine a long time ago.
2/28/06-
I grew up watching (among many other things) Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Tales From the Crypt, The Hitchhiker, endless B-movies from the 50s and 60s...
That probably explains a lot
There was one episode of Alfred Hitchcock that particularly stirred me. A man had been in a car accident that rendered him totally paralyzed, although he could still think and see clearly. He eventually realized he could move his pinky finger, but it wasn't enough- He was presumed dead and buried alive. I was six years old and petrified of something similar happening to me. I told Whitney and my cousin about the episode. It might have shaken them a bit but they didn't completely understand, they didn't watch the 46 antagonizing minutes of it. It was just TV, though, and the more thought I gave it the more I realized that in real life the nurses would check for a heartbeat before assuming someone were dead.
But he was dead. When I figured this much out my obsession with it ceased, although the fear still lingered in the back of my head. Is that what death is like? Is that what awaits all of us? Is Eternal rest just a fantasy? Perhaps that fear never really went away.
2/4/06-
All of my memories from Kindercare are horrid. My mother would drop me off and I would immediately cry as she left, every single time.
One day I had a dangerously high fever. They took me into the kitchen where they stripped me of my clothes and put me in a plastic tub with icy water. I doubt I ever cried so much in my life. Soon I saw my mother through the bar opening of the kitchen, and continued to cry. Years later, I would mistakingly remember this incident as the beginnings of the meningitis of my infancy.
2/4/06-
I was 8 or 9 years old and still getting ear infections. It was probably my last one; definitely the most painful. My mom and I waited in Walgreens while my prescription was being processed. I lied stretched out on the chairs and cried quietly. I had on my ugly purple and lime green fleece jacket that looked like a boys' jacket. At that age I was somewhat preoccupied about my clothes and accessories being too boyish. As I lied crying, a little boy walked up to me and looked me in the eye, then left a few seconds later. I felt embarrassed to be crying in front of someone so much younger than me. It made me feel even worse
2/3/06-
Adrienne's house in the Heights was light blue, decrepit, rented. They hadn't yet lived there for a year. That day we had taken her new skateboard and a sturdy rope (or something that did the trick) and took turns pulling one another down the sidewalk. Except it didn't work as planned, we eventually let her little brother Aaron sit on the skateboard while we pulled him, and moved out to the street as the sidewalk was too bumpy. We came inside and ate thin-crust pizza. Her house smelled like cat pee, and would only get worse throughout the years. My mom came to pick me up in her Saab; black, decrepit, paid for in cash (used).
1/26/06-
It was summertime and that meant a few months with my friends in Afton Oaks Montessori School (a different Montessori school than the one I had gone to before starting kindergarten). This was now my second summer there, and whereas in the previous year I was the new kid, this time around I had an established friendbase and everyone respected me. We were all seated at two long tables, drawing and coloring. Two parents were touring the school, to decide if it would be good enough for their daughter (who wasn't there that day). None of us were informed of the tour, but I was a perceptive child and I knew what they were doing there. I didn't want any new kids. The mother complimented me on my picture, "That's a beautiful drawing you have there." I ignored her. Besides, I knew she wasn't being sincere.
About a week later the new girl came. The other children were generally unfriendly with me my first few days at the school [I was blamed for someone's fart while we were watching a clown performance on my first day], and things continued as usual. There was something about her face that I didn't like, but I suppose I wanted a more legitimate reason to dislike her. Then Megan Ashley, my black friend who was two or three years younger than I, told me that the new girl had critized Megan's drinking cup for being similar to her "baby brother's". I got in her face about it- no one messed with my friend Megan Ashley. For the next few days the other kids were on my side as well. She didn't last long at Afton Oaks.
1/8/06-
Jennifer Thompson considered me her friend. I wasn't too fond of her, but her house was big and pretty and her mom was our Girls Scout troop leader. On Jennifer's seventh birthday she had received a lot of gifts. Although my gift to her cost only $5 (from Pic N Save), I had trouble parting with it; I wanted my own dish set like the one I had given her. She invited me to her house a few days after her party. I carried a home-made dectective set inside of my backpack, filled with things I had seen the characters on Scooby Doo use [the one thing missing was an inflatable raft], or things that I had seen in my cousin's detective book for children. We made telephones out of plastic cups and string, recorded finger prints, and when we searched for clues we went outside to look at her dog who was locked up in part of her backyard. He barked loudly and jumped up against the chicken-wire door. Later, Jennifer's mom played pictionary with us. She opened the wrapper to the game that Jennifer had gotten for her birthday days earlier. By the foot of the stairs lay a stack of most, if not all, of the gifts she had received. All in their original plastic wrappers and untouched. And there was the dish set I had given her, with the happy little blonde girl on the box.
1/8/06-
I overheard Ms. Hollis telling another teacher about the previous night's lottery. She was building the story up as only an old southern lady could. When she got to the part about her husband not believing her I interjected-- "Oh, did you match 4 numbers?... Yeah, so did Adrienne's dad. You won $101 right?" I sure burst her bubble, as she put it. I enjoyed doing so in those days.
12/1/05-
It was autumn. My aunt was in the passenger's seat and my cousin Andrew and I were in the back. We hid down as low as we could so that the aliens wouldn't be able to find us. It was one of many times that we had played make believe; when his older brother wasn't around he would play with me. Today we have no common ground and find ourselves in an awkward position on the rare occasions that we see each other.
11/27/05-
Pinky and Vivi chirped as I read them a story about birds. From time to time I would tell them to be quiet and listen. My mother had purchased the 1950s reader for me, there were analytical questions at the end of each story. My birds sat in cages that were placed side by side at the foot of the stairs. And they sat close to each other to keep warm in the winter.
But no matter how hard I tried to keep my birds happy I could tell they weren't completely satisfied. My mom would occasionally put their cages in the patio so they could get some fresh air and sunlight. One day she dropped Vivi's cage. In a mad rush Vivi found her way out of the patio before I could get to her. I called her name hoping she would come back to me, but deep down I knew that would be the last I would see of her. From below she looked like any other soaring grackle, but she was my yellow cockatoo- she was different and special and I loved her. I loved her, but I kept her from soaring.
For a few weeks after the incident I would hear her whistle and look out the window of my room. Dejected
10/17/05-
The entire forth grade class was sent outside one day, to partake in stupid group activities on the blacktop. The boys were in one team and the girls in another. We had to divide ourselves by some physical characteristic and then see if the other team could guess what the characteristic was. The girls decided to divide by hair color, something I tried arguing against but to no avail. The boys by eye color. I realized soon enough (after realizing that arm hair color was incorrect) that the boys had divided themselves by eye color; for some reason none of the other girls had. [I had noticed that originally the boys had divided themselves by skin color]. I said what I thought and Mikey went to Mr. Muller and repeated what I had said. "Out of all of you girls, Mikey was the only one who figured it out". Obviously, I felt cheated.
It was the second time Mikey had gotten credit for my ideas. The first was when we were 5 years old and testing to get into River Oaks Elementary. She was dressed in a frilly red dress and blatently jutted herself over the roundtable to look at my answers, several times. Mr. Talbot, our proctor and soon to be our vice-principal (who would die of AIDS a year before the gathering at the blacktop), most likely noticed she was cheating. Especially when I said something about it in the middle of the test. But he did nothing, and admitted Mikey into the school, because of the pull for more minority students.
9/26/05-
Whitney's dad had driven us far that day. I didn't know where we were going; it might have been a surprise. There were wooden walls, everything was jumbled. But amidst it all were some beautiful animals. Whitney picked out a friendly, grey cockatiel. It pooped in the cage on the way back to her house. We placed the cage on the dining room table and tried to teach the bird some words while petting it. I was probably jealous (it would be a short time before my mom would buy me Vivi), but overall I was happy. It was a good day.
9/26/05-
Ms. Hicks had stepped out for a moment, we were seated at the foot of the risers in music class. The conversation turned to religion. Some seemed to be proud of their denomination, perhaps felt they were better than others. I was asked what religion I was. "Christian". Apparently the answer wasn't good enough, but I had never heard the words "Catholic" or "Presbyterian" in my life. And I couldn't recall ever having gone to church, but I think I said we went every so often. "Well, I believe in God...", we all concurred and ended the conversation, maybe because Ms. Hicks had returned.
9/25/05-
We all gathered around Claudia as she lay squirming on Mr. Mansur's classroom floor. None of us knew what was happening, seconds earlier she was fine and laughing as usual. I initially thought she was trying to be funny, but after a while I became concerned (and scared). Urine started seeping onto the floor.
She came back a day or two later, seemingly normal; we all wanted to know what had happened. She said it was like seeing black with a few bright colored lights. Perhaps she had no recollection of it and wanted to give us some sort of answer. And maybe the Devil exists and manifests itself in seizure form.
9/16/05-
It had been a few years since I had made the transition from the small, private Montessori school to River Oaks Elementary. We still passed by my old school from time to time in the car. That day I had told my mom that the quality of the school must have been going down, "Because I just saw a black kid leave."
My mom was probably embarrassed by my comment, even a little angry with me. She corrected me. But I was just telling her what I assumed she would have thought had she seen him leave.
8/6/05-
Ironically it was my father who had taken me to tour the Montessori school he deemed unnecessary; my mother was the one who paid the tuition for the next two years. It was a small school, I was used to the overwhelming, large open space of Kindercare. Maybe not used to. I saw some of the children's work on display in one of the hallways, maps of Europe. Italy looked like a boot, but I didn't know it was Italy then. I was looking forward to making a similar map, but I never did.
Shireen asked me what my name was. I either didn't answer or said it quietly. "She's shy". My dad had on his black and white jacket that I saw him wear that day when he went for a walk at 6AM three years ago [no one saw me sit on the balcony of the abandoned apartments I would go to before sun rose, to write my dreams and wait for the schoolbus to come.] It turns out her daughter's name was also Aisha, spelled differently.
In the days before bracelet receipts and unpaid bills, general dissatisfaction, my parents were a sort of team. They worked together to do what was best for me, and I'm still grateful to them for it.
6/21/05-
We had been seperated into groups, based on our reading abilities. I was in the most advanced one, Adrienne in the least. We got to pick group names, we called ourselves "The Challengers", my idea. Adrienne was in "The Superstars". The Challengers had read a story and 2 or 3 months later The Superstars were reading it. I loved feeling superior, just not to my best friend. I can imagine she felt worse.
4/18/05-
I hadn't yet beaten Super Mario Bros. 3. My cousin had come over that day and we started playing it and talking, and we decided it would be cool if we spoke a language that no one else understood. So we started a conversation in our new language, at the end we told each other what we had been saying. But for the most part, we already understood each other.
12/18/04-
During one of those Parent Nights at T.H. Rogers, Kristan and I decided to go on the Elementary School playground. It had probably been my first time there. There were other kids there as well, albeit younger. We soon tired of the usual slide, swings, etc, and noticed red pipeish things sticking out of the ground, designed in the scheme of the rest of the playground equipment. They were phones! Kristan stood at one and I stood at the other, and I can't remember which of us decided to scream into one first, but in time we were both taking turns screaming as loud and high-pitched as we could. After a few minutes a man came and told us to stop, that people had thought we were in trouble and were worried. I think he had asked us why we were doing it and neither of us could come up with a reason; it just felt so FUCKING GOOD to scream.
11/1/04-
The pink volume of the Children's Encyclopedia at my Montessori school had a section about trees in it. This section had a little game. It was a maze of sorts, you could choose your own path through a forest but only 1 would get you to the end. It went on for pages, I don't know why I found it so much fun. Some older kid introduced me to it. Actually, he introduced someone else to it and I just happened to be watching. At first the maze was a novelty and we all wanted to see the book. The older, popular kids would go first, and I would be last or second to last. Soon the novelty wore off for the rest of the kids, but it continued to enchant me. I would get scared when I went down certain paths, there was something about the drawings that was simply mesmorizing. The Joshua tree was my favorite but a lot of animals and plants were frightening. After a while I learned the path by heart, my finger would go down it and through the pages in seconds. I was safe from harm, I wouldn't fall in the traps again.
A few years later my mom found a few volumes of that same encyclopedia set at a thrift store and bought them for me. Even more years later I casually took a look at the pink one, curious to see if the maze was there. And it still scared and enchanted me, much to my surprise.
10/18/04-
I don't think I was able to make it to Whitney's birthday party that year. I really wanted to go, though. When she saw me at school she gave me the party favor bag. Inside was a pink plastic necklace in the shape of half a heart with zig-zagged edges that read 'Bes Fr' (or was it 't iend'?). I loved that necklace, I wore it every day. A few weeks later I noticed that Kate Bizzell had a similar one on; hers was purple. I asked where she got it and she said it was in the party favor bag that she got at Whitney's birthday party. I was crushed, I wondered how many other people got the same cheapy plastic necklace that I did.
10/17/04-
From what I remember the script was pretty funny. I think Phyllis had locked herself out of her apartment and Rhoda mentioned something about cheese (Natalie Bates was right when she said 'cheese' was funny when we were little. 'In fifth grade it was like "Urkel and cheese... I get it!"'). I played Mary, of course, and I cast 2 of my friends as Rhoda and Phyllis. We rehearsed on the outdoor stage for a while, but they got bored of it and preferred the tireswing to the much needed practice. It really bothered me because that tireswing had been there forever - I was already bored with it and moving on to better things, but I couldn't do it alone.
10/17/04-
The library was so big in those days. Seemed so big. I really enjoyed it at that age, but I generally enjoyed leaving the house for whatever reason. That day my mom went to the small foreign language section. Most of the books were in Spanish (not nearly as many Spanish books as they have today), and very few were children's books, but then she found one for me: a French book about a family.
We got home and sat on the couch. The sun was bright and shined through the venetian blinds; indeed, some of my fondest memories somehow involve the light shining through our blinds. The book was one of those tall picture books they don't seem to make anymore, with an olive green cover. Inside, the drawings were ugly, but likeable, memorable. My mom read French so eloquently back then.
We had returned the following week looking for more. But there weren't any, and eventually my mom gave up on trying to teach me French and throughout the years would forget what she knew of it.
10/17/04-
I can't remember whose birthday party it was, but a magician did his lame little act and then we were handed out party favors. There was probably candy and other knick knacks in the bags, but the one thing that really held our attention was the fortune telling fish. It was made out of a very thin red film and the plastic bag it came in had a sort of Chinese theme to it. We held it in the palms of our hands and asked a question to ourselves, the fish would flip a certain way to tell us if the answer was a 'yes' or a 'no'.
That night I sat on the carpet of my room and asked it more questions. I was so fascinated by it, I really believed it to be magical.
10/14/04-
We got out of the car and walked up to the door of my grandparents' house per usual. However, that day (probably in early spring) the upper panels of the house were infested with caterpillars. Ugly caterpillars. So many that it was frightening. The way that they squirmed around appeared as if they were multiplying as they moved.
In some way or another I wound up with the hose in my hand and started spraying water in their direction. Some would fall and wriggle in the puddles that had formed. It was a disgusting sense of power, disgusting because I had to look at them. My cousin (6 years my elder) told me to stop. It was mean, and plus our grandfather had told her that they would turn into beautiful butterflies. "Yeah, but then when they have babies there'll be even more caterpillars all over the house."
She joined me in the killing spree and the next time I went to my grandparents' house they were gone. I had probably forgotten about them, or maybe I was satisfied that they weren't there anymore and felt a sense of accomplishment.
