Chapter 2--Louisiana, Part 1

We moved to Louisiana on the eve of my seventh birthday.  The military plane we took seemed so huge to me.  I fell asleep on the flight it was so long.  I had crayons and a coloring book.  It was storming at the airport in Louisiana... lightning struck the ground not too far where I was waiting with my mother for the taxi.  The shock of it made my jaw clench, and I bit my tongue very badly.  At the time I thought I had nearly severed it.  It was pretty bad.  Blood was pouring from my mouth as my frightened mother took me, staggering, through the airport to seek medical attention.  I recovered quickly, but to this day I have a cracked tongue.

The ride in the taxi-van was quiet, and the weather dreary.  It was the middle of the day, but so dark because of the storm.  Still, I was excited about moving to a new country and had a lot of mental energy and anticipation.  While house searching, we lived in a trailer park.  My father commuted to Fort Polk.  There was a sadistic little boy who killed a puppy and "showed off" his handiwork in the empty feild next to the park.  My mother--so normally passive and kind and acquiescing--got into a spat with another mother there.  My little sister had some brand new watercolors and was painting on the trailer stoop when another little girl invited herself over.  For some reason this girl wound up throwing Missy's paints into the dirt, and my angered 5 year old sister slapped this girl for it.  (She's still feisty.)

The other little girl's mother started screaming at the top of her lungs at my terrified little sister; and my mother emerged and there were words.  For some reason I was proud of my mother about this.  Don't mess with Momma Bear!! or my little sister.  I would have a temper of my own later on when a neighborhood boy said awful things to her.  I was terrified of repercussions so I pre-emptively went to this boy's house to admit to his father that I'd slapped him, and his father was angry at him, not me, for being so mean to a little girl.  Mr.Weaver was a cop.

I wanted this singing mermaid doll for my seventh birthday (which was very shortly after we moved to the US).  I wanted it so bad I still can feel the desperation for it.  My mother surprised me at the elementary school in Fort Polk, at school, with this doll.  I was downright GIDDY over it.  For years thereafter I would take long baths--so long the water would get cold and I would run more hot water--submerge myself, and listen to this doll sing underwater.  I wish I could remember what it was called, because I think it would be neat for my kids to have, and I have such happy memories about her.  I have loved mermaids ever since I could remember, and would pretend to be a mermaid any time I swam, which was as often as I could.  I even played around with post-rain water in ditches, much to my parents' dismay.  It is what led me to later become a competitive swimmer.  I love water, always have, always will.

My parents purchased a home in DeRidder, Lousiana, in a neighborhood called Green Acres.  85 Pear Street.  I switched to the DeRidder elementary.  When I lived in Germany, on our mixed military base, I had no real concept of 'race'.  One of my best friends was a little black girl named Latasha.  She spent the night once and her hair stuck straight up in the morning, sending our mixed German shepherd-cocker-spaniel-greyhound (what a mix!) Bucky into a howling frenzy.  I feel bad, but at the time I laughed, and she was frightened.  Poor girl.  I was fascinated by her 'black' hair, because it was so 'different'.  Now I wonder if that made her feel bad.

My brother Daniel was best friends with his older brother.  "Black" and "white" were not concepts familiar to me.  They just didn't matter in Manheim.  It was "friends".  When I went to DeRidder elementary, I saw a little girl--Christine... for some reason I will always remember her name but I don't know if she even remembers me--that reminded me of Latasha.  So I tried to make friends with her.  But, for some reason, this little town was about 20 years "behind the curve".  Racism=rampant.  Very rampant.  Whites and blacks didn't mingle, but I didn't know "the rules".  I just saw a cute kid I wanted to be friends with.  When I went up to her, her eyes were so wide, like "why is this white girl talking to me??"  She was AFRAID of me; a seven year old kid.  I can't blame her knowing what I know now.  White people were NOT "safe".  She ran away from me.

And all of a sudden it seemed the whole school hated me.  Black kids avoided me, and I couldn't understand why.  The white kids were awful.  They tripped me, said horrible things about me, sabotaged any belongings of mine they could get their hands on, called me 'nigger lover' (I didn't even know what 'nigger' means!), dumped trash on me, etc..  Every day I came home crying.  I was so alone, and didn't know why.  My mother would rub my back with a well-guised--but not wholly guised--rage underneath.  Who can stand to see their child hurting so bad?  She pleaded with teachers and school staff to do something, but they wouldn't.  

Bullying was... not an issue to society back then.  Everyone had a 'get over it' attitude, and to this day, my father still has that attitude.  His mentality was that I was "too sensitive" and should "get over it".  I can't blame him though; he's just a product of his 'times'.  He was bullied but got through it ok, so I think he just assumed I could too.  I was his first daughter, and I don't think he understood some of the fundamental differences (albeit society conditioned, I am by no means trying to infer that girls are naturally 'different' mentally from boys... we just have these differences because of environmental messages, and I was a product of that) between girls and boys.

My mother wound up going to the school in one final desperate plea to resolve the intense bullying; she read the principal the riot act, but he wouldn't listen.  Irony of ironies, he was a black principal.  The first black principal ever in DeRidder.  But he, too, was a product of environment, I think.  He didn't want to risk 'rocking the boat'.  He was in an impossible situation.  Who could stand up to whites in this draconian little town?  So, he offered no solution, and my tearfully angry mother went to find me.  She was pulling me out of school that.day.  Her timing couldn't have been more fortuitous, because she found me in the girls bathroom, being held at KNIFEPOINT.  Two older girls had me pinned up to the bathroom corner with a knife at my neck.  I don't really remember this incident except in removed dream-like waves.  I don't know that I would have remembered as real and not a nightmare if my mother hadn't witnessed it and talked to me about it. 

Those girls SCATTERED when my mother came in.  She enrolled me in nearby Rosepine elementary school, which didn't really have any racial issues because of the fact that no blacks were enrolled there.  It should've been better there, but it wouldn't be...

Chapter 1--Germany

Who am I?

Who cares?

What is the summation of my life?

I was born in Texas; but do not remember it.  My family--a military family--moved to Manheim, Germany, before I could remember anything.  I do remember nearly being hit by a car as I learned how to ride my bike on training wheels; and how tearfully apologetic the female driver was. I actually felt bad for her.  We lived in what used to be 'servant's quarters'.  It all felt so big, but if I went back, it'd probably be tiny.  I remember, breifly, my sister Julie.  I saw her in the doorframe of the hallway, with clogs overhung, everything in tones of yellow.  My visage was from the floor.  I think I was a baby; because my vantage point was from the floor.  I know she left back to the states to live with her dad before I was very old.

I remember... my brothers giving me money for the candy truck.  This was back in the day before it was non-PC to sell candy cigarettes.  I remember candy lips and root beer bottles.  I remember running over my father. He was working on this van, underneath it, and apparently I scuttled downstairs, got in the driver's seat, put the van in gear, and it shifted off the curb onto his head.  I ran upstairs and got him a bandaid as my mother was helping him off to the hospital.  There was blood pouring down the side of his head.  He suffered nothing but superficial damage, but still relishes in telling the story.  When I was little I would cry with embarassment and guilt about it.

I remember the Berlin wall coming down... in the form of my school having half the student body on either side of the field outside, with a giant wall of boxes.  One side held the American flag, the other, the German.  We ran screaming into the wall, tearing down the boxes.  It was so much fun.  My family visited the wall thereafter.  I remember picking up some graffiti pieces of brick; they were pink and purple.  They would later be thieved from us on Louisiana, along with a large conch shell.

We went to a mall and got soft pretzels once.  I remember a skylight.  I also remember Gerhardt and his wife; they gave m e a doll. I spoke German to them.  I can't remember any German now.  I used to ride my tricycle to school because it was so close to our quarters that my mother could stand at the edge of the building and see the path clear to the school.

There was a corn-field and strawberry patch in the neighborhood.  I remember we could go and pick as many strawberries as we wanted and pay by the pound.  I got lost in the cornfield once, and wound up in some adjacent woods, where a toad or frog peed on my foot and I got a wart.  My mother was calling for me and my lost sister with desperation in her voice.  She was happy to find us.  There was also some sort of construction going on near the woods; there were massive piles of dirt, like mountains.  They seemed so incredibly big to me.  I used to ride bikes with my brothers on those dirt mounds, enjoying the exhilaration of the wind as I descended.

We had some sort of school related hike in which I received a medal thereafter, for completing it.  I can't remember the caption at the bottom, but it was in Deutsch.  I prized that thing, and I'm still kind of sad it's long gone--along with all my other pre-2011 possessions--because of a vindictive ex.  People say 'things' don't matter, but I think that's kind of cruel.  We have history and emotion vested in our things, we work hard for them, so why is it so wrong to be sad about losing them?  Talk to some Hurricane Katrina victims, as I have, and maybe you'll rethink saying things like "it's just stuff".  It's water under the bridge, I guess, but it still bugs me when people are treated like crap for the innocent act of missing their things.  It's not wrong.

There were teenagers. Sadistic.  They killed a baby bird in front of me, then ran me into the basement of the opposing quarters, where they bullied me into taking my swimsuit off.  I cried so hard, and ran home.  They chased me, and beat on the door.  My mother shooed them off to my cries of 'don't beleive them!' because they were saying awful sexual things about how I was dirty girl who 'exposed [herself]'.  They left a pile of money outside a basement door another day.  When I came, found it, took it, they burst out, took it from me, and ridiculed me for 'stealing'.  I had a friend... Rachel? I can't remember... but she was older by a few years.  She hid some hand-drawn toy money under the swing set between our quarters and the next.  I found it after following a hand drawn treasure map she made for me--I was so excited!--and then the bullies showed up, told me it was fake, and tore it up.

People are.... mean. Cruel.  That's the lesson I learned then.  I learned to fear people.

And it still sticks with me now.

I had a little friend named Robert.  We got it into our heads we could create a swimming pool by flooding the stairwell in his building.  What we didn't know is that, well, the basement door isn't airtight. As a result, when we put a running hose in the stairwell, it flooded the basement below.  Parents railed for our punishment.  To their credit, and my great relief, my parents understood I didn't understand the physics of the matter, and didn't tar my hide.  To this day; I'm grateful.  I was an ignorant baby.  They got that.

I remember the snow.  Building a snowman by rolling a ball of snow behind the building.  I loved it.

My sister Sarah had a boyfriend.  I can't remember his name, but I remember that he was nice.  I chased a rainbow once; but got scared at an overpass and turned back home.  I had a best friend named Kendell.  We got chicken pox together, and I remember  a birthday with her at the end of the table.

My mom ran an in-home daycare.  Someone stole her wallet.  I pursued them like crazy, and wound up digging it from the sand under a swing-set.  It was sans her paper money, but she was so proud of me of working so hard--like a little detective--to root out the truth and get the boy who stole it to tell me where it was... and she was happy to have her credit cards, driver's license, etc. back.  I was so happy to have her so proud of me.

We moved close to my 7th birthday, to the US.  Louisiana...