In October of 1962, the four year-old named Stacy ran her fingers through her choppily cut dirty blond hair and pressed her nose against the chilly glass of her bedroom window in the small town of Hanneck, New Jersey. Crimson leaves fluttered from the maple tree in her back yard, skimming the brisk autumn breeze.
The outer world was so colorful. The red and gold leaves flitting across the cobalt sky were so bright that they stung her eyes. She squinted, not bothering to wipe the tears away that the bright light caused. She longed to be outside, breathing the brisk air, staring at the deep blue sky.
Her knees tingled as she watched the leaves pile on the stubby grass. She closed her eyes, imagining her feet crunching through the leaf piles, scattering the colorful castoffs across the yard. She imagined the crisp tang of the chilly air racing down her nose.
For a moment she was outside in the brilliant sunshine. For a moment the sun beat warm against her cheeks.
But then the crushing reality of her present returned.
She was a bad girl. Bad girls didn’t scatter leaf piles or enjoy the beautiful fall weather or sit beneath maple trees. Bad girls didn’t feel the sun on their cheeks. Bad girls must stay inside, even when no one else was home. Bad girls mustn’t feel anything at all.
Bad girls must lie quietly on the rickety cot beside the window and pick holes in the pink-painted plaster walls. Bad girls woke up in an empty house and mustn’t call, “Mommy?”
Ding-ding!
What was that? The bell on the paperboy’s bicycle! She dashed across the narrow hallway into Mommy’s empty bedroom and looked through the window that faced the street. The paperboy flew past, tossing papers, blue jacket and red and white striped shirt flapping, bicycle spokes whirring.
Stacy’s lips automatically pulled into a smile as she watched him glide past on his shiny bike, the wind ruffling his brown hair, his cheeks pinked with exhilaration. Her lips knew what to do when joy was appropriate, though she felt nothing.
Uh-oh! Crazy Grace was standing in front of her house.
“Where’s my paper?” she shrieked.
Stacy crammed her fingers into her mouth, her body shaking with anxiety. The paperboy would be in trouble. Trouble was a big, big word inside her house. Suddenly, Mrs. Jones, who lived across from Grace, came out on her front porch.
“Leave that boy alone!” she called. “He’s doing his best.”
He’s doing his best. Leave him alone.
Stacy muttered the words over and over.
Those words felt so good. Those words held big, big truths. She hugged the words against her torn white nightgown and basked in their warmth. And wished those words were for her.
Mommy’s words were darker. Mommy’s words made her shiver.
Bad girl.
Little brat.
No breakfast for you.
No lunch for you.
Go to bed without dinner.
Get out of my sight.
Rotten little creep.
Mommy’s going out for a while so you better be good.
Don’t make Mommy cut a forsythia branch and beat your bare bottom.
You better not see!
You better not remember!
Who do you think you are, you little brat?
Youlittlebrat. Youlittlebrat.
Daddy’s words felt better. On the outside. Daddy’s words were like the Icy-hot cream Mommy used when her sore back made her stay in bed. Daddy’s words oozed warmth, for a few seconds before they chilled her bones.
C’mere.
Sit on Daddy’s lap.
Sit still now.
That’s a good girl.
Lie still, now.
Gooood! So good!
Don’t be so hard on Mommy.
Play nice and Daddy will give you a chocolate bar.
Stacy sighed as the paperboy rode out of sight. Mommy and Daddy’s words stung her mind like late-season yellowjackets.
An old truck covered with a rusty canopy rattled down Arc Street, stopping a few feet from Stacy’s house. A brown-skinned man stepped from the cab, white teeth gleaming as he waved his straw hat.
“Bananas! Bananas!” he cheered, as if the whole world was a bright, luscious fruit.
Stacy’s stomach rumbled.
She felt dizzy as her inner energy shifted. Shifting energy felt weird but when it happened, parts of her emerged that knew helpful things. Things like finding food.
Shifting energy was bad, too. Sometimes it meant she didn’t know what she was doing.
Rummmmble.
She was so hungry, she couldn’t stop the energy from shifting. She blinked and suddenly she wasn’t scared little Stacy who looked at the world outside and obeyed Mommy and Daddy and suffered in silence when her stomach was empty.
She became a stronger Stacy, a resourceful Stacy who dared to break her parents’ rules. She was out the front door. Standing barefooted beside the banana truck. Clutching a nickel in her grubby fingers. Enough for one banana. Where had the money come from?
She didn’t know.
She didn’t feel the cold pavement seeping into her feet. She had no idea that her panties showed through her thin nightgown, or that she’d pushed past Crazy Grace, Mrs. Jones and several other neighbors.
A brief thought arose.
What if Mommy came home while she was outside?
Fear blurred her vision. She blinked. Focused on the banana man. A small part of her saw him. One small child peeking around the corner of her awareness.
Part of her exchanged the nickel for a golden yellow banana. A different part noticed the compassion in the banana man’s eyes.
“You have Sky Eyes, little one,” the banana man said in a thick south-of-the-border accent.
“Your body is here, but your spirit has fled. How is it that you have seen so much sorrow in your short life?”
The chilly morning air didn’t penetrate her defenses but the banana man’s words did.
He saw.
He saw a part of her that she’d hidden deep in the clefts of her soul, where she thought no one would find it.
She blinked. The brief dark spot guided her feet back inside.
She was in her room. Gulping the sweet food. Filling her cheeks. Chewing open-mouthed while an inner voice urged, hurryhurryhurry!
Her teeth made nyah-nyah noises as they smashed the soft fruit.
Blink.
She was burying the banana peel in the paper sack beneath the kitchen sink where Daddy threw his banana peels. Galloping up the stairs to her room as Mommy turned the corner onto Arc Street. Slipping her chilled feet beneath the threadbare sheet of her cot as Mommy opened the front door.
Mommy mustn’t know that she’d disobeyed. Mommy mustn’t know she’d left the house. But how? Mommy knew everything Stacy did and thought.
Mommy even knew things that Stacy didn’t know. Things she’d hidden. The blank spaces between the pages of her inner book
Stacy knew this because once when she was alone in the house, she’d dialed lots of numbers on the telephone. A few days later, Mommy had called to her in the dangerously sweet voice that reminded her of a fruit with hidden thorns.
“You were on the telephone while Mommy went downtown the other day, weren’t you?” she purred.
Stacy tried to say ‘yes’ but her throat closed. She had ducked her head so Mommy wouldn’t see the tears crowning at the corners of her eyes.
Mommy had grabbed her arm and dragged her down the narrow staircase, through the dingy living room and cramped kitchen into a weedy spot in the back yard where a forsythia bush grew.
“Pick a branch,” Mommy commanded.
“A-a branch?” Stacy said, her throat spasming, garbling her words.
“Pick a good one or I will,” Mommy said through gritted teeth, her lips spread thin so it would look to the neighbors as if she was smiling.
She waved to her best friend, Kelly, sprawled in a striped lounge chair in her yard next door.
Stacy blinked. Her body shook so hard that she couldn’t focus. Her finger pointed to a branch. Mommy had used forsythia whips, as she called them, before they moved to Hanneck. This was the first time she’d made Stacy pick her own branch.
Stacy couldn’t bear to be in the moment with Mommy and the branch and the knowledge of what would happen next. She blinked, blacking out for a few seconds, though she could still walk and talk so to Mommy it looked as if she was awake.
In her next aware moment, she and Mommy and the branch were in the kitchen. The forsythia branch sang in Mommy’s hand, striping Stacy’s arms, legs and back. The blows fell long after Stacy had stopped crying. Long after she lay, shaking, on the floor.
That beating had been days ago. Many blank spots ago. A lifetime ago. Stacy liked to think it had happened to another little girl. A girl named Sunny who was so cheerful that she sang during the whipping so that the red welts the whip made wouldn’t throb.
The only way for Stacy to escape was to forget. To create other realities. That was the only way to hide things from Mommy. So she erased the memory of the breakfast banana despite the knowledge that her stomach wasn’t sending waves of hunger so sharp that they made her feel queasy.
Mommy trudged up the stairs and poked her head past the length of silver conduit that held the light switch and the uneven edges of the cracked pink plaster in the doorless entry of Stacy’s room.
“Get dressed,” she snapped. “You have chores to do.”
Chores. Stacy shivered. Chores were hard. She blinked. Created a blank spot. Flipped an inner page.
The next moment she was dressed in blue pants and a white shirt. She stood in the kitchen, watching Mommy’s crimson lips slide over a spoon as she slurped cereal. She watched Mommy’s throat muscles contract as the milky flakes slid toward her stomach, fascinated by how easily food entered Mommy’s body. No rules stopped her from eating. Hearing Mommy’s brilliant white teeth mash the crispy grain and smelling the coffee perking on the gas range made her remember how nearly empty her stomach still was.
“Mommy?” she half-whispered, rubbing her right foot along her left leg. “Can I have some cereal?”
Mommy snorted, her lake blue eyes flashing.
“Can I have some cereal?” she mimicked. “Why should you get cereal, youlittlebrat?”
Mommy’s anger, familiar and cruel, struck like lightning.
Would she ever be strong enough for it not to hurt? She was too tired, too hungry, too cold.
Always.
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