10

1979-1980

Daddy wanted a son who followed him and done the things that he did. He got that with my older brother; But then he also got a girl who wanted to be a boy and do those
things just as well.
 I was made to love the soft and hard of life, so to speak.  I wanted to hunt and shoot guns, I wanted to build things as my father did. One day daddy let me shoot his 22 pistol, it hurt my ears but I loved
it and was fascinated my the feel of it, the power I held. Although most people know that 22s only hold enough power to piss you off when using them. It was a small
amount of power and but was interesting. I wanted the control I felt through the steel and found it tantalizing. But Somehow I failed miserably. When confronted with monsters that wanted more control than I desired myself, I was both mezmerized and humbled. Again, I was back inside the small body of a female child.
My family was a fragment of a small tribe. Strong in their disfunction. Proud in their secrets. We were sophisticated animals of a sort. It was grueling, our survival.
We made life and we made death simultaneously to sustain, my family and I did so. We were almost self-sufficient in this.

Every year, there was a garden which provided our vegetables and fruits. There was bean,green,tomato,squash,cucumber,corn,onion and various other veggies. There were
melons as well. I remember the work, the toiling all the way to harvest time and how determined my father was to make us work for our food. The dirt, I remember the
smell of fresh damp earth underneath my fingertips. I loved to lay down in the tilled earth and feel it surround me. I did this until my father yelled for me to get
back to work.

 Every year we filled our freezers and bellies with game from the forest behind our house and many other wooded areas near where we lived. We milked cows and goats and
got pork from my aunt's small farm up the little dirt road. We made kraut and butter in churns, we fished lakes and rivers for Catfish, bass and brim. There wasn't much
we could not provide for ourselves. Daddy killed deer, squirrel, rabit, racoon and possum then mother would help clean and prepare the game for our meals and to store
for winter. I remember blood....so much blood and parts of various animals. And for some reason, the white freezer paper sticks in my memories as some reminder of the
pristine compartment for our grisley gift wrappings. And I can remember the freezer...huge and monstrous with various dead animals cut into a creative array of portions
waiting for that fateful day when we would consume them. One day the big freezer came unplugged from the socket and all our meat went to ruin. My father was angry, my
mother cried and the stench was horrible. So we started over.

1980
I started kindergarten at the age of 5 and for some reason also attended through the age of 6. I have a faint memory of things that transpired at the school. I know
that I felt different from the other children, I felt alone...surrounded by a bubble in which I had a small world of my own. I watched the other children play together
and laugh. At nap time I would lie awake and watch two boys practice turning their eyelids inside out. I tried to do the strange trick myself and would only fall asleep
with sore eyes. As I would fall into my nap, I could hear the other kids giggling and talking about the strange girl who couldn't do the things that they did. I heard
them talk about the nasty girl, the ugly girl...the girl who never talked to them.
One day I asked the cafeteria lady what was in the cup she gave me for breakfast and she told me that it was urine. She thought it was funny to tell me that and she
laughed and laughed as I made a horrible face. I ran to the bathroom and puked because what she said made me sick. I never liked her after that. When the staff started
to take all the children to the dentist for a check up, I refused to drink my milk and would not eat the crackers because the cafeteria lady went with us and she smiled
every time our teacher passed out our snacks.

Once, I peed on myself on the school bus. I don't remember why but I remember the laughter and my horror. I realized that I didn't like school very much. Everyday at
recess, I would hide underneath the steps that led outside the trailer our classroom was in. I would play pretend and imagine that I was powerful. Death, he sat there
with me everyday and told secrets about the other children. I laughed and laughed.