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Traversing the Darkness

By xxxxxxxxx (ENH 376)

In my mind, my life is separated into different phases, each of which contains a go-to memory. My late childhood in Reston, Virginia – post divorce, but pre-Arizona – is always recollected around my best friend of the time, Sarah, and one particular midnight escapade.

The sky was clear. There was enough snow on the ground that, although it hadn’t snowed in a few days, my feet crunched when I walked. The snow that had begun to melt in the sun had now frozen into ice from that night’s chill. It was freezing, and I wasn’t properly dressed to be outside – my nose and cheeks felt numb, and my eyes stung in the wintry breeze. I was wearing a jacket, but no hat or scarf or gloves. If my mom had known, she would have yelled at me, but then again, it was past midnight, and Sarah and I should have been snug in our beds fast asleep, anyway.

The cold didn’t both me; I was caught up in the exhilaration of where we were and what we were doing.

We were standing next to a long stretch of dark road. There were no streetlamps, only the light of the stars above us. Next to the road was a slight ditch, and then the land heaved up an embankment lined with thick pine trees. I was standing between two such trees, my hands fisted around the sleeves of my jacket as I looked down at Sarah in the ditch. She had found a hefty chunk of ice, about the size of a soccer ball, and was holding it up for me to see. She was taller than me, with beautiful long blond hair, and blue eyes, all of which I envied her for. Her pointed nose and chin were all hers, however, and when she smiled she looked impish, as she did now.

Five cars had passed by already, and we’d failed to hit one yet – the ice exploding with a dull thud against the asphalt. On the last pass, Sarah had managed to hit a rear wheel, and was now determined to do better.

“Come on, get down here!” she called. “Another one’s coming!”

I shifted my feet. I had a bad feeling about this. My toes were starting to lose feeling, and I wanted to go inside and go to bed.

Sarah’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t be a baby!”

My insides squirmed. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I was not a baby.

The car came speeding on up then, its tires roving noisily over the wet pavement. I didn’t have time to move or react, I only stood there and watched as the car came closer, and Sarah heaved the huge piece of hardened snow.

It hit the hood of the car with a loud SMACK, splattering chunks everywhere as the momentum caused it to slide across and off into the road. Glaring red lights blinded me as the car skidded to a halt.

Sarah, without a sound, booked up the slope and out of sight without even a glance in my direction.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My feet were rooted to the spot, and panic rose up my chest and constricted my throat as the man leapt out of his car. He looked pissed, even from my vantage point.

“You think that’s funny?” he roared, looking around, his voice so loud in the silence of the night that it could have been blasted from a megaphone. “You could have killed somebody!”

My parents divorced when I was seven, and I went from living in a three-bedroom house with a huge backyard to a three-bedroom condominium, which happened to be next to a neighborhood where there had been a shooting. (This was a huge consideration in my eight-year-old mind – it made my situation that much worse, living next to a “ghetto.”) I went from having my mom around all the time, to hardly seeing her and being stuck with a family of atrocious babysitters. I remember being angry all the time, and even when my mom was home, I didn’t cherish her presence. I was mad at her, most of all.

At our old house, she used to make homemade pizza that filled the kitchen with its tantalizing aroma. Dad used to grill hotdogs, or barbequed chicken. In Reston, we had McDonald’s and Pizza Hut so much that I grew to hate fast food – at the old house McDonald’s was a delicacy we were only treated to on special occasions, such as going to the dentist, or when Mom had an appointment and needed us to Behave.

To release some of my frustrations, I used to shout at the top of my lungs a lot, and throw things.

I remember standing in the entryway to the kitchen, facing the long hallway to the front door. Mom was standing there wrestling to get her key out of the lock, while overloaded with grocery bags. My brother, sister, and I flocked to her side to grab some of the bags, and I remember walking down that hallway, my eyes fixed on the groceries, wondering what sort of meal we would be having that night.

Mom left out a package of chicken and a box with a picture of potatoes on it as she systematically put everything else away.

“We’re having barbeque chicken and mashed potatoes,” she told me evenly.

I narrowed my eyes at the foodstuffs on the counter. That meant baked barbeque chicken in the oven, and mashed potatoes out of a box. I could feel the heat rising up my chest.

“It isn’t fair!” I said. “I want REAL mashed potatoes!”

I slammed the refrigerator door, causing everything inside to clatter together, and stormed out of the room.

“Go to your room!” Mom shouted right back.

The familiar words glanced off of me, and I stomped down the hallway to the room I shared with my sister. This was common – as were the spankings, for doing things like breaking my sister’s toys (instead of my own) when I was so angry.

I hated our home. I didn’t just want real mashed potatoes, I wanted real barbeque chicken – Dad’s barbeque chicken. I wanted our old kitchen back with the mouth-watering aromas. I wanted to be called to dinner and sit down at the table with my brother, sister, mom and dad.

These arguments over dinner weren’t every night. Half the time Mom was at school or just Out, and we were left with the babysitter. I won’t even go into that situation just now, but just know that it didn’t help any.

I avoided the condo, neighborhood, and babysitter as much as I could, and Sarah, my best – and only – friend at school gave me a perfect out.

I met Sarah in third grade, when I first moved to Reston, but I remember virtually nothing about that school until the fourth grade, so I assume that’s when we started hanging out. She wasn’t friends with anyone else, and I think we sort of came together out of a need for solidarity within a school full of snotty bullies.

There was a period of time when I practically lived at her house. I was always welcome over there, day or night, school day or weekend, with no questions asked. When I discovered this, I took complete advantage of her family’s hospitality, because the Lord knows I didn’t want to be at home.

I don’t remember verbally complaining about my situation at home with Sarah, but I must have, because she would constantly prompt me to go home with her at the end of the school day.

I remember one Friday so clearly – and it must have been like so many others – but this stands out in my mind. School had just let out, and the kids were spilling out onto the quad and sidewalks in front of the school, hurrying to their school buses. The buzz and excitement for the weekend was thick in the air. I walked across the quad with Sarah, making our way towards the parking lot and her mom’s waiting car. I had already agreed to go home with her, although normally I would have ridden the bus home, hunkering down in a seat with my little sister, praying that I didn’t attract the attention of some horrible sixth grader. Sarah didn’t take the bus – her mom always picked her up – and I always felt envious of that.

We were beyond the buses when I turned to look back for some reason, and I could see my sister standing on the sidewalk, her back to me, her backpack dwarfing her small frame. She was rising on her toes, craning her neck, and I felt a pang of discomfort in my midsection. She was looking for me, I just knew it, and part of me felt guilty for leaving her and my brother to go home without me. The stronger part – the self-preservation part, I imagine – looked forward to the evening (and possibly the whole weekend!) at Sarah’s house, and I turned away.

(I’ve asked my sister what they did when I ditched them, and she only shrugged. “We’d get home and be asked where you were,” she said. “We always said we didn’t know – you just never got on the bus.” Back then I felt like I was escaping, like my brother and sister were part of the misery I so desperately wanted to avoid. If I went with them, I would have to take some kind of responsibility for their livelihood, while if I went my own way, all I had to take care of was myself. Now, however, I feel like I completely abandoned them to their own fate, and was incredibly selfish. Of course, I think that’s pretty natural for a nine-year-old.)

I never told anyone where I went. I didn’t even think of it. My only thought was to escape, to enjoy myself. It would only be around dinnertime when either Sarah’s mom would realize I hadn’t made contact with my family, or my mom would call, asking if I was there. (Sarah’s family wasn’t like The Donna Reed Show or anything. Sure, they were a married couple, complete with a boy and a girl, but that’s where the comparison stopped. Curse words flew around that house like a swarm of bees, it was always a bit untidy, and I distinctly remember having to sit through Misery, the movie adaptation of a Stephen King novel that they watched as a family.)

I never got into trouble for pulling stunts like that – in fact, I’m pretty sure my mom was just glad I had somewhere I could go that made me some semblance of happy. Nonetheless, I was there so often that most of my memories of it have congealed into a fluid slideshow of events.

The icy roadside memory is at the forefront of this montage because it represents so much of myself that was so unnatural for me. Before or since this period of my life I always followed the rules. I was, and am, the type of person who had to make sure my trash made it into the garbage can. If my gum stuck on the lip of the can, I would pry it off with my fingers and toss it in. Not telling any of my family where I was going, sneaking out in the middle of the night, and threatening physical harm to other people’s possessions was completely against my nature. (In fact, in Sarah’s presence I forced myself to curse, in order to fit in, and it felt so wrong to even use the word “hell”, which my mother would have smacked me across the mouth for using.)

Standing there on that embankment, my fingers and toes freezing, I to this day have no idea what I was thinking. When the man actually got out of his car, not twenty feet from where I was standing, I could not move. I could not breathe. In fact, I cannot think of another time in my life when my body and mind so thoroughly shut down on me. My fight or flight instincts had always done me proud in the past, but this was different: there was no fleeing or standing my ground. There was no thinking. It could have been one minute or ten, but I did not move. I only prayed that the darkness was enough to envelope me whole. Only when the man grumbled under his breath and got back in his car did I move.

I booked as fast and hard as I could over the crest of the embankment, through the remaining trees and back into Sarah’s neighborhood. My heart pounded so hard I couldn’t hear anything else – not even my own breathing. I thought it was going to break my ribs.

Looking back, I think I froze up because I knew how wrong it was to be doing what we were doing. That angry driver was demonstrating the consequences of our actions – someone could get seriously hurt. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else’s well-being, however – I just didn’t want to get into trouble.

I ran the whole way back to Sarah’s back gate, where she was waiting for me.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

I shook my head, bent over with my hands on my knees as I gasped for air.

“Why didn’t you run, you dummy?” she asked, laughing.

When I finally was able to stand upright, I looked at her, my eyes wide. “That was close.”

Within a year, my mom remarried, and we moved from Virginia to Arizona. I was ten, and while Sarah and I had been inseparable during my three years in Reston, we didn’t stay in touch after I moved. In fact, I don’t remember much of a goodbye.

In moving to Arizona I was leaving that awful condo behind, along with the horrible babysitters and lack of real mashed potatoes. By this time the divorce was growing fainter in my life, the transition nearly complete. Mom remarrying had brought back a balance to the household, as well as real food for dinner.

I remember breathing a sigh of relief at being able to start over – again. I no longer needed to escape a broken home, or search out something that felt normal, and I think that was what I was trying to do during my time in Reston. Sarah’s family may not have been perfect, but they were whole, and they invited me in, and that’s all I had wanted.

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