It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.
The awesome co-hosts for the May 1 posting of the IWSG are Lee Lowery, Juneta Key, Yvonne Ventresca, and T. Powell Coltrin!
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May 1 question: What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
The first time I ran away from home, I was five years old. We were living in Staten Island, New York. For the upteenth time, My sister was making my life a living hell. My father was looking after us. My mother was out. This is a story I wrote about the experience, and how a few words going on around in my head made all the difference.
One
night I said to Papa:
‘Well
then, I'm running away.’
He
didn't answer, stuck in front of the T.V.
I
went to my room and took out my Barbie case from under my bed. I
emptied it of all the tiny synthetic clothes. Lacy and bright
dresses; green slacks and psychedelic-colour tops; mini sweaters from
the drawers. I tossed aside the pink plastic hangers. Then carefully
I crammed in my nightdress, a few clean knickers, my toothbrush and
paste: all snug in the plastic lining, and flipped the lock shut. I
got dressed and put on a warm coat. With my brown teddy bear,
christened Badibo by my sister, tight under my arm, I marched up the
stairs from our basement room.
‘Bye
bye, then,’
I said to my father. He was still watching television and didn't hear
me. As usual deaf to the world about him.
My
mother had gone out somewhere and wasn't supposed to be back for at
least an hour. I opened the front door and ran down the porch steps
before I could change my mind. 88 Colon Avenue, Great Kills, Staten
Island, New York.
It
was dark outside. The lampposts were already lit. The aroma of an
Indian Summer rose from the earth. Autumn clouds and a nip in the
air. The oak tree loomed large on the front lawn. A grey squirrel
scuttled up the trunk. The headlights of a passing car traced two
long lines on the dark grey macadam. I waited for it to turn the
corner. No one must see me. The sidewalks were deserted anyway, no
one around not even the creepy neighbour, whose doorbell
we never rang on Halloween night, walking his dog. Every house lit:
families eating dinner, glued to the Ed. Sullivan show.
I
put one foot in front of the other down the path then swerved onto
the sidewalk. My heart full of a feeling of adventure and excitement,
I strode along the street even skipping at times. Past 86 Colon
Avenue, 84, 82, until 78 on the corner. Left into Katan Avenue. A
right onto Brookfield Avenue, I crossed the street, head turning both
ways before stepping onto the asphalt.
I
was launched. I cruised along, my soles tap-tapped against the
cement. From time to time my toe scuffed on a crack between two
slabs. Moist blades of grass trembled up in the breeze. My nostrils
tickled with the smell of cold dust. I heard an owl hoot, then a
siren far away: it wouldn't be coming this way. Nothing ever happened
in our neighbourhood. I passed the wood. Stray leaves still clinging
to branches glowed a gloomy orange in the street lights. I looked
through an opening in the trunks and wondered what unlikely monster
was lurking. Even in the dark, some branches, still clad, burst with
colour: light green, pale yellow, blood red.
After
the wood was the pit, now a dump site. Mucky ochre clay plastered its
flanks. A scent of metal rose from a puddle. We used to spend hours
hanging out there. Secret meetings and generally dirtying our jeans.
Us kids would tie a rope round a tree trunk and swing over the pit.
Hollering like Tarzan, we would leap on arrival: an ongoing contest
of who would land the furthest beyond the edge. Sometimes one of us
would miss and swing back. Enough to hit the edge's bump and tumble
down into the slimy hole beneath. We had to claw our way back up.
Gritty earth engrained itself beneath our fingernails, leaves
entwined in our sneaker laces, hair matted. ‘A
sight for sore eyes’
and a guaranteed ‘Oh Susan
! Where have you been ? What have you done to your clothes ? Your
clean sweater ! Honestly!’
Those were my English Mummy's
exclamations in a throaty pitched voice, with a scowl on her face,
her teeth clasped together on one side behind pursed lips: 'Mummy's
face', we used to joke, Papa, my sister and I. My American friends
wouldn't be greeted with the same words. More like: ‘Hanging out
with those brats again. Look at your jeans! Go scrub your face, you
ragamuffin!’
A
few years later in France, us children reproduced the same game but
without the rope. We jumped off the first story of a house under
construction in our résidence.
We landed on the edge of the open crater where the foundations,
buried deep, still stood bare. One girl missed the landing spot and
tumbled down, hitting the concrete walls and broke a leg. She was in
a cast for two months. Boy, was her mother mad! Somehow, although I
was one of the youngest of our crowd, I seemed to collect the blame:
the 'tinker' coaxing the others into performing dangerous dares. The
mother of this girl glared at me for weeks. With my small bones and
wiry frame, I should have been the one in a cast. But I was more
agile, quick and supple with my chimp arms and legs: always intent on
climbing trees and jumping off tall walls. To this day I still do,
climb trees that is, to prune overhanging branches from my willow and
lime-tree.
As
I passed the pit, a wind picked up and branches from the wood started
to creak, twigs lashing about sending rotten fumes up into the air.
The overcast sky began to move. A few dim stars peeked through a
breach in the clouds. And then the moon showed its face. Milky white.
Grey Man-in-the Moon patterns. We had seen Armstrong on the TV set
foot on the ashen ground just the year before. ‘One small step for
a man, one giant leap for Mankind’ but he didn't meet the
Man-in-the-Moon, what a let down!
It
seemed difficult to fathom this idea: a team of American astronauts
flying up in their NASA rocket and landing on this mysterious, even
mythical, orb. We had watched the footage on the black-and-white
screen, but it could have been a science-fiction series for all I
cared. My experience of real life was what happened to me first hand
in Great Kills or what I observed in the streets of New York during
Easter Parade: the soaring Mickey Mouse balloon kissing the
skyscrapers, the antlers of the giant Looney Tunes Moose missing by a
hair the electrical wires stretched from building to building. Or the
chimps at Brooklyn Zoo: ‘Happy Birthday to you. I went to the zoo
and who did I see in the monkey cage ? You.’ Our favourite refrain
at parties.
I
glimpsed a movement in the undergrowth across the street, and a
ginger cat scrambled towards me. I stopped and the cat, whiskers
twitching, edged towards my legs, rubbed its ears and its arching
spine against my pants. I bent down and buried my fingertips into its
warm coat, combing out the stray leaves and caked dirt in its hairs.
‘Hello
Kitty, are you running away, too?’
My
pace had slackened. The anger that had fueled my flight no longer
seething. I was now launched on an adventure; finally living my
life, far from the constraints and raging of my family. The taunts
and pinches of my elder sister.
Then
I stopped and looked around me. Ginger, who had been trotting beside
me, slunk behind a bush, leaving me alone with the night and the
rustling trees. I'd turned a corner without realizing and found
myself on a block I didn't recognize. I had never walked this
sidewalk, nor was it on the Yellow School Bus route. I was lost. My
heart leapt in my breast and then started to thump hard. I stumbled
into the true unknown. I turned left then right. I carried on, my
pace slower. Suddenly I was aware of the unfriendly noises of the
night that I was only used to hearing when snuggly wrapped up in bed.
Outside, in the cold and dark they felt eerie and threatening.
An owl
hooted as if signaling my presence: like the shrill whistle of a
street cop in a Charlie The Tramp movie. I thought a horde of dark
blue uniformed men would appear out of nowhere and run me down,
cornering me in a dark alleyway. A screech of car wheels not so far
in the distance made me jump: Al Capone on my heels. A black sedan
would emerge round the bend, machine gun gangsters crouched on the
running board aiming at my head.
Shrugging
off the images, I walked on, past another block, then another,
clutching my Barbie case in one hand and my Badibo's neck in the
other. I still couldn't place the houses I was passing. I had really
gone beyond my everyday surroundings. I stopped and looked up the
front path of number 12. What street? I didn't know. The windows were
blank. I trudged up towards the porch and sat down on the red-brick
steps. I leant my Barbie case against my right calf. Badibo lay on my
lap. I lowered my head into my cupped hands, hiding away. I would
wake up from this dream, this nightmare if only I didn't look. My
breath fell short and a high-pitched wheezing note escaped from my
lips. The enormity of what I had got myself into suddenly dawned on
me. This wasn't an adventure anymore. It had become scary, too
frightening to pull off. What was I thinking running away from home?
My mother's voice echoed in my head. Where did I plan to go? Where
would I sleep tonight? Where would I brush my teeth?
Then
panic struck. An abyss opened in my stomach: a pit of void in which I
should tumble forever. Images of my short life rushed through my
mind. I remembered scrambling out of my cot one night and rushing to
my parents bedroom in tears. I lied that I was up because my night
nappy was wet. But I didn't tell on my older sister because I was too much
afraid of her. She had woken me with harsh whispers and a punch. They
wouldn't have listened anyway. They never believed me: it was my
imagination from watching too many cartoons.
I thought about other
things and they overwhelmed me: Mummy's arms; her palm on my back
when I had a tummy ache. My bed and pillow, their sweet clean scent,
and home-made hot meals on the table. Lazing in a warm bath, door
locked so no one could get in. Lying on the itchy sofa watching
Captain Kangaroo. Dancing in front of TV to a Sesame Street song.
Christmas decorating and opening presents on the green and red-berry
rug. Skating on the frozen lake upstate. Hurtling down the slopes on
our large wooden sledge, Papa holding me from behind, my back wedged
between his legs and arms. Halloween, only a few weeks away and I
would miss that?
Then,
TV addict that I was, I saw in my mind's eye Dorothy and her plight.
‘There's
no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like
home!’
I
gazed down at my feet: no ruby slippers to click my heels with. So I
sprang up, grabbed my case, looked right, then left and chose right.
That was the way I had come wasn't it? As I scuttled back along the
sidewalk, tears began to swell behind my cheekbones. They welled up
into my eyes, brimmed over and streamed down my nose. No more
night-dreaming to the moon or fondling cats in the dark. I had to get
back home immediately before something really terrifying happened. I
was no longer my Papa's 'Bunny-who's-not-afraid'. I had reached the
brink of my five-year-old courage. My rebellious nature had to take a
step back. I would run away another day.
So
I ran, I ran, faster, and faster, left, right, left, right, past the
pit, past the wood, left, right, back to the end of my street.
And
drifting over the whispering leaves I heard Mummy's voice crying
out:
‘Suuusaaan,
Suuuusaaaan,’ into the night.
When
she saw me I rushed towards her and threw myself into her lap.
‘Oh
Suuzan, where were you? I came back and you weren't anywhere!’
Shame kept me tongue-tied.
Back
home, Mummy scowled while getting the meal, my sister glared at me
and Papa got the blame.
©susanbauryrouchard
I first wrote this in 1994, then typed it up for an exercise during my Open University course A 174 in 2007. I revised and submitted it to Mslexia New Writing theme Memoir in December 2012, but it wasn't published, only short-listed. I was late posting because it took me 2 hours to fish it out as I hadn't remembered that it was in my Mslexia submissions file ! so I went through all my notebooks from 1983 to 2019 !!!
To answer today's question, I realised in 1970 that words in my head could become like a mantra and influence the course of my life or at least my actions. Writing has always helped me to sort through my emotions and thoughts, keeping me sane ! Creative writing is work but also play: it is doing what I enjoy the most, fooling around with words. And I get to do it in two languages English and French. Sometimes, even, I've written diary entries in German and Spanish. Each language provides a very different way of thinking and writing, enabling one to see life in a totally new perspective.
'There's no place like home' extracts from the Wizard of Oz, go here ,
go here and go here,
that I had already seen 3 times in 1970 (every Christmas, they showed it on TV). The next time I saw it was in 1978 in France (shown On the Friday night Ciné-Club programme, FR2- later Antenne 2, today France 2).
In the 90's, I recorded it on video-cassette and later showed it to my children as they grew up. To my utter shame, I have never read the book. Maybe it is time !
And a song for the road :
Another World by Antony&The Johnsons, 2009. go here
Live version, with orchestra, 2009 go here
A song my sister liked a lot, and which I listened to frequently when she died in 2011. My mourning gave it a whole new meaning.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment and I will be sure to reply.
Brilliant sunshine yesterday in Toulouse. Rained in the night. The sky cleared up and is now hesitating between fair and cloudy.
Have a pleasant IWSG day.
Me, age 5 in Kindergarden.
88, Colon Avenue in 2013 (taken by my eldest daughter Alice).
I left in 1971. Went back in 1991 (but I only have a VHS video).