Excerpt
Part 1-What I Knew of Love

To my father figure, whoever he was who gave me love and showed me what life was even though I never got to touch or see him. Freedom: to touch real love or really feel the real free feeling of life for more than five minutes at a time.

There used to be a lake outside of my school where we would play a lot after school. There was a running stream going through it that would never freeze, not enough to walk on. If you would take one step on it in the winter even with the ice frozen you would fall through and drown.

The ice was so crystal clear. I could see through to the bottom. Something inside of me said it was okay. I reluctantly walked towards the water feeling death and then the rush as I ran towards the opportunity to dance with it.

I started to run and dance as I was laughing and slipping and sliding as the ice was cracking under my feet. I could feel them come in finally. I wondered where they were and when they would come in. One yelled at me to get off and the other said it was okay, the older one. I laughed as I slid across the cracking water and pushed my face against the ice so thin you could see through it. The old on, the one I call my father, said it was okay. “You can dance to it just this once. I’ll keep you above it,” he said and I felt him come inside of me and I had no conscience of anyone around me as I ran across that ice. When I was done playing I felt him safely let me off on the high ridge of the pine needles. I thought, Oh God! That was unreal. And he said, “Just this once, you’d better never do it again.” He sounded so much like the big fat man in the cellar area of my uncle’s place.

My uncle owned this club where all the adults would go and have their parties. The men would go downstairs and get drunk or pack boxes or unpack them, at least that is what my uncle always said that he was doing. We were never to go down there. It was a rule, the golden rule. I used to think that you would be killed.

One day my mother who was too lazy to get me a coke on her own made me, a little three-year-old, go down to the men’s area at the bottom of the club and get my coke. I said, “But, Mom, you’re not supposed to go down there.” And she said, ”Oh just shut up and go down there and get yourself a coke and leave me alone,” as she stuffed her mouth with food.

I looked at the bartender upstairs as I saw him pouring cokes and I said very scared, “They have cokes up here. Why can’t I get it up here?” She replied searching for words, “I don’t know. They don’t have any more up here. Just go down,” as the bartender upstairs was now looking at me with tears in his eyes. I could hear her telling him that they weren’t going to hurt me and he seemed to feel better, if he only knew. My mother loved her food. I said one last time, “But we’re not supposed to go down there,” whining now and scared to be around the grown men by myself and go down those big stairs.

The food was good to my mother seeing as she grew up in a poor country on a dirt floor with outhouses and only fish to eat in the morning because that’s all her father did for work. And he was a drunk, she said. I don’t know because I never met him. He died in her native land in some mental hospital. I was told that we were not supposed to talk about it. He didn’t die before beating my mother in front of my father though. Before my father married her he would kiss her goodnight after dates and my mother would be beaten for it. If not him, my uncle, her brother, would take the role. It didn’t sound like she had a good life, before my father anyway.

She had all her gums cut one year because she never brushed her teeth out there. It’s a wonder my father married her and she even looked good enough for him. And I never could understand how my father was such a jock with all this smoke and booze in here. I asked for a coke and the bartender offered me one with CHERRIES!! I thought, Oh boy!! I wasn’t afraid now, it wasn’t so bad. That weird funny feeling at the doorway that said don’t come in was a little scary but now that I’m in here it doesn’t seem so bad at all. They’re just regular people. I didn’t even want to come down here. That’s when this man cut into our conversation .....