Dream Journal
I was with Melissa and my parents on the boat. There had been previous damage to the boat, and I was trying to hold the mast with the crow’s nest up straight ant tall because it was very wobbly and I didn’t want it to break. I asked my dad if I could let it lean back against the boom, but he got very angry that I had even suggested it.
The waves got bigger and bigger; one was so big that it flipped and flopped the boat all around. We swirled under water with the boat as it spun. Everything got dark as we went under water, but I had a pocket of air and for that i was grateful - I was sure no one else had a pocket of breathing air.
The boat’s spinning and twisting slowed down and I wondered if I would be stuck in this pocket of air under water not knowing which way was up. When I finally found the surface, my parents and Melissa were nowhere in sight. I knew that they had gone for help.
The boat had righted itself and I went into the cabin to wait. I sat for a while when I noticed the boat was heading too quickly into a very small cove. The cove had cliff walls on all sides and I knew the boat would hit the cliffs if I didn’t do something. I rushed to get into the top house, and my feet kept slipping on the wet stair rungs.
Finally up in the captain’s chair, I stared at the levers and couldn’t remember which ones did what. I needed to put the boat into reverse immediately.
I turned around so I wasn’t looking at the cliffs and pulled on the levers to my left as hard as I could. The boat sped up a bit, so I pulled them in the opposite direction. The boat stalled and pushed backward a very little bit.
I was proud of myself for thinking of it and for being lucky, but didn’t want to turn around and see how close it was. I wondered if I should try to drop the anchor or if anyone would look for me in this little cove.
Then I was waiting in line with the other kids my age from the church as they were getting recognition for certain things. We each had a different vegetable sliced and arranged on a plate to present, and I held the tomatoes.
Tina said something to me and I slapped her, unappreciative of her attitude. She laughed to show me what she had said didn’t mean much of anything. A church deacon called each of our names, and everyone went up one at a time to present their vegetable and get recognition for their work during the previous year.
I waited and waited; since I was the oldest I would have been called last, but he never called my name. He had moved on to some other topic and I was very hurt that I had been left out. I had accomplished just as much as everyone else that had been called, and I still held the plate of bright red sliced tomatoes.
I looked at a graph of all of our cooperation over the last year, and mine was just as much as anyone else’s. I didn’t understand why I had been left out.
Then I was on shore eating a very fancy dinner with my family. One girl at another table kept jumping up to wave to her fiancé who was leaving on a ship for a very long time.
She wore a very nice but simple long white dress from an older era. She noticed the ship had stopped moving forward, and she knew that he was coming in for one last goodbye. She jumped up from her table very excited that a few other patrons, my father included, went over to the window to look at the ship.
I went into the kitchen to get away from all of the ship talk. When I came out of the kitchen, she grabbed my hand and asked me to bring a tray for her fiancé to take off his coat. The only thing I could find was an old, greasy and rusty baking sheet, but she had me follow her anyway.
We met her fiancé outside the restaurant and when she offered to hang his jacket over my baking sheet, he turned his nose away. I offered to hold his jacket with my hand, but he didn’t hear me and kept his jacket on.
We followed his straight back and fancy uniform inside the restaurant. I didn’t like him.
I was sitting at a large table with my family. Rodney and Jen arrived and gave everyone hugs. My dad, sitting at the table’s head, pointed them to two seats. John finally showed up, late, and looked over at the only remaining empty chair, but there is no shoulder or elbow room for someone to really sit there.
I had been pushed further and further over to make more room at the table until my small plate was right at the very corner of the table, pushing my chair out a ways. There was hardly enough room at the table for me as it was, so it would probably be better if I was moved.
Mom took John’s plate and mine and put them at a smaller round table across the room. We sat there and looked at each other, our empty plates, and the other table filled with the rest of the family. My other siblings slowly gravitated toward our table until it was full.
Heidi took Tay to the hospital for a checkup, and I offered to watch the other girls. Byrd came up to me and asked how damaging a dull pair of scissors would be to her ear; I looked up from my book and she was holding a pair of scissors at an angle on the side of her head, points down, trying to cut some hair.
I asked her why, and then I saw that she had nearly cut the top of her ear off. I was surprised it wasn’t bleeding. I took her and we went into the other room with the adults and I asked my mother if doctors could stitch up an ear. She looked up at me and I pointed to Byrd’s hanging ear.
My mother grabbed Byrd and they went off to the hospital, but not before the top of her ear falling off altogether. Everyone else followed them to the hospital, and I wandered back to the other cabin.
Two people stood in the doorway talking, and I walked around them so as not to interrupt them. When they had a break in their conversation and both looked up at me, I asked if they were aware that everyone was at the hospital because of Byrd’s ear. They looked panicked and ran off.
I sat on the couch with a book and read for a half hour or more, the house was very quiet. I suddenly realized that I should be at the hospital with everyone, too. While it would be nice to be here in case someone else came by, no one would come by because they were all at the hospital already. I jumped up to get dressed.
Themes: Dad, Left Behind, Mom
I was watching television on the computer downstairs when I realized I late for school. I had dripped food onto my new white pants so I changed into jeans. I searched around for my introductory school papers. When I found them, they said I could start at 8:15 instead of 8:00 if I do all of my paperwork at home and watch the movies in class. The clock said 7:59.
I changed back into my white pants after seeing they weren’t stained. It had only been water that had dripped onto them. I could hear my mom waking around downstairs, so I quickly went up the stairs and out the door before she could hear that I was still home.
I walked over to my car and saw that Melissa’s friend had parked it very crookedly. I pushed the unlock button on my keychain and heard a car behind me honk. I looked again and the car in my spot was a brand new silver hummer.
I turned around for my car as saw six vehicles parked three deep at the main door. All of the cars were covered in dirt and had trees growing out of the windshields.
I walked slowly around the cars wondering how that could have happened overnight. The trees didn’t look like anything that grew natively in the area, and the tree growing from my car’s windshield was the biggest of all. There was a rope attached to the top branch of this large tree.
I pulled on the rope and it unrolled and then rolled back up like a yo-yo. I pulled again and a creature jumped to the ground. The creature was grey, doughy and scared. He wanted to visit with the creature underground and he lunged for the elevator but I managed to grab him and pull him back.
The creature from underground came up and after a very long moment of staring at the thing in my arms, I introduce the two. They both smiled and went back into the elevator.
My parents had bought a very large and nice house. A man came to look at it and I had to put Lacey into a room in the basement and close the door so that she wouldn’t bark at him. The man bought the house weeks after my parents had bought it.
I asked my mom how much they made from flipping the house, and she said in awe, “$37,000.” I was surprised that they had made so much. I was happy for them, and wondered if they shouldn’t try it again.
Steve and I were trying to find a hotel in Fairbanks; we were having trouble finding any vacancies because we hadn’t made any plans until we had gotten there. I rattled off a few different hotels we could try, and thought about the one behind the mall because I’d always wanted to try it.
Then I remembered that the hotel I was thinking about is in Anchorage, not Fairbanks, and I could stay in my own home in Anchorage.
I stood with my mom and dad in tall wetland grass next to a lake. My dad goes into a long explanation of a large stump in the back yard. My mom had cut it down little by little instead of pulling it out properly. He said that other little trees had started growing from its stump, so now there were 100 little trees growing where we hadn’t wanted one.
Testing me, he asked why all of the little trees had attached to the stump, and I repeated his reasoning that the water was doing it. I didn’t want to be a part of this conversation at all.
He pulled me down on top of the stump with a hundred new growths. Another girl was kneeing on the stump already. She was naked from the waist down and facing away from us so that we could see her butt very prominently.
He reached down to caress her butt, but I wouldn’t let him. I was sitting with my legs tucked beside me and he put his hand on my hip. I stoop up quickly and announced that I would not be going to the store with him, even if he did let me drive and bought me coffee. I didn’t want to go and that was that.
He left for the store with Melissa and I stayed and helped my mom clean up the dishes. I washed away every trace of him off me and down the kitchen sink with the rest of the dish water. Finished in the kitchen, we could then somehow see what they were up to.
The two that had gone with my dad had rope of some sort and they were using it to fend him off. My dog Lacey appeared on the stump and I knew I had to send them a better rope to help. The only way to get the rope to them in the other dimension was to have Lacey swallow a strand of pearls.
I put my pearls in her mouth and rubbed her throat to encourage her swallowing, like when I give her medicine. She couldn’t swallow the pearls because they were too big; she started choking on them so I pulled them out. I had to find some way for the dog to swallow them so I could send her over to fight my dad.
My parents, Melissa, and I were going somewhere and there was a lot of mud. The roadway had flooded so much that someone had erected three-foot stone walls on the road shoulder to keep a path dry-ish for walking, but the water was threatening to spill over the wall.
We walked carefully and tried not to disturb the water, sticking to the driest places we could, but when we reached our destination our feet were soaked and muddy. We stopped at a small house to change our shoes and socks, and we saw something on the floor inside the house. I couldn’t tell what it was, but mom told me to hurry changing my socks and get back outside.
Once outside, I repacked my bag and watched Melissa pull out brand new dresses, costumes and shoes: a whole bunch of stuff she had bought on the trip. Some of her new things were wrapped in plastic and flattened like cardboard.
I told her that not everything would fit in her bag, but she didn’t care: she loved the new outfits she had purchased. She put a few of them back into her bag, zipped up and was ready to go. As my parents started out I told them to wait. I went behind a table where I found all of Melissa’s old clothes and some of her new ones that wouldn’t fit into her bag: she had stashed them to leave them behind.
I pulled the clothes out, handful after handful, angry that she was being so wasteful. I wanted to throw them into the flooded road, and started to do so until I realized that my parents had paid a lot of money for them and they would be very hurt if I did that.
My mom told my sister to pack all of it, but she couldn’t fit it all into her bag and she was very snotty about it.
I was driving a car at night with my mom and Melissa. We pulled up to a stop light behind a large white delivery van. The short male driver got out of the van, walked to its back, and opened its back doors. One of the doors smashed into my bumper as he opened it, but he didn’t seem to notice or care that he had dented my car.
I got out of the car and yelled at the man for damaging my car. He turned to face me and dragged me back behind my car. Yelling at me and keeping a firm grip on my arm, he told me to put the lemons and the sugar he was holding into my gas tank.
I grabbed a cut lemon and slowly squeezed its juices into my tank. I acted like it was no big deal because I didn’t want the man to think he was getting to me, but also because I knew the lemons wouldn’t harm my car at all. I took my time because I also knew the sugar would cause major damage to my car.
He pulled me back around front and I could see that inside the car, sitting on the back seat beside Melissa was a large tray with baking soda. I knew that if all of the lemons and sugar got into the gas tank, they would combine with the baking soda and the car would explode.
I was then sneaking down the fire escape at my parents’ house. I needed to leave but didn’t want to explain to everyone. I saw Bruce going up the fire escape with a backpack slung over one shoulder. We talked for a while and I agreed to house sit in his apartment while he was gone for a few weeks.
His apartment was just down the hill a little bit from my parents’ house. One day my father saw me coming out of Bruce’s apartment and got very, very angry. He grabbed me in the parking lot right next to my car and held me to the ground, yelling at me. I struggled to get up, but he was too strong.
I was laying in bed under the covers with Dad laying next to me on my left. He asked me about “that other website” just for him; he wanted me to get it up soon. I told him that Mom didn’t think it was a good idea, and I agreed with her.
He said that he couldn’t wait, and I told him that I wasn’t going to do it. He got angry. I knew that he was sexually frustrated, and I hoped he wouldn’t try to make me do anything about it.
Then he was leaning over me, standing near my side of the bed, with his hands near my shoulders. He grabbed me and lied down on the bed as I jumped up. I pleaded with him to not touch me, to leave me alone.
He reached out for my arm and I told him that I would scream and yell for Mom if he didn’t leave me alone. I didn’t think he would let me cry out or get her involved, but as he tried for a better grip on my arm, I hollered out and called for Mom.
I managed to pull my arm away and get out the door. Crying, I ran to the stairwell and halfway down the stairs saw my mom start up. I hugged her at the bottom of the stairs and stepped behind her as she looked up them.
I was at a high school hockey game with Michael who sat on my right. My right leg was pressed against him and I linked my arm in his. The arena was huge and packed with people; we waited for the game to start.
My parents stood on the floor down below, 20 yards apart from each other. They both faced left toward an exit and were completely emotionless.
Michael recognized my mother immediately even though she was in her late 20s. I pointed my father out to Michael because he, too, was in his late 20s and I knew Michael would not recognize him.
I leaned closer to Michael because the crowd was loud and energetic. He turned his head toward me at the same time and we kissed very sweetly. I looked up to see my mother looking right at me. I smiled and put my head on his shoulder.
I sat at my parents’ dining room table in their basement. My mother, sister-in-law Jen, brother John and I were mass-producing a large number of cupcakes. I had brought a few cans of spray frosting to make the process go faster. I handed one can of frosting to my mother and I took another. The frosting came out of the cans very fancy and pretty. I frosted a few cupcakes when my frosting can sputtered and splattered frosting everywhere. I said, “Fuck!” and knew immediately that I shouldn’t have said that in front of my mother, but chose to not say anything or look guilty so as to draw any more attention to it.
Since that had been the last can of spray frosting, I announced that I would make another run to town and get more frosting cans since they seemed to be working nicely. I ran up the stairs and out to my car in the parking spot next to my mom’s car, the one I used in high school. Melissa was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car ready to go.
My dad was leaning into the open driver’s side door. I saw him grab a plastic container about the size of a piece of paper and had a bubble at one end to hold one of my new contacts. From the porch I could see him place the bubble up to his eye and push the contact onto it. Then he turned and ran off.
I was angry that he had taken one of my contacts. Melissa stood out of the car and asked me to run back inside and grab the jacket she left on the pool table upstairs.
Back inside I walked towards an upright piano that sat on stage in a concert hall. I sat down at it and fingered the ivory keys. I needed to urinate on the keys, but before I was able to even stand I heard someone tell me to play something. I looked up and Bjorn was sitting in the third row. He was leaned forward, anxious to hear me play.
I turned back toward the piano and tried to remember one of the songs I had memorized back in high school. I could hear them in my head but could not remember where to put my fingers. I wished I had my sheet music with me.
I stood at my parent’s living room window with my mother looking out at my father’s shop. I could see that there was a large square pit dug underneath the shop, a pit so deep that I could not see the bottom of it. The pit was surrounded with lush green grass that had browned near one corner. The shop was resting on top of a very large round pole, the bottom of which I also could not see.
I asked my mom what had happened to the shop. She told me that she had asked my uncle to dig up all the browned grass surrounding the shop and replace it with fresh grass seed. Apparently he dug and dug until the hole became a giant pit. “And he still didn’t get all the brown grass,” my mother said.
B and I agreed to drive Jason through town to pick up his truck. I drove my car and Jason went with B in B’s truck, following me.
I did not know exactly where Jason’s truck was, but knew that it was somewhere downtown. I pulled past a parking lot, backed up, and found a parking spot. The parking lot was deserted but for my car and there was no other traffic.
I got out of my car and could not see B’s truck anywhere. I walked down the street the way I had come looking for B and Jason. I thought I saw our truck turn a corner at the end of a cross street and started after them.
I turned the corner, and turned again at the next block. This street was in the middle of Autumn even though it should have been the middle of Summer.
All of the leaves were turning colors and falling to the ground, and many of the trees had either fallen into the street or were hanging extremely low. I had to duck to go under most of them. As I walked by Bob’s house I knew that he and his sin were the cause of the season change.
I walked through the trees by my grandparents’ home. I walked by my parents’ old house and saw dresses, my and Melissa’s old dresses, still strung up on the laundry line. I knew all of the clothes had been hanging there for years, since my parents had moved, and wondered if anyone would come back to this abandoned home and remove all of our belongings.
I walked up the trail we had used to get to the school bus and emerged at the bottom of my mother’s lawn. I walked into the basement door, up the stairs, and found my mom in the kitchen.
I went to her, crying, and told her how B had left me behind, hadn’t even waited for me to catch up. I was distraught and could hardly catch my breath from the giant sobs. I felt very angry and betrayed.
My mom explained that it wasn’t purposeful, and that he would be back. I could tell that she knew where he had gone, but she wouldn’t tell me.
I saw him drive up the road in a dark blue van and pulled into my mom’s parking spot. He grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down. He appeared very laid back and was not concerned about losing me. I yelled at him for leaving me behind, and he looked right into my eyes for the first time since he arrived and said, “It isn’t every day that your father kills someone.”
He and my mom knew what he meant by this, and assumed that I knew as well. I was furious that they wouldn’t explain. I yelled incoherently through my sobs. I knew that my anger was not penetrating his nonchalance, so I flipped him off and walked away.
Themes: B, Dad, Left Behind, Mom
My parents and I were standing in Melissa’s old bedroom talking when we heard sirens in the distance. The sirens got louder and louder, closer and closer, until I could see lights flashing outside Melissa’s curtained windows.
I knew that the fire trucks were in our parking lot, and wondered how Lacey was doing with the sirens. She was downstairs sleeping in my old room under the blankets, and I heard her start to whine and howl. I called her name and she ran to me. I covered her ears with my hands trying to block out some of the painful sound.
My parents and I walked outside towards the trucks, who had parked in front of my dad’s shop. Two firemen were inspecting the 500 gallon gasoline tanks.
They explained to me that the hoses were clogged and they needed to fix it immediately. They squeezed the handle to clear the hose of its blockage and asked me to do the other hose.
We pointed the hoses into the weeds across the parking lot, long powerful streams of clear liquid. I worried about getting the gasoline in my mother’s garden, knowing that her garden lay just bejond that patch of weeds.
I looked at my mother and she furrowed her brow, probably worried about her garden as well. The liquid streaming out of the hoses turned into a bronze color, more like gasoline should look. We let go of the handles and turned the hoses back towards our feet.
I sat on the floor in my mother’s room against the right-hand side of the bed. She and my brother Damon sat propped up by pillows on the bed reading. She asked me if I had any push pins, and I handed her some bright blue ones. The head of the pins were plastic and larger than the metal push pins. I asked her why she needed them, and she said she needed them to mark the funny parts in her book so that she doesn’t forget them.
I picked up a Dave Barry book she had read previously and flipped through it. It was filled with those bright blue push pins punched through nearly every phrase on every page. No one could even read the book any more, there were so many push pins.
Themes: Mom
Dad was yelling at me, coming towards me forcefully to grab me. I was in my parents’ bedroom, and my mom was lying in bed. I asked for her to help me, but she didn’t move. Dad cornered me and I sunk to the floor between the edge of the bed and the wall.
He grabbed my arms and pushed me up against a wall on the other side of the bedroom - I knew the headboard of their bed was right on the other side. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. I needed help. I became so angry with him that I spit curse words at him, which only made him angrier.
I was dressed like an Amish girl. My dad grabbed my arms and was talking to me. I didn’t want him to, so I kneed him in the crotch - but it didn’t hurt him.
My mom told me to listen to him. I cried.
My family was at Costco in Anchorage buying groceries. Mom was relatively young and was wearing a white dress and bonnet from the late 1800s; she was also holding a newborn baby. Along one side of the warehouse was a long string of train cars. I walked up and down them with my dad. When we went around to the other side of the cars, we saw that “$1,000” had been painted in white on one of the cars.
My dad thought that one thousand dollars was a great deal for 6 train cars. The bagger tried to put them into a metal grocery cart while we paid for them, but she couldn’t make them fit. She could get two into the basket, but no more.
Dad decided to come back for them at a later date and so we went to the car to leave. I frantically looked around for Mom because she wasn’t in the car with us. When I asked Dad to wait for Mom, he told me that we were leaving her at Costco. This made me very angry with my dad.
Back at home, I went out onto the dirt road and hitched a ride. I intended to go back to Anchorage to get my mom. The ride I hitched was with some men in an RV. Not far up the road they pushed me out of the back door; I walked home.
I stopped by our neighbor’s and found that my Mom was hiding in their basement sewing. I was very happy to have her back near home.
I was in my parents’ basement. My mom was standing on a stepladder next to the pool table fixing the overhead light. Dad stood next to her watching what she was doing. I was standing in the living room area watching both of them.
I utter ‘asshole’ under my breath; my dad looks sharply at me and asks accusingly what I just said. I told him that I called him an asshole. I was afraid that he would come over to me and hit me. Before he is able to react to me, Mom called his attention to the light and asked him a question. He told her something, then looked down and muttered ‘wench.’
Furious at what he just called my mom, I ran over to him and yelled into his ear as loud as I could. I screamed obscenities at him, knowing that it would probably end with him hitting me. But I felt a giant need to stick up for my mom.
Mom, grandma, and I were in grandma’s small gray car. Mom was driving and I was sitting in the middle front seat. Grandma had gotten her hand caught in the doorway while getting into the car; half of her right pinky finger had been sliced off. Dad did the same thing on the same door a few days previous.
She wasn’t worried about going to a doctor about it; she had wrapped it up in the used kleenex that she keeps under the band of her watch. I kept staring at her stump: it did not seem to bleed at all.
Grandma had wrapped the piece of her pinky that had been sliced off in some more kleenex and set it on the dashboard. It kept rolling back and forth as mom drove. Most of her kleenex was used for her stump, so the detached piece was not completely wrapped - I could see the entire long fingernail.
Mom drove us into our parking lot and parked the car by the front door; they were talking and didn’t get out of the car. I started to feel suffocated and needed to get out of the car, but because I was sitting in the middle, I couldn’t unless they did. All I could do is stare at her finger piece and its fingernail sitting on the dashboard.
Themes: Mom
The entire extended family was at my parents’ house for dinner. I was still young enough to be living at home. We were all in my parents’ basement - it was set up just like it was when the family was still living there. I was sprawled out in my favorite orange chair and had it tilted far forward. Dad and grandpa decided to pray over the meal; they stood up to my right by dads chair and faced out the windows. Dad glared at me; he wanted me to stand, but I didn’t want to.
During prayer I rocked the chair back and forth as quietly as I could, but the chair ended up hitting the wall pretty loudly. I tried hopping the recliner forward to get it away from the wall - this made a much louder noise.
After prayer, dad was mad at me. I turned to him in the middle of the living room and began yelling at him. I told him every one of his faults and how much I despised him. I vented for quite a while.
Later, I found him in the unfinished upstairs. The walls, ceilings, and floors were still covered in plywood. He was standing in the middle of what would become the living room and was tinkering with some tool. I went up to him as he was standing up straight. I leaned in close to his face and whispered through firmly clenched teeth, “I hate you.” I turned and walked into what was my and Melissa’s room.
Inside the room, it was set up as it currently is: empty but for a few boxes of Melissa’s stuff and her cold waterbed. I am no longer young, but am my current age; I am crying. Standing on the side of the bed by the door, I opened my bag that was sitting on top of her bed and start stuffing items into it. I desperately want to leave the house and get away from my father. I undress to put on some cleaner clothes.
While I am naked, my father pounds on the door. Now standing by the side of the bed by the wall and looking at the door, I grab a sheet to cover myself and then yell, “I’m naked!” The knocking stops and I relax a bit. But then he opens the door and comes in despite my warning. I think that I should have locked the door (which is odd because that door has never had a lock).
He decides that ‘we need to talk about this’ and is determined to not leave until it is ‘all straightened out.’ I yell at him to leave my room and let me finish getting dressed. I feel very vulnerable and scared of what he is going to do to me. He steps toward me looking at the sheet I am holding over me.
I yell for my mom to come help. I have to yell loudly so she can hear me: she is downstairs. She comes upstairs and stands between my dad and me, not taking her eyes off of him. She says nothing and he leaves the room.
I am crying uncontrollably; all I want is for B to come take me away from there.
Now dressed, my mom and I walk into the upstairs entryway. The upstairs now looks completely finished: as it is today. My dad is standing by the door with his arms crossed: he is not going to let me leave without interacting with him. My mom glares at him and he goes downstairs.
B drives into the parking lot and I run to meet him. I give him a big and long hug. We get into the car and drive out of the parking lot. Part way down the road we are riding a snow machine and I am driving. B instructs me to drive into the ditch and up a small embankment in order to miss something on the road that we shouldn’t drive over. He then wants me to jerk the handlebars in the opposite direction than the one we want to go. His instructions don’t make any sense to me, but I try it.
This scene replays with different outcomes. My mind is trying to figure out what would happen if I were to actually do what B instructed. I wake up before my mind can come to a conclusion.
My mother and I were sitting on the front bench seat in her old red suburban. She was sitting in the passengers seat, and I on the left in what would be the driver’s seat if the steering wheel had been there: it wasn’t. I knew we were in a car because there were visors attached to the ceiling. Attached to my visor were three of my black hair claws. I immediately remembered that I had left them in mom’s car.
I was turned slightly towards my mom and she towards me. I asked her how her dog was doing, and mom told me that she (the dog) had walked back to the car and sat there, still as a statue, for two hours straight. While she told me this I envisioned the white fluffy poodle mix walking very slowly towards mom’s Yukon and sitting in the back.
I looked at the visor and saw that my hair claws were holding pieces of paper to the visor. I removed them, unfolded them as they were all folded many times, and found that they were checks written out to me.
I was very concerned at the dog’s behavior, and asked mom what had happened. She told me that dad had punched her in the head, on her scull. I was furious; I had known that he had hit the dog in the past, but this time he seriously injured her. I stared forward cursing him quite loudly. I yelled swear words at the dashboard.
I turned to mom and pleaded her to let me take the dog. I feared that if I didn’t do something, dad would kill the dog the next time he abused her. But mom refused. I kept asking; she kept refusing.
I was then lying on the seat under a heavy wool blanked with my back towards my mom. I quickly turned over and told mom that I could buy the dog. I showed her my checks as proof that I had the money. I was crying for this small dog. I told her that dad didn’t have to know that I knew about him hitting her, just that I wanted to buy her. Mom shook her head and told me that I couldn’t take the dog. She said that in a few years I wouldn’t have to deal with dad and therefore shouldn’t make it difficult for the rest of them who did have to deal with him once I was gone.
I felt furious and helpless. I awoke sobbing.
We wanted to go buy some comic books, and Beth wanted to go with us. We had been driving for a few hours before she asked where we were going. B was driving, Beth was in the passengers seat, and I was in the back. He looked over at Beth and casually said, “Anchorage.” She wasn’t terribly chocked that we were headed out of town instead of going to the local comic shop. It took a very long time to drive to anchorage due to construction. We saw Melissa on the road, and she gave us a ride the rest of the way into anchorage.
She dropped B and I off at my parent’s place then drove on into town in her little car. Someone I don’t know asked dad accusingly why he let his daughter drive in the city alone. Dad didn’t see a problem with it. My parents had a lot of dogs, all of which I hadn’t seen before. I went into Melissa’s room and saw my dog it was a little, hyper thing, running all over Melissa’s bed, unable to sit still. I was trying to coax it up close to me, but at that time Melissa drove into the yard, and a larger dog came into the room and started barking, too much commotion for the little dog.
Then B and I were talking with my parents and Melissa about our apartment hunt. Melissa didn’t understand the term ‘unfurnished,’ so I had to explain it to her and listed for her the furniture we own. She asked if we had a headboard; I told her no.
I was then naked but for my panties, leaning over the back of the couch in the living room trying to remember someone’s name. But I couldn’t. There was a shower stall/bath tub right behind me, and I stepped in. I stood with my back to the faucet and my hair under the water for some time with my eyes closed.
After thoroughly soaking my hair, I opened my eyes and saw my father standing at the other end of the tub. I didn’t find this strange or wrong at all. He was dressed in black pants and a black shirt. I asked him why he was still dressed (he was going to take a shower, after all) and he said that he didn’t want to undress in front of everyone in the living room. It made sense to me. I grabbed a towel off the rack yet stayed in the shower stall.
After I finished drying my face, I saw that my mom was now standing in the tub fully clothed. She was holding a dishtowel and was rubbing my fathers nipples uncertainly. I noticed that her nails were perfectly manicured. He turned his head to her and reached for her hands tenderly. I felt awkward seeing this. Not embarrassed for what they were doing, but awkward in the sense that they should be alone. I brought the towel back up to my face, not wanting them to know I saw anything. I then realize that I had showered with my glasses on and they were covered with water drops. I took them off.
I was at mom and dads. It was around dinnertime, and I was getting hungry. So I went to the kitchen to make some dinner. I was going to make spaghetti and meatballs for the whole family. I got the sauce in one pot getting warm and the water in another pot then went to the bathroom while it was boiling. I came back and both of my pots were gone and the burners they were on had been turned off. In their place were two flat cookie sheets covered in non-cooked beans and all sorts of herbs neatly grouped and looking very aesthetic and very purposeful. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to my pots. I looked around a bit and found them in the sink and dad was doing dishes. The kitchen felt very crowded with stuff on the counters.
I was upset that mom had thought they were dirty. She stepped into the kitchen, I asked why she took my pots away, and she said that I wasn’t watching them so she figured I was done. I got super upset - was crying so hard I could barely talk. I almost yelled that I had just gone to the bathroom for one minute to come back and find that I had been kicked out of the kitchen. I followed mom downstairs trying to get her to tell me why she had done it and trying to convey that she shouldn’t have. I told her that I had been hungry and since she hadn’t started dinner then I was going to. But my anger and sadness just kept building and building until I was doing that big-breath-in thing that you do when you’ve been crying reeeeally hard and my speaking was barely a whisper. She handed me my black yoga pants and said, ‘There, will that make you happy?’ and went back upstairs.
I followed, speechless in my angry tears, and found the kitchen to be empty but for one sandwich-sized plastic bag filled half way with spaghetti noodles cut into pieces the length of the bag so that they all fit perfectly horizontal. That was all that was left of the dinner I had left. I was in sheer agony - dropped to my knees right there on the kitchen rug and wept hard and uncontrollably. I ran out of the kitchen and downstairs to the orange laz-y-boy chair that was always my favorite, grabbed a blanket, and cried and cried. My old dog Chilie jumped up into the chair with me and laid with me. I remember thinking, “I’m not going to survive the entire summer here!”
All of a sudden I wanted to talk to B - he was still in Fairbanks. I went to the family room, but the computer was gone and so was everything else - I remember thinking that it smelled musty. The phone was gone, and there was no phone elsewhere downstairs. I heard Melissa coming down the stairs, so I ran back to the chair and got back under the blanket with Chilie. Mom was right behind Melissa, and they both stood on opposite sides of the chair (Melissa on my left, mom on my right) trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I told them to go away. Melissa grabbed a book from the bookshelf and asked if I had ever read it - if not, then I need to. I caught a small glimpse of the cover and noticed that the word ‘sex’ was in its title. I pulled the covers up over my eyes to make everyone go away.