There were very few trees in this suburban purgatory I found myself in. Granted, it was southern Texas and hotter than Hades but the lack of trees bothered me more than the heat. In Southwest Louisiana we had big beautiful trees to climb and sit under and our grass was green and soft under your toes. The grass in Flour Bluff was non-existent during the summer. Everything just burned. The field behind the Smith’s house had tall brownish gold grass and weeds that would stick you and scratch your legs if you played too close. Those fields were flat as far as your eyes could could see. Standing at the edge of those thorny dry fields made me feel small and inferior, similar to standing at the edge of an ocean. There’s part of you that wants to walk right out into the abyss but there’s a fear of what you might stumble upon.
Fear was my constant companion nowadays. There were weird things happening on the news: a little girl had been stuck in a well and was having a birthday, there was a man killing young women and hiding bodies in random places. I absorbed all of this and couldn’t seem to shake the idea of impending disaster in my own life. I had no family. No one was coming to get me and I wasn’t sure anyone was looking for me. I was vulnerable and quite hopeless at this point. I remember finding a skull of a dead animal at the edge of the thorny fields while out walking with Roxanne one day. Roxanne freaked out and wouldn’t touch it but I picked it up. At 6, I didn’t understand that this was an animal skull and not a human skull but I imagined that would be me soon. Dead in that field and no one would care. I brought the skull back home with us and washed it and put it in a safe place in my room. Whoever or whatever it was, I wasn’t going to leave it out there alone.
The playground in suburban hell was near the house so Roxanne and I would venture there when we needed to get out of the house. Like most girls, we would make up storylines and play house on the playground with one of us being the mother and another one the father or the baby. One of the older boys in the neighborhood would come out and play with us. I cannot remember his name so for the sake of storytelling, we will call him Jacob. Jacob was significantly older than us, possibly a teenager, because he was much taller than Roxanne’s older brother Jason. He lived across the street from the Smiths and would come hang out with us in the garage on those hot summer days. He would tell us stories about bad men that lived the fields and whatever story he could muster up to freak us out. Jacob would take over our storyline at the playground and start bossing us around but he was a welcome distraction from our normal routine so we went along with it. During one of his playground takeovers, he demanded to be the father and since I was the mother, he explained to me that we were married and had to kiss. I didn’t want to kiss him and would run away when he would try to kiss me. Roxanne thought this was hilarious and I saw it more of a game of chase until he finally caught me. I has told to lay down on the ground and I listened. Jacob pinned me to the ground and stuck his huge tongue in my mouth and it was disgusting and slimy. When I flipped over to hide my face he ran his hands down my backside and my legs. I shot up and ran all the way to back to the Smiths’ house and locked myself in the room.
Roxanne came to check on me. She was a great friend and we agreed that we would just play in our rooms to avoid the skulls, wells, thorny fields, Jacob and Jason.
Days would pass and there would be no sign of my mother. If she did come home, I would cry and beg her to let me go home to Dad. She told me that she’d gotten a job in Corpus Christi, Texas and that she would bring me with her soon. She always looked tired when she showed up. Mrs. Linda must have noticed that there was something wrong with Mom or was afraid that I would never leave because she began asking me questions about my father. The Smiths had never asked about Dad before. They had written him off as an abusive, crazy, black man that was beating up my innocent, well mannered, white mother. I told her everything I could remember. She asked if he was a good father and I told her that he did everything with me. I told her about our walks to Sel-Mart and riding with him on the lawn mower and how he would tickle me until I couldn’t breathe. I told her about our animals and Space Granny and that Rebecca has built me a doll house and painted it all by herself for my birthday. I even told her about Rebecca’s hamster that rolled all over the house in a little ball. Mrs. Linda didn’t give me any sign of approval through her cigarette hazed face but instead looked irritated, like she had been bamboozled by my mother. I yammered on about every facet of our lives I could remember until she finished her cigarette and sent me on my way.
After breakfast one morning, Mrs. Linda asked me to come to the phone and say hello. I went into the kitchen and put the phone to my ear and it was Dad’s voice. It was him. My Daddy. It was the brightest moment I’d had in months. He tried to talk to me but all he could say was that he loved me and he missed me. Over and over. That’s all we could say to each other. I don’t know how we ended the conversation but I was elated after the call. It was like finding out he wasn’t dead. I’d suppressed all of my hope of going home to my family. I’d accepted these awful circumstances for months and that short phone call gave me strength. And little did I know, I would need all the strength I could muster over the next few months.
Saving Elizabeth 