Sliding Into Home (4 page)

As I got a little older the racial divisions at my elementary school became so obvious that I was actually ashamed to be white. I hated the white kids, so I started telling people I was black. Whether they believed me—with my blonde hair and blue eyes—or not didn’t really matter. I just didn’t want to associate with the white kids.

Another good friend of mine at the time was a Mexican boy named Chris. I think I was probably his only friend. He sort of just blended in and went unnoticed by most of the other kids, but I thought he was
the greatest. He would come over and call my mom Ms. Wilkinson with his little accent and I thought it was so cute.

I took him skating for the first time and loved getting him to do all sorts of fun things that he’d never done before. He was very religious and sheltered, so I felt I needed to open his eyes to other important things in the world—like Ouija boards.

The whole concept of Ouija boards scared the shit out of him because of his religious background; he wanted to stay away from this devil game. But I convinced him to give it a shot, of course. We went to my room, sat down, and turned the lights out. With the Ouija board balanced on our laps, we asked it our important questions.

“Will Kendra have big boobs?”

The dial slowly inched its way to spell out Y-E-S. (Damn right!)

“Will Target ever sell black Barbies?”

Y-E-S. (Good to know.)

Then it was Chris’s turn. I didn’t really believe in the powers of the Ouija, but sometimes it seemed like odd things happened when we started playing with it.

“Will Chris die?”

It seemed like a perfectly good question for a little kid to ask.

We were very quiet and the atmosphere in the room felt a little scary as the dial slowly moved to the
Y
. When it spelled out Y-E-S, Chris freaked out and ran home.

A few months later we were playing kickball at school with a bunch of kids when Chris started acting really weird. We played kickball almost every day at recess, so he knew the rules as well as any other kid. But when it was his turn, he kicked the ball and ran across the field to second base instead of to first. He was on my team and a good friend, so instead of laughing at him like the other kids I
corrected him and pointed him in the direction of first base for next time.

Then when he was up again he kicked the ball and ran straight to third base. More laughter from the other kids.

I didn’t get it. Why wasn’t he running to first? What was his problem?

The next day he didn’t come to school. Then a week went by and there was no sign of Chris. We started asking the teacher about him, and eventually she told us all that Chris had a brain tumor and would not be back.

Chris was in the hospital for a while and then he went to a special school where I got to visit him one time. He was in a wheelchair and didn’t look healthy at all, and I was so sad for him. His illness seemed to be happening so fast. One day we were playing with the Ouija board in my room and the next he was in the hospital.

Shortly after I visited him, he died. Even though I knew he was sick, I didn’t realize he was going to die, so I felt like I didn’t get to say good-bye. It was heartbreaking to lose him.

Maybe that day with the Ouija board he knew he was sick, and asking if he was going to die was his way of trying to tell me. Or maybe we were just two kids having fun and it was an odd coincidence. Either way, the prediction came true. I’ve never touched a Ouija board since, because it reminds me of Chris and brings back all sorts of sad feelings.

Chris will always have a special place in my heart. I think about him all the time, and if you asked a Ouija board if I’ll always remember him, I can tell you for certain that the answer would be Y-E-S.

Outside of my few friends at school, I also turned to odd people around my neighborhood for companionship.

Next door to the development where we lived was a retirement community that as kids we kindly referred to as the “old-people complex.” The other kids in the neighborhood and I loved it there, and we bugged the elderly people all the time.

One of my friends and I really bonded with an older Asian man named Yen who lived there. After school we would go and knock on Yen’s door together, or sometimes I went by myself. I never told my mom about the visits, though, because I knew she wouldn’t approve. And if she was going to say no, then why ask, right?

Yen didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak Yen, yet somehow we communicated. He would always ask me to come in, but I knew better than that. Instead he would come outside and watch me as I performed all the cool things I was able to do at the time: I’d jump rope, bounce a ball off my knee, and do a few cartwheels, and the two of us would just look at each other and talk with our eyes. It seemed pretty normal. I felt closer to this old man than I did to most of the kids in my school.

This was also the case with an older woman in the neighborhood. She and I were supertight. I would go to her house and get something cold to drink and play with all her birds and cats. I would help her carry groceries, too, which made me feel like I was doing a good deed.

It’s funny that I was so into helping my elderly neighbor, because if my mom asked me to carry groceries I would get mad and try anything to get out of it. Doing it for this woman, though, was no problem. I liked helping others when no one was looking or expected
anything from me, but to do the same for my mom, who expected me to help around the house, always seemed like a pain in the ass. I would want to do stuff to make her happy and surprise her with good deeds, but the second she asked me to help her I wasn’t interested.

When my grandmother, Mary, moved from New Jersey to live next door, she and I had a similar relationship. She was very loving, but she wasn’t the kind of pushover grandparent who spoils kids. She was more like a second mother to me.

My grandfather, her ex-husband, also took over some of the fatherly duties. He would take me to soccer games and occasionally pick me up from school. In the car he would sing “You Are My Sunshine” and I would tell him to shut up because I thought it was embarrassing.

He was a World War II veteran, so he would take us to air shows to watch the Blue Angels, and to the naval base in San Diego. We spent a lot of time there and attended all the special events they held at the base—Easter egg hunts, Mother’s Day brunch, and the annual barbecue where they served amazing Mexican food. Of course the Fourth of July was like his Christmas. He would say the Pledge of Allegiance every day, but on the Fourth of July he would raise a flag in the yard and, with his hand over his heart, sing the national anthem loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. All the kids would laugh at him, myself included, but he didn’t care. He loved his country and made sure we grew up appreciating the military.

My grandfather taught my brother and me to say “please” and “thank you” to others and to not put our elbows on the table, and I think he was the first person on the planet to recycle. I would accompany him on the drive to the recycling center with a million cans in tow, and more often than not he would pull over along the way to
scoop up more recyclables from the side of the road. He’d swerve across six lanes of traffic and drive in reverse a hundred yards if he spotted a can on the road. It was crazy, but he was set on teaching me to treat others with respect and to care about the world.

However, all my values and manners went out the window when it came to my brother, Colin. When we were little we did
not
get along. We are three years apart, so in elementary school he was always following me around and copying my every move. I hated him for being a little tagalong so I was constantly yelling at him and beating him up. I was always so nice to everyone else and made a point of protecting the weaker kids in school, but my brother was my personal punching bag.

Aside from a few fights with my brother, though, I was a good kid, and a pretty normal one at that. I was always outside, building forts and tree houses, digging for dinosaur bones, and using my imagination to make my own fun. Friends or no friends, old Asian dudes or little Mexican boys, dad or no dad, I was going to enjoy life and do whatever I had to do to be a happy kid.

Everything was going smoothly until I graduated elementary school and moved on to middle school. It was then that I could have used a father, or at the very least a friend who was a good influence. Because when I turned thirteen, I was no longer my grandfather’s little sunshine.

CHAPTER 4
 

A Perfect Misfit

When I got to middle school I thought I was very mature. Some of my best friends were senior citizens, so it only made sense that I would think I was too grown-up for the kids in my own grade. I was a tiny blonde girl running around in soccer shorts, but inside I was wise beyond my years.

I wanted to know more about everything I was beginning to be told to avoid. Sex, drugs, alcohol—it all had my teenage brain working a mile a minute. I was ready to explore the world, but my mom had other plans for me. She was strict, man.

The first real parties I ever went to were at Skateworld, where I had birthday parties as a kid. My mom loved it then, but once I got to middle school her opinion changed. She thought it was a place where bad kids hung out, and she was right. The middle school girls always dressed skanky to go to Skateworld, and before the end of the night they’d usually find someone to hook up with. Everyone my age stayed there until it closed and then hung out at a spot in the neighborhood until all hours. But I had a curfew, so at nine o’clock
my mom rolled up to Skateworld in her red Jeep Grand Cherokee to drag me away from all the fun. I was embarrassed and, in my mind, it was totally unfair. I wanted to do what my friends were doing; instead, I sat at home wondering what I was missing. Then, in school on Monday, everyone would talk about who kissed who or who gave head to who, and I’d missed all of it!

I couldn’t live with her rules. I was ready to be a rebel and make my own choices. She pulled me out of Skateworld one too many times and I decided I would not let her ruin my night again. So when the next big party came around, I didn’t bother to tell her about it. Instead I just ran away. I left the house when she wasn’t paying attention and spent the night getting drunk on Mickey’s malt liquor in the Mervyn’s parking lot with no intention of going home again. A few hours in I was pretty hammered, and a friend thought I would sober up with some coffee. No luck. That just made me more wired and gave me a stomachache. It was a disaster.

At the end of the night when the party was over I had nowhere to go but home. My big plan to run away didn’t even last the night.

Even when I was in elementary school, I’d dreamed about running away. I would get a couple people in on my plan and we would talk about saving our money and getting on a bus to leave town. We weren’t trying to run away from anything specific; we were more interested in running toward something. We wanted to be adults. We wanted adventure. It would take us weeks to save our pennies, and when we finally had our money together we would all chicken out at the last minute.

This time was sort of the same. I was going to run away to make my own decisions and be my own boss, but when all the other kids went home, I had no choice but to do the same.

My mom was very mad when I arrived home, of course. She yelled, grounded me, and threatened to never let me see certain friends again. I just stood there and listened and showed no emotion. I didn’t care what she had to say. The bottom line was that I was back under her rules and already plotting my next escape.

One of the next parties I was invited to was down at the beach. Based on my recent behavior, my mom wasn’t so sure I should go.

“Pleeeeeeeease,” I begged, knowing full well that I was going to go no matter what she said.

“Are the girl’s parents going to be there?”

“Of course.” (Fingers crossed behind my back.)

“Okay, but I’m picking you up at ten
P.M
.,” she said. “No funny business.”