The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir (3 page)

My weekend trips to the hardware store had slowly taken the place of my weekends in the mountains, and after a while I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched my climbing gear except perhaps to dig for some art supplies I’d packed away in the boxes below it. I convinced myself that my house projects weren’t that different from climbing: They almost always involved some moment of fear—that I’d shoot myself off the ladder, nail my foot to the floor, or run a saw through the plumbing—and that moment was almost always followed by immediate relief. In either case (fear or relief) I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a dump truck of manure delivered, a load that made the entire neighborhood smell like a dairy barn for weeks.

I figured these house projects were making me smart, even if I didn’t always know what I was doing. I remember calling an equipment rental place one Valentine’s Day weekend, telling them I needed to rent a fourteen-inch “vibrator,” assuming this was the common word for the large vibrating pad sander I needed to refinish my wood floors. The guy laughed into the
phone: “Ha, you and every other woman in Portland!” I was so caught up in the project, in getting the equipment and cracking a whip, that it took me a minute to get his joke.

Another day, I wanted to trim some branches off the big fir tree in the front yard; I didn’t want it to take long, just a quick up and down, so I left the ladder in the garage and scrambled up the fir with a tree saw in my mouth. New neighbors were moving in next door, ushering boxes up their front stairs, when I dropped out of the tree near their porch to say hello and welcome them to the neighborhood. They gave me very uneasy looks as I stood there, and then suddenly seemed to amp up their need to “get moving.” A few minutes later, I went into my house to pee, and as I washed my hands I noticed in the bathroom mirror that I was sporting half of a Fu Manchu mustache—long, bushy hair that started just below my left nostril and ended near my chin. My best guess was that I’d inadvertently wiped tree sap on my face and then nuzzled my dog, thus creating a curious wad of facial hair for the new neighbors to ponder. I spent the next month cleverly trying to catch them as they left their house, hoping to offer a casual “Hello” and show off my hair-free face to restart our first meeting.

The hard work (and possible social isolation) paid off, and over time, the house became home. The front living room was repaired, the woodshop was moved to the garage, and our lumpy couch was replaced with a nicer one—one that I bought
from the want ads and that didn’t come with fleas and rats. The kitchen floor was replaced and new appliances were installed, and the house’s shabby exterior was rehabilitated, resheathed, and painted to look handsome and capable again.

In early summer one year, I cut open the back wall and installed two large glass doors so you could wander from the kitchen through the dining room into the backyard. Then I rehabbed the backyard into a little sanctuary, building a brick fire pit in the center of the lawn, not far from the deck that I salvaged from a friend’s house, one ten-foot chunk at a time, maxing out the load capacity of my car along with my luck.

On summer nights, my friends and I would gather at “Southeast State Park” (their nickname for my yard), and we’d throw open the glass doors so that whatever was happening in the kitchen could drain onto the deck and then spill toward the fire ring, where we’d set up our lawn chairs. That feeling of air and people floating unobstructed from one room to the next, from inside to out, was one of the best things about my house. Even in the winter, the big glass doors and windows supported that sense of openness.

I loved my house, but when I look back at it realistically, I was able to enjoy it only a small part of the time. Most of my time at home was focused on mowing the grass, repairing the hot water
heater, cleaning the gutters, and trying to keep the garage from listing farther into the neighbor’s yard—that’s how I spent most of my waking hours at home. And more and more, the chance to enjoy my house was even more cramped because of my long-distance commute, racing back and forth for work and up to Olympia, a hundred miles away, which is why I’d chosen this particular moment to try (once again) to repair the bathroom fuse. Once again, the attempt left me slumped on the floor at the base of a ladder, yelling, “Akkkk,” but at least I was trying. And I could always clomp down the stairs to flip the breaker like always, like this is what homeowners do, and what I’d likely have to do again next month or some other day when I least expected it.

(PORTLAND, OREGON, OCTOBER 2003)

L
ast night, as I was driving home from work in a downpour, I slammed on my brakes after spotting three kittens about to saunter across the highway. I pulled over to the shoulder, then backed up, watching for them in the glow of the taillights. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I caught up with my little fuzz balls but was certain that something needed to be done. I hate seeing roadkill, and dead kittens would just crush me inside.

I got back to what I thought must be the spot and looked around, scanning the area through the rain and flipping the windshield wipers, craning my neck over the steering wheel as I flipped on the high beams and then the low, and then I spun around in my seat to squint through the dim light behind the car. “Crap,” I muttered, unclicking the seat belt and angrily
pulling my hood over my head, then pausing to look in the rearview mirror for traffic.

People get killed on the highway. Years ago, my sister was nearly hit when she got a flat tire along the interstate. She had done everything right, crawling out the passenger-side door to avoid the highway traffic—a near act of God because she was nine and a half months pregnant and the size of a small army. She got to the trunk to pull out the spare and that’s when a semi came by and the wind shear nearly knocked her in a ditch. A passing motorist saw it—saw my sister in her tan wool coat that wouldn’t button over her belly anymore—so he stopped and changed the tire as my sister sat in the car, biting her lip, fearful that this stranger would help her and then pop her in the head with the tire iron. We were taught not to offer or invite aid because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choice but to trust that the man holding your tire iron, cussing at your old lug nuts, is a deeply kind human after all.

I threw open the car door and stepped into the rain, quickly skirting around the car to the far side of the highway shoulder. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” I shouted in a singsong that I hoped could be heard over the rain. I continued walking inside the beam of my headlights, scanning the ditch as I walked, and seeing something that for a moment made my heart skip: a dead
kitty that turned out to be a shoe. Ready to give up, I turned to walk back, and a movement by my car caught my eye; a hairy ball crept out from under the car. I got closer, shading my eyes from the headlights and wondering what the hell I’d do with the cat once I caught her, and a moment later, as I bent down to pick her up, I realized I was staring at a baby raccoon barely the size of a beer mug. “Shit!” I whispered as a semitruck plowed by, causing me to do a sidestep and tumbling the kit.

“Hi, little fella,” I said, squatting down on my haunches and wringing my hands together like I was holding a bug, afraid to reach out for the animal. In my mind, although raccoons are cute and I love how they can walk around holding an ear of corn in their mitts just like small children at a picnic, they inhabit the general category of fearful creatures called “varmints.” Like rats, they carry diseases, have teeth, and show up when least expected, like when you’re moving a stack of old flower pots in your garage; they are vicious when cornered and run in packs like street thugs.

“Where’s your mama?”

The baby suddenly veered left toward the ditch and sped up, like it was drawn by some imperceptible voice shouting, “NO-O-O-O! Do not walk toward the human!” I stood up and examined the ditch near my car, where I could finally see three sets of eyes looking back at me: two smaller sets (kits) and a
larger, meaner set (their mother), which spun me on my heels and sent me racing to the car. I jumped in, yelped, and slammed the door behind me.

That was weird,
I thought as I clutched the steering wheel, sighing in relief. Then another monstrous truck drove by, shaking my car and causing me to panic. My neck muscles were tighter than piano strings and I had a headache. I just wanted to be home; to walk into the living room and see my housemates up late and studying by the fireplace, to chitchat for a few minutes before wandering off.

I sighed and started the car. “Good luck, my friends,” whispering to the mother as I pulled forward along the shoulder. “Be safe.”

I was on the road too much lately. I knew it, and I was glad it would soon change.

At about the same time I purchased my new old house, I took a job as a State Hazardous Waste Inspector, which entailed popping in on various businesses to see how they were managing their chemicals. I’d check to see that they were abiding by the law, that acid wasn’t dribbling into the workers’ boots or out the back door, and that local farm boys out hunting weren’t going to fall in a hole filled with a thousand gallons of waste, something dumped and forgotten and so hot it would incinerate their legs
within seconds. It was a perfect job for a person like me—someone curious and fidgety (according to some), and averse to sitting at a desk for too long—and it gave me a chance to see how things were made: imitation crab legs, bullets, paper plates, car batteries, applesauce, tar paper, wool blankets, bicycles, ballistic missiles, shiny water nozzles, and little horseshoe-shaped grills destined for use at a taco shell factory. Like a kid touring the local cookie factory, I looked forward to finding out what ingredients went into the production of a solar panel, a wine bottle, sticky tape, and biodegradable soap. The only real downside was that people often didn’t like to see me. A visit from my cronies and me was akin to getting frisked by a cop or audited by the IRS. It was like having your teeth cleaned, and like any good dentist who learned to stand beyond the kicking radius of his patient, I learned to duck and cover, and to steel myself against the wave of ill will that sometimes surged toward me when I walked in the door.

I took classes and workshops, and studied various workbooks and manuals. I read and reread the law, highlighted various sections of the rulebook, and listened hard to what my mentors were saying. I even attended a class at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, where I thought I’d learn to shoot a gun but instead simply learned that, at lunch, it was better not to picnic in the grassy area near the obstacle course because nearly every day a SWAT team would suddenly
materialize out of the kudzu to charge across the field in their black commando outfits and practice busting down a door with a battering ram.

My class wasn’t as action-packed; we marched around in the woods, pretending to collect evidence off a truck that supposedly had flipped over and dumped drums full of chromic acid across the road. The truck and drums were there, tucked in the woods with the humidity, no-see-ums, and fire ants; the only part that was missing was the toxic waste—that part we had to imagine.

The main lesson I learned from this activity was that my job was a cakewalk compared with those of my classmates—Virginia State Troopers, New York City Police, Texas Rangers, and bomb squad guys. We stayed up late one night, lounging around on pool chairs under a flashing neon hotel sign, talking loud enough to be heard over the nearby highway noise and the grind of a nearby ice machine. We horsed around, flipping bottle caps over the pool, then tossing a pizza box like a Frisbee until it sailed over the fence into the highway chaff. At one point, as we were shooting the shit, I asked a general question like: “Have you ever been so afraid or freaked out that you peed your pants?” We were well into our beers and I figured this group of smart-asses would make some wisecrack like: “You mean besides the moment I saw your scrawny ass walk in the room?” But instead, they got quiet and reached into the cooler for another beer.

A guy from New York told a story about responding to a call about “shots fired” in an affluent neighborhood. He arrived at the address and ran up to the front porch, when all of a sudden the front door flew open and he found himself eye to eye with the gunman: an eight-year-old boy who turned and bolted up a flight of stairs, firing a shot over his shoulder as he ran. “He looked at me like my own boy does, like when I’ve caught him playing on his computer after I’ve told him to go to bed,” the cop said as he stared into the can he was rolling between his palms. He made fun of himself, cackling that he had gotten so knock-kneed, he had to hide in the bushes for twenty minutes, trying to get his shit together so he could walk back to his patrol car to radio for help.

One of the guys from Colorado gave a single nod, and in a tone barely audible over the ice maker, said, “Ya, I know that feeling.” He didn’t need to say more; we knew he was one of the first people to enter Columbine High School after a couple of students had opened fire, killing thirteen people and injuring dozens more. This guy, now sitting on a deck chair beside me, had done his job and waddled into the school, wearing a blast suit: puffy padding, a twenty-pound helmet, and other protective gear appropriate for finding and defusing bombs. We all knew what he must have seen—the media broadcasts lingered for weeks after the event—but no amount of imagination (of hearing accounts and reading reports, or seeing the kind of special effects horror that finds its way to television and
movies) could capture what he must have experienced walking into Columbine, or how the images of backpacks, upended tables, chairs, books, and blood splatter may have lodged themselves deep inside his understanding of the world. It took hours to clear the building of nearly a hundred bombs—hours that must have felt like years to everyone involved, especially, maybe, the bomb squad.

No one said anything for a minute, and I felt embarrassed, complete with burning cheeks and red ears, for asking the question in such a flippant way. Sitting there, I realized I was out of my depth with these guys. I was just a state worker with nothing to talk about except maybe the day the copy machine jammed and I panicked because I had a huge meeting that required a printed agenda. More than that, I recognized that I was small and soft; I wanted to believe in people—that they were kind and good, and given the chance, everything would turn out okay—but bad things
do
happen, and sometimes the best you can do is swim through them, focus, and years later say, “Ya, I know that feeling,” when some smart ass asks whether you’ve ever been so scared you wanted to pee your pants.

In my first year on the job, the worst thing I ever saw was a poisoned fishpond. It was a man-made pond, smaller than a 7-Eleven parking lot, and stocked with big goldfish and koi—ornamental, expendable fish that lured hungry herons, falcons,
raccoons, and other varmints from the river nearby. A drum of paint thinner had been dumped into the pond through a storm-water drain, and I ended up standing on the pond bank, arguing with a man nearly a foot and a half taller than me—a massive mountain of a man with hair bulging out from around the shoulder straps of his T-shirt—arguing that he had broken the law. He yelled that it didn’t matter; it was his pond, his fish, his property, and the state could shove off. After a few minutes, he stormed off to call his lawyer, and I stood there watching as a thousand tiny fish bobbed up to the pond surface, seeming to paw at the air with their mouths gaping and their fins slowly circling, and then one by one they listed sideways and died with their eyes wide open, staring at me like I had failed them.

I nearly cried while standing by the pond, and pouted for hours afterward, chiding myself that I should have thrown absorbent pads into the water instead of arguing. Or maybe, instead of feeling so righteous and indignant, I could have grabbed a rake and pulled some of the living fish into a pail. I swore to myself that’s what I’d do if I ever came across a dying pond again.

Over time, I realized I wasn’t necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.

There didn’t seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and “What’s the right thing to do?” wasn’t an easy
question, even though I assumed the answers would get easier once I came to understand how to best wield the skinny rulebook that I packed in my gear bag. My field notes became dotted with little sidebar observations that couldn’t be readily explained: “Man used severed horse leg as stopper in floor drain” at a rendering plant, and “Canada geese landed on corrosive settling pond. Did not melt; seems they should have.”

My job exposed me to the real world, and the more I saw (like the fact that nature was all up inside what I once believed was simply industrial, and how people are willing to crawl on their elbows for a paycheck), the more I realized how limited my field of vision was. I was protected and privileged, and to be honest, I didn’t really want to know what it took to make the copper cookware that I ogled at the store—cookware that I wanted to dangle from hooks near the stovetop, fleshing out my kitchen and making it appear that I was capable and clever, and ready to create a feast at a moment’s notice. I have never cooked like that and would probably just use one of those copper-bottomed pots to make popcorn.

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn’t always liberate you. Instead, it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up—it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions. Some nights when I got home from work, I’d find myself mowing the grass, cleaning the gutters, or retesting the bathroom’s
electrical system (once again pulling out the short ladder and grabbing a screwdriver for support) while I rattled my head as if a bee had flown in my ear, trying to make sense out of what I’d just witnessed (a taxidermist boiling skulls in a common kitchen pot; a hatch of frogs living on the walls surrounding acid baths). On those days, I imagined that a better world would be less complicated, less involved, and with less need to mass- produce doorknobs and lock sets, electric outlets, power cords, frozen chicken wings, packages of steak, rubber bands, and a million little foam earbuds that slip over the broadcasting end of an iPod. I’d stand staring at Jenna’s room, the recycling porch, and imagine what my life would be like if I could squeeze all my worldly possessions into a space like that.