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 |  Ordinary tales of an ordinary woman. |
| My name is Casey, and I was born a month late. It wasn't my fault that the womb was so invitingly warm and cozy and safe, but my mother wasn't willing to take the blame either, so it was with quite a few curses and a rare scream or two that I was rudely introduced to the world. I was a fat wee thing, bearing a shock of thick brown hair and a mouthful of feces. The latter was, apparently, cause for some concern and there was a small ruckus over me for a few days. I must have decided that the attention I received at that point made up for the violent expulsion from my previously happy home, for I settled down, spit up the poop, and went home to meet my family. I don't remember much about those first few years, understandably, but they tell me that I lived on a few military bases in Georgia and Florida before we finally settled in Copperas Cove, Texas near Fort Hood. It was then that I had my first real memory. I must have been only three at the time, because I remember later having my fourth birthday in Copperas Cove, but I was sent out into the back yard, presumably to keep out of the movers' hair. I toddled about, as toddlers do, and found myself clinging to the chain-link fence, peering across the four inch space that separated me from another tiny face. Her name was Kristy Lynn and she was, by all accounts, my best friend. But not this day. She and her wee friend, Selena, were standing in the yard next door, glaring fiercely at me. They were both pretty little girls, contrasting picturesquely with Kristy Lynn's wavy blond locks and pale face next to Selena's long, black, silky hair and copper skin. Their expressions, however, were similarly unimpressed. "Who are you?" Kristy Lynn asked, hands on her hips. "I'm Casey." "What do you want?" Selena chipped in, mimicking Kristy Lynn's stance. I thought perhaps this was a game, so I did it, too. "She's making fun of us!" Kristy Lynn shouted and promptly stuck her tiny hands through the fence and pushed me onto my wee rump. I began to think they didn't like me. "I'm not! You pushed me!" I shouted back. They both gasped, appalled that I, an outsider to their happy little world, would dare shout at them. Their punishment for this atrocity was to turn on their indignant little heels and leave me alone there in the grass, confused and disgruntled at my parents for having moved us to such a stupid place. At least I would have been if I knew what "disgruntled" meant. I don't recall much more about Copperas Cove. There are small moments that come flitting back to me every so often, like using charcoal briquettes as our pet bunnies or running with big black trashbags over our heads, pretending they were kites. It was a contented time, with no school yet to develop our young minds into complexity, no boys, no responsibilities. I do distinctly remember that I saw my first pregnant lady there. It was Selena's mother, and I don't really think that I'd noticed she was pregnant at all until one day she gathered the three of us--now the best of friends--around her enormous belly. "Put your hands on it," she told us, and we did, three tiny, distinctly different hands side-by-side on the huge mound. The baby kicked then, and three tiny, distinctly different hands jerked back in unison. We were awed by that which we could not see: a tiny person living inside someone else's belly, kicking and writhing to be free. "Can it breathe?" Selena asked. "Not like we do, but yes." "Can it see?" Kristy Lynn asked. "No, not yet. Not until he comes out and learns to use the light." "Can it be a girl?" I asked, rather put off that she suggested it would be a boy. Kristy Lynn had an older brother that didn't bother us too much, but I had a little brother of my own, just a wee thing still in the crib, that I was fairly unimpressed with. Selena's mother laughed and shook her head. "Without boys," she explained, "there could be no more girls." We all gasped! Obviously Selena's mother was quite uninformed. We decided right then and there that she might be nice and pretty and smell good, but by God, she wasn't all that bright. Time passed, as it tends to do, and it came time to move again. My father was active duty in the military in those days, and it was our duty to follow him. He was going to Sembach AFB in Germany this time. It was a long way to go, but to my little brother and I, it would be an adventure. I said goodbye to Kristy Lynn and Selena, I must have, but I don't remember it. I don't remember looking back through the window until they disappeared, as I'm told I did. I don't remember flying over the ocean or arriving in Germany. I just remember the letters that Kristy Lynn and I sent to one another for the next twenty years, though we never saw one another again. |
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