On the Road

Moving is something we’ve done a lot, like how some people go on vacations. They leave to get away from all of the mess just to return a week later to the same life they had before. They realize nothing has really changed. Sure, the grass is maybe a bit duller and the house is a little more stuffy, but the neighbors are all the same and the family cat is still sleeping. We moved to start over, again and again. We moved to meet new people, to keep things from getting boring. My mom needed the rush, the feeling of it all: boxes, bags, silverware being carried out to the car at midnight, traveling to somewhere new and exotic. Except it never ended up that way. We usually just settled down in the next town over. Nothing fancy, nothing new. Same types of people, clothing, friendships. We never stuck around long enough to notice how the sun didn’t set in the kitchen window anymore, or how the sidewalks disappeared and the grass turned to stones. How we fell asleep at night to sirens or loud music or the sound of the ocean throwing itself against the shore. It never seemed to matter.
I was three the first time we moved. We needed to downgrade. We went from a cozy ranch with neighbors and tea parties to the townhouses with the dumpsters out front and people that screamed all night long. I didn’t complain; I didn’t know how. My mom was a wreck, but I didn’t understand. All the romantic nights and champagne and wedding vows, blown away like sand. She never was the same again after my father left. But anyone who thinks a marriage is a sacred, forever thing is an idiot. I guess no one ever told her that. Maybe I should feel sorry for her but I don’t know how to do that either.
My father was a joke. If Alcoholics Anonymous couldn’t handle him, I don’t know why my mother thought she could. From what I’ve heard, he has a temper like weather: sunny skies and warm to dark clouds and wind chills. He was raised to be mean; it was something in his nature. My mom thought she could help him, soothe his cracked past until all the wounds were healed. But things never work like that (another thing she should have learned). The wedding was simple, the marriage was not. One day he was gone, and all the flowers in my mother’s garden shriveled. Mr. Soller is now just a man who’s name I have memorized, who’s picture I have studied one thousand times but still cannot put together in my head. I wish I could say that he doesn’t matter to me, but then I’d be lying. I get angry when I look into the mirror and see his face. And then that gets me even angrier when I realize that anger was his life, and me being angry at him is just like me being him. I make myself crazy sometimes.
The few years we lived at the townhouse were not so bad. I was young, and leaned on my older sister for everything. Sam was going to school, and read to me everyday. We made up plays together and sang songs about our stuffed animals. We fought all the time but still got along. She taught me how to draw flowers and puppies with big eyes, how to read, to color in the lines and turn on the TV. She always complained about how annoying I was but I loved her all the same. Everything was fine as just the three of us until my mom realized she couldn’t live without a man. That was how it all changed.
My mother went through men like babies go through diapers. She was beautiful; they fell for her. She reeled them in like fish. If one was too small she cast it back out into the sea, waves everywhere. She had specific qualities she liked, but never one man could carry them all, so they came and went, leaving little holes in my heart along the way. She never noticed what it did to me.
There was this one guy who made us sit down at a table to eat dinner. We’d never done that before. Then there were others who called me sweetie and baby and made me play games in the big bed when my mom wasn’t home until I threw up all over their pressed shirts. And that was how it was like for a while. I didn’t know it was wrong. And then along came this guy who’s last name is the name of a fish. He growled and mumbled to himself so often that I thought he was a bear. He was spiteful and nasty and hated children like they were some sort of disease. He never sweated and was afraid of water and birds. He and my mother ran off and married without telling a soul. I found out five months later. Big deal. I didn’t care as long as I still got to read and sing to my stuffed animals. They stayed together longer than anyone could have imagined. The family hated him so we lost contact with everyone, my mom thinking everything would be wonderful in our little family of four.