I joined the U.S. Army/Summer of 1983

After I quit Bundy’s class I had contemplated joining the U.S. Army, I found a recruiter Sgt. Virginia Yamato, and made preparations to leave after I graduated high school. We were already losing our home 1422. Daddy and momma were getting a divorce, only daddy would come to the house when we weren’t there.

Larry Cormier who had been my therapist for a year tried to talk me out of going as he had been in the Army, and served during the Vietnam War. I didn’t believe him and accused him of wanting me to fail.

Boi graduated the year before and was living in the dorms of U.C. Berkeley. Jimmy was 14 and attending Roosevelt High School in the 9th with me, but he was only there because momma told the school that I didn’t have any friends and needed my kid brother there. At first Jimmy would eat lunch with me, but then found his best friends Frankie and Raul, and would just stop by to get his hamburger from me then leave. I went back to crying in the bathroom for the lunch hour, when I was up to it I would read in the library. I read The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin, Sayonara by James Michener, Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, History books about World War II, and looking at photography books by Linda McCartney. Anything to make the lunch hour pass.

On the night of my graduation from high school daddy bought some woman, I guess his girlfriend, as I was about to walk. He crushed me by bringing another woman, this was supposed to be my special day, daddy ruined things, like he used to ruin Easter Sundays at Roeding Park, by arguing with momma then we would have to go home early.

I wanted to become small, and hide this was a very familiar feeling for me, wanting to shrink really small like Jeannie would when she would hide from Major Nelson. David, the partner they assigned me to walk with took hold of my arm, but my cheeks were stained with those same familiar tears, that ate away at my soul.

Momma, Mama Tana, my little sisters and little brother Jimmy were in the stands cheering for me. But graduation night was a blur, my name was called, I shook Mr. Spino’s hand who was the Principal and slunk back to my seat, daddy had humiliated me. This feeling bit my heart hard, I stayed with the teeth marks of daddy’s vengeful attitude.

It was no wonder I was digging a way out of my life, in a few months momma, Jimmy and the girls would have to move out of the house forever. The only home I ever really knew.

The tree house was gone now, so were the swings, and the Donald Duck sign daddy had painted was rusted on the back fence. The Pearson’s our next door neighbors had moved out in 1975. The foot prints of my childhood were erased from the earth. The hours I sat in my room making cassettes, and playing paper dolls with Mo-Mo, the apple clock in the kitchen, the fireplace where we used to warm up after taking a bath on Sunday evenings, the rooms daddy had tried to add in the back, the upstairs bedroom that never got finished, there were still two by fours and sheet rock, the parking spaces daddy had painted on the cement with our names in orange paint when we first moved to the house, Boi and Matti, daddy used to misspell my name. The patio where I had slipped and broke my head when daddy used to water the patio down, the blood that swirled with the water into puddles, the square of dirt where we spent hours building roads as children, our dogs were gone, Scotty was a Collie, and Shaggy was a Goldendoodle, daddy broke Scotty’s leg with the croquet stake one day he lost his temper, he howled a painful whimper and hid in the dog house for months, one day we came home from somewhere and Shaggy was stiff, he had died. There was no money for vets back then. Shaggy used to run away whenever we would leave the wooden gate on the side of the house open, he would just bolt he was finally free.

Maybe, I was finally free too.

“Even when my father and mother forsake

Me,

Then the Lord will take care of me.”

(Psalm 27:10)