A third grade girl struggles to fit into elementary school culture while hiding from the world that her mentally ill mother rarely leaves the house.\u00a0 This piece is a chapter of a memoir I am currently writing, based on the complexities of growing up with a mother struggling with mental illness.<\/em><\/p>\n

K<\/span>im\u2019s white high heels were at least two sizes too big for my eight-year-old feet.\u00a0 I stood in front of the full length mirror, examining the gaps at the backs of my heels.\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 Too big.\u00a0 Maybe some walking practice would help.\u00a0 After about fifteen minutes of strutting around my bedroom, I was able to keep them on my feet without plunging headfirst into the yellow shag carpeting.\u00a0 Had Kim been home to witness the runway show, she would have flipped.\u00a0 Her new shoes, purchased for Easter and her middle school band and chorus concerts, were off limits to me, her sticky younger sister.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see why<\/em>, I thought, as I pulled on her new pink and white Madonna tee-shirt, the Material Girl\u2019s hair outlined with silver glitter.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like I would wear her shoes out of the house.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I could totally wear these to school today.\u00a0 A glance at the clock told me it was 10:03 a.m.\u00a0 Earlier, I had moaned to my mother that I was too sick to go to school, and she\u2019d groaned her consent from underneath a scratchy wool blanket the color of rust.\u00a0 Mom spent way more time in bed than most mothers.\u00a0 Though I didn\u2019t fully get why, it was clear that she was sick in a \u201cdifferent\u201d way.\u00a0 She sometimes used phrases like \u201cmanic-depression\u201d and \u201canxiety\u201d to explain how she felt, but the words were as mysterious to me as she was.\u00a0 What worked in my favor, however, was that she didn\u2019t get out of bed before noon on some days.\u00a0 Avoiding boring old school had become a cinch.\u00a0 But now, twirling in front of the mirror in \u201cmy\u201d new outfit, hitting the third grade didn\u2019t seem so dull.\u00a0 I could always catch The Price Is Right <\/em>tomorrow.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I considered the shoes.\u00a0 My big toe and its sidekick\u2014alien toe, my brother Eric called it, as it was longer than the big toe\u2014both peeked out happily through the a thick, white leather strap.\u00a0 A white bow smiled up from the perfect white strap.\u00a0 In the midst of our jumble of a house, the shoes were perfect.\u00a0 Clean.\u00a0 Unblemished.<\/p>\n

Our house was always a mess.\u00a0 While the folks across town had cleaning ladies, we\u2026didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Between my mother\u2019s mental illness and my father\u2019s job in New York City, they weren\u2019t the best housekeepers.\u00a0 In short, she was too tired and he was too busy.\u00a0 The poor crib wasn\u2019t even nice enough to make \u201cbefore\u201d on one of those home makeover programs.\u00a0 The problem with the house wasn\u2019t just that things were antiquated or dirty or broken or cluttered.\u00a0 The problem was that all of those things were happening at the same time.<\/p>\n

So when you had a new pair of shoes, like Kim had, you wanted them to stay pristine forever, kind of like a beacon of cleanliness and purity in the midst of dog hair and peeling wallpaper and distressed mothers and fathers.<\/p>\n

But I took them anyway.<\/p>\n

Within ten minutes, I was pedaling up Chesapeake Avenue, Kim\u2019s heels catching in the pedals of my yellow and white banana seat bike.\u00a0 Few cars were parked in the driveways of the cape cods and split levels that ruled the neighborhood, and the streets were as still and grey as a cemetery.\u00a0 Everyone else was where they were supposed to be on that weekday morning.<\/p>\n

I pedaled along, my bike happily plunking on and off grey stone curbs.\u00a0 From my outfit to the pink lip gloss I had swiped onto my lips, I was ready to rock.\u00a0 Suddenly, the March wind stole through Kim\u2019s tee-shirt, breaking up the party.\u00a0 I looked down at my arm, where goose bumps neatly punctuated my freckles.\u00a0 I should have grabbed a jacket.<\/em> I had been so pleased with my ensemble that I hadn\u2019t even considered outerwear.\u00a0 Madonna never wore a spring jacket onstage.<\/p>\n

In the distance, the verdant soccer fields of Knollwood School greeted me in all their dewy glory.\u00a0 I excitedly pedaled up the concrete path to the bike rack, crashing my ride next to Jennifer Kaplan\u2019s as usual.\u00a0 Once old banana was locked up, I strode toward the school with the confidence of a corporate worker who\u2019d taken the morning off, wandering into the office a few hours late.<\/p>\n

Slup.<\/em> What the? \u00a0Slup Slup slup.<\/em> I looked down.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Kim\u2019s heels were sinking into the mud as I walked across the grass, brown quickly replacing white with every step.\u00a0 A wave of fear came over me.\u00a0 I looked back at the bike rack, realizing I could forget this whole idea, speed home, and still finish out the morning with Bob Barker.<\/p>\n

No.<\/em><\/p>\n

Madonna never ran off the stage before the set was finished.<\/p>\n

By the time I settled into school and avoided the curious looks of my classmates, it was time for recess.\u00a0 I looked around for Jennifer Kaplan, the Beavis to my Butthead, to confirm our recess itinerary.\u00a0 Maybe some swings, followed by a little monkey bars?\u00a0 I caught sight of the back of her dark blond French braid, following Rachel Edelstein and Heather Hunt out the classroom door.\u00a0 Weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jennifer and I were friends with Rachel and Heather, though I always felt like they were from another planet.\u00a0 Rachel and Heather always sat in the front row, their Trapper Keepers perfectly organized with completed homework.\u00a0 Teachers were in love with these two.\u00a0 Their brown-bagged lunches were neatly labeled with \u201cRachel E\u201d or \u201cHH,\u201d the tops of the bags folded down in precision, packed with, like, multiple food groups and CapriSun.\u00a0 Heather\u2019s hair looked different every day.\u00a0 Her mother really knocked herself out, combing and parting and braiding and the whole nine, coming up with new ways to arrange her Girl Scout\u2019s hair and always color-coordinating Heather\u2019s silk scrunchies with Heather\u2019s outfit du jour.<\/p>\n

Because I was in charge of my own food and grooming, let\u2019s just say that those departments proved dicey for me at times.\u00a0 Between my mother not feeling well most of the time and my older brother and sister kept busy by all things high school and junior high, I was on my own, and sometimes got a little too inventive.\u00a0 One day in the third grade, tired of dragging myself to the water fountain at lunch time, I actually swiped an empty Molson Golden from the counter where my parents stored recycled goods.\u00a0 I peeled off the label, rinsed the sucker out, and filled it with orange juice.\u00a0 Good as gold.\u00a0 When I ferreted the bottle out at lunch time, a curly-headed lunch aide had yelled at me, even after I swore that I wasn\u2019t an alcoholic and that my dad refused to spend money on drink boxes.\u00a0 Something about commercialism and excessive packaging, I implored.<\/p>\n

After that<\/em> note home, Dad bought me a reusable water bottle the next day, words like \u201cyuppies\u201d and \u201ccapitalism\u201d skidding over his bottom teeth.\u00a0 It must have been hard being a hippie during the 1980s.<\/p>\n

But anyway, on Madonna Day, it looked like Jennifer was ditching me for the Wonderbread crowd.\u00a0 Not one to be ditched, I followed the trio out to the school playground, where a game of hopscotch was in full swing.\u00a0 A cold wind whipped across the blacktop as Jennifer jumped across three spaces on one foot, her hands in the pockets of her purple fleece hoodie.\u00a0 Teeth chattering, I looked down at Kim\u2019s heels and suddenly felt as garish as a fist fight in church.\u00a0 Everyone else on the playground was running around in sneakers and coats.\u00a0 Why had I worn this stupid outfit again?<\/p>\n

As Rachel tossed her pebble, clapping as it landed neatly inside a chalk-lined box, the curly-headed aide who had called me out on the beer bottle blew her whistle from across the blacktop.\u00a0 Everyone turned around to see who had committed the latest offense.<\/p>\n

She was heading for me.<\/p>\n

She blew her whistle again.\u00a0 Oh God.\u00a0 Oh S-word.<\/p>\n

\u201cHEY!\u201d\u00a0 She screeched.\u00a0 \u201cHEY YOU!\u201d\u00a0 Heather, Rachel, and Jennifer pretended they didn\u2019t know me.<\/p>\n

\u201cUh\u2026yes?\u201d\u00a0 I eyed my bike at the rack, about a hundred meters away.\u00a0 I could outrun this broad even in my too-big heels, I thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cWHERE IS YOUR COAT?\u201d The aide screamed.\u00a0 Her mousy frizz, cut into a mullet, didn\u2019t move even as she thundered across the blacktop.<\/p>\n

I stared at Jennifer\u2019s hopscotch stone and shrugged like a kicked dog.<\/p>\n

This woman was nowhere near done.\u00a0 \u201cWHERE IS YOUR COAT?\u201d\u00a0 She repeated.\u00a0 A circle of kids was beginning to form.\u00a0 \u201cYOUR PARENTS LET YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE WITHOUT A COAT?\u00a0 YOUR MOTHER DOESN\u2019T CARE IF YOU CATCH COLD?\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly this lady had skipped Child Psychology in her quest to become a lunchtime aide.\u00a0 My lower lip began to tremble, but I bit it back and stared at her.\u00a0 I was not<\/em> about to break my \u201cno crying in school\u201d policy for someone with a perm.<\/p>\n

\u201cDON\u2019T YOU TALK?\u201d\u00a0 She was really starting to lose it.\u00a0 \u201cWHAT\u2019S THE MATTER WITH YOU?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, what is going on here?\u201d\u00a0 A male voice broke in, interrupting the banshee\u2019s rant.\u00a0 Oh God.\u00a0 It was Mr. Scanlon, who had been Kim\u2019s sixth grade teacher two years prior.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t any nicer than Curly here, from what I\u2019d heard.\u00a0 He had once called our house, complaining that Kim looked out the window during history lessons.\u00a0 Dad tried to make a joke about kids and windows, but before long was speaking into the phone in a tight voice, telling Mr. Scanlon that he\u2019d rather raise a dreamer than a disciple before slamming the phone down.<\/p>\n

And now, minutes after the hopscotch incident, I was sitting in Mr. Scanlon\u2019s classroom, unsure whether I was being punished or being saved from imminent pneumonia.\u00a0 Kim\u2019s shoes weren\u2019t looking so hot.\u00a0 They stared up at me accusingly.\u00a0 \u201cWhat do you want from me?\u201d\u00a0 I asked them.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m only eight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curly was stationed outside the classroom door, angrily guarding her convict.\u00a0 I heard Mr. Scanlon come back down the hall, returning from the men\u2019s room I suppose, and they spoke to each other in hushed whispers.<\/p>\n

Mr. Scanlon marched into the room and made a beeline for where I sat.\u00a0 He was clearly not psyched about wasting his lunch hour on me and my desire to play dress up in public.\u00a0 I really didn\u2019t blame him.\u00a0 Halloween had long passed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, little Miss.\u00a0 Enough of this.\u201d\u00a0 He ran his hand over the widening part in his hair.\u00a0 \u201cDidn\u2019t Mrs. Clifford speak to you about your ensemble when you got to school this morning?\u201d\u00a0 Mrs. Clifford was my teacher, a woman who looked and acted well past retirement age.\u00a0 She was a bit of a loose cannon, Clifford, but had taken to ignoring me lately, a vast improvement over some of her previous tirades.\u00a0 It probably wasn\u2019t her fault that she wasn\u2019t as into me as the kids who were easy to like, the Rachels and the Heathers of the world.\u00a0 I was absent sometimes for no apparent reason.\u00a0 I forgot my homework frequently.\u00a0 The inside of my desk was about as organized as my snarled hair. Clifford had told me earlier in the month, a look of resignation on her face, that the only thing I had to do in life was die.\u00a0 I think I had forgotten my Lewis and Clark review questions or something.<\/p>\n

I pretended to be really interested in twisting one of my blond curls around two fingers.\u00a0 \u201cNo. Mrs. Clifford didn\u2019t say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curly shifted her weight from one double-Velcro Reebok to the other and broke into our t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate.\u00a0 \u201cHOW DID YOUR MOTHER LET YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE LIKE THAT?\u201d<\/p>\n

This woman had no clue of what an \u201cindoor voice\u201d was.\u00a0 Rather than voice this observation, I just shook my head.\u00a0 The truth was that my mother would not <\/em>have let me out of the house \u201clike this\u201d had she been up and about, but I was too terrified to say as much.\u00a0 It\u2019s too bad my parents didn\u2019t just stick a note to my forehead, explaining me to people:\u00a0 \u201cPlease excuse my outfit, ma\u2019am, but my mother has a mental illness that I don\u2019t even know the name of, and can\u2019t always care for me properly.\u00a0 Sometimes she hits a downward spiral and doesn\u2019t get out of bed for days.\u00a0 Plus my dad works in the city, and the poor man leaves too early in the morning to be of assistance to my morning routine.\u00a0 But let me assure you that they are loving parents who are doing the best they can with an unpleasant situation, and would definitely oppose my lack of a coat and suitable footwear today.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

But I wore no such note, so I stood there like a dummy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Scanlon, clearly disgusted by my silence, snipped, \u201cWell, you can go outside for the rest of recess.\u00a0 You wore the clothing; you can be cold in the clothing.\u201d\u00a0 He and Curly ushered me outside, where I stood for the next ten minutes and silently watched Jennifer, Heather, and Rachel jump through their game of hopscotch, their sneakered feet hitting the pavement with as much force as my humiliation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Our house was always a mess.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}