Displacement

I’ve grown used to being pushed out of the place I live. I was born in Kansas, and shortly after, we moved into my grandma’s attic in St. Louis while my parents looked for a house in the area. My mom tells me that I slept in a separate bed, and she ignored my screaming until one night I threw up and fell asleep in it. After that she let me sleep with her, and never had a problem again. When I was a little over a year old, we moved into a big house with a red-tiled roof up the hill from my grandma. I don’t remember any of that, though. Afterwards I was forced to move to a new room twice, each time about six years apart.

My parents’ bedroom was the large room you walk into at the top of the stairs, and it had two rooms adjoining it. The smaller room was mine, and the other was my playroom, ‘the green room’. It wasn’t the typical layout of a house, but it was what I grew up with, so I thought it was a little strange when I later saw my friends’ parents with completely separate rooms. My room had long golden shag carpeting, a bright orange radiator, and white wallpaper with thin orange and brown vertical stripes running down it. I never liked yellow or orange. I liked purple. It was always too hot in my room in the summer, and we had no air conditioning. The heat was so stifling that Momma wouldn’t let me play in my room during the day in the summer. The windows were up higher than I could reach, and looked out over a stretch of roof to the yard and street below. There was a bright light with a square glass covering in the middle of the ceiling. My bed was in that room, but I usually slept with my parents. I was their only child, so I could do that. I would crawl into bed and make Momma read me books, and think of stories to tell me until one of us fell asleep. Daddy always went to bed late, and his snoring sometimes woke me up at night. But it was warm and safe in their bed.

During the day, when Momma was home, we would play together. Sometimes we would draw, and I was always envious of her straight lines and graceful shapes. Her horses looked like horses. Mine looked like blobs on tall blocks. When she had a morning off, we would go to the zoo or the botanical gardens. We packed crackers, a bottle of water, and sometimes even tuna sandwiches, and went early to beat the crowds. My favorite part was feeding my crusts to the fish at the botanical garden, or to the flamingoes at the zoo (right next to the “Do Not Feed the Animals” sign, which I had memorized and would recite through my giggles as I tore up the bread and threw it through the bars). At home I had my own little zoo, a toy wooden barn full of all my little plastic animals, and another box of dinosaurs that I loved to play with. They had all kinds of adventures, and I was always on the lookout for more toys to join them. My true wish was to have a dog, any dog, but we had no fence around our yard, and Momma never liked dogs. To compensate, I convinced her to let me have a stray cat, some goldfish, and any snakes and insects I could catch.

Some time while I was in that room, Momma quit working at her publishing company to edit the Post Dispatch. We got free newspapers after that. Daddy was a social worker, I think. He worked during the day and watched TV at night on our little black and white television in the living room. I sometimes watched the news with him for a minute or two before I got bored. Whatever else he watched was usually on past my bedtime. He bought me a lot of stuffed animals too, and they lined my bed and shelves. My favorite was a two-foot tall gray elephant, its trunk tipped with pink suede. Daddy did a lot of the cooking at our house, and was always asking me if it met my approval. I tried not to encourage him too much to be sure he kept improving. He didn’t know how to play with me, though. And he didn’t like animals. I had to whack him with a fly swatter when I was three or four, for getting his herbivores and carnivores mixed up. But he could snatch me up and hold me above his head, or hang me upside down. He made me laugh, but he obviously didn’t know much about the important things in life.

Despite how my parents’ lives revolved around me, and how they catered to my every whim, I was lonely. There weren’t many children in the neighborhood, and I was discouraged from playing wild in the street with those who were there. I was thrilled when Momma told me that I would be getting a new brother or sister soon. I wanted a sister! I could take care of her, and play with her, and teach her everything I knew, in my boundless almost-six-year-old wisdom.

*********

My bed was moved to the green room. My aunt gave me a new dresser to replace the smaller one I left behind, and somewhere I acquired a soft, dark green armchair. My new room had green shag carpeting. The wallpaper was a darker green with white silhouettes of jungle leaves and flowers. At night while I was waiting to fall asleep, I would try to find faces in the wallpaper. There was a stupid-looking boy, a court jester, a grandmother with a big jaw, and her pet bird. The closet was big enough to be a small room of its own, and later on I sometimes hid from my brother in it. At some point, I got a bookcase to keep all my animal books in. There was a bright globular light on the ceiling, and Momma got me a wooden seagull to hang from the ceiling that flapped its wings when I pulled a string.

The door to my room was always open. I loved my privacy, but for some reason I never closed myself in. Maybe I wasn’t allowed to, but now my brother and sister do it a lot. Momma and Daddy liked to be able to walk in any time to see what I was doing. After my brother Ian was born it always stank in the doorway, so close to his room, so I always wrinkled my nose going in or out.

I had two windows. One looked out over the yard, straight at our magnolia tree, which was small enough to see over at the time. The other had a view of our patio and the neighbor’s house and yard. I kept the windows open in the summer to keep cool, and Daddy’s cigarette smoke floated in with the cool night breezes. The neighbors on that side of the house were old and mostly deaf, so when they watched old TV shows at night, I heard just enough to decide it was boring. During the day, their little dogs yapped when they were let out. I always tried to go outside when they were out so I could stick my fingers through the fence to be licked.

I especially loved my closet. The floor was wooden, the ceiling was slanted, and there was room for at least three people to lie down comfortably. There was a secret panel in the back that you could pull out to reveal a jungle of pipes that ran from the bathroom through the wall to the bathroom below. Once the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom fell down, and I could look through my closet to see the bathtub.

The top of my dresser had various inhabitants through the years. For a short time it was clear, and I could climb up on it to be tall. Later I got some pet gerbils, and their round wire cage was perched up there. My first gerbil had babies there, and I would listen to their squeaking and rustling as they skittered through the pine shavings or ran on the creaky metal exercise wheel. I would get up early in the morning to watch them, and show them off to Ian because he was always there and easily impressed. After the gerbils moved to a large glass cage on my bookcase, I started collecting porcelain figurines, mostly of birds and horses, to populate my dresser top.

I started tearing pictures out of magazines, and soon at least one whole wall was completely covered with every animal picture I could find. I put larger paintings that I had made in classes at the Art Museum on my other walls. There was a detailed map, a vase of flowers, and the hairy leg of a faun, surrounded by grapes. My drawings weren’t as perfect as Mom’s, but I was starting to be happier with them. I was still frustrated by the uneven, messy lines, though. I loved my wallpaper, but it was exciting to be able to add my own personal touches to my room, to make it my own.

Since Mom had a baby to take care of in addition to her job, she couldn’t spend as much time with me anymore. I had been used to her playing with me all day. Now she signed me up for countless classes and camps at the zoo, the botanical garden, and the art museum. I got to make and learn things, and be around other people who were interested in the same things I was. No one I went to school with was especially excited about animals and nature, so I assumed that no one else in the whole city, or even the world was like me. The rest of the girls at school were more interested in dolls, but I hardly touched mine. My brother got far more use out of them than I ever did.

I also started spending a couple of weeks out of every summer at Girl Scout camp, and I was especially interested in learning to ride horses. In addition to the boring boots and jeans, one Christmas Mom gave me a huge box of her old toys that her sisters had handed down to her. There were at least seven tall plastic horses, graceful and fragile in their old age. Most were fixed in a straight standing position, but one chestnut was pulling back, its mane molded to blow in the wind. Another tan horse had moveable joints. He fell over a lot, but I propped him between two of the more sturdy horses, and he became the leader of my herd. There had also been people, but only the tall blond woman wearing turquoise remained whole. Her face was ugly, but her joints moved so that she could stand, sit, or ride a horse. There were body parts of two boys and an older man scattered through the box. All had once been as flexible as the woman, but now none could be completely reassembled. The rest of the box was full of plastic dogs, bears, saddles, bridles, and other old Western equipment. All the little pieces fascinated me, though the humans in the set were a bit lacking. I kept it all in my closet, and usually kept the horses, dogs, and bears set up on a shelf in the back. My room was too full to place them anywhere else without it being too crowded.

After a few years, Mom got me a roll-top desk to encourage me to do my homework on a good surface in a quiet place. Wanting to please her, I kept the surface clear and most of the drawers full of school-related papers. One drawer was a home for my favorite toys, with foam beds and toy chairs though, and the topmost surface held a few of my best figurines.

*******

When I was almost twelve and Dad had just quit his job to go to nursing school, Mom told me that she would be having another baby. After the disappointment of my brother, and thinking that he would be the last one, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the news. This one had been an accident, couldn’t Mom and Dad control themselves? Worst of all, the baby’s room had to be near Mom, and we had run out of empty rooms. For some reason, she decided that my room should be the baby’s room. She told me later that it was because that was a better room for a girl because it had more privacy. I had a lot of suggestions of course, none of which were really taken seriously.

“Keep the baby in your room, where Dad’s desk is.”

“No, then we’d have to move his desk and the big bureau and everything. It’s too inconvenient. Besides, she should have her own room.”

…

“Make Ian move.”

“You know he’s too young to sleep downstairs by himself.”

…

“Let the baby live with me, at least I could keep my room.”

“You don’t want to do that. No, you should each have your own room.”

…

“We can just find a new house with more bedrooms.”

“We thought about that, but we have enough space here, and with your dad going back to school, we just don’t have a lot of extra money.”

…

“Just have an abortion, this was an accident anyway! Look, I found some abortion clinics in the phone book!”

“Um… yeah. I’ve thought about that.”

“Well then nobody would have to move!”

“Listen, you’ll just have to live with it. You’ll get to like it.”

Her mind was made up. There was a good-sized bedroom on the main floor of the house, and that was where I would live. We called it ‘the blue room’ because of its fluffy pale blue shag carpet and silvery wallpaper. It had a ceiling fan, and three bright lights on the walls. We moved the futon sofa, bookcases, and computer out, and went out to look at wallpaper. I looked at green and plant-themed paper first, thinking of my old room, but I finally settled on a pastel print with Monet’s Waterlilies on it. We picked out some new light-globes, but all the fancy ones I liked would collect too much dust, so Dad picked out a plain bowl-shaped light cover. I helped strip the old wallpaper, finding some green bamboo paper buried under the silver layer. Dad took out the old lighting as I watched, cringing every time he cut a wire even though he had turned off the electricity. One day I came home from school to find all my uncles and Dad nearly finished hanging the wallpaper. My aunt gave me a bigger, heavier dresser that was too tall to climb on. Mom bought me a day-bed in our parish auction, and my mattress fit on it easily, with room underneath to store blankets, shoes, and whatever else I have under there. Mom wanted me to throw out the soft green armchair because the fabric was getting very worn and even splitting in places, but I was too attached to give it up. My bookcase and books moved, in addition to my figurines, but not all of my belongings were so lucky.

By this time I was twelve years old, so I might have been a little old for some of my toys. It still hurt to have to leave my barn of plastic animals and my box of dinosaurs upstairs, though. Mom and Dad made me pick out a few stuffed animals from the accumulated masses of them, and I had to get rid of the rest. Maybe I could keep twenty, maybe thirty, but I had to give up a lot too. Some of them stayed in the room for my new brother or sister. The doctors said it was a brother this time.

My new closet was just big enough to hold a set of shelves, so that couldn’t be my hiding place. We positioned my large dresser so that it blocked the view from the door to the head of my bed, but it wasn’t enough. Worst of all, my horse and cowboy set had to stay where they were. I could always go upstairs to play with them, of course. That’s what Mom said. That’s what I said. But they weren’t right there with me anymore.

There were two windows in my new room. One looked out directly at our neighbor’s patio and back door. Not the neighbor with the loud TV, the one with the upholstery business and two more yappy dogs. The other window had a flower garden under it, a small section of the yard, our biggest maple tree, and the brown house across the street. I called the people who lived in this house ‘the hoosiers across the street’. They had at least three generations living in one house, they were always in and out of jail, their big dogs ran all over the neighborhood and were always getting taken away by animal control, and they were often found sitting on their porch drinking. There were always at least five cars and a small trailer parked outside, and a few of the cars didn’t run. Now I wouldn’t even have to move to listen to their yelling, see what kind of dog they had this week, and watch their interactions as if they were animals. I think I really did think of them as somehow subhuman.

The door to my room was right next to the bathroom and basement doors, and between the kitchen and living room. Mom and Dad no longer had to go out of their way to talk to me, since I was on the way to everything. Dad was even more likely to stick his head in my door to say something, then step away and come back for one more thing at least five times.

I had to find new hiding places for my forbidden possessions. I never had anything dangerous or really shameful. Ever since Mom forbade me to have candy and I had to rely on my grandma and best friend to feed my sweet tooth, I had found places under furniture, in dresser drawers, and in my closet to hide things from my parents and brother. My bed was higher and easy to see under, so that was no longer an option. The closet was too small and easy to see all parts of, too. Now the main hiding place for my candy, sketchbook, and writing notebook was under my armchair. I also had a wooden treasure chest with a lock on it for the best candy, small toys, and the Gameboy I walked three miles to buy with my own money.

I couldn’t rely on anything being safe, though. My brother Ian was always looking for ways to get me in trouble. I lived in fear of his overly-loud, “Hey Mom, I didn’t know Alexandra was allowed to have gum!” That was confiscated.

“Hey Mom, how come Alexandra has all these toys under her bed?”

“Hey Mom, Alexandra’s got a Gameboy that she plays at night when she’s supposed to be asleep, and I thought she wasn’t allowed to play video games or anything on school nights! Can I play it on the weekend?” Of course she allowed him to. Soon it didn’t matter that it was mine. It was kept in his room, and I was hardly allowed to touch it.

Ian wasn’t the only problem, though. The next child, who turned out to be a girl, was almost as bad. Julia had inherited my love of animals, so I had to check my collection of figurines every day when I came home from school. Some days she would take them all up to her room; other days she would only take my favorites. I had three pet birds on the tall dresser by the time she could walk, so I couldn’t move my statuettes up there. After a few months she decided she didn’t like me yelling at her anymore, and she stopped. Ian never did.

I eventually came to like my room. Gradually, the dragons that now crowd into every open space on my dresser, desk, and bookcase replaced the animal figurines. I had more privacy at night, and it was easier to sneak to the kitchen to grab a snack or to the living room to watch TV. I could do my homework with fewer distractions. Best of all, I could listen to what was going on in the family without having to lie at the top of the stairs and run away when anyone came near. I could be close to the action without quite being in it, just the way I liked it. As I got older and had to listen to the lengthy bedtime routine upstairs, I became more and more grateful for my place, slightly removed from the family.

When I was looking at colleges, my dad kept saying they should send me off to North Dakota. I’m not sure why it was North Dakota, but the point was that it was far away. I looked through college guides and didn’t see much that was very interesting. I refused to even look at colleges in St. Louis, because I was looking forward to moving out. Mom would never let me live in a dorm if I lived in town. She advised that I apply to St. Louis University (where she went), ‘just to see how much money I could get.’ I tried. I really did. But the idea was so repulsive that I was almost in tears as I forced myself through the application. Mom let it drop, thankfully. Then all of a sudden I noticed Westminster College. It was small, so I wouldn’t fade into the background of a class, as I tend to do. It wasn’t in St. Louis, but it was close enough that I could go home for breaks and emergencies. Perfect! I applied to Westminster and a few other small colleges like Truman, McKendree, and Stephens. Westminster offered the most money, so I planned excitedly, and my parents dropped me off in my new, starkly bare room as early as they could. I was excited to see them leave. It would be just like summer camp, all year long! Mom, who had been talking all summer about turning my room into an office, or changing the locks to keep me out, looked like she was about to cry. I didn’t understand.

In my junior year, I studied abroad in Japan for a semester, not knowing any people, much of the spoken language, or even any of the three alphabets of that new, exotic place. My parents supported me in my decision, as long as I would make most of the arrangements myself. Dad kept saying that it would be better if I went to England, as he and Mom did before I was born. I’d love to go to England if I had the chance. But it wouldn’t be new enough, exciting enough, or far enough. It would be too easy, too normal. Everyone goes to England if they study abroad, where they can communicate easily. I would rather see something really new, that few people here in the Midwest have seen. This could be my only chance to really get away, so I wanted to do it right.

After college, Mom plans to have me stay in St. Louis for at least a year or two. She hasn’t said it directly, but I can tell, and Dad confirms that. My plans are to overcome my cold-bloodedness, get an apartment in Chicago, and work for a few years until I can pay for graduate school and move into a house. I have a friend who will be inheriting a house there where we plan to live together, but I would end up moving away to a similar place even if I had nothing set up. I’m already looking at apartment floor plans online, squealing in delight over how I could set up a cheap studio apartment, realizing that I would have to pay a lot more if I kept a dog there but deciding to settle for small pets instead and hope the extra rent would be low, and pondering the best kind of job to get that would match my ideals. These ideals are slowly getting more realistic, but I’ll always be hopeful about moving farther away from my ‘comfort zone,’ because I’ve seen that the farther I go from home, the better I thrive. I was never rebellious, but getting farther away from my family seems like a much better way to discover and develop who I am.

I can hardly imagine clinging to my family as I did when I was little. I resent the reasoning behind it sometimes, but being moved from your established place really isn’t so bad, as I continue to learn. The older I get, the more I desire I have to leave the safe, familiar world I know. It makes me wonder how well I will ever be able to settle down in one place, but I think as long as I can take a vacation every year, I should be all right. I always used to go on vacation with my family in the summer, in addition to going to Girl Scout camp, and I was content, even excited, about that. But I was younger then, and practically a different person. One familiar room just isn’t enough anymore.