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car. He talked to Suzanne in a way that he did not talk to the rest of us. I wondered if we were really going to be
the kind of family that he had promised.

I knew we'd been tricked the morning we arrived in Hiram County. The air was a dirty, sickening gray which
grew more and more oppressive as we cut through the center of town. Tiny, poverty-stricken homes made a hope-
less grab for the Better Homes and Gardens award. A few yards were still properly trimmed and these were
complimented by a few plump, dough-white women peering happily from dirty porches. Faded and polka-dotted
house coats shifted weight contentedly back and forth, back and forth, in white-washed porch swings. The line of
rocking women never ceased their motion and were rocking still ...compressed beneath my eyelids when I climbed
into my new bed that night.

I don't remember who saw our sadly neglected, one-floor brick house first. Perhaps we all saw it at once. There
was a deafening silence as our station wagon slid into the drive way of 1803 Covington Street. Not one of us kids
moved. Even my father stood somewhat unsteadily outside of the car.

"Well, kids, this is it," he said.
Suzanne, Bobby, Bruce and I stared at our dream house and then at each other. We got out of the car--only to
discover that the inside of 1803 Covington Street was no better in appearance than the outside. It instantly
violated all the hopes, so hastily pasted together during the long car ride. I was disappointed, not by the house,
but by the fact that my father had lied. What was harder to bear was that he didn't seem to know it.
He called us to take a look at the view from the east window. We clustered around him-wand dutifully
looked. A brick wall arrested out gazes. The east side of our new home faced an alley. I looked at my father. He
was smiling.
I passed the time as best I could with a tiny, soft-spoken and bespeckled boy three years my senior. My father
never liked him. Jon was a lonely boy who accepted me without questioning my wild nature, and I was drawn to
him as he seemed to be my exact opposite. Jon was a loner ...except for my companionship. He taught me how to
fish and throw a ball properly. "Just because you're a girl is no excuse not to do things as good as you can," he
always told me. It seemed that Jon wanted to learn how to do a few things properly, too, and we bade our
virginity farewell one simple afternoon in a field dotted by Queen Anne's Lace. I felt rather proud of
myself. I remember how badly I wanted to tell someone about it. In the end, I decided that I would rather keep it
to myself. My father looked at me for a very long time that day. I was sure that he knew. I felt as if he'd been
there all along--watching me.
When Jon moved to New York late in September, I was much more equipped to fend for myself than if I had
never made his acquaintance. We said a strained yet fond farewell on the morning of his departure and I gave him
an engraved dime-store watch and a bouquet of Queen Anne's Lace. It was an eternally priceless relic of the
summer that we had shared together. In return, Jongave me a model airplane which I knew he had been working
on for months. In a tiny bit of newspaper he had wrapped a gently shaped gold ring, marked by a single opal. We
both swore that we'd write often--twice a week at least. With that we shook hands and parted company forever. I
received a few letters at first, then there was nothing. I never heard from him again.
Going to school became the most difficult part of my existence. The building and the subjects held little or no
interest for me. I had tired of trying to force my way into the group of girls who wore too much make-up for their
age, wore clothes that I could never afford, and dated boys with prominent fathers or fast cars. Afternoons were
agonizingly longer that I ever realized they could be and I took to gazing for hours through my bedroom window.
I sensed that there was something sad out there, something dead or very nearly dead that was waiting for
mew-somewhere in the darkness of a southern evening.
I began sleeping poorly, or not at all, afraid of the night's solitude or the creatures in my dreams which took on
terrifying formations. I dreamed of children--dead children or monster like children, or ones that were somehow not
quite right. My father woke me once. I heard him coming upstairs late one night after having too much to drink.
He stopped at the door to my room and looked in. The yellow light in"the hall made him look larger and taller than
he really was. My sister came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. He smiled. He looked at me for
a very long time. I pretended to be asleep, and when I looked for the yellow light in the doorway again, I did not
find my father. For awhile, I stopped dreaming about the dead children, but I could still see my father's smile--
standing by itself in the doorway.
Mornings that I walked to school were some source of happiness for me. I loved to drag my feet through the
soft, wet grasses which seemed to melt beneath my step, and rejoiced at leaving some mark upon the
EARTH. Occassionally, I paused to pick a few strands of lady-like Queen Anne's Lace. Placing them gently in my
coat pocket, I would look for them later and find them to have fried and become crumbly. I loved the delicate, lacy
texture of the flowers and longed to explain this feeling to someone else. Wondering if I could find someone who
would believe in the simplicity of nature, I asked the one person who would be the least likely to understand. I
gave the flowers to my father.
The day I showed him my gift had not been a particularly good one for him. Morning found him unable to shave
himself and he spent the afternoon in his bedroom shaking and goddamning the world. Suzanne would not venture

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