Safe Spaces
I moved quickly down the street in an awkward canter somewhere between walking and running. My short legs carried me with urgency over the rough asphalt – away from home and away from her. Loose gravel was spread across the road from shallow potholes. The street was not long, with only a few homes on either side before it ended abruptly at a bike path which ran alongside a canal. Steep concrete walls lined the waterway, containing seasonal high flows from the creek to prevent flooding during heavy rains and high tides. High chain link fencing, topped with barbed wire, continued upward another six feet from the canal’s walls. The galvanized steel fencing was a dull grey and was woven together with the thin fingers of flowering vines.
At the end of the street, metal poles jutted out three feet high above the concrete to allow only bikes and foot traffic to access a community path. Only 7 years old, the tops of the poles were at eye level as I approached the intersection, which offered many areas to explore. During that time in my life, I spent most of my days away from home either because I was exploring or I was escaping. I wasn’t allowed to go farther than the closest main roadways on either end of the bike path, which afforded me a few miles in each direction.
The path continued for 2-3 miles downstream before ending at a large park. Along the way the city had installed circuit training stations meant for runners or bikers to stop and do strength training. They didn’t seem to get much use for this purpose, but I could spend hours playing on the various wood and metal obstacles. It had been long enough that the pictograms illustrating the intended use were no longer legible. I used to spend hours walking down the path, stopping at each station to guess what exercise I was supposed to do or to imagine I was a tightrope walker while I balanced along a metal beam fixed between two splintering wood posts.
If I continued straight across a bridge, I could walk through my brother’s middle school. On this side of the canal, there were a number of unofficial dirt paths. I used to play at the bases of Eucalyptus trees, looking at their tops at least a hundred feet above my head. I would peel the papery, chestnut-colored bark away like sunburnt skin to reveal the smooth, cardboard-colored underskin. The pungent smell of the leaves littered the ground. Nearby, a tidal wetland was accessible only during low tide, when the mud smelled like sulfur. The hollow straw-colored grass grew a foot above the mud and ended abruptly at the bank of the creek. If you looked closely, you could see the air bubbles of tiny organisms reach the surface of the mud.
But this day was not a day for exploring. I paused for a moment at this intersection to turn back and look toward my house. Tears streamed down my freckled checks. I saw nobody had followed me. My mother was certainly still boiling over with rage, misdirected at my brother who undoubtedly stared back at her with stoicism or obstinance; I never knew which. I could see his forehead crinkled slightly behind his blond hair as he stared back at her blankly with his olive-colored eyes. His posture would have been alert, but not rigid. These bouts of anger occurred on a cadence that was too short not to remain vigilant, but too sparse to be predictable. During this time, they were almost always directed at my brother.
My mother was tall and lean, a former catalogue model in the 1970s and 80s. Originally from the Midwest, she had left her home -- her three brothers, her mother and father -- as soon as she graduated high school. Modeling provided her a clear escape route. Her face was both angular and elegant, accentuated by her wavy natural-blonde hair and eyes the color of the sky. She was beautiful by any reasonable account and had a usually playful demeanor that was intoxicating. But when her face twisted with all the emotion that lay underneath, her spell was broken. She became a banshee -- her frenetic energy exploding in insults and criticisms.
I felt guilt for leaving my brother behind, but confusion and an intrinsic self-preservation motivated me to escape. My glance back at the end of the road was to see if she had noticed me leaving and pursued me, but it appeared that she had not. My sandy hair stuck to my wet cheeks. I brushed it back and let out a deep, diaphragmatic sigh.
Opposite the chain link fence and the canal were fences that lined the backyards of the adjacent homes, many of which were covered with thick English ivy. I clenched a thick book firmly under my arm. I conducted one last survey of the scene to affirm that nobody was nearby. Today was not a day for playing and so I did not trace my usual steps down the long path toward the park. Adjacent to the intersection, I parted the strands of ivy to reveal a secret hideout. The thick ivy completely ensconced a broad tree with thick branches. I’m not sure why the dugout was there, perhaps the property owners didn’t want to cut down the tree or a city easement existed in this one tiny corner. Whatever the reason for its existence, this place provided me with solace and safety. The tree bark had a gentle, welcoming texture that made it easy for my small hands to grip as I ascended but made for a comfortable seat to settle into. My rapid breath began to slow and my chest found a metered cadence. I slowly leaned back to rest against the tree trunk and opened my book. Light filtered through the ivy and tree branches just enough to read without a flashlight.
An avid reader since I started sounding out, I basked in the opportunity to escape to the worlds created for me. They offered an on-demand alternative reality. Putting my books aside was a common argument in my household at bedtime. As I sat there enthralled in my book, hidden in my tiny oasis, an unknown amount of time elapsed. It was still light out, but dimmer than before. My mother must have realized that I was gone, either because she had calmed or because she wished to pull me into the fray as a prop for her vitriol. “Look what you’ve done to your sister!” she would scream, pulling me close as if to protect me. “How dare you lay a hand on her!”
Outside of these circumstances, she was an incredible mother. She played and had a contagious joy for life -- teaching us to be loud and unencumbered by others’ judgements. She laughed warmly and genuinely. She loved us dearly and told us often. There were usually two circumstances that caused this rapid about face. A periodic heavy drinker, she would sometimes come home so intoxicated that she was no longer herself and all the anger and frustration that must have swelled beneath the surface emerged. Other times, she would perceive that my brother was hurting me. It took me a long time to learn not to run to her as little siblings do yelling, “Mommy! Mommy!” with whatever accusation I had to throw at my brother. These times were the worst. My brother picked on me in the way many older siblings typically do. He used to make me into a “tickle burrito” by rolling me up into a blanket and tickling me until I could barely breathe. On this day, my brother and I were tossling over some retrospectively trifling thing like what TV show we would watch or who had to wash the dishes. Maybe he pushed me or aggressively grabbed the remote out of my hands. I overreacted and cried and screamed.
This house was originally a two bedroom and the small detached garage had been converted into a third bedroom. My brother and I stayed in the main house while my mother’s bedroom was the detached unit. She was drawn in by my wails and as the front door closed behind her, our sibling skirmish turned quickly into a more serious conflict. Our banshee-mother walked through that door and I quickly fled out through it.
The light began to dim outside. I looked up from my book when I heard my mother calling my name. She must have walked the other direction on the street first, because her voice sounded far away. Slowly, it began to draw closer until she was just outside of my hideaway. I could see her looking frantically from side to side. Like tinted glass, my nest was hidden behind the ivy camouflage. It went on like this for a while as she explored all the avenues where she thought I could have gone. Eventually, she must have wandered back home.
I could not imagine what she did then.
Gently, I sat back against my tree and parted the cover of my book. Again, I disappeared to another place. When twilight had arrived, I slowly climbed down and peeked my head out of the ivy before emerging. I walked the three or four houses down my street and went home.
Recently, my brother and I set about the seemingly impossible task of counting the number of houses we lived in before moving out on our own. Our parents separated before I was a year old and my brother was four years old. We estimated somewhere between 20 and 25 houses each. I can’t recall the exact spot for each of these places, but at each house I had a similar respite. We lived in a house on a steep hill once where I could climb onto the roof from the deck. At the end of a quiet street, I could sit up there and read, but when I heard someone approach I could lay flat so that nobody saw me. When I was very little, I used to tuck into the crawl space beneath our porch. Too young to read, I would play with worms or salamanders.
I remember the house with the ivy dugout well because it was the year my brother could no longer withstand my mother’s torrents. At 11, he moved in permanently with our father. After his departure, my spaces became even more important as the winds of my mother’s outburst shifted more frequently in my direction.
The last home my mother and I lived in, there was a steep terrace with a hidden ledge at the top. At 16, I would climb up to the top and read, or make phone calls to my friends, smoke pot, or watch my neighbors walking by with their dogs. I could see over the top of our house when my mother’s gold Acura sedan pulled in the driveway. She would peek out the sliding glass door to see if I was home. When I did not emerge, she would assume I was still out. That was the last house we lived in. It was the house where she died.
From that, there was no hiding.