Wild-child Part 1

Once upon a time there was a middle class family in the 1980s in Colorado. The family had just moved into their first home, a tiny but efficient three bedroom house in the booming community of Lafayette, Colorado. The husband was a military-brat turned civil-rights-activist turned draft-dodger turned English-Lit-major turned poet turned husband turned half-person turned General-Electric-desk-jockey. This husband was an up and coming Yuppie, who sacrificed dreams and idealism for cold hard cash and a crib with a baby and two mouths other than his own to feed. Who can say that was a good sacrifice? I can, as I’m a byproduct of his sacrificial death of dream.

The wife of this up-and-coming Yuppie family was halfbreed “Black Dutch” turned poor-white-trash turned abused-child turned orphaned-rebellious-hippy turned Anglophile turned psychology-major turned sociology-major turned wife turned half-person turned housewife turned mother turned homemaker. This wife was a woman who was taught to believe in the White Knight to rescue her and she sacrificed her self, her dreams and her idealism for a lovely roof over her head and a crib with a baby and two mouths other than her own to feed. Who can say that was a good sacrifice? I can, as I am the biproduct of her sacrificial death of dream.

This middle class family believed all was well in Reaganworld, where so long as you kept on giving up for money, all the worries would be relieved by the glossy gifts of material greed. It was the way of their generation, it was the way of their culture.

The little girl they bore was unlike other little girls. She did not like dresses or frills, and preferred He-Man to She-ra. She liked Mickey Mouse and wanted to grow a beard like her daddy did each morning. She enjoyed playing and living out of house and in the yard, playing in the grass and eating Razzles and mud pies on stormy summer days.

One day the wife told the little girl she was going to have a little sister. The girl was excited and watched her mother’s stomach grow and thought that perhaps the baby got in there when her daddy would kiss mommy on the lips. Perhaps the little girl had lived in daddy and had crawled into mommy’s stomach through his mouth into hers. It didn’t matter, she was going to have a sister, and she had no say in the matter. It was already done.

Little Wild-child remembered her parents leaving for France with her daddy’s company. She remembers being forced to live at Meme and Grandpa’s. Meme had a fascination with suppositories, and grandpa enforced a strict dress-for-Sunday-school code, very much like an MP would enforce curfew. As much as Wild-child liked her grandparents, they smelled different than her parents and they were not as nice. She hated her parents for going to France without her, but she had no say in the matter.

Wild-child resented the little pink thing in the car seat next to her on the way home from the hospital. She resented it because it took mommy’s attention away. It demanded much more than Wild-child ever did, and it cried a lot. It made everyone frustrated, but still Wild-child had to like it, it was her sister, after all.

One day when Wild-child was playing with her finger paints, her sister came over and bit her knee so fiercely that she broke skin and Wild-child’s knee bled. She could not hit the teething infant but Mommy fixed the wound with a bandaid. She could not fix the wound of resentment in the little tomboy’s heart, the malice that tainted Wild-child’s relationship with Matilda since that first cut on her knee.

Wild-child remembered saying goodbye to the house in Lafayette. She remembered the big moving van and the new Camry that would take them to Toronto. None of it made much sense until she said goodbye to her best friend Camilla. Camilla was like Wild-child, she didn’t like dresses or frills and preferred G.I. Joes and Legos to Barbie, but Camilla couldn’t watch the Thundercats or the Smurfs because they were filled with witchcraft and sorcery and Camilla’s parents were missionaries. When Wild-child said goodbye to Camilla, she knew she was really leaving forever.