my life, in bullets (1)

•  I was born on the fourth of October, 1983. I don't know what the weather was like, I don't know what my mom was doing when her water broke. I do know that my father wasn't there. I didn't meet him until I was about five years old.
• When I was eight, I dreamed that flying was as simple as running really fast and picking up your legs. I had this dream many times and I still have it now and then. It seems so real, the feeling I have when I feel gravity's hold snap, when I break the laws and fall into the sky. It was always night, when I did my flying. I liked flying over the orchards near our house- the neat rows of trees wheeling under me. I'd come in low and snatch an apple. Low-hanging fruit was for the earthbound. I flew over my little town, apple in hand, moon over shoulder, night after night. It was lovely.
  
  It was so real to me that I decided to try it. I'd got it into my head that the reason I couldn't fly when I was awake was that I didn't *believe* I could fly. Doubt was kryptonite. Life was a dream of a different sort. If you could kill a nightmare by believing it wasn't real, it should be possible to live a dream by believing it was.
  
  They let us out for recess in a baseball field that doubled as a parking lot. There was long building up against the chain-link fence that was used to sell hot dogs and cokes during Little League games. You could get up onto the roof by climbing the fence. The roof across the front was steep enough to provide speed on takeoff but not so steep that I'd slip and fall when I ran down it. The thing was to be committed, to not remember what kryptonite was.
  
  I hesitated for an instant, standing on the ridge of the roof. The wind was strong, it flapped my skirt around my bare legs. I was seen at once by Sister Gillian, but she was the only one. The other kids were playing, talking in small groups, milling around like a school of shark pups far below me. I saw the fear in Sister Gillian's eyes when she realized what I was about to do. So I closed my eyes and ran into the dark. I picked up my legs. It seemed to be working till I hit the concrete.
  
  Sister Gillian carried me into the office. I got blood on her habit, I told her I was sorry about that. She asked me why I'd done what I did and I told her the truth. I never lied in those days.
  
  Every week for the next year I had to go to Father Cree's office. He was a Jesuit with a master's degree in psychology. At first he was concerned about my ability to distinguish make-believe from reality. He thought I was a budding schizophrenic. I resented him- "seeing Cree" was kid-talk for being really bad and crazy. He was funny sometimes. He was very interested in the fact that I liked to fly with an apple in my hand. I realized he genuinely cared about me and just when I began to look forward to talking to him he said I didn't need to come to his office anymore.
  
  I wished I could fly by day, after that, far away from my life, but I knew I couldn't, that feeling was for dreams and only for me. When I'd pass Father Cree in the hall sometimes he'd nod to me. There was some kindness in the nod, some recognition, a wince of what he knew about me. My flying days were done.
• When I was ten, I told my mom that it was strange how birds could float above a wire, without flapping their wings, and she realized that I couldn't see their feet. I had to wear big blocky black plastic glasses after that.
  
  We were living in Downsville, New York. Our house was near the top of a mountain. It had a wide porch, with a swing. Once there had been two gray rocking chairs, too. If you sat on the swing in the summertime you could see the sun set over Pepacton. The wood was carved under the porch roof- gingerbread, my mother called it, we lived in a gingerbread house- with a grey slate roof. A lightning rod with a star on top.
  
  There was a creek in the woods behind our house.  It was too shallow to swim in. I'd wade it barefoot- you'd slip if you tried it with flip flops on. I remember the little round stones that rolled and tumbled under my feet. The water was clear and clean and very cold. Sometimes I drank it, though I knew how stupid that was.
• When I was twelve, my father lost his job. We moved. I'd been in 7th grade in Downsville, but they skipped me up to 8th in my new school in the City.
• When I was thirteen, my mom was a singer by night, with a band called the Three Marys. By day, she worked in a used bookstore. She'd bring home books with their front covers torn off- most of them very old. One of them was You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber. It imagined the world as a vast, terribly inefficient machine. People were mindless cogs in the machine, clockwork actors who could not go off-script. But under extraordinary circumstances, they could be awakened.
  
  When a person wakes up, and steps out of the machinery, all of the people still in the machine act as though the missing person is still playing their original role. As far as the machine-people can see, nothing has changed. And the free person can do almost whatever they want: the machine didn't care. There was no intelligence in it, it was vast and cold and empty, and it made no attempt to recapture the people who escaped it.
  
  The real danger to an awakened person was other awakened. Absolute freedom made some of the people who escaped the machine absolutely cruel. If you wanted to live, it was important to pretend that you were still part of the machine. Some rules for surviving were:
  

  Always keep up appearances.
  Always be alone.
  Never move anything, it leaves gaps.
  Never touch anyone- DANGER! MACHINERY!
  Some animals are really alive.

  The book was terrible, but the idea haunted me. I thought about the Rules sometimes, while I wandered around the City. Rule #2 was more of an observation than a command; I was  always alone.
• When I was fourteen, our three-room apartment was completely filled by my parents and the terrible space between them, so I took to hanging out in the boiler room in the cellar. The door to the boiler room was locked. But thanks to my lovely friend Linda (co-daughter of the Three Marys and so, my sistah) that wasn't a problem. She taught me how to pick locks and how to curse in Spanish. Two skills I don't use very often these days.
  
  My parents sent me away for the summer so they could fight in peace. While I was away I hunted salamanders, the little orange ones, with red spots and golden cat eyes. I gained about ten pounds on macaroni and cheese and bread. I learned how to pee outside.  I got kissed, my first kiss. I almost drowned. I learned why no one eats edible wild plants. I read "Kitchen", by Banana Yoshimoto, and it made me want to live in Japan, so I could sit on the clean wooden floor in a sunny, monochromatic room, eating soupy rice from a bowl.