There wasn’t really a lot else that happened during my middle childhood. My mom eventually got off the smack. I asked her about it once when I was older and she explained that my grandparents always assumed that once they took me away my mom would realize that she was destroying her life and get clean so she could have me back. Apparently it did the opposite; once she lost me she lost everything and there was no point to getting back on track. She told me that we used to high five or cross our little fingers together or something because we were a team. I don’t remember that, but I believe it and it makes me sad.

When I was in second grade I noticed that my family wasn’t normal. We were young and basically everyone had a standard nuclear family at that point. Plenty of divorces and hardships came later, but when we were only 8 I felt like I was the odd one out. Although I hadn’t seen my father in years, I was in touch with my grandparents on his side of the family and they gave me his number. I’m not sure what they expected to have happen…they were also only barely in touch with him. I called him up one night while I was still living at my grandmother’s house. He answered and as I didn’t recognize his voice, I asked for him by name. I told him who it was and he asked me, “Marie who?” “Your daughter,” I told him. He mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and hung up. Wailing, I tried to call him back. My grandmother stood nearby and furiously got on the phone. His roommate answered and told her that my father wasn’t there. She shouted at him and I don’t remember the rest. That was my first heartbreak, I think. And the first time I can distinctly remember feeling unwanted, although I don’t think I could have put words to it at the time. And that became a pretty rampant theme in my life.

I didn’t really know it until about a year ago, but I think I was a pretty unhappy child. I remember crying a lot. Too much, I think. I wrote a song in fifth grade about my fire burning out or something, which is sort of standard adolescent angst, but it got to me sort of young. I “ran away” when I was little too. Basically that meant that I would pack a bag of cookies and a box of bandaids and go sulk under the tree across the street. Otherwise, when I was feeling heavy, and I have felt that way ever since I was quite young, I would climb a tree or sit on a big rock and just feel the sun and the wind. I liked to imagine I was Pocahontas. One time I heard someone describe someone else as being a “free spirit” and I wanted so badly for someone to see that in me too.

My mother was around, eventually. She visited me and took me along on her trips to the methadone clinic. Sometimes she lived with my uncle in Colrain. Sometimes he lived with me and my grandparents and cleaned the house for money. She might have had friends. She worked a night job and eventually got her own place in Shelburne Center. I visited on weekends. I remember that I told her once I only wanted to visit every other week. I’m not sure why I decided that. It must have broken her heart.

She had a dumb boyfriend at the time. His name was Bill and he was a straight up cliche redneck. He was dumb as rocks and drank too much beer. He knocked my mom up too, which was a surprise to everyone because he had declared himself sterile. Turns out he just thought that because he wore really tight jeans. The two of them broke up before my little sister was born and I was sad to not be able to go to his brother’s farm anymore. After Michelle was born my grandparents relented and let my mother have me indefinitely. I don’t think the custody was officially changed for another year, so I still had to have my grandparents sign all my permission slips for school, and I think my mother is still bitter about that.

I think it was only about 5 months later that we moved into the house in Buckland. I remember that it was on one of the very first days I was in fourth grade that we moved and I couldn’t find the right bus and I cried. We moved into a ranch house off of Elm St. It was a tiny dead end street called Harmony Lane. It was like some kind of terribly ironic foreshadowing. You can’t make this shit up.