School

Back to the story again: it's been a few days, so here is some more from my little memoirs:


Gulfport
I am not fond of the school where it feels to me like I am the only poor kid. When Christmas comes, all the other kids bring elaborate presents for the teacher, wrapped in pretty packages, which she opens one by one and exclaims loudly over. I squirm in my seat because I didn’t know we were supposed to bring presents. During the lecture on recycling, I tell my teacher that me and my family pick up bottles which we return for money to buy food. I mean it as a way of sharing in the discussion, but my teacher gets a funny look on her face and I feel like I’ve said something wrong.

I spend several weeks out of school. I don’t think I was really sick, but that is what my mother tells the social worker who comes to our house to investigate my absences, the claim that we pick up pop bottles for food. I am asleep, bundled in blankets, on the floor in front of the television and my fish tank. I wake to hear voices, a strange woman, who I peek at from beneath the blankets and the fringe of my bangs. I hear my mother angrily explaining that I have been sick; she usually handles situations like this with loud voice, anger, hostility. The social worker probably is uncomfortable. It’s obvious that I am not being abused, but just as obvious that the place is not exactly Beaver-Cleaver land. My mother resents the meddling. We are poor. she says. Not abusive.

The lady upstairs who my mother leaves me with when she goes on shrimping trips likes to kick me in the butt, hard, if I scuff my shoes. She says Your mother doesn’t work hard for you to scuff those shoes all up. She plays Family Feud, the board game, with me, and doesn’t let me win. She is hard, her mouth a thin line and her hair scraggly. She will not let me bring my cats upstairs, but lets me sneak down and feed them, pet them, play in my own apartment alone. Another babysitter gives me tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches and chocolate Pepperidge Farm layer cakes, and demands her babysitting money. She says I don’t babysit you for the pleasure of your company but she is an old lady, and spends most of her time on the couch. She doesn’t kick me so I consider her a step up.