..excerpts from The Girl Swinging Into The Sky...a work in progress.

--December 1994
It is almost Christmas.  I started writing poetry yesterday.  I am keeping it hidden, in my own binder so no one looks at it.  I made a blue binder and painted the front with all the paints that I had and then made a collage on the back.  Mostly of band pictures, musicians that I like and some outer space stuff.  The first poems were easy to write, like they were already there.  I think I am going to number them and see how many I can write.  

Dad deleted all my writing I had on the computer.  But first he read it all.  He called mom on the car phone on our way to Metamora for the women’s holiday shopping trip.   I could tell something was wrong when she picked up, mom’s face frowned really hard, and then she glared at me and said,

“Okay I’ll tell her.”

“Your father found your writing” she said.

It felt like the blood in my body turned cold.  Mom only uses the word father when there is something bad about to happen.

“And he saw that you talked about drugs,”

I also talked about how I hated them.  I wonder if he saw that.  It was hard to walk around Christmas town and shop all day with the women and know that I was really in trouble when I got home.  I don’t know how mad dad is going to be, or if he will just not talk to me for a while.  

--February 1995
Mom was crying in the doorway of the den.  Something was wrong with her.  Dad was sitting in his recliner facing the tv.

She saw me,

“Your father has been asked to leave the soccer club.”

Dad didn’t say anything, he turned the TV volume up.

“Everything is falling apart, this is our whole life, and now it is gone!”

Mom started breathing heavy.

“Don’t you even care, Dave?”

Dad flipped to another station.

“Am , I the only one in this family who cares?”

“Who is going to be our coach?”  I ask.

“It was that stupid Rick Mann, who reported your father, I know it.”

Mom put her fingers in her mouth and started pacing.

“Who’s going to be our coach?”

“Your father never liked Rick Mann, he should have cut Jenny from the team.”

She put her arms in the air and walked in a circle.  I went to the fridge and found the ½ full soda can from lunch, walked through the sitting room back upstairs.  Eric was playing world wrestling federation in the Nintendo room.  I went to my room, shut and locked the door.

--March 1995

“I found a new team for you to play on.”

Mom was waiting for me on the porch when I got off the bus.  I sat in the wicker chair next to her.  

“It will just be until you can try out for Dynamo, but their tryouts for next season aren’t until May so until then, I found a team for you.”

She was holding the cordless phone and staring at me.

“What team?”

“It is an all boys team in Perry and the coach’s name is Len, they said they will take you right away, you don’t have to try out.”

“If it is all boys how come I am going to play on it?”

“Because you are better than all the girl players in that county, they have a terrible soccer program.”

She continued,

“I told them where you were from and they said they’d take you right away and then I said that I would bring you over to practice tomorrow night, your first game is this Saturday.”

Allison 07/02/12