Germs on the Playground (Or, Constant Eclipse - Flash Two)

During recess on the playground, I played with my best friend Lisa, a quiet girl with the straightest, longest brown hair in our grade. We sat in a tunnel and played Outer Space, which meant we named ourselves after planets.

“Do you like New Kids on the Block?” she asked me.

“What’s that, Mercury?”

“A music group. Everyone loves them.”

I shook my head. “I never heard of it.” At my house we only listened to Sesame Street and Disney.

“Oh,” Lisa said. “Hey Jupiter, let’s go to the tower.” I liked being called Jupiter. I played it over and over in my head as we walked across the wooden playground. I wanted to be someone else.

“Ewww!” yelled Awful Andy as we passed by his group of boys on our way to the tower. “Everyone get away! We’ll get Chrys germs!” The boys scattered and shrieked. One of them stopped running, turned and asked, “How many fingers am I holding up?” in a taunting voice. I could see the blurry shape of his hand, but it was too far away for me to make out individual fingers. I would never admit that I couldn't see well enough to know. It would prove they were right in their teasing, and give them more to use against me. Instead of answering, I ran after the boys as they dove away in horror. “I do not have any germs!” I screamed.

They were too fast for me to chase. “You can't catch us, Grandma!” yelled Lance. I knew it was him by his voice, and because he always called me Grandma, for my white hair. “Grandma's too slow,” he said to one of the other boys in the group. They were about ten feet away, and it was hard for me to distinguish their faces, especially because they were boys. Girls were easier to tell from far away because their clothes, backpacks and hairstyles were more unique and distinct. The boys all wore dark colors and had similar short haircuts, so I would've had to be closer to discern the details and separate them by names.

Lisa caught up to me as I made mean faces at the boys in the distance. We could still hear them talking. “She's a ghost,” said one, and I cringed. I hated when they called me that. “It's good we didn't catch her germs,” said another, kicking at the gravel and stirring up clouds of dust I could see. “Did you ever notice,” asked yet another boy in the huddle, “that every time she sharpens a pencil, she puts it so close to her eye and stares at it?” That must've been Kurt, because he always laughed at me after I came away from the pencil sharpener in our classroom and studied the tip of my pencil to make sure it was sharp. “She's a freak,” he said.

“Come on, Jupiter,” Lisa said quietly. “Let's go to the tower and play Outer Space some more.” We walked back to the castle but I kept looking back at the boys, my mouth slightly open. I wanted to run after them, prove that I wasn't a freak or a grandma and it wasn't my fault I had to look close at things like pencils to see if they were sharp, or hands to see how many fingers they were holding up. And that I didn't have germs.

Deep down though, I felt like a ghost, a weirdo beyond weirdos, and even though I wanted to, I felt like I had no solid grounds to defend myself. I sat in the tower with Lisa, and felt more like a mealworm than a celestial body.

Lisa came over my house that afternoon. “Well, how was school?” Mom asked as we settled in with my brother Randy for an afternoon snack. It had to be healthy so we had peanut butter crackers. Mom sat down at the table with us.

“They did the ‘Chrys germs’ thing again,” I said and bit into my cracker.

“Did you provoke it?” She was across the table so it was hard for me to see her features, but her voice made it sound like they must be hard.

“No,” I said right away. “They’re mean, Mom.”

“It’s really stupid,” Lisa chimed in my defense. “I mean, they’re just so dumb. You don’t have germs. And even, let’s say you really did, it’s not like you catch them just like that.” She tapped me quick on the shoulder. “Boop!”

“Right,” I said. Even Randy, who was two years younger and probably didn’t know what germs were, nodded his head.

“Actually,” said Mom, “germs do jump that fast.”

I couldn’t finish my crackers. I was crushed. Sometimes it felt like she thought I had germs too. She didn't ever touch me. I had the strong feeling that she was ashamed of my albinism, of having a child who was such a freak. It was a topic we never touched. That shame seeped into me like osmosis.

*******

This is my second #FridayFlash - short pieces of writing posted every Friday, so keep reading! This is an excerpt from the very beginning of my memoir, Moonchild, a memoir about being a freshman in college with albinism.

Before the bulk of the book is a section called Eclipses, four chapters about my childhood and adolescence before college that really shaped that experience. This one is from the first chapter, Constant Eclipse, which is about my life when I was in elementary school.

Some names have been changed.

Another excerpt from the same area of the memoir:

Constant Eclipse - Flash One


Currently Listening:
"American Cowboy" - Jada - I can't believe I'm publicly admitting to listening to this song, b/c it's soooo not my style, and it's pretty stupid (and I'm not into cowboys, lol), but I blame House for getting me stuck on this song - for anyone who watched Season 5, it's the song from Chase's bachelor party. It's infuriatingly addicting and strangely, I like it, kind of a lot. So there!

Constant Eclipse - Flash One

I was scared that Mom or Dad would kill me in my sleep. Dad was an FBI agent and he had a gun that he sometimes kept in the house. I thought even he was afraid of Mom, who screamed all the time, got hysterically mad and spanked me when I was little. It was her I listened for as I laid in bed in my thin yellow nightgown, reading Nancy Drew by the light of my night-light, while I tried not to think about getting murdered.

My parents' bedroom door opened and I heard Mom’s sharp footsteps in the hallway. They sounded mad. I waited curled on my side with the book under the covers and screamed No, Mom, No! inside my head. If either of them came for me tonight, I’d jump out the window. I didn’t care that my room was upstairs. I’d jump anyway, land mangled on the driveway and run across our yard as fast as I could. I’d pound on our next-door neighbor’s door. If she answered, I’d tell her my parents were chasing me and beg her to protect me. If she didn’t believe me, I’d run faster and pound harder at the next house and go through the neighborhood with wild desperation until I found someone who would keep me safe. It might not last. My parents might follow me, shoot into the distance or use the authorities to take me back, but that was like the second story window and the driveway; if I wanted to survive, I'd have to think about it later.

The bathroom door opened and Mom went in. I kept freezing. She finally stalked back to her room and I breathed. The quiet lasted a few full chapters.

I got up and went to my window. It faced the driveway and our front yard with its giant tree. The moon was out, maybe full, I couldn’t tell. It was big and white and round and it cast shadows through the branches onto the grass. I had a huge feeling of dark and mysterious magic in my chest. If I could touch it, it would be like touching my soul. It would make me huge too, and magic. I stood watching the moon, the tree, and the shadows until I was finally tired.

I woke up early for school. I woke up alive. I went downstairs and talked to my dad about the weather as I got ready for school. I talked to him as cheerfully as possible and asked a million questions in hopes of hearing his usual cheerfulness back. It was reassurance that I would be okay. He was a good way to gauge if anyone was mad at me, because Dad agreed with everything Mom thought. Being downstairs helped me eavesdrop and figure out where everyone was and put me in a much better position to run if I had to. When I walked out the front door, I felt like I could finally fully breathe, and drank in deep breaths of fresh air.

*******

This is my first #FridayFlash - short pieces of writing posted every Friday, so keep reading! This is an excerpt from the very beginning of my memoir, Moonchild, a memoir about being a freshman in college with albinism.

Before the bulk of the book is a section called Eclipses, four chapters about my childhood and adolescence before college that really shaped that experience. This one is from the first chapter, Constant Eclipse, which is about my life when I was in elementary school. It's a pretty intense piece, I admit, but I figure, why not just dive right in?

~Chrys


Currently Listening:
"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" - The Darkness - something about the music to this song really reminds me of The Cars, which is just sort of...funny or something. It's an addicting song.

A quickie - part of my book up at The Memoirists Collective

Heh, I said quickie.

Anyway, each Monday, The Memoirists Collective has an online workshop on their blog, where they post a section of someone's memoir for comment.

And this week, it's mine! It's the very first section of my book. Read it here and feel free to comment.

Currently Listening:
"Big Tall Man" - Liz Phair

A rough sketch of my book - Moonchild: A Memoir of Albinism

I am albino. Albinism is a recessive genetic condition that means my skin and hair are white, and I'm legally blind. After a sheltered and chaotic childhood, during which I worried that my parents would murder me in my sleep, I felt more different on the inside than I am on the outside. I lost (and found) myself in alternative rock music and counted down the days until I could escape to college. I felt eclipsed.

Moonchild: A Memoir of Albinism details my freshman year at college. As I dealt with finding my way around college, I had intense social anxiety. I didn’t know how to talk about albinism with people, so I didn’t. I was at school on a creative writing scholarship, and I had writer’s block as big as the Great Pyramid of Giza. I wasn't even sure if I felt anymore. The eclipse deepened.

Euphoria Morning, a solo album by Chris Cornell, inspired a story idea and touched me on a deep emotional level. Almost spontaneously, I found myself talking to my best college friend about albinism and what it was like growing up in my skin. I came close to talking about my childhood night terrors. When I found out Chris Cornell was going on tour and the closest concert was states away, because I couldn't drive, my desire to attend became a quixotic quest. This adventure lead to other, wilder quests that completely defed the way I grew up and expanded my realm of experience and ability like concentric circles. In each new quest, I explore how my partial blindness and "looking different" pose obstacles and how I overcome them.

It turned out though, that opening back up to music, to feeling, didn’t just mean that I felt like a rock goddess, but also that I felt the murdered child inside. For the last months of school, I struggled with these conflicting feelings and sorted through the fallout of my upbringing. Thus began the real quixotic quest, the inner journey to come to terms with my albinism and my history.

The book is also a vivid visual journey about what the world looks like to someone with impaired vision.

Currently listening:
The Doors - "Riders on the Storm"