My first substantial memory was of
the clanking of tin and sweltering heat. I can also vividly remember
spider-like green vines tickling me as I spun the globe. I was ecstatic. It was
finally my turn to spin-and-choose and my heart was beating fast.
I must have subconsciously recalled seeing the globe spin before. Spinning of the globe was something we’d end up doing for many more years, chasing the globe for something I could never put my finger on. I’m not even certain where we lived before this time, other than I can surmise it was somewhere foreign, given my dad’s remark about not needing to learn a new language in Illinois. I guess I should ask, but it never occurred to me to do so. All I knew is I was born in Florida according to my birth certificate, visited Harry in the desert Southwest, and ended up in Illinois and then some.
I was barely old enough to hop the
threshold from Aunty Harry’s trailer to her lopsided tin-and-plastic
greenhouse, but I was adamant upon making it over by myself. I was big enough
to spin the globe, so I had to be big enough to cross over. The heat and stale
smell assaulted my senses as I hopped inside. My dad placed the Bible atop the
torn naugahyde stool, giving me just enough height to reach the table and globe.
“Go on, Karen,” coaxed my dad. I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer. I licked
my lips twice for good luck and touched my hands to the bumpy-smooth surface of
the globe, wiggling my elbow out and back in to whirl the globe. My finger
trailed in zigzags as the revolutions slowed to a stop.
Dad peered over my shoulder.
“Presto Change-oh, we’re…well, no need to learn a new language, but an
adventure is an adventure right? Illinois is it, I think Illinois is right
there.” He squinted at the globe and nodded. “Well, Karen, it is what it is and
meant to be, God willing. We will leave tomorrow, Harry. Thanks for having us.”
Harry’s place was our family
epicenter, a place we always returned to, a place as close to what someone
might call “home”, a foreign concept to me at that age. Harry had married young
and sudden, one of those love at first sight things. He took her for all she
had and ended up in prison for fraud, a family story no one spoke of, and now
Harry lived where she did, too prideful to dip into the family trust. She was a
proud “desert rat aristocrat” who owned “ten acres of luxuriously dead dirt”
and a little pond she siphoned illegally off the aqueduct. Dad said Harry was
much more “normal” as a child, but never wanted to flaunt the family name or
wealth even then. Somehow, something set her “off the deep end, forever”.
Perhaps it was her dad’s death or the divorce from her prisoner husband, who
knew, as it all happened before I came about. In retrospect, her batty ways
were probably just a life-long rebellion against her upbringing.
I don’t know what dad did for a
job, he never told us and still refuses to; I imagined as a child that he was a
clandestine secret agent, but as a teen I decided he simply lived off the
family trust while working such embarrassing jobs as panty liner manufacturer,
or stool softener tester. Whatever it is that he did, only he knows, but either
his career or trust fund and inheritance allowed him to work from anywhere,
doing odd jobs not much more regal than a stool softener tester. However, I did
find out what dad did when I overheard a conversation I shouldn’t have, but
without and proof, I can still assuredly state I haven’t a clue what dad did
aside from odd jobs. While we didn’t live a posh life, his odd jobs couldn’t
possibly have supported us the way they did, and like Harry, he refused to dip
into the family trust.
Why am I thinking, now, about that
silly globe? Well, I too would end up following in my dad’s footsteps,
circumnavigating the world in search of something, what I didn’t know, but it
was something I’d found and lost before.
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