posted on 2002-04-11 @ 6:10 a.m.
we're going to play a game. i remember in mrs. williams's creative writing class we had to make this huge list of details about a character before we wrote a story about them. random things that really make a difference, like their favorite colour, favorite song, a childhood memory, what size pants they wore. i chose a character, sheridan, in this story i wrote in several pieces. i had a couple of pages of completely random stuff, but knowing all of it and then reading my story made it so much more powerful to me. not powerful, just...interesting. i remember in the eighth grade, in mrs. lea's english class, she criticized (positively, of course) a story that jennifer lynch and i wrote because we didn't develop the main character enough; thus the reader isn't wholly troubled when something doesn't happen to his liking. and it made so much sense. and to this day, when i see movies or read a book, and a character's character is brushed off lightly, i can't stop the complaining. i suppose it's just because you can't understand what they're doing or what they're going through if you don't know exactly where the hole in their sweater is, or what's written on the sides of their shoes.
this time i'm going to develop miette-no�lle. she was the main character in the above-mentioned story. i really like her; she's a complicated petite fille. we'll do this like the fight club thing, addressing it to you, making her experiences yours. i don't expect anyone to read all of this in full, so don't worry about it.
you open the door and you step inside...
you were born on september 20, 1983, in shreveport, louisiana's highland hospital, the same one in which your mother was born. you weighed exactly nine pounds and was exactly 20 inches long, something you still to this day find fantastic (the 9/20 correspondance). this hospital has since closed however, and reopened elsewhere in the city. your mom took pain killers while you were growing in her belly, and as a result you have a small bump on your right pinky finger; the ob/gyn said that if you had been in the womb much longer it would have developed into a sixth finger. you were due on the 18th but didn't come til the 20th. your head was too large to fit through your mother's canal, so after several hours of labor the doctor decided to cut you out. you entered the world belly first!
you didn't have a significant amount of hair til you were around two. your eyes were the brightest shade of blue imaginable; they'd have put cerulean to shame. at your first birthday, whereas most babies simply throw their cake around, you demurely smoothed one finger through the icing and licked said finger. the theme was sesame street, the same as your little sister's fourth birthday 13 and one-half years later.
your very first memory is of your parents fighting. while sitting on the foot of your bed, you could see into their bedroom. one morning (like so many), your mother brought your father breakfast in bed, and he complained about something not being perfect. your mother cried, your father yelled. you spent a lot of your time in the bathroom, staring at the wallpaper. if you crossed your eyes at the right moment the pattern became three-dimensional. one time you were running through the house and tripped on one of your father's shoes. you fell and hit your forehead on the corner of a wall and have a knot there to this day. there are home videos of you putting the water hose down your panties and giggling. you liked to dance to mtv. you had a horrible speech impetiment that's common in all children, and your southern accent was so thick and slow it makes you cringe today. when you were four, your parents split, and the divorce finalized when you were five. when your mother informed you of the split, you told her you wished you had a knife so you could stab her in the heart a thousand times with it. the fondest memories of your childhood are of the year before your stepfather entered your life, even though you don't remember that year fully. the heater never worked properly in your home one winter, so you and your mother would huddle together in the living room in front of tiny space heaters. once while she was sleeping on the couch, you took so many flinstones vitamins you threw up but didn't tell her about it. (note this pill intake; it will come back to haunt you.) a year later, your mother remarries the boy down the street (now 21). once while sitting in the car in your driveway with your father, you mentioned your stepfather as "dad." in a rage your father yells at you telling you he will never be your father, that only he is your father. you run inside the house crying. being the vengeful bastards they are (that's where you get it), your father and his mother terrorize your mother, stepfather, and their families.
your mom had a weinie dog who hated you, and after biting you as a young child they gave him away. you had a little dog named candy who was too crazy to keep. you also had a pure-bred collie named sheena. she cost $400, but one night when you were about seven she ran away. there's a picture of you staring off into the distance, your arm around her neck, a small bow on your head (you're about two, and remember, you don't have hair quite yet). everyone in the neighborhood helped look for her, including the boy next door, on whom you had a huge crush even though he was about 17. you made out with the girl directly across the street several times when you were seven, only it was more than making out considering you were both naked and had roaming hands. the circle across from your home had at least one child your age in every house. stephanie smith's father was really cool. she had an atari. he didn't like being called "mr. smith," but you couldn't bring yourself to call him "steve," so you called him "mr. steve." you eventually developed a crush on woody in the first grade, even though he was in :gasp: the third! (note these early infatuations with older men; they'll come back to haunt you.)
when you were seven or eight, you had a wreck on your bike. stephanie wagered you couldn't catch her running, you on your bike. never being one to back down from a dare, you chased her, went into the bus driver's yard (where her bus was always parked), and hit a sewer lid. this sent you flying into the air, landing on your face on the road. your face was split open in so many places, and your front left tooth was chipped (this didn't get fixed for several years, when you finally had a piece screwed onto your remaining chunk of tooth). woody and the sister of the affair across the street drag you home, leaving a trail of blood in your wake. mother panics, calls papaw, and you are rushed to a clinic where you receive four stitches in your chin. it didn't really hurt that much, being sewn up. you still have a scar.
you moved out of that house on pine cove when you were in the second grade and into the seasons apartments, mere blocks away from your grandparents. (note this move; in about two or three years you'll move to across the street from your grandparents.) in the apartment across from you there lived twins, a boy and a girl, a few years younger than you. beneath you lived a girl who was 13, and of whom you thought the world. once she babysat for a girl who lived in apartment F13, and you tagged along with her. she was probably six. the older girl told the younger she was cursed because she lived in apartment F13 (like friday the 13th sort of thing), and she started crying. sobbing. and wouldn't stop. the older girl demanded she stop, and when she didn't she got a belt and beat her with it. you stood motionless and horrofied in the living room as you listened to the sound of a belt crack against the bottom of a helpless child again and again. and again. and she screamed. and begged for her to stop. when she finally did stop, she returned to you laughing, and you forced out a false laugh yourself. you didn't tell anyone, but once when you were at brian and brianna's (the twins) and the older girl was there, too, the mother of the young girl came by with the girl. she pulled down the girl's shorts and panties to reveal to the babysitter her bottom. you'll never be able to erase the image of that poor angel's bottom, almost one complete bruise. when you hear certain 80s songs you feel deeply reminiscent and feel as if you're lying in your bed in that apartment, staring out the window at the rain like you did so often. they had a great playground only a building away from yours. mom says that you came home everyday crying because people made fun of you, but apparently you've done a fabulous blocking job of this.
there's a boy at school, chris beaugard, whom you've had a crush on since the first grade. he kissed you in mrs. hoffman's class, twice, and you chased him around the room asking him why. (note this confusion; you'll never understand why someone likes you.) of course you play hard to get and such, and then on the first day of third grade, when he doesn't show up in your class, you ask where he's at. oh i'm sorry, honey, he's moved to dallas over the summer. you want to cry. mrs. davis had a cardboard castle set up in her room for good students, and being the pet as you usually were you got to sit in it the most, even for no particular outstanding reason. timothy always stared at you, and you wondered if that meant he liked you. because you sure liked him. (note this constant infatuation with someone; it's an integral part of who you are.) your fourth grade teacher, mrs. echols, read where the red fern grows in class, having to pause frequently to drink water to wet her throat. you cried and felt very foolish to do so in public (being raised by boys you know that's just not an acceptable thing to do), but since everyone else is doing it you feel a little better. there's a boy who sits next to you, patrick, who picks his nose constantly. you now hate the name patrick. in the fifth grade, kimberly adams tried to pop your bra on the way back to class after lunch, and as you twisted to avoid it you fell and sprained your ankle. chris stegal and the coach took you to the office, where you sat, swollen in pain. when the nurse took your shoe off, it was all you had inside of you not to scream. it seemed like it was going to be okay, so you were just instructed to go easy on it. however, nine days later you fell on your bike, sprained it again, and had to get a cast. you were going down the path on the side of your grandparents' house (by this time you live across the street from them), and when you fell your mother could hear your screams from inside the house across the street. green was your favorite color then, so you got a neon green cast. everyone signed it. you were on crutches for about four to six weeks. toward the end you insisted it would be okay to ride your bike while in the cast, even though mother said that you'd just fall. needless to say, you did fall, consequently ripping up your left big toe pretty badly (the one poking out of the cast). when you got the cast off, it tickled badly and smelled oh so bad. there were pencil marks all over your calf from when it itched. one of the last days of fifth grade, you, timothy, and marvin were sitting on the ledge in the back of mrs. fowler's class. while everyone else was watching fern gulley, the three of you were digging through wesley's (oh yeah, you liked him, too, but since he liked laura you hooked them up) bag and taking pictures with his camera. oh what you would give to have those pictures now. later when megan was jokingly hitting you, timothy spun around over a desk to come in between the two of you, ordering not to hit me. ooh do you like chelsea or something? megan accused. yes i do, he replied, she's my friend. he returned to whatever he had been doing, you blushed, and megan gave you a look as if to say, oh well aren't you special. you have a job in the kindergarten circle helping kindergarteners into their cars. you went to a baptist church, but all you noticed was all the bad stuff that god did. so you stopped going and started hating god.
there was a man who lived next door to you whom no one ever saw. he had a giant magnolia tree in his yard, and the other children would climb in it; you were too afraid of getting caught by him. you tormented his dog because it was very rude and moody, and one of your bedroom windows faced his yard; you were contantly woken up to that dog barking when the old man would get home or feed it in the middle of the night. your radio station of choice was light rock, less talk, 96.5, kvki. you could name every single song and respective artist within the first five seconds of the song. (note this obession with music; your future nickname will be "the music queen.") all the girls refused to play you in mercy, several of the boys as well. you started the trend of running and jumping and falling (stupid, yes, but it was fun). it was around this time that you started your period. you had absolutely no clue as to what it was, but you understood soon enough. justin goldman "humped" his desk in class once. this was the first time you were introduced to such language, and you were appalled. by the end of the year, you were cursing like a sailor. somehow, even though you were supposed to go after justin, you managed to get ouf of singing in music class and couldn't be thankful enough. you had the music techer call you by your middle name because that's what britney rogers did. there was one tree in your front yard which you named willow. you spent countless days in his branches, until mom said you were too big for them (they were rather small). this is when you met the girl down the street, tara, who had mighty oak trees easily climbable. you would go to her house and watch "unsolved mysteries" on her big screen everyday. she taught you how to play yahtzee and do handstands against trees or walls. her mom treated you like her own child. tara had a crush on a not-so-cute guy with red hair. you saw the movie dr. giggles at her house, while eating, and almost threw up when he pumped her stomach but didn't stop there; flesh started coming in the tube. when she saw seven, you sat in the tree in the back yard, accessable by fence, telling you about the obese man who was sewn up, "and you could see his...!" you played horse a lot, and she told you dirty jokes, something about a wooden dildo and a glass dildo... there was a guy who lived on lone oak, just a block from hilton dr. (that's you) whom you liked. he had long, pretty eyelashes, and he rode your bus. your bus was fun. you had assigned seats, and your tara's partner was "queenie," named so because she was a bitch. that's where you first heard the "penis game" being played. once you playfully punched at him (he was sitting behind you, so you just raised your fist), and it actually hit him in the face. the bus erupted in laughter. there was a storm, and a tornado touched down near your father's new home. you wondered why it couldn't have taken his, too.
then it's 8 years later, you started to want to go to bed, so you went and took a nap before your poetry class.
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