LJ Idol Season 10: The Rent I Pay
"Hillary, it'll be for three months. I promise." My father swore to me as he tucked me into my new bed and bedroom, the one I was to share now with my mom. My mother leaned over me to give me a kiss good night, her face pinched with worry. My aunt, my mother's sister, stood off to the corner, glaring at this display of love. "We'll be together again as a family. I swear."
"You sure, Aba?" I asked as I curled into my pillow.
"I promise." The lights turned off and I fell asleep that night with the sounds of hushed whispers of angry voices.
It was not the first promise he was going to break nor the last.
I didn't realize until I was an adult but at that moment, we were essentially homeless except for the fact that my aunt begrudgingly gave my mom a bedroom for her to share with her six year old daughter. She never let us forget it either.
....
My father ended up in jail. It wouldn't be the first time or the last time. I learned this the hard way.
Despite being a fluent Hebrew speaker, my mother didn't take into account my vocabulary (what 7 year old knows the Hebrew word for prison, she rationalized). She told me that he was in Baltimore doing a job with my uncles; I believed her. I had no reason not to believe my mom.
Until one night, my aunt sat at the kitchen table and berated her about her decision to be with my father, this schmuck who is now in prison. I began bawling and screaming, hyperventilating and yelling two words over and over. "You lied!"
I ran to the bedroom screaming as my aunt yelled at me to stop making so much noise and stop being a brat because "you don't know anything." My mom ignored her and calmed me down and I asked her "why did you lie to me?"
She apologized over and over; she thought she was protecting me. No child should know that their father is in jail.
She swore she would never lie to me again; she kept her word.
....
I transferred schools in third grade; it became too much of a drive to go back and forth to my private, religious school across the county when there was a good public school in our backyard.
I loved my school. I didn't have to wear skirts every day and have to worry if my elbows and knees were covered. I didn't have to learn Hebrew formally anymore. I made friends quickly and I fit right in. I would go over to my friends' houses, run around the neighborhood, and had the time of my life.
But I never brought friends over; how do you explain to your wealthy friends that the only reason you're able to live in this neighborhood is because you share a room and a bed with your mother in your aunt's house? You don't. Anytime my friends would ask me about where I lived, I made up lies as a little piece of me died inside thinking about what my life had become.
The one time I brought of my friends inside my house, my cousin was sprawled on the couch watching TV. When my friend asked me who that was, I lied and said my aunt and cousin lived with us. It sounded better to my ear. My cousin never said a word but I wonder if that night she and my aunt sat there and laughed at me and my need to play pretend and imagine that all was right in my world.
That sense of shame stayed with me for a long time after.
....
My mom and I hated being in that house with every fiber of our being. My aunt lorded it over us that this was her house; G-d forbid we touched anything that belonged to her. There were screaming matches between my mom and her sister nightly from being accused of "mooching and not paying rent" (which my mom did pay rent much to her friends' shock - who charges their own sister rent?) to stealing her food. She would have parties (including not inviting us to my cousin's high school graduation party which my mother never forgave her for) and not invite us unless one of her friends would say "don't you want offer Hillary something to eat?" and then I'd hear in a sickeningly sweet voice, "Hillary, would you like to join us?" Never my mother. I never went upstairs when her friends were there.
Aba was out of jail again and bouncing back and forth from hotel to hotel. On weeknights, we'd go out to dinner almost every night with him or with their friends and get home late. On weekends, we would join him bouncing from hotel room to hotel room so that we didn't have to be at her house. It was never home.
I swore that one day I would find some kind of stability, a home, and what I wanted the most, a bed of my own.
....
The summer before 5th grade, Mommy had enough money to afford an apartment of our own. What had been promised to me three months of having to live in that room turned into three and a half years. Finally, we were getting an apartment with two bedrooms - a bedroom and bed of my own.
That summer, Mommy took me shopping to pick out my own quilt for my new room; it was a monumental decision in choosing a red, green,yellow, and blue squared print quilt that was my very own quilt for my very own bed. My mom's friend's husband put my room together with the bed and the dressers that had sat in storage for all these years. I asked my mom repeatedly if I could decorate my room any way I wanted which she swore I could (and kept her word).
August 10th, 1995, a month before I turned 10, I finally had a room of my own again. I'll never forget that simple joy, tears, and excitement, for finally having my own space. I'll never forget that first night of laying in my own bed and realizing this was my place.
My room became my haven; I had decorated it floor to wall with posters and magazine cutouts, I had a huge bed, books everywhere, figurines that I collected proudly displayed. That room was a reflection of who I was and who I was to become. It became a place where I could invite my friends and that I could be proud of. It became the place where my friends wanted to hang out, have sleepovers, and spend time together. My room was my safe place to go for the next seven years of my life.
Never again would someone take my room and bed and my sense of self away from me.