The Boots My Mother Gave Me
Read The Boots My Mother Gave Me Online
Authors: Brooklyn James
My Mother Gave Me
The Boots My Mother Gave Me
by Brooklyn James
Copyright © 2010 by Brooklyn James
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Edited by Janet Kilgore
Cover design by Rebecca Bretz
Cover concept by Ginamarie Hinojosa
Cover photographs used with permission
Chevelle owned by Ed & Kim Bonham
Text design and layout by Terry Sherrell and Blake Mitchell
Published by Arena Books, Austin, Texas
Lyrics used in chapter 4: “Anywhere But Here,” chapter 8: “Moving On,” chapter 15: “Let Me,” chapter 18: “Touch You At All,” chapter 21: “Lucky One,” chapter 25: “It’s Not Always About You,” chapter 33: “Live and Let Love” © 2010 One Dumb Blonde Music & On Your Right Music. Lyrics used in chapter 29: “Jeremiah Johnson” © 2010 One Dumb Blonde Music. Lyrics used in chapter 17: “Can’t Get It Right” © 2005 One Dumb Blonde Music, On Your Right Music & Acrimony and Cheese Music. Lyrics used in chapter 34: “Nothing More Natural” © 2005 One Dumb Blonde Music & On Your Right Music. All rights reserved. Lyrics used with permission. Songs performed by Brooklyn James.
First Printing—August 2010
ISBN: 978-0-615-38913-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010912827
NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, BY PHOTOCOPYING OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER/AUTHOR.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to every woman, man, and child of abuse.
May you find your way and your light within.
In Loving Memory of Shar-Baby.
I know you would have been so proud.
My Angel misses you. We all do. See you in the moon, love.
*
Song accompanying chapter can be found on music soundtrack.
I
f love is so good, why does it hurt sometimes? I never liked being at the mercy of another, especially when most often that other was someone who was supposed to protect and love me unconditionally. Daughters covet their fathers, and when abused and manipulated, those feelings firmly plant seeds of destruction. The words from my father’s mouth penetrated my most internal thoughts and emotions, defining my self-worth. With one word, intonation, a look, my father could make me feel ten feet tall or lower than a slimy slug, dragging its disgusting body through the muck.
In my fifth grade science class, I discovered the amygdala. An almond-shaped group of nuclei, the amygdala resided in my brain as part of my limbic system, pivotal in monitoring my emotional sensors. The amygdala, my
almond,
as my ten-year old self referred to it, was my savior.
I pictured my soul as an actual part of my being, not unlike my heart, my kidney, or any other body part. Mr. Yumani, my fifth grade science teacher, so specific in his explanation, made it clear: I did not have a
soul,
not in my abdomen or my chest, even though it always seemed to ache there when I was offended, hurt, or otherwise affected. My
soul,
my feelings, my emotions actually resided in my brain.
Life-changing and empowering, Mr. Yumani’s lecture ranked as one of the most significant experiences in my ten years of life. The mind controlled all things; I was on my way to emotional and psychological freedom.
From that lecture on, whenever my father said something hurtful, I tried like hell to convince my
almond
it didn’t hurt, even though my gut disagreed. The tears stung as they inevitably welled in my eyes and fell down my face.
The first few times I failed but persistence was key. As with all things, practice made perfect. By the time school ended that year, my heart was a mite harder, my
soul
more distant, my mind a work in progress, flexing its muscle, the fiber tearing each time disappointment and hurt came my way, only to recoup, rebuild.
What I couldn’t control with my mind, I ran from, figuratively and literally. Growing up, I often berated my feet as too big, too long, and too skinny. Ironically the spitting image of my father’s, my feet, with their gangly, long-knuckled phalanges, became my personal freedom train. Like Forrest Gump, I just kept running and running and running. The disruptive thoughts that found harbor in the recesses of my mind, too intense to control, any unlucky feelings that made their way into my
soul,
were punished on the pavement. Vulnerability became my personal vendetta.
Running was my release. My feet never failed me. Always ready for an uplifting casual jog or a speedy run, maybe a punishing sprint, they took me far away. My mind and my body the perfect yin and yang, what I couldn’t control with my mind, I exhausted with my body.
Running held me until I got my driver’s license, a rite of passage for some, a spiritual awakening for me. Like an addict, I was hooked the first time I felt the wheel in my palm obeying my direction as it clung to the winding road. Where would it lead me?
M
y father kicked me out the fall of my senior year of high school. It happened on a Tuesday night in October 1996. On the basketball team at school, I returned from an away game that ran into double overtime, pushing it to get home by ten o’clock. Jeremiah Johnson, or Miah as I often called him, my neighbor and best friend since we were four years old, rode with me.
We won our game. I still rode that high while Jeremiah, in priceless form, made me laugh until my stomach hurt. Riding along in the old rusted-out, brown, flatbed Ford farm truck, we must have looked like the Clampetts, but we couldn’t have cared less.
He was handsome, his seventeen-year-old frame long and lean, chiseled from the testosterone running through his body and the rigorous football training at which his young fully-charged physique excelled. Captain of the football team at Lambo High, Jeremiah epitomized every little boy’s hero, every schoolgirl’s dream.
I had convinced myself liking boys constituted a waste of time. What if they grew up to be men like my father? I heard all the horror stories about young girls who fell in love with boys, only to find themselves pregnant or married, stuck in this town for the rest of their lives.
No guy would get near me with a ten-foot pole, not even Jeremiah Johnson. Not that he wanted to anyway. He dated the pretty girls, girly-girls. Sure, I had a vagina, but I was one of the boys, really. My neighborhood swarmed with them. If you wanted to play, you did what the boys did. We played ball all the time. We built secret forts in the backwoods of our desolate wilderness, covering them with wild green ferns as a disguise, only to return the next day to find a steaming cow patty sitting right in the center of our illustrious fort. We played Cowboys and Indians and Matchbox cars, no dolls or tea parties for me.
I believe I actually thought of myself as a boy for a while. Hell, maybe even Jeremiah thought so, my long, lanky frame nearly free of curves. People define flat-chested girls as
late bloomers.
Well, someone forgot to plant my seeds altogether until the summer before my junior year.
Without warning, the puberty train ran me over.
Finally!
I thought, until I was left trying to figure out what to do with my new, bouncy attachments. A real MacGyver with the duct tape, I used it to hold the
girls
down on the basketball court. Feeling self-conscious and awkward about my ever-changing physical features, I feared Jeremiah might notice and our friendship, as I knew it, would end. Fortunately he didn’t bat an eye, which left me feeling relieved yet somehow disappointed.
As we drove, the dashboard lights reflected off his intoxicating smile. I watched him intently, burning the image into my mind for future recollection. This would be my last year with the person I shared most of my firsts with—my first friend, my first bike ride, my first loose tooth. (We tried the old string on the doorknob trick and much to our excitement, it worked.) He even gave me my first kiss.
Jeremiah wanted to learn to drive a stick-shift, so we piled in the old brown Ford and took it out on a desolate dirt road, which ran everywhere around our hometown of Georgia, Pennsylvania, a speck on the map. We drove and laughed for hours on that back road. I figured he turned my insides into a milkshake, what with all the surging and bucking of the truck, as he tried to find his rhythm between the clutch and the gearshift. After what seemed an eternity, he made it in one straight path through all the gears, his transitions so smooth a cup of water on the dashboard would have remained upright and full.
He whooped and hollered in triumph, I whooped and hollered louder. He slammed on the brakes and turned to me. I thought he was going to hug me, as we had a million times before in teenage exuberance. He looked at me, his chest heaving up and down. His smile faded before my eyes and he simply stared at me, as if making his own personal snapshot.