Things only seem to get worse from here.
While searching for a job in Florida, Dad secures a position with Southern Bell as a telephone communications technician: a “telephone man.” He returns to New Jersey to talk my great-grandmother into selling her beautiful home and moving to Carol City, a middle-class suburb of Miami. He says he can be happy in the warmer climate, and he promises to never leave her alone again.
My great-grandma says yes. After all, he is the man, and everything he says and does is right.
She will live to regret her decision and never speak much about it in the end.
Grandma sells her house to Dr. Bricker next door for a pittance. He is ever so pleased that Dad wants out fast and the house can be had at a steal. He tells us his intentions are to turn it into a retirement home for the elderly. Whether he does or not, I never find out; but later, in our big backyard, a pool takes the place of our beautiful climbing trees.
Our new house in Carol City, Florida, is nothing like the hand-built one we left in New Jersey. The yard is much smaller. The house, built of cinder blocks instead of wood, has metal awnings to protect the windows from the seasonal hurricanes.
Quickly, we kids comb our new home for things familiar. In the backyard is a kumquat tree and a lime tree, and in the front, a royal palm. All are much smaller than the trees we are used to, and we instantly disapprove.
Sporting the décor of the 1970s, the house is an aqua color. The walls have wood paneling, and the floor is covered in green shag carpet. “It’s da latest ting,” Mom informs us while we make frowning faces.
Roaming our yard are frogs and giant toads that foam poison when we come near. The creatures have the sad, terminal habit of sleeping on the cool road at night, and their slimy webbed feet aren’t fast enough to jump out of the way of oncoming cars. So in the mornings, we always find at least two freshly splattered ones on the street out front. It’s disgusting.
Mostly it is hot, hot, hot! So hot we can’t sleep at night. Although we’ve adapted to different climates in the past, the dense humidity of this miserable place is too much to bear. I get up in the middle of the night to rip off my clothes because I can’t stand it.
On the stifling nights when I can’t sleep, I trudge to the bathroom to search for water to cool off. When I switch on the light, masses of loud, scurrying cockroaches dash to their hiding places. Screaming for our mother becomes a nighttime practice for us children, until Mom contracts an exterminator and installs air-conditioning in our swamplike Florida home.
My first job at our new house is to clean the yard. The royal palm tree in front needs its dying fronds peeled away and put in something called a trash pile.
Trash pile? What’s a trash pile? I think.
I don’t know, but everyone has one.
I am grudgingly yanking off branches when suddenly something slimy jumps out and glues itself to my face. Screaming and in a panic, I run in circles, yelling for help, and my brother and sister run out to see what’s happening.
Wayne, not afraid of creepy things, simply pulls the creature from my face, looks at it, and laughs. A little tree frog’s sucker fingers have stuck to my skin so hard they’ve left tiny round marks on my forehead and cheeks.
I cry hard.
My mother tells me I am stupid.
But I know why the tears are there. My sadness has risen too high, and like an awkward, toppling stack from the roadside trash pile, I can hold it in no longer.
Everything is too different, and no one is happy.
Mom always screams, and Dad is mad.
Dad even starts to take the belt to us when we are bad, just as Mom has always done. He calls it “the snake,” and he is strong.
Dad doesn’t call me princess anymore, and my heart is broken.
I just want everything to be like it was before. I want to go back home to New Jersey. Before, we could always go back. This time is different, though. We are stuck here, in this awful place; here, where they have things like trash piles; here, where it is always summertime; here, where, no matter how hard I look, there is never any magic—and never, ever any fireflies.
Dad goes to work at the phone company right away, but he isn’t happy there, either.
School starts, and I begin the third grade at Carol City Elementary. I am eight years old, my sister is seven, my brother is four, and my great-grandma is eighty-two. Mom and Dad, in their thirties, are ageless in my eyes.
In no time, Dad is restless again and decides to find work elsewhere. This time, overseas is “where the real money is,” and he’s determined to tap into it “for the family.”
Putting our faith in him again, we say good-bye as he leaves to seek out our fortune in far-off countries. He has been with us in Florida for only six months.
As the years roll by without Dad in Carol City, we struggle, waiting for him to return. Trouble begins within a year of our arrival. Things get bad fast. Really bad.
In the schools, angry students plant bombs and stab teachers; on the streets, robbers target the elderly.
Grandma makes friends with our next-door neighbor, Owello, a Cuban man in his eighties who speaks through a hole in his throat. One day, after walking into town to cash his Social Security check, he staggers home with a fresh stab wound in his hand. Punk thieves hid in an alley waiting for him to walk the few blocks home with his meager monthly cash folded neatly in his pocket next to his freshly smoked cigar.
Owello’s arms flail wildly as he explains, without a voice, how he bravely fought the robbers at first. Then his shoulders slump, and he shakes his head as he describes how he was overpowered. Tears run down his leathery cheeks, and with broken nods, he agrees to let Grandma bandage his hand.
Afterward, the two of them sit on his porch, numbly looking out at our lost neighborhood and in at our deteriorating lives.
My first fight is on our street in front of an entire block of kids. While I am out walking our dog, a girl jumps me. I am ten, and she, a girl who used to play with me, is twelve. Taking a beating, I am devastated.
Being small for my age and still a child, I am terrified to walk down the streets again. But in order to prove myself and not be marked as an easy target, I have to learn to throw a punch and challenge the girl who jumped me to another fight. This time I’m prepared, and she loses a tooth. Staggering home, my only injury a hole in my knuckle, I am oddly triumphant yet scared out of my mind that I might have to fight again.
I do.
Once the ball begins to roll, gang activity in my community escalates faster than lightning speed. For me, school is becoming the worst place to be: a place where a person can get killed.
In fact, going anywhere alone in Carol City or the surrounding towns is becoming very dangerous.
My brother, sister, and I have to grow up fast. My childlike demeanor, the innocence of my age, is now stuffed into the deepest recesses of my psyche, hidden and safe. I keep my guard up and feel protected only in moments of absolute privacy. All too soon, my childhood has turned upside down forever, leaving my mind focused every waking moment on survivaclass="underline" How do I avoid a confrontation? Where do I go to be safe? How do I protect myself? Like a mantra, an internal prayer, these questions chant constantly in my mind, keeping me ever vigilant.