The Vapor of Vanishing Innocence

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The Weight of Who I am

Chapter Four

The Vapor of Vanishing InnocenceBy Thom Hunter -- http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/

The little one who smiles and hides the pain

Lets tears fall when he plays out in the rain.

The innocence portrayed with winsome look

Was the part of him that someone selfish took.

The awakened now spends time just looking backAnd moments focused only on his lack.

The autumn gray has claimed the barefoot son

Who sits and dreams of how he used to run.

Twelve hours elapsed from the time of my arrest to the time of my

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release. Twelve hours was long enough to relive a lifetime. I was

warily aware that in the bare room in which I sat on a metal bench and

leaned against a concrete wall -- not hungry enough to eat the baloney

sandwiches wheeled in on a big metal cart -- were men who would not

be going home for quite some time. Some glared at their sock-clad feetin borderline shock; one cried and folded up into a ball, another

babbled incoherently and kept hitting himself in the head, and several

others walked in circles making jokes and reminiscing about their past

visits to the county jail with the vibrant enthusiasm of returning

students recounting "what I did this summer," sharing stories of prison

guards, comparing rules of various facilities as if they were summer

camps.

I re-lived each mili-second of my five-minute moment in the park;replayed every syllable of the conversation; reviewed each frame of

every character's movements with my eyes closed as if someone else

might see what I could see and respond with an unflattering critique.

There were things I wanted to forget but could not and would not --

handcuffs in a holding van while being "processed," the trophy picture

with the undercover officer standing at my side as if with a prized fish,

the pink ticket with the charges, the reading of my rights, the

questioning of whether I planned to hurt myself (had I not already?),

the typhoid test, the sliding of my wallet, watch and ring into a plastic

bag, fingerprinting, mug shots -- so I meticulously labored through with

mental determination to convince myself I was not dreaming.

And I was not.

We refer to things as momentous because we view most major life-

changing . . . life-ending . . . events as happening in just a moment, to

us. An earthquake. A car careening off a bridge. A final breath. A look.

A gesture. A touch. A rejection. A slamming door. A momentous word

creating light. A momentous word plunging us into darkness. An arrest. The truth is, most "momentous" events are not moments at all, but

climaxes that unfold over time in plain sight of our refusal to observe.

We seem surprised to find ourselves digging through debris which

contains within it the signs of impending disaster.







to children of a young divorcée who's ex had quickly lapsed into non-

payment of child support. Michael bought blow-up floating toys for the

pool and plied us with hamburgers. My "real dad," as I began to refer

to him, spent his withering income on wine, cigarettes and an

occasional bus ticket to visit his offspring.

I found myself slowly taken in by this suave stranger in his big

bathrobe and dressy slippers, propped up in his motel bed with

cigarettes and Black Crow whiskey, telling jokes like Johnny Carson,

declaring himself a German Jew, though he had hailed from Oklahoma,

claiming he had big money somewhere, all the while taking Polaroids

of my sisters posing in bathing suits and Baby Doll pajamas and telling

my mother she needed to sue my father for unpaid child support. It

would not be long before she did, and my father returned to Denton,not on a bus to see his kids, but in a squad car to be transported to the

county jail. My older brother, who knew him better than I, would stand

on the grounds outside the jail-house and throw cigarettes two stories

up and through the bars to my dad, a strange bonding experience

between father and son that Mike will never forget. I only thought that

Dad was bad; he was in jail.

Meantime, Michael practiced his shrewd moves. We often point fingers

at people for being gullible, for being taken in, swallowing the bait . . .

but the truth is that evil is so well-camouflaged that even the most

discerning can find themselves swooning at attention that is not

authentic, smiles that are practiced and compliments that are nothing

more than a cluster of words designed to win an audience. My mother

fell for Michael and we fell for the promise. I had a dad again.

The hamburger days ended abruptly, replaced with the "go to the store

and get me some damn cigarettes" days. The bathrobe became the

uniform of the day, day after day. The money somewhere became

money no-where. The laughing man who had once tossed handfuls of

quarters in the pool so we could dive and keep was now watering down

ketchup to make it go farther and forcing my mother to cook cauldrons

of lima beans and meatless spaghetti and freeze it in measured "TV

dinners." The suave world traveler became the unemployed typewriter

repairman. His Black Crow whiskey became his idol and the escape





abuse Michael. Though he never touched me, he drained me of the

remaining hope that boys have of finding a shadow in which to walk.

And he even took away from me my brother, who, refusing to trek to

the store for cigarettes -- perhaps remembering the days of throwing

them to a better man -- climbed on a motorcycle and drove away atthe age of about 14. In his rebellion, perhaps compelled by an

immense hatred for a truly awful man, he somehow moved from

uprooted to upright, spending a few years with grandparents before

enlisting in the Marines and shipping out to Vietnam.

My mother's dream man, Michael, who had rescued her from the

disappointment of my dad, was, in later years referred to by her as

"the name we do not mention." She still won't.

Thankfully, it doesn't take much light for children to grow; the desire

for life is strong even in strife. Those were days of Monopoly games,

home-made skateboards, free-range roaming of ever-changing

neighborhoods into which we would move to avoid the sheriff when the

rent was too-far past-due. There were always new people, terrain

shifting from trashy alleys to weeping-willow-bestowed grand

backyards. There was adventure. The misery of our home-life made us,

in some strange way, attractive to others; we were an oddity. Despite

my vow to remain locked down inside, I found friends.

My stepfather was a follow-the-work type, as in when he would drink

too much and lose a job in one town, he would follow his urge to start

anew in a place where no one knew him. It follows that we followed

him. We followed him to a hopeful and far-too-nice home in Shawnee,

Oklahoma where I would ride my skateboard with abandon down the

steps of the administration building at Oklahoma Baptist University

-- Old Baggy Underwear to us local boys -- until administrators would

emerge to chase me and my friends away. In the afternoons after

school, my friends and I would stand on the porch with brooms as

guitars and sing Beatles songs while my sisters and their friends would

swoon in the front yard paying tearful homage to our mop-top talents

by tossing Sweet-Tarts to the stage. I know I had friends there, though

I cannot remember their names or place their faces.



When I was about 10 years old, we left tornado country for the humid

bayous of Houston, where we moved into a concrete jungle . . . blocks

and blocks of apartment buildings and parking lots, dotted occasionally

with a convenience store or a dry cleaners or a liquor store or a Jewish

deli. It was a fine place for little boys on banana-seat bicycles wholiked to explore. I could race between the buildings and through the

alleys and leave my feelings behind in our little apartment.

In Houston, I found friends like George who did not abandon me even

on the day that my stepfather dragged his mattress to the front lawn

of Houston's Riddlewood Apartments and sprawled in gaping boxer

shorts to protest a broken air conditioner, yelling ethnic insults at Mrs.

Weingarten, the manager of the building, despite, of course, his own

unsubstantiated claim to Jewry. It would soon be moving time again.

Despite it all, it was a season of re-discovering summer and I did so

with the gusto of a normal Gentile in a Jewish suburb. Buying chocolate

covered ants at the Jewish deli in Houston and dumping them on the

sidewalk because George told me they were still alive; sitting under

the yellow neon lights of the strip center, fighting off dive-bomber june

bugs as we ate orange sherbet ice cream cones outside Baskin-

Robbins. It was the summer of my first kiss, to a girl whose name I

can't remember, through the window screen of her family's apartment.

It was a season in which I almost found myself, but backed away and

hid, postponing revelation for a better day. Still, it was the season in

which I found Christ.

Deb, my older sister, was entering her teen years. During summer

months when the pool was open, her friends from school would come

to swim, though they dared not enter the apartment where Michael

ruled. I remember the older boys would taunt me from the second-floorbalcony as they prepared to jump into the pool, calling me names like

"hairless little monkey," proud of the fuzz on their legs and chests and

beneath their armpits. I did not know that all I needed to do was grow;

I felt lessened by my skinny sleekness. I should have realized it was

just their way to chase me away.



Repulsed by coming home from school to find my stepfather protesting

in his boxers in front of our building, I fled on my bike, racing away to

erase the indelible image of my stepfather in his underwear. A few

blocks from out building I turned a corner and saw something rare:trees. Like they had sneaked into the neighborhood, they closely

guarded a thick green lot I had never noticed before, overgrown,

crowded with trees and thick undergrowth, but with a thin meandering

trail into its middle. I was 10; I took the trail.

I hopped off my bike and walked it in with me, over the vines and into

the cool darkness of this small forgotten piece of forest, a reminder of

what this part of town had been before most of it was paved, a picture

of what we all are before the layers of life suffocate the freedom in oursouls. The further I walked into the lot, the less I could hear the traffic;

the more I could erase the real world: my stepfather, the older boys in

the neighborhood who liked to tease and threaten, the arguments at

home, poker parties that played out till dawn, the broken air-

conditioner and the still hot humid nights of Houston, too overbearing

for the tiny apartment window that only opened a few inches.

In a clearing in the middle of the "quiet place," a bulldozer sat, its

shovel aimed skyward, its tracks clogged with vines as if it were never

going to move again. The trees around it had been cleared, probably

by the bulldozer itself, and it sat alone beneath a hole in the sky,

abandoned and forgotten, but powerful in its solitude. And very

beckoning. My bulldozer.

Ten-year-olds love secrets, but most of the secrets I had at the time

were bad. Some boys have dogs; others have buddies. I had the

bulldozer. Every time feelings would invade my life, no matter the

prompting, I would head for the clearing, park the bike against the

machine's massive tracks, scale the cabin and climb into the upraised

shovel. There I could cry, cry out, sing, shout or just lay quietly and

watch afternoons fade to almost dark. This was a place Daddy had

never been, a clearing in which Mr. Hooten would never camp and a

resting place far removed from the repulsive Michael. I told the

bulldozer everything. Or someone . . . whoever it was that listened



when 10-year-olds hurl their hearts at the opening in the sky.

Though I had many conversations with God beneath the opening in the

sky, I did not officially become a Christian until I was 12. We still lived

in Houston. My visits to the bulldozer were less frequent as I learned torelease the silent inanimate solidity of it for God Himself, who not only

listens when we cry out, but responds. So I began to grow up and I

tried to release the weight of the past. Still, even though I was a

Christian, I carried some feelings deep inside, unwilling to be as honest

with God as I had been with the bulldozer; hesitant to cry out or cry to

a living God as opposed to a yellow, though very strong, hunk of metal.

I was as trapped in my own clearing as the bulldozer was in "his."

In the darkest reliving of the memories of being abused, and during thequiet nights on my bunk bed wondering what my dad was doing and

where he was, I felt clearly the presence of God, though I was clearly

uncomfortable referring to Him as "Father," particularly with Michael

snoring down the hall. I would lie still and silent, letting my tears flow

and my heart ponder the possibility of His goodness. The too-soon loss

of innocence met the presence of hope in those midnight moments of

solitude away from the burning sun of reality. I sensed that, to Him, I

was like everyone else, not shattered and shuttered, but whole and

open.

But . . . there was this baggage. Invisible to everyone else, I was

beginning to get a glimpse of it, feeling the weight, realizing the room

it took to store it, but adjusting to the need to have it always with me. I

did not know what it was, but I knew it was there. This awareness was .

. . momentous . . . an acceptance that I was somehow moving through

childhood, though innocence had ascended like a vapor, blending into

the dark night sky. Like viewing the tail-lights of my father's car for the

final time. Like feeling the weight of Mr. Hooten unwelcome upon me in

a smothering tent. Like being sent to the store to service a sick man's

addiction. Not moments at all, but life, to be replayed.

I have been asked if I was a happy child. In truth, I very often was.

Happiness is one of those mysteries that plays out somehow around

the edges of misery and weaves its way into memory. It tiptoed in and



out as I picked my way through the minefield of emerging masculinity,

unmindful I was composing my to-do-list of what-not-to-be.

Every time we moved, the baggage became greater and my care of it

more determined. I would soon begin to unpack it.

(Note: Chapter One is available at this link: Have We Finally Come to

the End?, Chapter Two is available at this link: Sadness at the Sound

of Trains, and Chapter Three is available at this link: Why Was My

Voice So Small?

http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/2010/08/have-we-finally-come-to-end.html


http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/2010/08/sadness-at-sound-of-trains.html



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The Vapor of Vanishing Innocence