who themselves had been marginalized, rejected. Many of them were kids from the Northwest Idaho Children’s Home, an orphanage and detention center for those with nowhere else to go. They were the ones who spent their lunch period in the empty lot across the street from school, cupping their Marlboros, slouching in their ragged jackets and faded jeans. They were the ones who took me in, placed the cigarette in my fingers, ridiculed those who had taunted me.
My father sensed my growing frustration, caught the rise of rebellion in my voice. The only response he knew was totake in rein, bear down harder, lock all the doors and bar escape. I began skipping school to meet my friends at the river, where we cajoled the railroad hoboes into sharing their wine, where we pushed ourselves into the swift water on packing-crate rafts and wished for the current to take us.
I no longer believed in who I was, or why. Nothing made sense except my need to reach out and taste the forbidden. I knew what punishment my acts would bring, but I no longer cared. Better to risk body and soul than to be imprisoned by the tyrannical laws my father and the church imposed. I was hungry for a world I had never known, a world held at bay by the mountains and the trees, by my parents, who meant only to save me. I spent my fourteenth year in basements and back alleys, in the blue glow of black lights, listening to Led Zeppelin, learning how to French-kiss, smoking dope, dropping mescaline, waiting for a vision that might change it all.
I N THE LATE SPRING OF 1972, instead of walking home after school, I met a girlfriend with whom I had made my plans to escape. We would
run away
, that magical phrase that promised to sever all ties to my old life, connect me to the new. We’d catch a ride with an older guy I’d never met who specialized in such underground relocations, ferrying discontent teenagers across the state line for little more, we’d heard, than the price of a doobie.
I never made it to the new land, to California—that oasis of freedom to which my friends and I were headed. My parents found me before I’d even left Lewiston, hiding in the closet of my friend’s mother—a humiliation I could hardly bear. But they could do no more. My heart was hardened, myconscience seared. Their only hope, they believed, was to send me away to live with the Langs, our former preacher and his family, who, like us, had traveled from the woods and now lived in Spokane.
I left Lewiston that summer knowing that all through the hot days of July and the late heat of August, my friends would smoke pot and listen to Black Sabbath and swallow the tiny tabs of Windowpane and Orange Sunshine; they would sprawl across the goal line of the empty football field to watch the moon rise, see it burst like a yellow balloon. They would close their eyes and taste butter on their tongues. They would eat my share of the sky—while I was stripped of my beads and makeup and given a bed in the Langs’ upstairs hallway. While I was under supervision day and night, allowed to go nowhere alone lest I flee. While I hoarded the last of my cigarettes and swore my hatred of God and man. I watched Luke, the preacher’s son, now sixteen, walk by me as though I were invisible, a chair in the corner, a ghost in his house. I remembered his hands between my knees, the dark stairwell we hid in, my adolescent shame and pleasure, there in the parsonage, there in the woods.
I tried to stay awake at night, to tend the hard knob of bitterness in my chest, because I hated to wake in the morning and feel, in that moment just before awareness, that girl I once had been take up residence in my body. She was the one who awakened with her eyes and mouth open, as though whatever might greet her came pleasant and sweet. I’d close my eyes, open them again, and she’d be gone, back to the closet I had made for her, back to where her softness could not be touched.
———
T HE L ANGS reminded me of
My father sensed my growing frustration, caught the rise of rebellion in my voice. The only response he knew was totake in rein, bear down harder, lock all the doors and bar escape. I began skipping school to meet my friends at the river, where we cajoled the railroad hoboes into sharing their wine, where we pushed ourselves into the swift water on packing-crate rafts and wished for the current to take us.
I no longer believed in who I was, or why. Nothing made sense except my need to reach out and taste the forbidden. I knew what punishment my acts would bring, but I no longer cared. Better to risk body and soul than to be imprisoned by the tyrannical laws my father and the church imposed. I was hungry for a world I had never known, a world held at bay by the mountains and the trees, by my parents, who meant only to save me. I spent my fourteenth year in basements and back alleys, in the blue glow of black lights, listening to Led Zeppelin, learning how to French-kiss, smoking dope, dropping mescaline, waiting for a vision that might change it all.
I N THE LATE SPRING OF 1972, instead of walking home after school, I met a girlfriend with whom I had made my plans to escape. We would
run away
, that magical phrase that promised to sever all ties to my old life, connect me to the new. We’d catch a ride with an older guy I’d never met who specialized in such underground relocations, ferrying discontent teenagers across the state line for little more, we’d heard, than the price of a doobie.
I never made it to the new land, to California—that oasis of freedom to which my friends and I were headed. My parents found me before I’d even left Lewiston, hiding in the closet of my friend’s mother—a humiliation I could hardly bear. But they could do no more. My heart was hardened, myconscience seared. Their only hope, they believed, was to send me away to live with the Langs, our former preacher and his family, who, like us, had traveled from the woods and now lived in Spokane.
I left Lewiston that summer knowing that all through the hot days of July and the late heat of August, my friends would smoke pot and listen to Black Sabbath and swallow the tiny tabs of Windowpane and Orange Sunshine; they would sprawl across the goal line of the empty football field to watch the moon rise, see it burst like a yellow balloon. They would close their eyes and taste butter on their tongues. They would eat my share of the sky—while I was stripped of my beads and makeup and given a bed in the Langs’ upstairs hallway. While I was under supervision day and night, allowed to go nowhere alone lest I flee. While I hoarded the last of my cigarettes and swore my hatred of God and man. I watched Luke, the preacher’s son, now sixteen, walk by me as though I were invisible, a chair in the corner, a ghost in his house. I remembered his hands between my knees, the dark stairwell we hid in, my adolescent shame and pleasure, there in the parsonage, there in the woods.
I tried to stay awake at night, to tend the hard knob of bitterness in my chest, because I hated to wake in the morning and feel, in that moment just before awareness, that girl I once had been take up residence in my body. She was the one who awakened with her eyes and mouth open, as though whatever might greet her came pleasant and sweet. I’d close my eyes, open them again, and she’d be gone, back to the closet I had made for her, back to where her softness could not be touched.
———
T HE L ANGS reminded me of
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