Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture by Chelsea Cain

never again be allowed back into Summer’s home. Nina and I walked, hand in hand, down the sidewalk and across the street. Nina stopped at the front door and waited until my mother answered. No words were exchanged. My mother’s angry stare bored into me. I shuddered in my skin, already feeling her icy words in my body, her violent pleas to be obedient, to honor my father’s demands.
    After I stepped inside, I bolted for my room and closed the door. My mother did not knock, but just stepped inside and said, ‘Tell me what possessed you to go over to that girl’s house when your father told you not to? I was worried sick, don’t you understand? I knocked on every neighbor’s door. No one knew where you were. I called the police. I called your father at work. I thought you had been kidnapped and raped and killed. I thought you were never coming home.’
    Tears crested in my half-moon eyes. I held my breath, determined not to let them fall.
    ‘You know better than to sneak around behind our backs. You are grounded for a month. I’m going to have your grandfather pick you up at school and bring you home. I’m going to call from work and make sure you answer the phone. You’re a disgrace to our family and a poor example to your sisters. Just wait until your father gets home.’
    My mother stormed out of the room and banged pots and pans in the kitchen as she attempted to cook dinner. My head ached.
    My stomach churned. I felt so bad I wanted to die.
    At dinner, no one spoke of my transgressions, though my sisters glanced at me with furtive eyes. My father was not home. He did not return from work until late at night when we were supposed to be asleep.
    The following morning, my father called me into his room. ‘You embarrassed us,’ he said. ‘What will people think of us if they saw you at that slum? What type of parents will they think we are for letting you go over there?’
    I did not know and I did not care, but I was told I should know, I should care. So I did.
    I listened to my parents. I let my grandfather pick me up after school when everyone else rode the bus. I let my mother call me from work to see that I was home, caring for my sisters like I said I would. I let my father lecture to me about good people, honest people, trustworthy people.
    A week before Christmas, Summer and her family moved as mysteriously as they had appeared. By January, another family had moved in, a more conventional one, with a mother and a father and two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom did not want to play with me or my sisters, even after my father said it was okay. ‘They go to our church, be nice to them,’ my father reasoned. But they kept to themselves as much as we did.
    Only once did my father speak of Summer’s departure, and when he did, he dramatized it as if it were a made-for-TV movie. ‘They left in the middle of the night. They had something to hide and did not want to get caught. They didn’t have a moving van. Just a truck. They piled up furniture and left the place a mess. The owners had to paint and re-carpet and replace doors and the stove. They left trash everywhere. And they never paid rent. Not once.’
    I missed Summer. I missed the escape into a world where time did not matter, where tasks could be forgotten, where it was just fine to be. I wanted stories like Nina’s to tell my children someday.

    Years passed. I forgot about Nina and Summer—for a time. When I was nineteen, I moved 110 miles from home and lived with my boyfriend. A year later, I married. Three years later, I had a son. For five years, I did not own a TV. I listened to whatever my husband played on the stereo. I walked barefoot and naked in the house. I have stories to tell. Of my wedding reception: how the best man had broken his toe and was downing vodka to numb the pain and when the time came for his elegant speech, he wavered with his glass and said, ‘Get a life!’ We laughed. Guests and relatives cowered with shame.