"So, where're you from?" 
In my younger years I was more sensitive about where I was from.  When people would ask me, 'where are you from?', I would tell them, "Every bar, bowling alley, truck stop, and airport across the country."  Because that 's what it felt like.  For a few years there it didn't feel like I was 'from' or belonged anywhere. No place was "home".

After Dad & Mom got divorced we moved from a 20 acre farm in the country, to a trailer park in a small city called Lowell (Michigan).  Well, it was small back then!  Mom was never home, or she was sleeping when she was home.  She worked 3rd shift at Amway.  On the weekends she'd bring me to her friends house, and her friend's daughter - Kimmy - would be stuck with me through the weekend while our mom's would go up north to Greenville to hang out at the bar... 'dancing'.  Mom would come get me some time on Sunday, and she'd go to sleep when we got home. 

Finally she hooked up with this guy tom, a trucker, she'd either leave me at Kimmies on the weekends while she took off with tom on short runs, or she'd leave me at someone else's house, or I'd get home from school on Thursday or Friday and just find a note telling me that she'd left for a while and would be back in a few days. 

I vaguely remember having other baby setters later, people I'd stay with during the week, and only go home on the weekends, or to a different setter.  I stayed with Harry and Earlina Eldersma in an arrangement like this for a while.....they had kids, though I don't remember how many, and a weiner dog, and fish.... I don't even know how mom knew them. If you know them... yeah, write and tell me how I can find 'em!  I have an issue or two to take up with Harry..... he really likes little girls!  I was in 7th grade.  I also remember staying with some other people whom I didn't know, but they had a lot of kids in a little apartment.  I stayed nights there too, I remember watching the Olympics in there apartment for the first time.

  I would sometimes ride the bus up to my friend Chaundra McAtey's house just so I could get off the bus with her.  Sometimes, if her mom was home, I would stay and play for a while.  If her mom wasn't home, I would just walk home.  There was a field behind the trailer park between her house and mine.  One day I got off the bus there and her momwasn't home, so I started walking home.  Chris, a guy from my trailer park, from just a few trailers down the street from mine, got off the bus there too so he was already walking the same direction.  He said he'd walk with me.  He was a senior in high school so I didn't see any reason why I couldn't walk with him.  I knew him from the neighborhood; i never gave it a second thought.  Well.. he did, about half way through the field though, he had his own ideas.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  Right there in the open field he raped me and exposed me to all aspects of 'sex', the whole kit n kaboodle, and made it clear there's more than one way.....  I thought I was going to die of suffocation the way he held his coat over my mouth to muffle me.  Then he just left me there.  I don't knwo how long i laid there in the field before I finally collected my clothes, put them back on, and walked home.  When I got home mom was madder than a wet hen, because I was so late.  I tried to tell her what happened, but I was a liar anyhow I guess, so she didn't believe me... or soemthing like that.  She had to leave early for work that day.

Chris must have told people about it, because for the rest of the time we lived there, there were other boys, regularly. Most of them nicer than Chris was to me.  Mom was less than interested.  These occurances usually happened when her new friend from Greenville would come to visit.  If the Semi was parked on the street in front of our trailer, I was supposed to stayin my room or stay gone.  When he stayed longer, like overnight or for a weekend, he would park his semi at the bowling alley down the street.  Then I would stay in his semi.  He had a TV in there, and lots of magazines with pictured of naked people.  I would read the stories in his magazines and they explained the things that the boys in the neighborhood did to me. The magazines explained what I was supposed to do back.  Well this made sense, no wonder those boys would get so mad at me, because I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do.  It was becoming clear to me that this must be how it's supposed to be.  This must all be very normal after all.  Hmm... my mom never told me about all this stuff. I guess she was just too busy working. She would tell me, "I'm doing all of this for you.  I have to work like this to provide for you.  So I have the right to have a man friend sometimes, and you have to accept that."  Ok.... so i did.

I liked mom's new friend though..... He called me 'Princess' and was always really nice to me.  He used to like to hold me and hug and kiss me.  He would go on and on about how cute I was, and what a pretty little girl I was.  He used to tease me about how all the boys would be chasing me before I knew it. Little did he know, nor did they care, that they were already chasing me, or why.... but they weren't little boys.  On the bus ride home, sometimes I would see the stacks of that big semi truck parked in front of our little trailer there in Lowell.  I knew then that mom would be gone for the weekend, or that I would have to stay in my room all weekend if they decided not to go away. 

Yeah, I had to stay in my room because the adults were busy playing adult games in the living room.  No big deal, I would just climb out my window and run the neighborhood till one by one my friends' moms would send meaway.  When I ran out of places to go, I would climb back in my window.

Sometimes they would let me stay at the house, when tom would have some of his friends over.  They would drink, and play cards with money, and I learned how to be their bartender.  All those men thought it was so cute, for me to bring them drinks.  Some of them really took a liking to me, and the ones that would spend the night sometimes would tuck me in when I had been up too late, then  later when the card games were over, they would sneak into my room, reeking of whisky, and with speech slurred would tell me stories and cuddle with me.  Yep... I must have been really special. IN OTHER WORDS..... they were sick sick perverted people......  but I was 10 years old.... what the hell do I know!

One day I came home from school, I was in 7th grade, and my mom told me to get ready to go to my Dads house for the weekend.  "But it's not his weekend?!"  She said (and I remember this like it was 5 minutes ago), "I know, but we're moving next week, to Idaho, and you need to see him before you go, and I need to sort through what you are taking."  Just like that.... we're moving to Idaho with this trucker guy and I don't even get to say good-bye to my friends, and I don't get to take all my stuff.  Turned out I had a little space allotted to me in the back of the pick-up and whatever fit in that space I got to take along, if it didn't fit in that space, it was given away or just left.  I didn't know I had to fit in that space too.  I had to leave most of my belongings.  I didn't get to take any toys, or my canopy bedroom set.  The worst part is that nobody talked to be about this, nobody told me about it, there was no explanation; we just left. That was the beginning of a night mare.........

Frankly....I don't even know why the hell that woman fought for custody, much less why she got custody of me.... it was so obvious to all that her kid was just in her way and a pain in the ass for her lifestyle.

  On the Road 
When we moved, we had a little camper trailer to pull along.  All our stuff was in the back of the pick up......with me.  Mom and tom rode in the cab of the truck, and my spot was in back.  I really only remember the "highlights" of this trip.  Like when we had stopped to camp somewhere and tom sent me to get kindling for the camp fire... but I discovered quicksand.  I was stuck in it, screaming my head off, I was so terrified I peed my pants.  When tom finally came to see, 'what are you whining about?'..... he just stood there laughing at me.  I s'pose it could have been funny from where he was standing, but I was horrified.  I'm sure it wasn't very long, but it felt like forever. By the way, the more you struggle, the more it sucks you in. 

Another 'highlight' was these hippy hitch hikers that we picked up, who by the way, were let to ride in the cab of the truck, and we took them to their camp.  We stayed there over night...... what a strange experience..... my night in a hippy camp out in the middle of nowhere halfway up the mountain tucked back into the forest!  Another 'highlight' was when we stayed at Yellowstone Nat'l Park for a few days.  I NEVER got to sleep in the camper.... I literally lived in the back of that pickup truck....  lock up the food, lock up the truck, but leave the kid outside..... that particular night there were bear getting into the trash cans about 50 feet away.  They were making so much noise, and all I could do was lay there in the truck, too scared to even move! 

We ended up in Lapwai, Idaho for a while, part of the NezPerce Indian Reservation.  I don't remember how long we stayed there, but that's where I first tasted Hamms beer with tomato juice with a good old indian man friend of Tom's.  We spent some time in Boise too, at toms family reunion.  Somewhere in this deranged time frame, we ended up in a logging camp.  Up in some mountains, me still in the back of the pick up truck, mom and tom in the camper... living in a perpetual camping trip. 

Tom drove logging trucks, mom ran around doing important things like making lunches, doing laundry, and in general pampering all the men 'teaching and training' the few women, and I picked up sticks and branches that the logging trucks left in the road.  Somehow we finally landed in Grangeville, Idaho.  I was in 7th grade....again...or still?  I don't remember.  Not like anyone would tell me!

  Grangeville, Idaho 
In Grangeville we lived at the end of "D" street in this old Butler building.  It's a metal framed building, like a warehouse, but someone had build an office building inside of this metal frame.  Then someone had taken out the offices along all one side, so one side was wide open for the whole length, and the other side, divided straight down the middle by a wall and a hallway, was still offices, which were turned into their bedroom, my bedroom, a bathroom and a laundry room.  On the side, which would be the front door I guess, was a hallway to the outside of the building, but along this hallway were more "offices" two were merged into to one to be toms wood shop, one or two were storage, and the one by the door had a ton of windows in it, like a store front.  That's where mom and tom displayed their creations. 

IF they'd used their heads, and IF they'd been smarter about doing business.... they could have really gone somewhere with their combined talents.  mother can create anything out of anything, draw, sketch, or paint anything, and is very artsy fartsy.  Of all the things I involuntarily inherited from her - these creative genes I am thankful for.  The rest of the genes I could do without!  And tom, well he's amazing with wood!  But their entire business endeavor was a total flop..... they kept trying again and again.... but if you keep doing things the same way, you will keep getting the same results!

One Saturday morning I was doing my usual.... cartoons.  I was in a bathrobe, had just made my instant oatmeal, and was going to go set on the couch... when a huge motor home pulled into our driveway.  "Mom....someone's here."  I sat down to eat my oatmeal.  She yelled back, "It's for you!"  [....for me?.... who would I know visiting in a motor home?... oh, they probably told someone I'd clean it out and wash it for them.... I wish they'd warn me when they did that, they did that to me all the time......] OH MI GAWD..... Dad?....and Velda, and Claire, and Tony? (oh yeah...Dad and Velda got married last time I was home for a visit!) [What are they doing here????] 

It had been prearranged that they would come get me and take me on a "family vacation". 

Again.... no warning, no chance to say goodbye to anyone, no chance to see my friends..... no chance to plan or to pack.... and I had a dog, Tiny, she just had puppies only days before.... I have to just leave my dog??!!  I wasn't even dressed for goodness sake.  How many 7th graders do you know that wake up on a Saturday morning and are in any conditions to just leave for a vacation?  No packing, no laundry, room not cleaned..... Hellooo people!

We vacationed all the way back to Michigan.... but when the end of summer came... I still hadn't heard from my mother....and I was enrolled in school..... I realized that the vacation was over.  The truth of the matter..... I didn't go on vacation..... I was moving again.  Nobody thought to tell me I guess. Mother now claims it was because she couldn't afford me anymore... but the reality was that her kid was just in the way and 'tied her down' to too much responsibility and too-loose adult behavior.  She could have at least told me. 

I knew things were tight.  I knew her and tom wanted more freedom.  I knew she was tired of us having to scrape and eat old restaurant leftovers, because tom couldn't control his gambling, and because liquor and cigarettes always game before groceries and school clothes.  I knew she was tired of having to retrieve him from my bedroom late at night, and having to explain to me that it was because he was drunk, he didn't mean it. 

Though it was never ever talked about, I knew she must have disagreed with them locking me in my room for days.  I came out to pee n shower n stuff, sometimes to eat, but I mostly ate in my room.  They knew I came and went freely through my bedroom window.  No - I didn't sneak out, it was how I got in and out when I was locked in my room.  She could have told me.  For goodness sakes.... you should at least tell your kids when they move! So... suddenly my new home was in Clarksville, Michigan.