7. Left Behind

The summer of my 10th birthday would test the fragile normalcy of our family. I had completed the 4th grade, my brother Bill (aka Billy) was due to start his freshman year in high school, and David, our oldest brother, was slated to start his freshman year in college. That summer, Dad accepted a position with a mutual fund investment firm located in Chicago, Illinois. My parents would rent a house in Winnetka, a lush suburb north of the city that rested on the shores of Lake Michigan. We were moving to Illinois, halfway across the country, leaving behind our grandparents and neighborhood friends.

We also left David behind. I was shocked to learn David wasn’t coming with us to Illinois. Mom explained David was starting his college years at the University of Utah, so it was important that he stay behind to complete his education. “But,” I asked, “David will live with us during the summers, right? He’ll have a bedroom in our new house in Illinois and he’ll be with us, right?”  “No,” mom sadly replied. “David is staying in Utah and will not be coming with us.”  “But where will he live?” I asked.

I had survived previous family upheavals but leaving my hero brother behind in Salt Lake shook me to the core. This had to be my father’s fault. Recently David explained, “Sweetie, it was time for me to go. I couldn’t stay with Dad any longer. It was time.” I am still saddened by that decision and the reasons behind its making. My memories reel with the “loss” of David and the many subsequent years without him. 

Reputed to be one of the first farmhouses in the village and therefore of some historical significance, the rambling house Mom and Dad rented in Winnetka was already over 100 years old at the time of our occupancy. The house had been minimally upgraded but retained its original quaintness. It was a fantastic place. The sprawling back yard hosted enormous Maple trees with palm-sized leaves that turned deep red in autumn.

The barn was still standing and the hayloft, accessed by a ladder of questionable safety, was reserved for childhood imaginations. In the living room stood the original wood-burning fireplace, its black stovepipe stretching high into the ceiling and through the roof. The upper floor of the house had two bedrooms, one for my parents, the second for Bill, through which we could access the spacious screened porch for sleeping during the heat of the Illinois summer nights. Another small door in Bill’s room opened to a tiny, sloped ceiling space with a small gabled window. Originally intended for maid’s quarters, it became my bedroom with just enough space for a twin bed and a small dresser. Dad and Bill could barely stand upright in it. The main door for my room led to a winding hallway at the back of the house with stairs leading to the kitchen.

We lived in a real-life farmhouse with an ancient boiler furnace located in the deep, dark bowels of a spooky basement I avoided whenever possible.

The first night of arrival to the house, our next-door neighbor, Cora, came calling. Cora arrived with the proverbial plate of  “Welcome to the Neighborhood” cookies and a highball glass tinkling with iced bourbon. “Welcome, ” she said. “You do drink, don’t you?”  Mom replied to the affirmative. “Thank God!” Cora exclaimed. She immediately invited my parents for a drink (or two or three). My parents eagerly accepted her kind invitation. As I watched my parents walk next door I knew that copious bottles of gin and bourbon would soon claim a special place in the old farmhouse. 

Summer turned to fall and I started the 5th grade at Greeley Elementary School. In Salt Lake, all the girls carried little purses. I thought every school girl did. Not in Winnetka. I walked into class on my first day of class with my purse in hand and became an immediate laughing stock. The teacher chastised the class, but I was a marked kid for the remainder of my 5th-grade year. No one forgot the social impropriety of a frizzy-haired girl from a state no one had ever heard of walking into class with a purse.

I never told mom about this public shaming that had shrunk my soul. I never told her of how hard I tried not to cry as I watched the surreptitious glances of smirking girls whispering about me. Never would I speak of my aching desire to run home from the classroom and burrow my head in the pillows of the tiny upstairs room of the farmhouse.

Mom had already told me that Bill was having a difficult time adjusting to his new school so he needed special attention. Surely I understood that, she remarked.  As I braved through that 1st day of school, knowing Bill was the focus of my stoic mother and tumultuous father, what I did understand was that I was alone. There were no safe places, not among my classmates, and not at home where I thought I was hearing the whispers of being left behind.

Sometimes when I recall that day I have the impossible wish I could step back in time to hug that sweet, lonely girl with frizzy hair, the one who tightly clung a little purse to her chest. For as the narrator of her life, I know that day was the real beginning of her story. 

She would soon know that the blackbirds of her nightmares were nothing in comparison with the real-life nightmares of surviving in Winnetka, Illinois.