January/February 2002

The U-Haul pulls out of the driveway. Raindrops fall on the windows, pelting the glass in a steady rhythm. Dad is driving. He’s wearing his old red flannel shirt and worn blue jeans, which I haven’t seen since we came here, to Miami. My stepmother Lisa is in the passenger seat, humming along to the Beatles (an old music group) on the radio. Dad starts singing with her; he’s smiling, happy to be leaving Miami. I’m not singing or smiling. I don’t want to leave another place that felt like home. *          *          * Ever since my mother died, my father has been constantly moving, dragging me along with him like a sack of dirty laundry. I spent the first seven years of my life in Crisfield, Maryland, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. My parents had bought the little beach house when I was born, and I loved every part of it. I remember the hours I spent playing in the dusty barn (which was somewhat larger than the actual house), or swimming in the bay. We had a private beach with a small dock, and a canoe that my father took me fishing in. It’s hard to remember my mother. Almost every memory of her is a blur. I do have a photograph of her, though. She was pretty, with long chestnut-brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. In the snapshot my mother is sprawled on the dock, red autumn leaves caught in her hair and falling in a thin carpet around her. It is either sunrise or sunset, because reflections of pink and orange sky are in the rippling water. My mother is laughing at something; her smile lights up the world around her. In the background there are ducks swimming around the dock. I often take it out and stare at the place that was once mine, and the woman who used to be my mother It’s a nice picture. I used to spend most of my time looking at it idly. Even now (usually when I’m supposed to be doing something else) I often take it out and stare at the place that was once mine, and the woman who used to be my mother. She died when I was six. I can just barely remember the time spent at the hospital. I remember nurses hurrying in and out of her room, my family coming and going in and out of the hospital. And the doctors. I remember I was scared of the doctors. My relatives were all crying, but I didn’t understand. Nobody had ever explained death to me, and so I didn’t know what it was to die. My mother lay still, very still. Her chest moved slowly up and down, her breathing was raspy and loud. I watched her chest more than her face as she breathed in and out. I kept watching because I was afraid that if I turned away the breathing would stop. The funeral went by in a blur. I remember standing and ‘hugging everybody. People kept crying into my shoulder, which was strange to me because Momma had always said that adults ought to comfort me, not the other way around. The people were saying things about my mother: “Poor child, your poor mother!” Or, “Look at her, the brave little girl isn’t shedding a tear over her momma!” And, “Oh yes, it was a disaster . . . drunk driver rammed right into Cathy . . . poor girl doesn’t understand about it.” Cathy was my mother’s name. I was the poor girl everyone was talking about, and I did not understand anything except that my mother was gone. *          *          * And so my father left Maryland and took me along with him. By then I was seven and knew about death and drunk drivers killing my mother. Dad sold the house; he sold the barn and the beach, even the canoe. “Why?” I asked, tears running down my cheeks over my beloved home. My father answered that we were moving because everything here reminded him of my mother. From place to place we moved, all along the eastern seaboard, but then inland and further west because the ocean reminded Dad of Momma, too. He married Lisa while we were in Vancouver, more because they were friends than because they loved each other. “It’s a way that we can be best friends and so that the social workers won’t think you have a broken family,” Dad explained. “So that they won’t try to put you in a foster home.” I didn’t mind because Lisa was nice, like a substitute mother, and Dad needed a friend. We never stayed anywhere for too long; each place was like a stop along the line, on a train that always kept on going. I grew used to moving, accustomed to never making friends. If I made friends I knew it wouldn’t be for long, because as soon as Dad decided to go somewhere else to live the friend would just be one more person missing in my life. But then we stopped in Miami. I was twelve. This time, my father told me, it would be different. “This time it’s for real,” he said. “Miami will be permanence. We’ll settle down and stay for a while, a few years at the very least. You can make some friends, Cassie, go to a good school. We’ll have a house, a real life, a permanent one. I promise.” Permanence. That’s all I ever wanted. I hated moving, hated going to the awful schools where I never allowed myself to make friends. Lisa saw how happy I was and came over to hug me. I was a bit confused about why Miami would be so different, but Lisa explained that my father thought he had run from my mother’s memory long enough. Miami was her hometown and Dad believed he could find peace on the Florida shores. We got a small