chapter three.

i just spent an hour curled up on the hard wood floor, hugging my knees. i was cleaning up the mess, sweeping the glass shards away, picking up the broken pieces of a lamp and the shreds of a cushion i stabbed repeatedly, putting the dirty dishes that survived in the sink, cleaning the walls on which i had thrown various substances, from sticky to splashy. i was really into it, so when i came upon a couple of boxes that had remained in a corner, hidden behind a little table, i opened the first box and started sorting through it. it turned out most of the stuff in there was destined to be thrown out, recycled and given away. i mean, who needs three coffe grinders and two kettles? and when exactly am i going to fit again into those size four jeans? i found coloring books that i brought with me for the kids when i used to babysit. something i haven't done in fifteen years. i used to be such a pack-rat. i try to be better now. in fact, i managed, without remorse, to dispose of the contents of the entire first box. didn't even take me long either. next!

well, the other box was of a different nature. under the candles used for my baptism (which i got overturned - oh yeah you can do that officially and everything! - as soon as i came of age), the first pair of shoes my parents bought for me, the dress i was wearing on my first birthday pictures, there was a frame. a framed picture. i knew what it was even before i took it, but i couldn't stop myself. it was my picture of bigby.

rewind. when i was little, i had an imaginary friend named bigby. he was my bestest buddy and my greatest ally. he and i would host talk shows on my little tape deck, would cut the hair on my dolls and apply permanent makeup (crayola didn't make washable markers in those days, believe me), would hunt for clues of lost civilization under every rock in the forest. i would blab on and on about him to any adult who'd listen (there were few). i said i only remembered bad shit about my childhood, but it's not quite true. i remember bigby too. it's so easy for a child to create a believable other being: when you're three, you are not that complex a person yourself, or at least you are not aware of your complexity, so creating a being that is just as complex as you perceive yourself to be is, precisely, child's play. everybody happy.

bigby appeared in my stories when i was about three. i vaguely remember that, but i was also told and i've read my mother's journal of my childhood, and i've read the psychologist's report. about a year later - and this i remember - we took a picture in front of the house. my aunt took the picture, actuelly, while i was standing, in my pretty red dress with ruffles and ribbons (i'm gagging), in front of my parents, smiling for the occasion. fast forward to a few days later, when we got the pictures back. there we were, looking like a happy family in front of their pretty house, with the pretty ribbonned and ruffled daughter. but next to the little girl, there was a kind of halo. it was only a freaky lens flare, as i learned later. that's not what i saw. i saw bigby, and i said so. it is hard for me to explain now, but at the time it made perfect sense, and i was convincing enough to freak out my parents. you see, that's precisely how i had always pictured my bigby, my imaginary friend. so to see him "standing" there next to me was a dream come true.

my dad made fun of me, while my mother crossed herself and backed away. i was blabbing about bigby, showing him the picture (while my mother backed even further), and begging my parents to be able to keep it. i was told that i could, since it was a bad picture anyway, and we'd have to take another family portrait for whatever use this one was supposed to be for. (what they didn't know was that the red dress had already suffered a... well, an accident. bigby and i and scisors ahad been kind of busy on it... and ribbons are so pretty, flowing in the wind from the top branches of a slender birch tree...) so i hugged the picture close to my chest and went to my room - i took out of a frame a picture of my grandmother (for some reason grandmothers think that what a child really wants in his or her room is a picture of a wrinkled adult) and replaced it by the family portrait, the only one that included my best buddy bigby.

time to clear the air. i find that sometimes tv is its own antidote. often i'll get stuck with something stupid in my head, like that guy whose feet are too big for his bed, with raindrops falling on his head, and i can't stop humming or singing on the inside and it drives me nuts. when that happens i often turn back to the good days of the friends sitcom, when phoebe used to sing such perls as "the cow in the meadow goes moo, then the farmer hits it on the head and grinds it up and that's how we get hamburger" and "sometimes men love women, sometimes men love men, and then there are bisexuals, though some just say they're kidding themselves". it perks me up. and dries the insanely clingy raindrops that would otherwise keep falling on my head but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red. okay, so sometimes my trick doesn't work. so i think of a blue sky with just one cloud, and at every breath i blow the cloud a little further away until it vanishes at the edge of my vision. but then i think of pacman, and how the ghosts could just go out on one side to reappear on the other - the game screen was looped. and then my cloud reappears on the other side. do you have any idea how frustrating that can be? i'm so far from being zen.

thinking about my childhood but avoiding hardships, i remember consumerist frustration. i was twelve before i got a barbie. that didn't last long. i never had a little pony or a strawberry shortthing. there were some toys that were ubiquitous: everybody had them, but me. and it probably explains my empty pockets now and the rage of consumption that overwhelms me a few times a year. somehow you can rationalize it all you want but i still remember acutely how essential possessing those things was to me. without them i was half a child. in my own mind. looking back i can tell how ridiculous it was and is, and how easily kids get manipulated by shiny plastic and happy jingles, but because as an adult i'm necessarily not a child, seeing the mechanic and the strategy doesn't quite make the manipulation any less powerful. my adult brain sees the industry's game, and smiles a little at their evil brilliance. but there is a complete disconnection between that understanding of the strings, and the child i was, mesmerized by the jingling jangling fake jewels and easy bake ovens. the child still doesn't see the strings.

i kept bigby's picture next to my bed for a year or two. it was my most prized possession. and even as i entered school bigby kept his place in my life - obviously, since he came to school with me. i was glad to have a friend to hang out with and play with, because all the strange children just made me mad. well, they did keep a certain distance after a while. after i broke a finger. i mean another kid's finger. but i didn't mean to, i swear. i just wanted the damn idiot off me. playing tag is one thing but if you physically restrict me, chances are you'll pay the price. and it was true then, when boys were no bigger than me, and it's true now but i had to work at it. anyway, the jerk grabbed me from behind, and he surprised me so i yanked his pinkie. hard. and then he yelled. loud. and i kicked him while he was down and i walked away. and after that the other children had a new respect for me, and bigby and i agreed that was just fine.

then at some point - in fact it was at a point so precise i'd rather say at some point - i put bigby's picture away in my childhood box, with the little pajamas and the old candles, under all the cards people i don't know sent my parents at my birth, and there it has stayed since, through moves uncounted, storage and floods.

i don't think about bigby anymore. he is now the kind of thing that i never think about, but then when i do it sort of rings a bell, and it feels half true, and then i go "oh yeah..." and mull over it for a few minutes, before taking the lasagna out of the oven or the clothes out of the drier. finding the picture again brought it all back in a more elaborate, clearer way. i've been hiding from what happened all my life, and now i'm paralyzed when it surfaces. well things have not yet changed. i'll wipe my bloody tears (no really - the gash in my skull has reopened during the night, just a little, and now i have blood on my face, which the tears rehydrated) and put everything back in the box, bigby and all. i miss him. but what i really miss is those few years of happy innocent childhood. that's another lie. i was probably never innocent. yet who knows.

i feel so stupid to be so affected by childhood crap. as if that could explain everything, as if at some point one didn't have to take charge and say, fine, i had fucked up parents (who didn't?), and this is what they made me, but now i make myself and what i do will be my responsibility, my choice, my actions, my catastrophes.

time to change the topic. one of the things i hate most is being cold when i'm very tired and actually falling asleep in a place where i shouldn't. like at work, when i worked. it would be after lunch, and my head would start nodding, but then shivers would wake me up. nod, shiver, nod, shiver, in a parade until recess, until the bell tolled for thee and me. and the yawns, so big i could put my foot in. and all i want when that happens is to curl up under the desk and sleep, and perhaps i'll give a good scare to the portuguese cleaning lady when she comes in at night and wakes me with her vacuum cleaner, but perhaps in a few weeks we'll both laugh about it. right. well i hate needing to sleep and being cold. i hate being kept awake because i'm cold. i also hate when my appendix bursts and nobody cares. and i hate not having a real solution for sinus congestion.

there are words i like and words i don't. i like pun, bun, wiggle, jiggle, squirt, jelly, bong, gong and key. i hate plymouth (because i want to pronounce it ply-mouth). juggernaut, cosmetician and lavatory. and sometimes i can lay in bed and make lists until the wee hours or until i fall asleep, whichever happens last.