#7 YOU'RE EITHER DIPPING YOUR TOE OR YOU'RE DROWNING

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Who is she?

All the pretty ladies in the plane are nice to me and give me crayons and paper to draw. But they don't give me candy like to the small girls who cry, and maybe I should cry, or maybe it's because all my mouth is rotten and the dentist took out two teeth and transformed the rest in silver.
This is the great escape that Grandad Arcadi planned for me. Before he died and everything really began. So next to me is my Grandparents' Friend. She's not Mom's friend. She snores and holds my jacket on her lap. I go to her house every week to play the guitar and play with her granddaughter. I haven't taken off my cap.
I didn't say goodbye to my friends, or to my cat. Mom said she'd bring him next week to winter camp, but I won't be in winter camp. What will she do then? I am sure she will find out... trouble... trouble... I paint the little girl blue, her eyes black. I go out the lines. The pretty ladies smile.
My mind goes over all the bad names Mom taught me, and I say Shhh, but my mind won't shut up. Mom says the other side of the family, the one I haven't met, the one I'll meet now, is evil. Mom invents evil names for them all, including my father whom I have never met except one time with a very red pie, and my other Grandmother. My Mother says the evil names, although I don't think she's supposed to be evil, and then makes me repeat them again and again until they're stuck on my tongue and she's calm. And when my other Grandmother comes Mom smiles for five minutes, gets something and when Granmother turns around she whispers the evil name to me and makes me repeat it again.
Grandaddy Arcadi would never send me to an evil place.

After picking up our bags, I hide behind my Grandparent's Friend. I don't recognize anyone. A group of people are talking to me and maybe I am talking back, maybe not. They hug me and kiss me and cry. They are strangers. Except my other Grandmother and a man who was in my dream with the sad long-haired woman. He's my uncle. The sad long-haired woman is not my aunt.
I also have baby cousins who stare at me and are beautiful without being scared. And I have a second Grandfather, who maybe saved my life with big pink pills once when I was in the hospital and I couldn't breathe and my heart couldn't beat and I couldn't speak although I knew everyone's name and they were going to make a hole in my throat but I didn't want them to and along came my Grandfather with these gigantic pink pills he made me swallow and I was alive again although I didn't know his name and the doctors said that if ever I had pneumonia again I would die and didn't want to send me home.
And then there is my Father. He is not talking to me. I am supposed to know him, but I don't remember. Mom doesn't keep pictures of him and only speaks bad. Here it is only Grandmother and her Friend who talk. Then we get into two cars, and when they stop we have arrived somewhere and we all get out.

It is my new Grandparents' appartment. It is small and crowded with Christmas decorations, big presents wrapped in shiny new wrapping paper smiling on the sofas, and food food food, food in the fridge and food on the tables and food in the kitchen, as if it didn't matter, as if it were nothing. And among all this food, plenty of sweets and chocolate.
It takes me a while to understand that my new Grandparents are no longer married, but they still live together. But now that's not important. now I'm important, they say, and everybody cries because it's Christmas although Christmas was a couple of days ago, but now that I'm here it's really Christmas and it's late but Grandmother had prepared wonderful food and everyone has presents and my new Father takes pictures of me with each present. A bear I call Misha. A gray and red jacket. Boots. A monkey whose name I don't know.
They ask if I want to take a bath, is it because they like me or is it because I disgust them? I get into the bath, while Grandmother looks. The bath is full of nice smelling bubbles. I've never had bubbles before. Grandmother rubs and we find out that my skin is a different color. She also tries to comb my hair, but I scream and sink in the bath. The others come and say goodbye. They are nice, but I'm not sorry to see them go.

When all the bubbles disappear and the water is no longer hot, my Granparents' Friend forces me to get out and put on new pajamas. We sit in Grandmother's lunch room - because Grandfather and Grandmother have divided the house - and drink tea. I eat cookies and I know it will never be enough. Grandmother touches my hair and I pull away.
When will I go back home?
Do you like it here?
Yes, it's like heaven.
Then you will stay here you will stay here you will stay here you will stay here... but what she really means is that I never can go back and what did I do wrong? Mom will be upset. Mom will be angry with me. This time she'll kill me. She'll find me. She'll find me and she'll kill me and Grandma.
My new Grandmother and her Friend smile as their sip their tea not knowing what's to come.