Burn Down the Ground Read online

  Not only was I exceptionally unattractive and skeletal, I was shamefully unfashionable. All the girls at school wore Gloria Vanderbilt or Jordache jeans with Izod and Polo sweaters, the iconic logos branding them rich and popular. I wore cheap clothes from the discount department store, Weiner’s. I begged Mom for my own pair of designer jeans, but she refused. Not even for Christmas. “I’m not gonna spend all that money on one pair of jeans. You won’t fit in them for very long, anyway.”

  She was right; I was growing fast. A sweater that fit one day was too tight just a few months later. I felt my bones stretching at night, so Mom gave me aspirin and massaged my legs to ease the excruciating pain. David and I were head and shoulders taller than everyone else in our respective grades. We kept track of our growth rate with marks on the kitchen wall. I climbed on top of a stool and marked the wallpaper with a pen where David’s head was, and then he’d do the same for me, until the wall looked like a six-foot ruler with all the measurements we had taken over the years.

  The weekends at Galveston beach and blistering sunburns had covered me in freckles, which the boys teased me about.

  “Hey, Kambri, did you stand too close to a mud flap?”

  At home I took out my frustration on Mom, a natural redhead with plenty of freckles of her own. “I’m ugly because of you! It’s all your fault I have freckles!”

  Mom’s attempts to comfort me with the tale of the Ugly Duckling backfired.

  “So, you think I’m ugly, too!”

  “I didn’t say that, Kambri.”

  “Well, you told me one day I’ll turn into a swan but how can I do that without being ugly first? YOU THINK I’M UGLY!” I shrieked.

  I flung myself onto my bed crying, kicking and screeching hateful rants about Mom into my pillow.

  What I lacked in looks, I made up for in effort. I invested all my energy into school and extracurricular activities. Throughout junior high, I was a straight-A student and teacher’s aide, served on the Youth Advisory Council, participated in theater arts festivals, and competed in poetry readings, readers’ theater, and pantomiming. I was on the track team and a starting player in both volleyball and basketball. If I could have joined the boys’ football team, I would have. Instead, I settled for playing with them on Boars Head.

  One evening after school, I was in a basketball game against the Magnolia Bulldogs. I heard a familiar voice coming from the stands and was surprised to see my father sitting alone on the top bleacher. My heart fluttered. No one had ever come to see me play. I stopped and gave him a big wave. He waved back and signed, “Don’t look at me. Look at the game!”

  Energized to have someone there to watch me, I raced down the court, caught up to the other players, blocked a shot, and grabbed the ball in midair. Before anyone realized, I was headed toward my team’s net unguarded. The only thing between the basket and me was fifty feet of court. The crowd leapt to their feet screaming wild cheers, including Dad’s signature piercing shriek.

  I dribbled to the basket and slid a layup toward the hoop. I missed.

  The crowd let out a collective groan and everyone took his seat.

  I glanced up at Dad. He snapped his fingers as if to say, “Aw shucks,” but I still hung my head in shame. After the game, Dad patted me on the back and signed, “Next time. You just need practice.”

  If the night hadn’t been bad enough, Dad made it even worse by driving our old Chevy to the game.

  The once-beloved truck that we had decorated with red, white, and blue balloons and streamers to carry David’s baseball and my softball teams in parades back in Houston was now a blemish on the façade I was attempting to create. The bench seat had holes worn through and the metal was riddled with rusty spots. Dad had patched them up before spray-painting the interior a bright royal blue.

  I was usually one of the last kids to be picked up after practice so my classmates never saw it. But there was no avoiding it now. Ducking my head, I climbed into the cab convinced that every person in the whole wide world knew I was a freckled, ugly loser who lived in a trailer, rode in a rattletrap truck, and missed the easiest shot in the history of basketball. I wanted to die.

  The Chevy had outlasted any other car we owned. Mom’s four-door sedan still looked decent, but because of the bumpy dirt roads, it was rattled to the core and eventually fell apart. The miles we logged demanded an upgrade to something that could handle the backwoods of Texas, so we became the proud owners of a brand-new four-wheel-drive Toyota truck. I’d never seen anything so cool.

  “The cab comes off so when we go to Galveston we can drive it like a jeep,” Dad signed.

  “We really can’t afford it,” Mom said. “But it’s built to handle these roads so we’ll save money on all the repairs and your daddy won’t have to spend all his time working on it.” She rattled off the speech like she was still convincing herself that getting in over our heads with the high monthly payment was the right thing to do.

  To make ends meet, my mother got a second job working nights and weekends as a hostess at the members-only Walden Yacht Club in Montgomery. I took the opportunity to ask her if I could work there, too.

  “Why do you want to work? You’re only thirteen.”

  “Please? I can use the money to buy my own clothes and books.”

  To pinch pennies, my mother had discontinued my book club membership, and I desperately wanted it back.

  “Let me talk to my boss and see what he says.” Mom told her manager I was fourteen, but very mature for my age. He agreed to meet me so my mother told me to get dressed in my nicest school clothes before we drove forty minutes to Lake Conroe for the interview. Mom told me the Walden Yacht Club was a really swanky restaurant. I imagined it to be like Red Lobster, since anytime I heard adults talking about where to go for a special anniversary or celebration, Red Lobster was the choice. I had never been to one, but knew from the TV commercials that it was really expensive and served you fish that you couldn’t catch in a lake.

  The yacht club was part of a gated community of new estate homes, single-family houses, condominiums, and townhouses under development on the shores of Lake Conroe. I had never seen anything so luxurious. The homes had sprawling manicured lawns and carefully sculpted evergreens. There was a golf course, swimming pool, multiple tennis courts, a clubhouse, and even a playground. “This is how the other half lives,” Mom said as she steered us toward the yacht club. She pointed out a house owned by Farrah Fawcett and said, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The nicest house I’d ever been in was my grandparents’ two-bedroom ranch in Tulsa. How rich must these people be to afford homes like these? I couldn’t contain my awe as I stared out my passenger-side window trying to imagine what these houses looked like on the inside. We drove for six miles before we reached the yacht club. I was captivated by its grandiosity. It was modern and sleek, using both brick and glass in an ornate, impressive architecture. Enormous columns marked a grand entryway. Two lofty glass doors were reached by a sweeping stone staircase. The clubhouse, a half-acre big, was directly on the waterfront and befitting of such a posh community. As I climbed the stairs, a young, pretty hostess greeted me. She was tastefully dressed in a slim taupe pencil skirt, peach silk blouse with ruffles and lace, and beige pumps. She flashed a beautiful smile and said, “Hello, ladies, how may I be of service to you this afternoon?”

  I had never been treated so professionally by a stranger. I was just a teenager, but she acted as though I were a member of this elite world. I let her know that I was there for an interview about a job. She told me to have a seat and disappeared into the kitchen. My mother wanted me to handle this on my own and left to chat with her co-workers. I chose a nearby table and awkwardly sat down, crossing and uncrossing my legs and wondering if I should place my hands on my lap or on the table. I simply did not know how to act in a place like this.

  The dining room was grand with a floor-to-ceiling, circular brick fireplace as its centerpiece. The entire back wall was made
of glass windows that showcased breathtaking views of the twenty-one-thousand-acre man-made lake.

  The manager was a stout, middle-aged man, and almost bald except for a ring of dark hair at the base of his scalp. I was nervous when he first sat down at the table, but he put me at ease by asking basic questions about school and my favorite subjects. He agreed to give me a shot. “If anyone asks, you say you’re fifteen,” he said.

  Because I was underage, I was only permitted to bus tables. I was paid the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour and was given shifts that coincided with my mother’s hostess schedule. When I arrived for my first day, I was paired with a waitress named Shelly, who taught me how to balance a tray of dirty plates with one hand. I soon discovered this was the hardest part of the job.

  “When you see someone’s water glass halfway empty, you take this pitcher and fill it up for them,” Shelly directed. “But you need to hold the pitcher sideways so the customers get ice in their glass. If they haven’t touched their plate in a while, go ask ’em if they’re done.

  “The key is to be discreet. The better we are, the bigger the tip. If you do a good job, I’ll share my tips with you.”

  When the first table was seated, I filled all their glasses with water as Shelly had demonstrated. I had a few minor spills but soon mastered it. Then it was time for the salad course.

  Shelly emerged from the kitchen carrying the plates on a tray she balanced on one shoulder. “Here, take this,” she said, pulling what looked like a giant wooden chess piece from the pocket of her apron. “After I serve them their salads, ask them if they want any pepper.”

  I looked around for a pepper shaker on the table but didn’t see one. Beads of sweat formed on my upper lip and the bow tie around my neck felt tight as I hurried back to the service station in search of pepper.

  “Kambri, what’re you doin’?” Shelly yelled after me.

  Busted, I confessed, “I’m looking for the pepper.”

  Shelly laughed. “You’re holding it. You ain’t never seen a pepper mill before?” I shook my head as I stared down at the wooden object in my right hand.

  “Dang, you gotta lot to learn.”

  I had been working there about two months when my classmate Lance came to brunch with his family. I was at the service station and quickly turned away so he wouldn’t see me. I knew that some of my classmates lived in Walden, but it never occurred to me that they might be a part of this community. On the very rare occasion my parents took us out to eat, we went to Pizza Hut or Long John Silver’s. A trip to Bonanza Steakhouse in Conroe for an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner was saved for special occasions. I didn’t know any families that took their children to dine at fancy places like the Walden Yacht Club that had waiter service, live piano music, real china, and linen tablecloths. The realization left me momentarily thunderstruck, like in fourth grade when I discovered that teachers used the bathroom. It just seemed unnatural.

  I turned around cautiously and watched Lance and his family take seats at a big round table by the fireplace. I had always thought he was just like me. He was one of the popular kids at Montgomery Junior High, and liked to make the girls laugh with goofy faces and jokes. I had had a crush on him all through seventh grade but always clammed up when he came around. But now our differences were glaringly apparent. He was a patron of a members-only yacht club, and I was his busboy.

  I was mesmerized watching him interact with his family. They all looked so proper and well dressed. Lance was wearing pressed chinos and a buttoned-up pink oxford Polo Ralph Lauren shirt and was behaving like a proper young man, not the class clown I was used to seeing. His father was even wearing a tie to breakfast. Lance caught me staring and smiled. In a uniform of black slacks, a white collared shirt, black vest, and bow tie, I was out of context. He looked momentarily confused, as if he was trying to figure out how he knew me.

  I tried to look cool as I carried a tray with a pitcher of water and some glasses on one shoulder. Lance’s eyes seemed to be following me around the room. So I took the opportunity to show off: I spun a tray on one finger, balanced piles of dirty dishes, and joked and laughed with another busboy, a cute seventeen-year-old. When I reached to fill Lance’s glass with water, he fumbled and dropped his fork.

  “Let me get you another one.”

  I came back with a clean fork and the pepper mill and asked, “Pepper for your salad?”

  “Um, yeah,” he whispered. At school he was full of charm and confidence, but now he could barely articulate an answer.

  Maybe he wasn’t such hot stuff after all. Filled with newfound confidence and a pocketful of tips, I sauntered away with my tray of dishes like I owned the place. Suddenly the glassware shifted and slid from the tray and shattered on the floor. Two of the other busboys came to help me clean the embarrassing mess. I stole a glance at Lance, but he quickly looked away, pretending he hadn’t just witnessed my catastrophe.

  Lance never spoke to me again after that day at the yacht club. Instead, whenever he saw me coming down the school hallway, he darted his eyes to the floor and whispered to his friends. I was certain he disdained me on the grounds he was wealthy and I was not.

  Growing up deaf, my parents were sensitive to the plight of the Deaf community and the way they were sometimes disregarded. For the first time, I felt like I really understood what that meant. These were the days before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, protecting the rights of the Deaf, who were often subjected to discrimination at work and passed over for jobs or promotions. Many times they were gawked at like they were zoo animals when they used ASL in public or made fun of because of the unusual sounds they made when trying to communicate verbally. The most insulting thing for me was when someone deaf was ignored entirely by a hearing person because that person was afraid or even disgusted by someone they viewed as different.

  Mom and Dad taught David and me the Golden Rule: to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. No matter what challenges anyone faces, physically or otherwise, he deserves the same respect as anyone else. Many in our circle of deaf friends were born with physical disabilities, so I was accustomed to being around people with special needs and developed empathy for them. As a schoolgirl I took special interest in the class outcast, who took medicine to control his wild behavior: I made sure he received holiday cards and party invitations. I couldn’t stand the idea that somebody would be excluded for something they couldn’t change.

  The bond in our Deaf community was so strong that a person’s race, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation was irrelevant. They were deaf first. In the early 1970s, an openly gay lifestyle was almost unheard of, especially in the rural South. But in our community, Uncle Darold, a handsome man with a handlebar mustache who wore leather vests without shirts underneath, and tight jeans decorated with silver studs, was just Darold. Phrases like “whatever floats your boat” or “to each his own” reflected my mother’s basic tenets.

  I was raised in this community and Lance’s reaction of contempt was foreign to me. Like some people who couldn’t get past my family members’ hearing impairments and chose to reject them from social circles, Lance wasn’t able to look past my busboy uniform. To him I was the hired help. His inability to like or appreciate me for who I was and his willingness to judge me based on my social standing made him wholly unattractive to me.

  Now that I was employed, Dad was going to teach me to drive. Or, technically, finish teaching me what Mom had started. She wouldn’t let me drive the Toyota—it was the nicest vehicle we had ever owned and, job or not, I was only thirteen. But I wasn’t too young to learn to drive. Lots of kids in Texas were driving farm equipment long before that age. By that time, I had driven a go-cart, a three-wheeler, and a dirt bike and often steered the Chevy down the busy Houston freeway on Dad’s lap as he worked the pedals. I had even ridden a bull bareback.

  Mom chose to take me out in the old VW Bug they bought soon after the Chevy died. Its red paint was faded and dull from y
ears of sun exposure and the engine sounded like a go-cart. It had no radio or, more important in the Texas heat, no working air conditioner. But it was perfect for letting a young kid get behind the wheel and give driving a shot.

  It wasn’t exactly a smooth ride. The Bug had a stick shift, which was hard to learn. And worse, David decided to tag along. His presence meant I was under extra scrutiny. Mom was on the passenger side and David sat in the middle of the backseat, right in the line of my rearview mirror, where he had room for his long legs.

  I soon learned that driving a car was wholly different than driving anything else. The Bug required the operation of a clutch and gear while steering, and it was bigger and faster than anything else over which I’d had 100 percent control.

  It was exhilarating. For about five minutes.

  Once I got us moving, there wasn’t much to do except steer since Boars Head and the adjacent Honea Egypt Road didn’t have stop signs or intersections. Despite this, Mom was a horrible passenger. At every twist and turn of the country road, she pressed against the dashboard with open palms and stiff arms.

  Bracing for a collision, she screamed in varying degrees of seriousness, “SLOW DOWN!” “YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST!” “KAMBRI, I SAID SLOW DOWN!” The windows were rolled down so the breeze distorted her hearing aids. She shouted even louder to hear herself.

  I alternately screamed back. “I’M GOING TWENTY!” “WOULD YOU CALM DOWN?” “YOU’RE MAKING ME NERVOUS!”

  For David, this was pure entertainment. I saw his wry smirk and squinty brown eyes staring back anytime I looked in the rearview mirror.

  When we approached Webb’s Grocery and the paved two-lane highway, Mom told me to stop and turn around. She showed me where reverse was on the gearshift, but I released the clutch and sent us lurching before the Bug stalled. Mom reminded me how to restart it, which took extra effort now that I was flustered. Again the Bug heaved forward and backward and stalled. After several failed attempts, Mom took over.