Burn Down the Ground Read online

  I’m confused as to why I have to smuggle in something so basic. “Can’t you get them from the prison?”

  “Yes, but they look like Buddy Holly glasses. I don’t like that kind. They’re ugly.”

  I am puzzled by Dad’s interest in fashionable eyewear. Who is he trying to impress?

  Dad moves on to the next item. “Buy me the Sunday New York Times. Only Sunday—I want to see what the big deal is. Also I want a subscription to Discovery Magazine. I love reading about new technology, computers … oh, and what is a B-L-O-G? I can’t find that word blog in the dictionary and I asked other inmates but they don’t know what it means, either.”

  I love that he is interested in learning but am disappointed he can’t seem to get the information he wants.

  Dad checks his list and signs, “I want you to sneak in a hundred-dollar bill.” With the money he will be able to buy eight packages of loose tobacco and make over five hundred dollars in profit without doing any of the selling. The jailhouse version of one of his standard get-rich-quick schemes.

  “What if we get caught?”

  “You can’t visit me for six months and I get solitary. Only fourteen days. That’s nothing!” With all the time Dad has spent alone for fighting, fourteen days is a minor annoyance.

  “Okay, next thing, I need you to deliver a message to Larry.” Larry, a fellow inmate and new friend of Dad’s, has been transferred to another prison after suffering severe beatings at the hands of guards after they found drawings of nude children in his cell.

  “Larry told me he’s not a child molester, just a flasher!” Dad declares. “That’s nothing. And they beat him? Why? Larry said they weren’t drawings of kids. No! They’re midgets! Not dwarves, that’s different—M-I-D-G-E-T-S.”

  Larry had spun a line of bullshit that Dad had swallowed. Not that Dad is so gullible but because Dad is compelled to believe in others’ conspiracy theories so they will believe in his. If Dad doesn’t believe Larry then why would Larry believe Dad? Why would I, or anyone else?

  “Any news from my mother or brother and sisters?”

  I lie. I shrug my shoulders and shake my head no.

  I don’t tell him how days after his arrest one of his sisters sent me an email condemning Dad. She blamed his non-Christian lifestyle for everything he had done. She informed me that after removing Dad’s belongings from his apartment, she had gone through his photos. Based on what she saw—pictures of him partying or posing with women he dated over the years, in various stages of undress—she decided Dad was evil and she was going to burn everything he owned.

  I begged her to reconsider and mail me his photos. She agreed but only if I first sent a check for fourteen dollars to cover the postage.

  She gave Dad’s cherished cowboy hat to her grandsons to play cowboys and Indians. I am not telling Dad about that, either. He really loves that hat.

  “How can they call themselves Christians and still disown me?” My father’s biggest fear in life is being abandoned, just like he was as a child at Deaf school. Dad persists. “That is not how to be a Christian. Christians are supposed to forgive.”

  “I know, Dad, I know.” I nod without dispute.

  He has gotten so many second chances, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking he deserves another. I can’t blame his relatives for not wanting him in their lives. He doesn’t make it easy for them to help or forgive him.

  WEYLAND DRIVE

  1987–1989

  SIXTEEN CANDLES

  Within a year of relocating to Fort Worth, Mom and Dad were behind on our rent. My mom walked into my room one day and told me to start packing. We were moving again, this time into a two-bedroom apartment. Having dropped out three weeks into his senior year, David had already moved into an apartment with his new friend Derek.

  I noticed that the lease was in Mom’s name, but I didn’t think much of it. They had so many problems with the IRS that it was probably best to leave Dad’s name off. What I didn’t know was that she had intended on moving without him and planned on doing it while my father was out of state on a gambling trip. But he had come home early and found her in the midst of packing boxes.

  She wouldn’t tell him where we were moving, but he was persistent. He rifled through her purse and discovered the new apartment’s address on her checkbook. He convinced her to give him another chance—again. She knew better, but since he had already found out where we would be living, she felt she had no choice.

  Our new apartment was on Weyland Drive, about a mile from our old house. It was one of thousands in an ocean of brick two-story complexes with tan roofs. It served mostly as housing for the students attending the junior college across the street. The building had tennis courts, laundry facilities, and a swimming pool. Our small two-bedroom on the ground floor with an outdoor patio was much bigger than our shed on Boars Head. But it was cramped, overstuffed with furniture and Mom’s knickknacks. Mom preferred the convenience of living on the first floor and since she and Dad were deaf, they were never concerned with noise from upstairs neighbors.

  In the midst of my sophomore year, I quit working at Showbiz Pizza and got a better job at Malibu Grand Prix, a hip spot for young people to hang out. Unlike Showbiz, Malibu was open late, so there were plenty of shifts I could work. This meant a nice paycheck, definitely an upgrade from Showbiz. The mini–amusement park had an enormous arcade with pool tables, air hockey, the latest video games, and classics like Galaga and Pac-Man. The racetrack itself was equipped with regular go-carts for kids but also had bigger, high-speed models for adults with driver’s licenses only. The track was a magnet for teenagers and a dream job for me.

  I decorated my new bedroom with a modern racetrack motif using discarded checkered racing flags from Malibu and a coordinating black and white checkered comforter from Wal-Mart.

  “Oh, Kambri, look at this,” Mom gushed, pointing out a three-piece black lacquer bedroom set in a Fingerhut catalog. Mom was trying to rebuild her credit and Fingerhut was the only company that would lend to her. She needed to use the company’s layaway program despite its exorbitant interest rates.

  “Yeah, that’s beautiful,” I answered.

  “You want it?” Mom smiled. “It’ll look great in your room.”

  Yes, I wanted it. The shiny furniture would look so much better than the flimsy dresser Mom had picked up at a garage sale. Even though I had painted it black and white, it looked cheap and the splintered drawers always stuck.

  “We can’t afford that.”

  “It’s my money.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “I know you don’t,” Mom huffed. “I’m trying to do something nice for your birthday. You deserve it after all your hard work and good grades.”

  “Mom, please don’t. If you want to buy something, then buy something for yourself.”

  “But it’s your sweet sixteen,” she persisted. “How about a new radio?” She pointed in the catalog to a stereo system with three-foot floor speakers, lots of wood paneling, buttons, and lights that served no real purpose but to look fancy. The payment was only a few bucks a month, far less indulgent than the bedroom set.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “A new stereo … but not the furniture! If you buy it, I’ll send it back, I swear!”

  Mom gave me an offended look, but I was not letting her waste money on an extravagant and unnecessary expense. I had loaned Dad and her lunch money regularly and, worse, our phone had gotten shut off for nonpayment more than once. As a teenage girl, this was a tragedy that ranked second only to getting our trailer hauled off by the bank. I couldn’t accept her offer no matter how much I wanted a cool bedroom set. Just like when my library was destroyed, I rationalized that all that shiny black lacquer would be too hard to keep clean.

  More than an expensive gift, I really wanted to have a party or a fancy dinner, something to celebrate my official coming of age. The day I turned sixteen, Mom was in the hospital recovering from a planned operation. She had chosen thi
s day, my sixteenth birthday, to schedule a surgery she had needed for a long time. I was disappointed but at least she had made the effort to buy me the stereo as a special gift. Besides, I still had my father and brother, who might help me celebrate. Even though David didn’t live with us, he’d usually stop in at least once a day to raid our fridge. But I hadn’t seen Dad or him in days, which I suspected meant they were out partying together. Still I had a sliver of hope that they would remember June 22, 1987, my sixteenth birthday, as an important date.

  Since it was summer, the majority of my school friends were out of town on family vacations. Most of them didn’t know that it was my birthday anyway. Brad and I were no longer together. We had been getting on each other’s nerves and our nearly ten-month relationship ended with a loud fight in the hallway of our high school. After the breakup, I promptly went back to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I worked more often than usual so I wouldn’t have time for much of anything else.

  I was used to simple birthday celebrations, a homemade cake, a card containing a five-dollar bill from both sets of grandparents, and, if I was lucky, one or two friends over at the house for a sleepover. But this was my sixteenth. No one seemed to remember. No one seemed to care.

  Bored and agitated, I dusted the apartment, washed the dishes, and scrubbed the floors, hoping the lack of interest in the date signaled a surprise party was awaiting me. Other girls at Richland High got new cars for these occasions. All I expected was some acknowledgment of this important milestone. Instead I was all alone. Even the phone sat silent till past suppertime. When it finally rang, I raced to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “I jushh called to shaay I looooove you,” Mom sang, slurring the words to the Stevie Wonder song. Even though she was calling from her hospital bed, I was fuming mad and cut her off with a slam of the phone.

  Moments later, it rang again. She didn’t wait for my answer; she just picked up where she left off, “I jushh called to shaay I caaaaaaare.”

  I hung up again. By the third call, she had changed her tune to “Happy Birthday.” I made it clear I was livid.

  “Yeah, happy fucking birthday,” I yelled.

  “Kambri! Watssch your mouth! Whash the matter?”

  “It’s my sixteenth birthday and I didn’t even get a card or a cake or anything!”

  “Where’s your daddy?”

  “I don’t know. He and David are off somewhere. You sound drunk.”

  “I’m on morphine. Woooooo,” Mom giggled.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Well, how do you think I feel? I’m in the hospital and nobody’s come to visit me.”

  I was silent.

  “When your daddy gets home, you tell him ish your birthday.”

  “I’m not gonna tell him. He should remember his own daughter’s birthday. And what about David?”

  “Kambri, I can’t talk about thish. I’m woozy from drugs and you’re making my shtomach upshet.”

  “Fine!” I slammed the phone down again.

  At one o’clock in the morning, I heard the key in the lock and smelled a burst of fresh-cut grass, summer air, and alcohol. It was David and Dad coming home, and they had been drinking.

  My father looked surprised to see me standing in the hallway. “Awake?” he signed.

  I scowled and stormed into the kitchen with Dad trailing behind me. Casually pulling some food from the fridge, he began to fix something for him and David to eat.

  “I did the dishes,” I signed, and glowered expectantly.

  “Thank you,” Dad gestured. He then gave me a quick pat on the head before pulling open the cabinets in search of a skillet.

  My parents always had to remind me not to leave the pots and pans unwashed. I hated scrubbing them, and today I had left them dirty and piled on the stovetop. It was my birthday, after all.

  When Dad noticed they weren’t clean he cried, “Kipree!” Then he signed, “Why didn’t you wash the pots and pans?”

  “I cleaned the whole apartment!” I signed with wild arm movements. “So, I didn’t wash the pots. Who cares?”

  My father was taken aback by my outburst. “Whoa,” he mouthed and signed, “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my birthday!”

  “Not anymore,” my brother snorted. “It’s after midnight.”

  “Fuck you, David!” I snapped.

  “Oh, man, I’m sorry, Kambri,” he continued, stifling his amusement. “I’m serious. I’m sorry. Happy birthday,” he reached out to hug me, but I pushed him off. “Awww, come on, Kambri. We forgot. We still love you.”

  Dad signed, “I’m sorry. Happy birthday. Thank you for cleaning.”

  I charged to my bedroom and slammed the door.

  The next morning, my father invited me to the mall. I thought he was motivated by guilt, but maybe he just needed to buy himself new Wranglers. He kept his sunglasses on as he strode confidently through Foley’s department store. Passing a row of mannequins modeling new swimsuits, Dad covertly yanked down their bathing suit tops.

  He laughed at my shocked expression as he signed, “H-A-H-A-H-A.” When I was younger, he used to try to embarrass me by making vomit and fart noises in public. He may not have known what throwing up or flatulence sounded like, but he knew they elicited disgusted expressions from the other shoppers and embarrassed me. Now that I was older, he’d graduated to this public prank, befitting my maturity.

  As we made our way from store to store, my father continued to molest the plastic women, pulling off their clothes and on occasion tweaking a breast or tickling the pubic area with his index finger. The other customers gave us a wide berth and cast disapproving looks over their shoulders. I couldn’t help but laugh at the horrified reactions of big-haired ladies, gasping and whispering to their shopping partners, “Did you see what that man just did?” I stood back, just far enough to avoid implication.

  It didn’t take long for the mall police to catch up with us and I had to interpret.

  “Who cares? They’re plastic,” Dad shrugged.

  “It’s not right,” the guards awkwardly retorted.

  Dad would not relent. “They’re not real. They don’t even have nipples,” he signed, with a sly grin.

  I relayed Dad’s excuse. “But they don’t have nipples, he said.”

  Reluctant to have this conversation with a teenage girl and her father, the uniformed guards resorted to pleading. “Please, just tell him to stop and go home.”

  I started giggling and repeated in ASL, “Please stop and go.”

  “Okay, fine,” Dad signed. We fled the store to the Thunderbird, laughing the whole way. Dad stuck the keys in the ignition so his hands were free to sign, then animatedly reenacted the scene, mimicking the exasperated faces of the security guards. “H-A-H-A,” Dad signed. “People are so U-P-T-I-G-H-T.”

  I was laughing so hard I could hardly watch him. The mall outing had been a welcome distraction. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon with my father, even if he didn’t buy me anything. I still felt deeply disappointed at the hurtful oversight and knew that there would be no follow-up surprise or celebration. The memory of a morphine-laced apology from Mom, a drunken, attempted hug from David, and a trip to the mall with Dad molesting mannequins would be the end of it.

  I carried a heavy workload in my junior year of high school. In addition to my honors classes, I chose theater as my requisite fine arts course and quickly became a fixture in the drama room, loading equipment, watching rehearsals, and running errands.

  Mom said I came out of the womb with a microphone in my hand. “You weren’t even two years old, but you were already talking and using sign language and told everyone you were going to be a movie star when you grew up.” But aside from the puppet shows I wrote, directed, and “performed” for the King boys, only one acting opportunity had presented itself during our time in the backwoods of Boars Head. I was only eight years old and Mom informed me I was headed to an audition. I had no idea what pla
y I was reading for or what getting the part might entail. I was ready for the exciting challenge, though, as Mom drove us in the Chevy to a community theater in Conroe. I had already had the lead in my second-grade school pageant in Houston and performed in and directed a group of fellow third-grade girls in a brilliant rendition of “Silent Night” in Montgomery. Mom had never been cast in anything her whole life, but I still listened to her advice: “Remember to speak loud and clear!”

  That would be a cinch. I had to do that around deaf people all the time! And as a CODA I could express myself in ways other kids couldn’t. A hearing person expresses feelings by changing the tone and intensity of his voice. Just as slight variations in the pitch and volume of one’s voice convey information in a spoken language, fluent speakers of ASL can pick up small differences in a sign’s duration, range of motion, and the signer’s body language. It was normal for me to use body language and facial expressions to convey meaning and feelings in my signing with my two deaf parents and other deaf friends and family. The problem was that I hadn’t learned how to drop those communications traits when socializing and going to school with people who could hear. My animated speaking had become my unique accent.

  Once inside the theater, I took my place at the center of a wide circle of auditioning actors. When it was my turn to read the script, I read, or I should say shouted, the lines with exaggerated facial expressions and wild arm gestures.

  “I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND NOW TO LEAD A DIFFERENT LIFE FROM OTHER GIRLS AND, LATER ON, DIFFERENT FROM ORDINARY HOUSEWIVES. MY START HAS BEEN SO VERY FULL OF INTEREST, AND THAT IS THE SOLE REASON WHY I HAVE TO LAUGH AT THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS MOMENTS.”

  With frantic motions, the director waved for me to stop. “Okay, thank you!” she yelled. “Well … Kambri …” She cleared her throat and bit her upper lip to suppress bubbling laughter. “You enunciate very well, and you certainly can project!”