Mom is making me go to Mean Vicky’s house. I hate it here. We get up really early in the morning, when it’s still dark and still cold. I am bundled up in layers of hats and scarves and jackets and carried to the car. By the time I start to feel awake, we are almost there. I start crying because I know what’s coming.

We pull into her drive. It’s raining. It’s dark. I can see the raindrops falling in the beam of the headlights. The windshield wipers are working over time. Mom unfastens me from the car and carries me up the walk. I’m crying. I hate it here. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me with Mean Vicky.

“Hurry. Finish your cereal. It’s time to lay back down. Time to nap,” she says. I am staring at the little tan O’s floating in the milk in my cereal bowl. I push them to one side and then the other with the spoon.

“Eat it! Quit playing with it.”

Finally, she’s had enough. She takes my cereal. She dumps the milk. She leaves the rest of the soggy Cheerios in the bottom of the bowl. When she says to hurry up and eat, she means it. I’ve never been treated this way before. I wasn’t finished yet!

At nap time, we are not allowed to play in the living room with the toys. She has a chest full of toys, and the lid is propped half open. I can see them from my nap spot. Bright pinks and blues, shiny plastic balls, doll hair, levers and handles. They peek out of the top of the trunk. No one is allowed to play with them during nap time. Even if you can see them from your nap spot. And even if you'll be really quiet and not wake up anybody else.

Nope, no one. Mean Vicky said so.

So why do I see a girl sitting in the middle of the floor, playing with a doll or a truck or a bouncy ball? She has long hair and she’s older than me, but she’s still a kid. Why isn’t she taking a nap? And why does she get to play with the toys? That is against the rules. Mean Vicky said so.

Just when I think I cannot stand another minute, Mom and Nana come to pick me up. Oh, what joy!  I am saved at last. I hope they never make me come here again. I tell them in the car  about my poor, abandoned Cheerios, never to be sweetened and eaten. I cry to them. She’s mean. Who does that? Pours out your cereal like that? Just because you didn't eat it fast enough. I tell them about the girl, the one who got to play with the toys.

“That’s her daughter,” they tell me. They say it like that is supposed to make it okay. I’m someone’s daughter too. What makes her special? Better yet, what makes her more special than me? To not have to nap or follow the rules?

I beg them not to make me go to Mean Vicky’s house again. But I know they will. They have to work.

We skate on the ice in the Creek. Some patches of ice are wide and we build up pretty good speed. Mostly, though, where the water was shallow, rock edges stick up through the frozen surface and trip us in our tennis shoes. When a big snow hits, we start teeny little snow balls at one end of the field and roll them until they are ten times our size at the other end. Little bits of hay and brown grass and dirt cling to the snowy surface of the giant snow balls littering the pasture.

Ginger and Jiggy have shaggy coats. Their hair clumps in sections when the snow or sleet dries on their backs.   Their manes get tangled, and I brush them out and braid them. I am enchanted to be this close to such a big creature and not be trampled by hooves. Ginger especially likes it when I brush her. I  can see it in her eyes and the way she ducks her head down, inviting me  to pat between her ears. She and Jiggy sleep in the barn at night, packed in with bales and bales and bales of hay.

The hay loft is full. We climb the rickety ladder and squeeze through the square opening, coughing and sputtering as bits of hay and barn-dust invade our lungs. When you get into the hay loft, you’re supposed to pull the heavy wooden slat back across the hole so that no one accidentally falls through. But we always forget.

We’re too busy climbing over the scratchy bales, stacked high to ceiling. A barn cat has kittens and we hear them mewling in the back corner. Cozy and warm. Tucked away between two bales, their crusty eyes and wobbly legs are beautiful and pitiful to see. We can’t touch them yet, and it’s killing us.

 We peek out the loft window and watch the horses in the field below. They don’t do a whole lot. They just eat grain and hay and grass and get fat. Sometimes, Papaw sits us up on their bare backs, but they never learned what do with a kid on their shoulders, so they simply stand there, perplexed.

Papaw put a block of salt in the field. The deer have thick tongues and, in the wee hours of the morning, they lick deep grooves into the sides of it. We get down on our hands and knees and lick it too. We break ice cycles off the porch roof and suck on them like lollipops. They taste like rain water and tin.

My brother has a brilliant idea. “Let’s sled down the creek bank and onto the creek!” I go first. The round, silver sled flies down the bank! Excellent. I hit the surface with a thud, my head falls back with the jolt. My head hits the ice. No real damage done. Just a bump.

Oh, and I’m never listening to my brother again.

My brother has a brilliant idea. “Let’s stick our tongues to the pipe, like they do in A Christmas Story! Let’s see if it works.” I go first. And now I’m stuck. I simply cannot move, my tongue stuck to the piping above me in the tunnel. “Hewp!” I cry out. My brother says he’ll run inside and get some hot water. I wait. And wait. He isn’t coming. I rip my tongue from the frozen surface, and run back up to the house, bleeding. My brother is on the couch, stripped down to his long johns, drinking hot chocolate, and watching cartoons. In the bathroom, I peer at my battered tongue in the mirror. It’s brown around the edges, and red and bumpy in the middle.

I’m never listening to my brother again.

We sit in a circle in the morning and play a hand-clap game, counting the number of days we’ve been in school so far. We finger paint, which feels like something we should be in trouble for. Smearing colorful goo all over the table top surface? I would be in so much trouble at home. But it’s okay here. Actually, it’s wonderful here.

In the afternoon, we get to drink chocolate milk from little cartons. They bring it in to the classroom in brown, square crates stacked on a cart. Some days we have to do fluoride. Tiny cups of pink liquid stand in rows on a lunch tray. A line of tape runs the length of the room, and we stand on it in a row, waiting our turn. She checks our name off the list when we take a cup. I don’t like fluoride day. It smells funny and tastes funny and makes me feel all woozy, like my head is full of yarn and air instead of brain.

We have a substitute teacher at recess. It rained in the morning, and there are puddles scattered around the playground. One by the swings. One by the sandbox. The sand there is sticky and rough from the earlier showers. One under the monkeybars. We take turns climbing across the cool, slick metal bars, trying not to fall in the puddle. But we aren’t really trying that hard. Someone lands in the puddle.

Uh oh! Look around. Quick. Did she see? Did the teacher see? We’re going to be in trouble.

But she’s laughing. How fun! A grownup who likes fun, kid things? This is a miracle.

Suddenly, everyone is jumping in puddles. Splashing. Stomping. Dirty, brown puddle water spraying up the backs of our jeans and onto our coats. Little flecks of mud and rock stick to pink round cheeks and in the girls’ long ponytails. This is the best recess ever.

Suddenly, everyone freezes. Now, we’re in trouble. Here comes a real teacher. She teaches first grade. She’s tall, and has red hair and glasses, and her voice is sharp and straight like a razor. We’re all ordered to sit against The Wall. That’s where you have to go when you’re bad at recess. Go sit by yourself along The Wall and watch everyone else have fun. With my back to The Wall, the scratchy bricks pick at my coat and catch pieces of my hair, pulling it when I turn my head.

We are all in trouble, but it doesn't seem fair. The grownup in charge was letting us play there. She was okay with it, and she was the one in charge, so why does this other lady get to come out here and tell us we all did something bad? How can you be in trouble for something that you’ve been told you are allowed to do? Rules are supposed to be simple and constant, and I do not like it when they change. It is the essence of unfairness. My five-year-old self is offended and outraged.

Now, any time it’s rainy before recess, even if it stops in time for us to go play, we have to have Inside Recess. Board games. Books. The costume area and play place where we can play house or doctor or ride on the pony seesaw.

And each morning, we sit in a circle and clap our hands and slap our knees and add one more day to the count. These are the days we are in school.

When the nights get cooler and the dark comes sooner, my brother and I play in the light cast by the Security Light. A power line runs through the yard, and we play a game. The high, thick, black cord is our target. A small Nerf football, with little holes chewed in the sides, is lobbed back forth across the wire. You get points based on “over it,” “under it,” or “hit it!” You get the most points when you hit it. We play this game for hours. Talking about everything and nothing, all at once.

At Christmas, we got fake laptops. The kind that look like real computers but are really full of dumb learning games like Hang Man and a music maker. Instead of using it to learn math or “spot the noun,” we play like we are in Twister and we run behind the tool shed, dodging tornados and trying to calculate the next likely touchdown in our area. My brother got a Terminator doll – excuse me, action figure – for Christmas too. When you push the buttons he says, “Hasta la vista… babay” and “Aisle be bach.” His arm is plastic flesh, and you can see the machinery underneath the skin.

Someone, Mom or Dad, tied up an old tire to the side of the barn and I practice pitching to it. I hate practice. I always get tired, and then I get worse, and then they want to make me stay longer until I get better again. But I’m not going to get better. At least, not tonight. They keep making me pitch the ball at the tire, trying to hit it dead-center, right through the heart. Those are strikes. "Keep going until you get 10 strikes." I hate it.

When I’m not playing or practicing, I’m reading. I read everything. I get in trouble for it sometimes.

“Sarah, we’re going to watch this movie as family. Come inside right now or you won’t get to watch it at all,” they say.

“But I only have 2 chapters left!” Oh, the humanity!

“Fine. Stay out here and read, but don’t think you can come in and watch it with us later. You made your choice.”

But I don’t care if I miss the movie. I’m reading about someone far away from here, someone grownup and free and setting out on exciting adventures and falling in love. Who cares if there’s a ghost man who plays on the basketball team? The Sixth Man is a dumb name for a movie, anyway. You can’t have six players on the court at one time. Everybody knows that.

Okay, maybe I do kind of want to watch it. Too late. I chose the book and now I can’t go in. That’s what you get when you make choices around here. Stick-to-it-iveness. Even when it’s against your will. I sit and read by the light of the Security Light, content in this other world that I wish was mine. Somewhere far away...

I have chickenpox.
And no front teeth.

Everyone else at school has had missing teeth for ages. Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle. Pop! Missing tooth. But it’s taking forever for me to lose one! I’m afraid my baby teeth are going to last forever. Not even the hint of a hint of a wiggle in my gums.

On the first day of kindergarten, Sissy tells me there will be a Pee Detector. It means that if I pee the bed in the night, the next day when I walk through door of the classroom, the detector will go off and everyone will know. Horns blaring. Flashing lights. Just like when they Slime someone on Nickelodeon.

I never pee the bed again.

Finally, my front tooth starts to wiggle. I make the mistake of telling Papaw. He wrestles me to the floor in the living room, like he always does, and starts mashing his fist into my thigh muscle, like he always does. This is the worst kind of tickling. I’m laughing, but it hurts, but I’m laughing. Then he goes for my mouth. YANK! My tooth is gone. Blood is gushing everywhere. Did I mention the other front tooth had wiggled just a bit too? YANK! Both teeth are gone. Even more blood. It’s salty and warm in my mouth.

“Don’t put your tongue in the hole and a Gold Tooth will grow there,” they tell me. But it’s too late. The mushy, fleshy crater is too enticing a sensation to resist, even for a gold tooth. I dip the tip of my tongue in the hole again and again, looking for a sign of the new grownup teeth that are supposed to be growing in there.

On Spring Break, I get the chickenpox. I have itchy, scabby, red dots all over my body. Even on my butt and armpits. Nana uses a scratchy sponge and rubs Gold Bond power on my back, my arms, my legs. This is heavenly. She makes me sit in a vinegar bath too. This just hurts. It stings and smells bad and the water gets cold too fast. I don’t normally like when Nana makes me take vinegar baths anyway, but this is the worst.

My mom wants to take my picture. I have no teeth. I have chickenpox. I cry to her, “I just want my old self back!” What if I stay this way forever? Dotted and toothless? What a horrible fate! No one will ever be my friend or want to sit next to me at lunch or let me borrow their red crayon. I am in a state of abject despair. Mom just laughs. And takes my picture.

Aunt Sissy is grownup, but she’s kind of not. She smells good and has big, blonde, poufy bangs, and she’s the coolest person in the world. Her nails are long and pink. She plays the radio loud in the car, and gets Cheetos and Big Red pop when we stop at the gas station.

She works at the Season’s Lodge waiting tables. She stops there to say hello or pick up her check, and we stand at the front by the hostess and eat the mints. They’re in a bowl on the counter, and only guests who have just finished their meal are supposed to have them, but we’re with Sissy, so we’re allowed. They are delicious, and I shove five in my mouth at a time.

I’m trying to follow her as she weaves in and out of the tables and through the halls. I follow her into a room behind a heavy swinging door. It’s so loud. Dark. Smokey. Everyone in here is old. “Hey! You can’t be in here! This is a bar!” someone shouts at me, and I turn around, run back through the door and out the hall, mortified. What’s a bar? And why can’t kids be there? And why can Sissy be there if I can’t? We’re friends - don’t they know?

Because we’re friends, Sissy takes me along when she goes to a baby shower at the Season’s. It’s for one of the girls who works there with her. We play games at big round tables, but I don’t know how to do any of it and I don’t know the answers. Except for one. Baby food jars with characters’ faces taped to them are passed from hand to hand. Who’s that? Who’s that? Write it down on your list, but don’t show anyone or else they’ll cheat. “I know that one! It’s Cruella De Vil!” I helped.

At the drive-thru, Sissy tells us about conjunctions and types of nouns and teaches us new words, words that are way longer than the ones on my spelling test at school. Inside the truck, waiting for our fries, my brother and I get to sit up front. Some sharp corners make us slide and topple in our seats and look for something to hold onto, so Sissy tells us about the Cuss Word Bar. It’s right above the door, on the ceiling, and only for emergencies. And when you grab it, it’s just like saying a cuss word. We giggle and try to sneak our fingers to it when she’s not looking.

My brother and I get to ride in the back of the truck sometimes, but we have to lay down flat. The police will take us all away if they find us back here. We lie still, flat as boards and barely breathe, the wind rushes over us and sometimes tiny, sprinkling raindrops fall and splatter on our faces, our knees, our bare feet. I watch the leaves and branches and telephone poles passing overhead and try to guess where we are on the route home.

Any time I try to watch TV, Sissy attacks me. Sprawled out in the floor watching Yogi Bear or Lamb Chop, and suddenly she’s twisting her fingers tightly in my hair, or poking her long, pink nails into some baby-fat flesh, or sitting on me, pinning me down. “It’s loooove, Sarah,” she says with a grin, and then flits away, off to do something cool and fabulous and young. But when she wants me to sleep, she gently, gently rakes her long fingernails over my closed eyelids, soothing. It makes a soft scraping sound. It feels divine. 

The barn smells like dogs and dirt and old tobacco leaves.

Papaw grows fields of tobacco in the summer. When the tobacco is first planted, we get to ride around on the planter, pulled along behind the tractor. Two-seated, with a wheel in the middle, you have to stick the little backer plant into it really fast or else  your fingers catch and you miss a row. Papaw walks around afterward and presses the dirt in around the little plants, and fills in the holes we missed.

It’s really hot out when they cut the tobacco. The leaves are so tall and bright green. The Bacci Worms are long, and fat, and full of juice. Papaw squishes them and they ooze green backer juice into your hand or on your shoe. The cut stalks are stacked on Bacci Sticks, and left in the field to dry out in the sun. My brother and I use the Bacci Sticks as swords to be Donatello, or as canes, or tie them together to make a raft to float on the Creek. The rafts never float. 

The leaves are sticky and browning at the end of the summer when they get hung up in the rafters of the barn. Still on Bacci Sticks, they hang and are spread out evenly to dry out even more. When the barn rafters are full of upside down backer plants, the Bacci Worms fall from the sky. I’m sitting on the second or third highest rafters, which are as big around as a horse. I scoot back to make room for the bundle on its way up to the boards above me, and my bare leg catches on the dusty wood. I have splinter. And it’s huge. The wood inside my skin is as big as the tip of my pinky finger.

It takes forever for it to come out. Nana makes me sleep with a sliced potato wrapped against it to “draw it out.” I beg Papaw to take his pocket knife to it when it’s been in there for a week. I promise not to cry. I can tell he doesn’t want to, but it hurts. He sits down and exams my leg, places the knife to my skin, and the splinter pops out. No cutting necessary. The skin that was stretched scars and bubbles up and you can see it on my left calf.

When it gets cold, they run a kerosene heater and dress in camouflage coveralls and peel the leaves off of dry, crackly, yellowish-brown tobacco plants. We sit and watch, mostly trying to stay out of the way so the grownups won’t make us go back inside. Nana, Papaw, Sissy, Troy, Gary, Brian. They take turns standing in a row, forming an assembly line of tobacco stripping efficiency. A small, black radio blares country music. The floor of the barn is dirt and hay. When they get a pile of leaves big enough, they put them in a small, wooden box with a press at the top. Lower the press and then crank the handle until the tobacco block is small and compressed and a billion pounds.

Polly and Daniel lay content in the back stalls, howling occasionally, but mostly ignoring us. Ginger and Jiggy whinny when we ignore them, but Jiggy is old. She has arthritis in her legs and she bites our thighs when we try to sit on her back. Instead, we climb the tractor that sits in the middle of the barn, only scramble off again to press our noses close up to the crank handle when they start to press another load. Papaw is the strongest man alive, and he’s got the pressed backer bundles to prove it.