Like every other Saturday morning before the sun was all the way up I remember stepping out the back door of our one bedroom apartment, walking the fifteen feet to my friends/neighbors bedroom window. Everything was quiet as I sat waiting for her bedroom light to come on or hear people stirring. Frequently I lined up the famous Arizona white rocks and made designs with them to waste time. Sometimes I just laid on the sidewalk and think about all the fun things we would do. The problem with being an early riser is often waiting hours for the rest of the world to join you.
Mandy’s mother was very nice and always made good food but she was a strict parent, Mandy had many rules. I couldn’t even keep up them all. She was never allowed in the houses of our neighbors like I was and she wouldn’t even ask. Well, I can’t really say I was allowed to because it’s more like…who would know. My dad was gone driving his Taxi all hours of the night and day and our mother left years ago. Mandy also had to be inside before it got dark even if she was sitting on her own porch.
Finally, I heard people moving around inside their apartment. Her little brother Tommy who was barely a toddler was crying for something but I could hardly understand him. Mandy’s bedroom window was open and I could here almost everything that was going on but I never knocked immediately, I always waited for them to really be up and about. I thought that was respectful. I didn’t know how my waiting and listening for them was borderline stalkerish. I’m not really sure I had ever heard the word stalker at 10.
Then I heard her, Mandy’s mother yelling at her and telling her she could not go out to play with me today. She started telling her it was because she had been coughing all night and didn’t want her to go outside and get worse. When Mandy began to whine begging her mother to let me come in to play, she snapped. The next words out of her mouth have haunted me for over thirty years. “No Mandy, their family is not good people”
The rest of her ranting stung but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. She pointed out that my older sister was in a gang, that my brother was destructive, and my dad gave her the creeps. She went on to express her lack of faith in me being any better and didn’t want her to hang out with me as much. She explained how I could be a bad influence and she could be in danger by associating with me. On and on she defended her decision saying that no good parent would be comfortable letting their little girl hang out with people like that. She was afraid that people would think she too was trouble.
I quietly went back to our apartment. Robert, my brother, was sitting on the couch watching cartoons. He never looked up and I hurried to the bathroom where I could cry in private. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t “good people”.
The day that started out like so many others ended in a way that echoed in my soul and affected who I am, a person seeking to be seen as a good person and afraid that one day I will lose my facade and they will know, I am not.
Raising Vipi 