Someday I'll Edit Stories of My First Eviction
Yes, it happened more than once. And more than twice. Ok, now double that.
Well, this was harder to pull together than I thought it would be. I’ve written about the first time I remember getting evicted many times over the years as it’s a core memory. I knew there were at least a few drafts hiding in my piles of papers, besides the ones I’d found on my laptop when I was backing up my documents. (See my last post on that here). This sent me off on a search through almost everything I’ve written on paper over the last 25 or so years. It was exhausting.
I found a lot of different versions, written to varying prompts in so many different workshops and classes, in so many notebooks and folders. Depending on the time allowed, the angle of the prompt, and maybe most importantly, my state of mind at the time of writing, some details only appear in one draft. Memory is a tricky thing that way and I have an example of that from something else I’m working on for my writing group.
There’s another core memory I’ve written several versions of over the years, and I’ve referenced eating Chips Ahoy cookies in the scene. But as I uncovered more drafts, I came across an older one that said they were Rich’n Chips cookies, which is the capital “T” Truth. Now, did I forget that detail, easy to imagine since Keebler stopped making them in the late 1980’s? Or did I choose to make it something more relatable, but still specific? I tend to believe that I just forgot and filled in the gap with something close enough, because memory will do that sometimes without your knowing. Also, I’m terrible at making things up, so I wouldn’t have thought of it! Does anyone remember those?
I’m not going to share all of the drafts that I found, only because there’s a lot of redundancy. In some cases, like the first one below, the piece is about all three evictions that I remember as a series, or as a jumping off point to something more. If you don’t know me very well, it might be news to you that I was evicted three times as a kid. But it was news to me, when in 2017 my mom referred to the first time as the second time, and that’s how I learned it actually happened four times. But that’s another story.
From here, I’ll try to make one full, sparkly draft with whatever I think are the best bits of what I already have. Then, I’ll see what, if anything, I can do with it in terms of submitting it to be published, after a LOT of editing. Depending on calls for submissions, I may rewrite the angle or vary the length, etc., but I’ll share with my group and edit from there. I’m also interested in exploring other forms—maybe a poem, definitely something in the hermit crab family.
An example and an explainer of hermit crab essays can be found HERE from Brevity Magazine. And one of my favorites: The Heart As A Torn Muscle, By Randon Billings Noble.
Eventually this story will be included, in some form, in my memoir. For now, here’s the raw, unedited material.
First Eviction Drafts:
From a workshop in Woodstock, NY, summer 2018 with Abigail Thomas and Beverly Donofrio. I loved this one and always hope Martha Frankel will do something like this again. This is the beginning of a piece about me ultimately moving out at 17 after being evicted three times.
The first time it happened, I was in third grade, and it was the last day of school. As the bus pulled up to our driveway, I could see our stuff—all of our stuff—scattered across the front lawn in piles. I hadn’t known the word “evicted” before that, and though I didn’t understand exactly what was happening, I understood enough to feel embarrassed.
The Sheriff’s Police were boarding up the windows. That was my first clue that this was my parent’s fault. They didn’t board up the garage though, and we lived in it for three weeks.
Found in documents on my laptop—modified October 2019. No idea what prompted this one.
It was the last day of school of my third grade year. We were living in a big, old, drafty farmhouse for the past two years and there had been lots of good times there. The house had so many rooms that one was named “The Funk & Junk Room” and had all sorts of stuff in it, including my dad’s drum set. With its enclosed front and back porches, we had room for “puppy boxes” and raised several litters of puppies there. At one point, we had fourteen dogs. We had the room for all of this, as the house and property were sprawling at the dead end of a road in unincorporated LaGrange, Illinois. There was also a large 3-car garage which my dad kept his race car in and spent hours out there working on it with his buddy and co-owner, Jim. I sometimes liked to hang out with them and loved going to the racetrack (Santa Fe Speedway) every weekend during those years.
As the bus drew nearer to the end of the street, I saw something strange—our couch was sitting out on the grass on the side of the house. As the bus pulled in alongside the house, I noticed there was other furniture, piles of things, everything in fact, piled up on the grass and even in the gravel driveway. I had no idea what was happening. I saw men nailing boards over the windows and across the doors. Did our house catch on fire? No. Were we robbed? What was wrong? I knew in the pit of my stomach that something bad had happened, and I’m so thankful now that I didn’t know what it was, though I did feel it. Thank God for saving me the embarrassment of knowing that we had been evicted. Thank God even more for the fact that it was the last day of school, and I never saw any of those kids again.
I found my dad walking circles around our piles of stuff, pacing, ranting, “this is fuckin’ bullshit!” he exclaimed. I asked what was going on and I got something about “the asshole landlord” kicking us out. I don’t think I knew or understood the word evicted yet, though I grew to understand it quite well, but I knew what “kicked out” meant. “For how long?,” I asked. “For good.”
Though I didn’t understand, I knew it was bad and I was pretty sure it was my parents’ fault, based on the looks of disdain we were getting from the sheriff’s police who were carrying this out. When they left, after boarding the house up so well that we couldn’t get back in, we simply moved into the garage. We lived there for three weeks. One night it rained very heavily and my dad spent the entire night sweeping the rain back from the bay doors with a huge push broom. All of our belongings were piled high in one half of the garage and he was trying to keep them dry. I could hear the sound of the radio televangelist in the background, my mother’s desperate attempt to find something to cling to. I think this is still why I hate the smell of gasoline. And the sound of televangelists.
We cooked on the grill sometimes. My dad said, “It’s like camping!,” trying to sound chipper. We never went camping. I knew this was bullshit. My 8th birthday was during this time, though I don’t remember it.
