LINES IN THE CARPET
THIS ESSAY IS AN UNEDITED WORK IN PROGRESS…
The last room on the left was my room. We took a year long break from living at our house because after it flooded, it needed extensive repairs. Four feet of water in our South Louisiana starter home had destroyed almost the whole thing. While many kids would feel devastated at the damage of their home, the year our house was being repaired was the best year of my childhood. That year was a retreat for me, because we got to live with my grandmother. My grandfather passed away not too long before that happened and so I shared a bed with her for the year. The weekend before we moved back to our house, I walked through the house, running my hands down the textured grass wallpaper, the brand new carpet underneath my toes.
Dragging my hands on the side of the walls, I inspected each room. The house seemed so much smaller than before the flood. My mother hired an interior designer to help her with the remodel. I spent a year at furniture stores, looking over my mom’s shoulders as she flipped through fabric swatches. Other places we frequented were flooring warehouses and the like as these were the days before Home Depot. I eyed disapprovingly as my mom chose a neutral color palate of beiges, tans and light browns. She was historically boring with her taste in interiors and artwork, AS an art major in the seventies, she rebelled against abstract art and leaned more toward traditional realism. If it were up to her, the entire home would be decorated with Thomas Kincaid. My artistic inclinations were entirely opposite. As a child, I marveled at Dali poster my father kept on the wall, I imagined the formation of the piece in Dali’s mind, how he distorted and created the piece. Meanwhile, at my mothers, I was subjected to landscapes and pastoral scenes, all too glistening to ever come true. To me, the distortions of Dali seemed more true to our human nature than the mask of pastorialsim. Time and time again I disappointingly watched my mother pick the worst choices in colors and textures for the walls and furniture. Resorting to neutrals was almost a non choice, but going with what was safest. The tan carpet was equally boring. Your stereotypical boring eighties family of four or so it would seem. Behind the myriad of uninspiring neutrals laid blood red hatred….Hatred of a little girl, hatred of me. The safety of the choices for me felt quite ironic in my unsafe household. But of course, my mother could not escape her true passion for masking reality as she herself was a professional clown at this point. Not only did the realism of her artistic tastes mask the reality of the harshness of life, but to add to that, the subjects of our walls wore masks themselves as they were Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs (whom she knew personally).
I loved playing on the floor in my room when I was allowed to be inside. The height of my childhood in the 80s was the age of sending the kids outside into the yard or to the neighbor’s house until dinnertime which was wonderful. I loved to be outside and in fact preferred it. Playing outside, climbing, biking, all the freedom of growing up in a suburban eighties neighborhood were my favorite parts of being a kids. Even in the rain, we’d make mud pies and run down the streets barefooted with umbrellas. Large puddles flooding the streets and yards became make shift rivers and swimming ponds and I never minded being outside rain or shine. I also found playing alone inside to be equally fun if the weather was dangerously violent or if it was after dark. Not having a sibling close in age, I spent my time drawing and listening albums on the hand me down record player. I played with dolls and cars equally. I loved sitting on the floor, even to do homework, despite having a perfectly good desk. I would read and write and enjoy my room on days I couldn’t be outside. However, after the flood repairs were completed, everything about the security and safety of my room changed for me.
My stepfather often had business trips that we would attend with him. We never really had a choice in the matter. Since he was a CEO and on the board of several national non-profits, my mother was often expected to attend parties and socials. They would leave me as “sitter,” watching over my difficult to control younger half brother. This particular year, we went during a school week to a conference in Little Rock. WE rode up the mountains past little rock to a scenic resport that overlooked the valley. It was a breathtaking view and my stepfather said to my mother, “we shouldn’t have brought the kids.” With a view that stunning my stepfather already regretted not turning the trip into romantic getaway instead of a family trip. I smirked a bit because I already had built up so much resentment toward him for his malignant abusiveness that I was completely happy to ruin his time with my presence. Irritating him with my presence was already be my” job” as the family scapegoat. I did my best to enjoy myself as my mom took us to see Ozark waterfalls and we had a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Most of the time was spent in the resort room with my brother, watching TV. I was worried the entire time about the week of school I was missing, but told it would be fine.
The next week, I went back to school and discovered that I had missed an entire week of learning times tables. A week behind doesn’t sound like much, but for whatever reason, it was a major setback in my learning. I never was really good at memorizing; my brain functions best on analytics and philosophical understanding. Having to learn times tables and then use them for the numerous worksheets my teacher handed out proved difficult. My classmates were excelling, and I was drowning on my very first day back. Unfortunately for me just a few days after being back, I was to have my first multiplication text. I sat nightly at my desk, trying my best to memorize multiplication tables – writing them over and over again, saying them out loud. I knew that if I didn’t learn them by Friday that I would be in big trouble. My stepfather adhered to a strict “NO C’s” policy in our house. I was in the fourth grade, meaning just two years until middle school. I was expected to get into one of only two magnet schools in town. These schools used a quota system as part of a city wide desegregation plan. All qualified applicants were place in a “drawing” based off of racial demographics. After the school was full, other qualified applicants were placed on a waiting list. I was expected by my stepfather to be admitted into a magnet school, not caring about whether or not it was fair for him to expect this of me. I was told that if I didn’t make it into the magnet middle school, that I would have to pay for my own education at a private school. All of that pressure was built inside of me as I prepared myself for a test I knew I might fail.
The Monday morning after the first multiplication exam, I was so nervous. Actually, I I was terrified. As the teacher placed all of our tests on our desks, she placed the ones with As and Bs faced up and the others faced down. My last name granted me the position of being toward the end of the class roll. I anxiously watched as she went up and down each row of students, saying their names as she put down the papers. She got to my desk and I looked up at her, trying to read her expressions….nothing. And then it happened, my paper was placed face down. I froze. I had never made anything below an A or B. I thought that I might pass out. I kept thinking before even reaching for my paper whether there was a way that I could disappear or maybe hide, but I knew that I was nothing but exposed.
I lifted up the paper – D. “D” for Done, I thought, “D” for dead. “D” for destroyed. All papers had to be signed by our parents and returned the next day or else a parental phone call was warranted. I knew that there was no escape from what was coming for me. I begged the teacher that day before recess to allow me to do make up work or bonus work. She said that she could not do this, and that I just needed to use my recess time to work on my math, so I did. No longer would I go outside for recess, instead, I sat at my desk next to the one other kid that had made below a C,. I wrote times tables over and over. I could hear the other children laughing and playing as I sat at my desk and tried my best to memorize the tables.
I walked home from school that day knowing that my night was going to be torture. I spent all afternoon at my desk writing times tables. I think that maybe I was in shock, because I wasn’t retaining anything that I was trying to learn. Instead I respectively wrote hoping that I could fix my learning gap in the course of an afternoon. By 7:30, I heard my stepdad’s car pull up. I rushed outside to greet him, as I did every evening.
“How was work Dad?” I asked.
“It was WORK.” He replied as he always did. Then, before we were even at the front door, “Did you do your homework? Go get me your work and tests.”
“Ok Dad,” I said turning away from him, hoping that he would not see the tears in the corner of my eyes. I knew that if he saw me cry that he would “give me something to cry about.” I also knew that this was going to be one of the worst nights of my life. It ended up being in fact one of the worst years of my life.
“You are punished,” He said sternly as he sat at my desk peering at the papers. I sat underneath him on the beige carpet. At that point, I wished that I could melt into that carpet. If I could only be as boring as the carpet, maybe my stepdad would not be as interested in playing his narcissistic games with me.
“Stand up,” he demanded.
I stood up and listened to him tell me how multiplication is simple and I’m a smart girl so I must just be lazy to not know it yet. He told me that I had absolutely no excuse for not already successfully memorizing my multiplication tables other than I was not studying hard enough. I nodded and said, “You are right.” I knew he was wrong, that I just was having issues getting the multiplication down despite studying, but at this point I had been trained to fawn.
“You will be punished until you can recite all of your times tables one though twelve,” he said.
“But my teacher only wants until ten, she is going to show us how to do double digits a different way,” I interjected.
“Ok then through thirteen,” he said, looking at me with hatred. “Talk back to me again and it will be through fifteen.” Now sit at your desk until its time for bed and practice. I will be back to test you before its time to brush your teeth.
That night was the first night of my punishment. I was no longer allowed to play outside. I was no longer allowed to use to use the telephone. I was no longer allowed to draw or write or play. I was no longer allowed to listen to music. All of my albums were removed from my room. I was only allowed to read books if they were school assignments, which luckily, we had a constant stream of required reading, even in the fourth grade. I loved reading; it was an escape from my childhood, a world of possibilities and a great way to avoid talking to people as well. The only thing I was allowed to do after school every day was to practice my multiplication tables. I would write and recite and write and recite. After a few weeks, my mom purchased an album for me that put the tables into songs. This was the one album I was allowed to listen to.
One night not long after my punishment started, my stepdad came in to test me as he did multiple times a night. The rule was that I had to start with 1 then 2 then 3 and so on. If I messed up any part of the table, I had to start at the beginning. I was not allowed to use my hands at all, in fact I was told to sit on my hands. I also wasn’t allowed to sing the multiplication songs from the album my mom bought me. My answers were also timed, and I was expected to rattle along without pausing. Taking too long of a pause meant I didn’t know it well enough and had to start again at the beginning. I did one and two, and even got to seven before I began messing up my numbers. Jumbles of numbers were in my head. The more anxious I was, the more I would mess up. “I’m coming back in an hour and if you haven’t finished memorized them, then you are getting a month more of punishment. I began working again on my tables, writing them obsessively. At this point, I was overly exhausted. I slowed down my pace from being utterly worn out.
Within five minutes, my stepdad burst into the door. “Exactly what I thought,” he yelled as if he had caught me in some sort of act of great mischief. “You are in here goofing around! Don’t you know that you will never be anything if you can’t learn these?” That’s it – sit in the center of the room! You are punished from being at your desk where you can draw and goof off. Go sit in the center of the room. I’ll start your album, and you will listen to it over and over again until you get some damn intelligence in your stupid brain.”
I did as I was told; I sat in the middle of the room. My stepdad started my album and I listened. He left the room only to come back almost immediately, with a vacuum. A vacuum?, I thought, for what? I looked at him standing in the doorway. I was so confused as to what he was wanting me to do….was he trying to have me do chores right now as I listened to the album? How would I hear the album if I was doing chores? I was baffled. Was he going to show me that I had broken something on the vacuum? What was he doing? I could see by the lines of anger in his face that he was ready to really punish me now. I watched in almost slow motion as he silently plugged in the vacuum.
“You can’t be trusted,” he said. “If you haven’t learned a damn thing by now, that means that you are not working on your tables. If I can’t trust you to do that, how can I trust you to stay away from your desk?”
VRRRRRRRRRRRRMMM. He turned the vacuum on. To my surprise, he began vacuuming my room, all around me. He started by the window, and encircled me, then vacuumed himself out of the room.
“Do you see the lines in the carpet from the vacuum?” he said. I wasn’t really sure if he wanted me to answer this question until he asked it again much louder.
“Yes, I see them,” I replied.
“Good, well those need to still be there when I come back, if you get up, I will see your footprints. I expect you to stay with your hands under your butt and listen to the album until I get back,” he said as he stormed out of the room.
Was I really trapped like an island in an unknown beige colored sea? Was I really a hostage in my own childhood room? I had already been sequestered to my room for weeks, but not being able to move from the center, not being able to access anything in my room or the bathroom felt completely different. A new type of cruel and unusual punishment had formed in the space that once was flooded with swamp water. At that moment I felt as if my room was flooded with hatred, as if a rising resentment was overtaking me. The suffocation of emotional trauma and the paralysis of fear overtook me. I listened to the album and tried so hard to remember every table. Learning when your brain is switched to survival mode was impossible. My brain flooded over the numbers with ways to escape, to be emancipated from the monster that reined over me. Each multiplication table that I had created a space for in my memory was quickly washed away by the growing anxiety and terror of what my stepdad would do next.
Day after day, I was placed in the middle of the room in this manner. Night after night I had trouble reciting my tables perfectly. I started doing better with my work in class, because at school, I had a safe place to think. My teacher let me use whatever means I needed to get the answer right….whether I used my fingers or sang in my head or just needed a bit of extra time. But at home with the obsession my stepfather had of me reciting in order each table until twelve and eventually fifteen in a speedily paced and robotic manner, I failed miserably for months.
After several months, I finally had memorized up to eleven but I always had issues with twelve. Sometimes I was allowed to read books from the “Let’s Talk About It” children’s series with such titles as “Lets Talk about Whining,” “Let’s Talk About Lying, and “Lets Talk About Disobeying.” I tortured and simultaneously brainwashed into thinking that I was the source of the problem in my household. As I sat in my strange carpeted solitary confinement, I internalized this idea. AS the roaring of my stepdad’s temper played over my inner monologue, I thought, perhaps I really was not good enough. Maybe trying wasn’t every going to work.
I was deathly bored of listening to the multiplication album and sitting on my hands. I was frustrated and resentful that my life had come to this at only 9 years old. It had been months since I was allowed outside to play. In fact, my friends didn’t even bother to come by anymore. I could hear everyone outside behind me as I was also not allowed to face the window. Facing away from the window was perhaps the hardest part of my stepdad’s sentence, its as if he had stopped working for the department of corrections and instead created a one girl lock up just for him to use a an outlet for narcissistic supply. He clearly got off on the power; it was a game to him. My distressed pleased him and causing me distress was as much of a drug as booze. So many times, I wanted to shout out to my friends playing outside for help. So many times I wished that I would be released from my imprisonment. I longed to be one of the children outside. I longed for different parents. I longed simply for peace.
I dreaded the sound of the vacuum coming out of the closet every night. An invisible chamber encased me, a mimed chamber, as if my mother’s clown persona had influenced my stepdad’s malice in the sickest way. At some point, I figured out that if I was very careful, I could draw in the carpet on a tiny section and smooth it back out so that it matched the vacuumed carpet. I would mostly write my multiplication tables and come up with multiplication problems to solve in the carpet. My finger would trace out the numbers. I would solve the problem then quickly smooth it out expecting my stepfather to bust though the door catching me making lines in the carpet. My tiny finger was pale tan like the carpet. It was as if the carpet was overtaking me. The polyester threads felt rough under me, and I would have bumpy carpet marks on my body as if it had assaulted me. How could something seemingly so bland and boring be the source of so much pain? .
Lines in the carpet were like daggers. A year of confinement on a base of beige, encapsulated by melodies of multiplication pierced into my soul forever. I hate carpet, Carpet is filled with filth. The encasing of my small spirit was like the covering of beautiful hard wood flooring with an unfriendly and synthetic overlay, masking the beauty of what lies underneath. I knew the treasures that I had within myself. I was determined not to give up and determined to survive. I knew that everything my parents did was wrong. None the less, I was unjustifiably confined and my only escape was adulthood….if I could make it that far….until then….I had to manipulate my way into being happy. I had to lie to others about my safety. I had to cover the lines that I made, just to hold onto what little bit of my soul that was left. As time went on, the figurative lines in the carpet, the strings of my soul that I thought were washed away by a flood of fear, in fact, were never wiped away at all but were rooted so deeply that they grew stronger and multiplied.
I often wondered those years if I would survive. I often wondered if I even wanted to, if survival meant enslavement, could I do it? I continued to wonder for years to come. Something deep in me never wanted to give up. I had the spirit of a great fighter even at a young age. I wanted to stand up for what was right, and I knew that “what’s right for me” included living a full and fulfilling life. I ended up excelling in math and science until I abandoned it for my love of literature. Every day sitting on the carpet I dreamt of a new life, one that I controlled. The lines I drew in the carpet with my fingers were my first steps of defiance, my first drawings of creativity, and my first glimpse of freedom, a freedom that I hold to tightly. No matter how bleak – I knew that there is always room for me to draw another line.