Non-fiction / The Suburban Hitler and Those That Weathered the Storm, Based on a True Story, Chapter 1: The Warning Signs.

Chapter 1: The Warning Signs

        I should have seen it coming. It was obvious from the start. “Heed the warning signs,” they say, but few people ever do. As black clouds gathered on the far horizon, I was too entranced by my own preoccupations to notice the atmospheric goings-on. It came all of the sudden, or so it would seem. “ ’Tis easy to see; hard to foresee.” Now, the hurricane is unleashing its full ferocity, maximum velocity, upon the world below.  Nothing can reverse the past, but anything can change the future.

        Most people don’t wake up one day with a tumor on their cheek. It forms gradually, subtly, quietly, and not without a stimulus. One chemical or another latches onto the wrong tissue, and the horror is conceived. It grows, multiplies and develops, much like an embryo, like a fetus. It remains hidden, perhaps suspected, but not fully realized. It is not “born” until it is protruding from the skin, a forceful reminder of cruel fate, and it becomes a source of lasting grief. Alas, such has been the course of my own disaster.
        Freud is surely beaming, as I look to my childhood to begin tracing the descent into domestic melancholy gloom. One could say that my misery began the moment I was conceived. I was doomed from the start, and in a most peculiar way. I was -- I am -- a twin, you see. As my sister and I grew older, I had the misfortune of becoming the submissive twin. My dearest other half had no trouble exerting dominance, as was the case with many another person in my early life. My parents were on my side, though, and that statement now seems laughable. The problem, believe it or not, was with the two people a decisive majority of society trust most in their younger years: their grandmother and their friends.
        Let me address the first option first, by which I mean, “Allow me to introduce you to my grandma.” She was the cool grandma, the one who watched you play video games and actually understood how they worked, the one who snuck you to the store to purchase the toy that your parents had refused to buy, the one who was your friend. She rocked. That is, until she became suspicious of me.
        All my life, I seem to have been plagued by a bad sense of timing. As it happens, my grandmother was actively involved in her work when I was born, and so, she had little time for her junior playmates. When she could, she did spend time with my sister and I, but the good times quickly turned into a picnic in a deluge—for me, at least.
        I was a curious child. What five year old is not? I liked to sort through my grandmother’s belongings, always being careful to place them exactly as they were before.  My grandmother placed a red flag by the first fact, but the second fact she overlooked altogether, and this was the cause of my first true grief. For, there came a day when my grandmother began to be frustrated by the growing list of lost or misplaced items in her home. She needed someone to blame it on. Can you guess who she picked? The curious, now “meddling”  five-year-old, me. Every object on the estate that was not accountable for was written off with my name. Be it a pair of glasses or a pair of underoos, it was somehow my fault. Though discouraged, I continued to visit my grandmother at her house. Oh, how foolishly undaunted I was. That soon changed. Before, it had always been trivial, replaceable items, but one day a medical bill went missing. Can you guess who they came looking for? None other.
        At first, there was silence. Then, one day when my sister and I had gone over to make Christmas t-shirts, as was our custom, the first cloud burst. My grandmother calmly asked me to speak to her in her bedroom. It would only take a minute. I happily obliged. Twenty minutes in, I sorely regretted my decision. She was yelling, and I was crying. It was a distasteful mix. Despite my best efforts, I could not clear my name with her. She had reached her conclusion, and nothing could shake her from it. Arguing was useless, but that day we were at it for a good twenty-five to thirty minutes, which is lot for a youngster. I guess my grandmother had had enough, and she sent me back to meet my sister. I wiped away my tears on the way back down the hall. My sister looked up and saw my tear-stained face.
        “What’s wrong?” she asked.
        I did not reply.
        I went home and pretended that nothing was wrong. In my mind, if no one knew and if no one acknowledged the fact, then the fact became fiction. It ceased to be. So, I let it be, until it happened again. I cannot recall the occasion, but I remember well the feeling. Still, I held on to my beliefs and kept silent. Life went on. Then, it happened a third time. I had had enough. I went home and broke down. I sobbed out my story to my parents. They found it feasible. They dialed up my grandmother to confirm the story. Her reaction was enough to convince them. Yes, this was happening. This was real. My parents looked at me oh-so-pitifully and advised that I stop going to my grandma’s so frequently. I started going to her house only on the special occasions of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. They knew that I was alive, but did they know that I hurt?
        
        Time passed, and my little brother was born. He grew into a curious five-year-old, and he became my grandmother’s beloved. By then, my grandmother had retired, so she had all the time in the world to spend with him. They became best friends.  My brother practically lived at their house. He spent the night there almost every night, and he began to ask why I never went. Hmm. Curiosity.  I never answered him straightforwardly. It was always, “I don’t feel like it,” or something along those lines.  He accepted my replies, but as the years went on, he would ask a second time: “Come on, Anne. Why don’t you want to go?” Silence.
        By the time I was thirteen and my brother nine, I finally had the guts to tell him the truth. I sat him down and explained the situation to him. He seemed to think that going back was the cure. At first, I was afraid, but then I eventually caught on to the fact that my grandparents loved me after all. This fact was confirmed at my (Catholic) Confirmation retreat, where my grandmother struggled to voice to me how deeply sorry she was that she had not spent more time with me and my sister when we were young and how proud of me she was. She told me what a fine young lady I was turning into. She told me all this through a stream of tears, and I believed her. She hugged me close, and I felt obligated to return the embrace. I was taken very off-guard, however, and I gave only a weak squeeze.  Today, my grandmother and I get along fine. Granted, I don’t see her too often in my busy life, but now we are at peace. So ends one story, and so begins another.

        I had said that there were two people I had a problem with, one being my friends and the other being my grandma. Perhaps I should have been more specific: I had a problem with my friend. My one friend. My only friend. My best friend. I was not a social butterfly, and I guess I wasn‘t lucky either.
        I latched onto her in second grade. We had matching “Best Friend” necklaces and the whole shebang. We were always at each other’s houses. We were inseparable. We were, until that situation crumbled too.
        I suppose she caught onto the fact that I was not the dominant twin. I did not even have a dominant personality. I was the silent tagalong who would follow anyone, wherever welcome. Surely, she must have caught on to this fact, which was why she fell in love with power. Even though I was awkwardly larger in stature, her ambition outnumbered mine exponentially. She began to take control. We did only what she wanted, and I usually managed to have a good time anyhow. I did, until she began to mistreat me. It wasn’t full-on abuse, but it got to me. I fear you will laugh at me, but you must know the truth.: she would pinch me. Hard. We liked to play on the trampoline, and some days, she would just wrestle me and start slapping me and pinching me, for no reason. I think she left some bruises on me, but I can‘t confirm that. I did not want to tell my parents at first. I did not feel welcome when she would do it, but I had nowhere else to go. She was my only friend. Finally, I gave in. I told my parents. They said to wait it out. She would stop. She must be forgiven, after all, because both of her parents are dying from cancer. I trudged on. Nothing changed. I confronted my parents again. They gave in. They called my friend’s aunt, who was now my friend’s legal guardian as well. The only thing they could agree upon was that we shouldn’t play together anymore. That’s when I sank into literature. From the second grade until my sophomore year, all I did was read. I walked in the shoes of heroes and heroines. I observed with eyes wide open universal conflicts, and I gained astounding amounts of insight. I had found a comfort, something where I could be myself and not intrude. I imagined better places to be. I imagined better people to meet. I lost myself in unknown worlds, and I was content.
        Then, I found myself, I found my voice, and trouble came. I had been writing poetry since sixth grade, but not until my junior year did it truly mean something to me. All humility aside, my verse had always been remarkable, but it wasn’t until my third year of high school that I learned to harness my feelings, or at least, to try to. I became outspoken on paper. Then I became (somewhat) outspoken in person. I took a speech class and became the unofficial public speaker of my high school. I had found myself, and that was someone I was not supposed to be. As I found myself, though, I also found friends, one of whom was the aforementioned playmate. We have swept the past under the carpet, and I suspect it shall stay there. We are not close friends, but we are in good standing now. In fact, she’s my tennis partner. It’s still a bit strange to talk to her, but I have forgiven her. Ah, but the memory remains…

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