Cindy was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Her mother said the temperature was twenty degrees below zero, with gale force winds and snow on her birthday. Her father had trouble getting to the hospital and he spent the day angry at the weather. She was a Great Plains baby, a child of the North American prairie. She played games near the grain fields, ignoring the great machines harvesting crops. The wind was a constant companion, shrieking in her ears, she would have been uncomfortable with calm, claustrophobic in a forest. The world was a big blue sky and amber earth, with the hustle and bustle of a large farming community on the edge of the Dakotas. Her first memories were of cracked linoleum and Formica counters, the ringing of a cash register and the sun blazing through the dirty windows of a small grocery store. Her mother was a cashier and lacked the money for a babysitter. The smell of produce and boxes and people was familiar to her nostrils, the sounds of many voices in her ears. Clattering carts and coins clinking, the hurried footsteps of hungry people. Her mother had said she was a good baby, although sometimes she screamed and cried, as if she was scared. Sometimes she would stare at something unseen, a baby transfixed by something invisible. Then she would panic, little arms and legs flailing, wailing and clenching her little eyes closed. Her father had begun attending the "happy hour" at a local tavern, during these crying spells. She remembered him as a large man, with long hair and a rough face. Her mother said he had left for his happy hour and had never come home. She thought he may have gone to Minneapolis, or Milwaukee. When she was a child, she told her mother of the shadows she saw, perched on the backs of some people. She would point to these people, staring at them. Her mother told her she was being impolite and smacked her on the back of her head. Lowering her head and averting her eyes, her mother lead her by the hand, along the sidewalks and side streets of the busy town.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 12:54:03 +0000