The Gum Tree posted 5/20/2008 6:13:27 PM | 10 kudos what's this?     report abuse

LaughTillYaPuke

I receive my acceptance letter 4 days later. She has managed to find me $6,000.00 in scholarship money. Since I had no idea that free money was available, this is a king’s ransom. I have $800.00 of my own to throw in the pot. Few clothes and my mother will not allow me to walk out of that house with anything other than what is on my back. And this is where I find myself. The real me and what I am capable of.

I steal (borrow) my birth certificate. Take it to the bank and have a copy made. 5 in fact. I need to have room for error here. It takes me three tries to fold it perfectly over the 5 in 1965 and magically change it to a 3. I am now 16. I go back to the bank and have 15 copies made. I hitch hike back out to Madison and start applying for jobs. I am tempted to go take a drivers test and see if I can pull off getting a license. But greed could ruin everything and I use my new acquired age to get a job in a furniture factory. Why they ever hired someone my size was not to be known for a while.

I am now the only child at home. The boys have escaped to drugs and the girls have escaped to men. The pressure is incredible. There is no one else to distract her now. And as I leave with my cash stashed in my bra and cling to my father as I am not sure I can separate myself from this man. My last touchstone to reality and my last safe haven in the storm. And even bigger? How do I leave him here all alone? The guilt is overwhelming and will eat at my soul for the next 5 years.

I introduce myself to the people at St.Vincent De Paul. I am in need of sheets, clothes, shoes appropriate for dresses, the works. I purchase 2 bra's a pack of panties, a towel and a pillow and socks at J.C. Penny's. Nothing matches. I go to Walgreens for laundry soap, toothbrush, dental floss, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, hair brush, and a razor. I will have no dental care for 4 years. I need to stay on top of things. A black man with only one arm offers to drive me and my belongings back the 15 miles to the school. I accept. And it is (besides my new principal) my first exposure to human kindness from a stranger. I vow to protect the innocent as soon as I am able.

He helps me carry my belonging up to my dorm room. We walk past hundreds of kids wearing Calvin Klein jeans and Izod shirts. Canvas Nikes splayed over the lawn. I am in jeans ripped at the knees, Frye boots and a flowy hippy blouse. I want to crawl under one of their Mercedes as this one armed man tries to help me carry my paper bags from St. Vinnies up that winding staircase. I have made a terrible mistake. I see pictures of that first day years later and I am stunned at how beautiful I was compared to the fashioned kids.

I make my bed and put away my new belongings. Wander around until I find the washing machines and hurriedly try to rip the colored tags off my used clothes. Washing them all in hot water to try to find a neutral smell for them. And me. I grab them warm and fresh smelling bundled in my arms up 3 flights of stairs as I have no laundry basket. Carefully folding these chunks of gold. Pants in the bottom drawer, shirts in the top. Dresses hung on metal hangers found in the dumpster. Everything looks so beautiful. Clean and new. After years of denying myself the release of crying, my body has forgotten how to let them past the rocks in my throat. I go into the bathroom down the hall and throw up. I brush my teeth and go put on still warm clothes, and feel that I might just blend in. A bell chimes from somewhere and I hear laughter as the hordes go to the welcome supper. I will not be going. I have no money for food.

I am standing on hundreds of laughing voices. The cafeteria in located in the lower section of the girls dorm and I will become intimately acquainted with it soon enough. I look out the one window in my room and am in awe of this beautiful place. A giant tree spreading itself out just outside my window. It's bony fingers will scrape my walls in the dark cold winter of night, but for now, it is glorious shade in the August heat. I wander out to the quad and look up at this gigantic tree reaching to the sky and notice colored blotches all over it. I reach out and touch one and find it sticky to the touch.

"It's the gum tree" an Asian boy about my size says. His name is Tu and he is from the Truk islands. For years he tells me, kids have been putting their gum on this tree as gum is not allowed in the cafeteria. Too much stashing their chew under the tables he assumes. These colored globs go up as far as the eye can see. They must have stood on top of each other to accomplish this goal. I feel wonder that such a tradition would be passed down through the generations. A tall thin boy comes past and shoots a colored blur out of his mouth so fast and so hard it immediately becomes part of the tree and trots down the steps to dinner. I decide to never leave this place.

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