With horror comes reprieve. When all you see is pain the days without are much brighter. For maybe 2 years I had my only stretch of stability: a two-parent household, with their two biological boys around 8 and 10, and me; still small enough to wear my doll’s clothes. It was the one window of time untouched by surgeries or hospital walls, a fragile pause before everything broke apart.
My room had blue tulips painted along the top of the wall. Hanging there was a doll sleeping on the moon, a gift from my aunt from before I can remember. My cousin named her Moon Baby and even wrote a whole book about her for me. I remember how the attic fan would make the air sound like the house was breathing. At night, I fell asleep to the swish of the pool pump outside my window, instead of the Sisters prayers. But it didn’t drown out the nightmares.
The house was old, a sprawling ranch-style. One half we lived in, and the other half my adopted dad used as his office. Downstairs, the basement was our playroom, with an indoor swing and a chalkboard big enough to cover a wall. Outside, there were chickens, a climbing gym with swings, and the wide openness of land that still carried echoes of being a working farm.
There was a cherry blossom tree I called my own and was told was mine. I named him Mumphry. Where the other trees grew too tall, their branches out of reach, Mumphry bent low, as if he wanted me there. I climbed him, leaned against him, whispered secrets of my fears into his bark, and with patience he would listen to my pain without judgment. The pines left sap that stuck to my clothes, and my adopted mom scolded me for it, but Mumphry never betrayed me. He was steady. He was mine. I had a bond. Mumphry was my home, my safe place in his branches, nobody could hurt me, because he was my forcefield of safety. He was base. He was my protector from the world.
I spent hours in the garden, digging up worms, carrying them inside for baths (no soap, just well water), then returning them to the soil. The air smelled of mint and honeysuckle. I swung as high as I could on the swings, pumping my leg until I almost reached the branches of the old mulberry tree. I never tasted one; the birds always beat me to it, every year.
Near the oak, where the gray well water from the house flowed, I carved rivers into the dirt, making my own worlds. I studied moss and believed it was a hidden forest, its green tops nothing more than treetops covering a world of microscopic people I could never see. I was careful not to step on them. I wondered how time moved when people left my view. Did time stop for them like it did in the hospital for me? I traced the squiggly lines left by bugs on fallen tree branches, as if they were messages written in a language I couldn’t figure out. Sami, the family dog, and I would tunnel through the tall grass when it didn’t get mowed, hidden completely from the outside world; explorers lost in a green jungle.
My oldest brother, their bio son, once dressed me in my doll’s clothes, tucked me in my doll’s bassinet, carried me to the front porch, and knocked before running off. When my adopted mom opened the door, she gasped and made a great fuss over the mystery baby the stork had delivered. My brother slipped through the back door and played along.
My other brother lived for soccer. We had a big goal in the backyard, built by my adopted dad, and the younger brother practiced endlessly. Sometimes he let me play too, until the day I discovered I could use my crutch, come up behind him, and stealthily steal the ball right out from under him. After that, he decided I was cheating since I had 3 legs and he only had two and didn’t want to play. We wrestled each other too. He was Junkyard Dog; I was Junkyard Cat. If I was lying on the ground, he would shout “steamroller!” and roll over me, often taking the wind out of me. He would mumble in his sleep about soccer games and unseen goals. Open fields and teammates I knew what he dreamed about, and what I saw at night were different. I would often climb in his bed after he fell asleep for safety. Beyond my brothers, the world was opening up slowly.
I was introduced to toddlers my own age; Courtney, and Shannon. It was careful, gradual, so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed. In them I saw pieces of myself, though I hadn’t yet learned to notice the ways I was different or recognize my own individuality. With them, I discovered laughter that echoed without fear and the warmth of another baby, which I missed from the orphanage. The freedom of being around another and not being physically hurt. In their company, I learned joy could live in simple moments, in the small imaginary worlds we built together where white doctor coats never existed. I was escaping my own mind by following their lead. They had no fears like mine. Little by little, I could leave the void, this brought me from the safety of my own mind back into the world.
Summer evenings were magic. There was a hammock out back by the pool where we ate dinner, and afterward I would sit under the table, watching the bats swoop low to sip from the pool. I caught fireflies in the dusk, their glow pulsing like tiny lanterns in my hands.
Mumphry was my anchor, my safety, and I wished with everything in me that it could last. That his branches could always hold me. For a while, they did, and I belonged. But even then, a quiet part of me knew safety was fragile, a borrowed thing that could vanish without warning. Still, in his shade, I let myself believe; clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, it could be mine too.