The first signs my world would change again came quietly,
while I lay safe in my canopy bed.
A book of frogs was read to me at night,
their voices soft, like whispers through the dark.
They spoke of change.
I didn’t understand.
Or maybe I didn’t want to.
I knew I was leaving,
though no one told me when, or where, or why.
My adopted mom moved me and my youngest brother out of the jungle.
No woods.
No fields.
No mint and honeysuckle.
No Sami.
No Mumphry.
Just a few minutes away
a small distance for adults,
but for me, it was a canyon.
My brother went back to the jungle,
back with my dad and other brother.
But me
I stayed.
I was never given a choice.
Just me and my amom.
I felt like a prisoner,
and she was the warden. She was my handler.
I was four and a half.
She said child support would keep us afloat,
but it didn’t.
She had to work now,
though every month I brought $750 from my adopted dad. About $2,000 in today’s currency.
At first, I was the one sent to fetch the check.
I didn’t even know what money was
only that it made me a pawn,
pushed between them.
Packing and unpacking every weekend became routine,
but the jungle was different now.
Ruled by a different woman.
My brothers hated her.
I was too young to have an opinion,
but I knew she had changed the jungle for the worst.
My handler even spoke of changing my name.
I had only just received this name,
and already I worried it wouldn’t stay mine.
First Morning Bird.
Then Reader Lane.
Two moves in the same town.
No roots.
No home.
Across the street lived a dog.
I barked at him,
and he barked back.
I never knew what we were saying,
but it made me feel close to Sami again.
Like the jungle could reach me even here.
Courtney was my freedom.
She rode her Strawberry Shortcake banana-seat bike
and let me balance on the back.
We explored the walking trails of our town,
going much farther than we were allowed,
escaping the cage of parents’ rules.
One afternoon, an older girl stopped us
a kid from school,
her voice sharp.
“Want to see a newt?” she asked.
We didn’t even know what a newt was.
Courtney ran home in fear.
I stayed.
I picked up the bike and hopped it back to her house.
When Courtney reached her house,
Aunt Brenda asked, “Where’s Deepa?”
Courtney told her through tears,
and Aunt Brenda sent her to fetch me.
The 80’s felt safer to let children roam on their own.
She came back.
She didn’t leave me.
I was glad to see her face cresting the hill, tears and all.
We laughed until our sides hurt,
argued like strangers,
made up like sisters.
She was steady.
She was mine.
And I was hers.
A boyfriend of my amom’s taught me to ride a bike.
I don’t remember his face, or name,
only the toe clip on the pedal,
and the rush of sudden freedom—
like my body belonged to me again.
My leg didn’t matter anymore.
But Morning Bird was no jungle.
It was just an ugly townhouse
where Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy died.
It was a place to live,
but not my jungle.
School was no easier.
I could learn something one day,
and by the next, it was gone.
Memory slipped away like water through fingers.
I knew something was wrong.
Courtney remembers the teacher better than I do.
She remembers the way the woman pushed me,
stacked questions on me,
made me nervous.
I was shy, and this didn’t help.
When I froze, they held me back.
I left school early sometimes, due to pain in my hips, back, or stomach.
Not home to my jungle,
but to a cold townhouse
where I sat alone.
Kids at school would complain to the gym teacher, Mr. Palmer,
that I didn’t have to run the “fun” run. A mile-long run everyone else had to do.
This would put extra stress on my joints—
arms and shoulders are not meant to hold my body weight.
But kids don’t understand,
so Mr. Palmer brought in clear inflatable tubes.
The kids who complained got one put on their knee to keep it stiff,
then were told to do the “fun” run.
They never complained or made fun of me again.
Even the things I loved weren’t safe.
My oldest brother threw a high school party that got out of hand.
My canopy bed, my little world of comfort, passed from cousins down to me
was broken.
Another piece lost.
Court went to first grade.
I went back to kindergarten.
The only two children of color in our grade,
split apart.
I don’t remember the teacher’s face
just the silence left by losing my best friend.
I was tested again and again,
pulled aside for questions, numbers, and charts.
My answers came in fragments,
never whole.
My memory was only flashes,
never a line.
Reader Lane came next.
Another ugly townhouse.
Homework piled higher.
No one helped.
My handler, born Dutch,
didn’t understand how to teach English,
since she never learned it in school.
The papers stacked up like a wall.
I stopped trying to climb it.
Then she moved me again.
Farther than ever before.
Half an hour away,
but it felt like the jungle had been ripped from the earth.
The jungle had been sold to developers.
My adopted dad said Mumphry would be safe,
protected in the sale.
But Mumphry wasn’t safe.
He was chopped down,
cut from his roots. Dead.
She called it change.
I knew it was exile.
All my roots had been pulled out,
just like the nerves from spine, just like Mumphry.
The jungle, the safety, the laughter, everything I had, was gone.
Even when the world tried to erase it all,
like it had done to my past,
I could carry my memories with me.
Fragile, fleeting, but mine.
I had a body. I had a name.
But I had no roots.
Nothing was left but the quiet ache of loss,
the emptiness where the family I was meant to have and should have been,simply wasn’t. And the hollow space of the only home I had ever known was formed.