If You Don’t Please
I hopped into the back of my mom’s old Subaru sedan in the pick-up line shouting my greetings and bobbing around in my seat. She turned around with her beautiful pink-lipped smile and asked in a bubbly tone “how’s my Ann-ET?” As we made our way home I was already lining up what adventure we were going to get into that day. After contemplating the prospects of making mud pies, riding our bikes, or going to feed the ducks, I landed on what made my heart sing that day and eagerly asked if we could ride our bikes around the neighborhood. I was fixated on a house around the loop from us that had two adult Siamese cats who would sit in the window as we rode by, looking incredibly majestic.
I used to make my Mom stop her bike next to me in front of the house and the two of us would sing the opening of the cats’ song from the movie “Lady and the Tramp:”
We are Siamese if you please
We are Siamese if you don’t please
No additional lyrics, just those two lines and when we were finished, we’d peddle off. It didn’t matter if we went around the block once or four times in a day, if the cats were in the window, we stopped each time and each time we stopped — we sang. If the cats weren’t in the window, you could bet we’d be going around the block at least one more time in hopes that the felines were sun napping in the front window on the next go-around.
This is my world and it is rituals like this that allowed me to exit the mundane and twirl into the whimsical; it was a skill I acquired early and I’ve adapted and applied it throughout my life. Perhaps it’s a reaction to never quite having a place at any established social table. I vividly remember being in preschool and waiting for my mom after school one day on the playground for pick-up. When she pulled up I jumped off the swingset, gathered my book bag and lunch box and dashed to the car. My mom asked if I was OK and I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was referring to: “yeah! We had a good time today.” Later, when I was older, she told me that it broke her heart that day to see me swinging alone with kids running around behind me in a large group. It was that day she decided to take me out of that school and send me to a Catholic elementary school.
I was a child that grew up mostly around adults and was an only child for a large part of my childhood. My penchant for solitary play and low tolerance for children was a paradox that was evident by the time I was 5. That day, when we arrived home, mom had agreed we could ride our bikes and just before we were about to head out I heard her say “AGAIN?” My dad had been sitting in the recliner and asked what she was referring to, she handed him a note which he read aloud:
“Ann Eleece was bitten at school today.”
This was the 4th time my parents had gotten the same note about the same boy who would leave the deepest bite marks on my arm. That day, I thought I had cleverly hidden the marks but the teacher had foiled my well-intentioned concealment. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t want my parents to know about the playground transgression, but part of it was I knew what needed to be done and I didn’t want to do it; stand up for myself.
My dad, a man of few words, laid the note down on the kitchen bar and said “at what point is she going to bite back?”
It hadn’t really occurred to me to turn around and bite the kid back, I didn’t quite understand the idea of doing something “bad” to someone who had done something “bad” to you. It made absolutely no sense to me but I did know I wanted to stop getting bitten and something had to be done. I was over being a meal for some shaggy top boy.
We rode around the block, we sang the song to the cats and I imagined they were as happy to see me as I was to see them. I liked to think they would lazily saunter up to the window and wait for me to come and entertain them. I’m still convinced they knew they had a life of their own in my world and I was happy to make them feel at home.
A few days passed and one evening, as my mom was emptying my bookbag, she saw a familiar colored note in my folder. Exasperated, she picked it up and read it aloud:
“Ann Eleece bit a child at school today.”
