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Category: Literacy Narratives

This is where I collect the earliest memories of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Tar Babies

We swung from tree branches like apes, our shirtless bodies not girlish with breasts that might develop in a few years, but gangly–protruding ribs that lined our chests. We broke mirrors and jammed their fractured pieces into the bark–we created a wonderland where the trees nourished us alongside its leave with sunlight, and the sun bred fireflies that would have stood the Texas summer heat. We filled our stomachs with imaginary dishes and pretended we hosted cooking shows.

First pick the grass, then stir in the dirt, and wait ten minutes. Smell it to check if it’s right. It should have an Earthy smell.  

I’d read the complete tales of Uncle Remus over and over again until I could recite the stories by heart. I lined up my stuffed animals for the performance: “I know it don’t seem right, since Br’er Possum didn’t have a thing to do with the disappearance of the butter. But that’s the way of the world. ” We filled the empty house by turning on music and dancing for hours. We filled the empty cupboards with paper dolls, with paper–written poems, written prayers–taped inside. The door swung open on display:

For every cup and plateful, Lord make us truly Grateful

We were always grateful–especially of each other. My sister and I held hands walking to the bus stop. At lunch, we slid those hands under the glass display and filled our pockets with cafeteria biscuits. They were the pirates gold that we’d survey together on the bus ride home. We never got caught. And we held hands walking back down the lost dirt driveway. At night, we would change into our pajamas, and put ourselves to bed. Even if we had two rooms, we always slept together.

We would play a game at as we intertwine our legs and lay really still, whispering so no one would hear. We built our nest out of blankets and pillows and huddled together. Our chipmunk mother would be home soon, but while we waited, we would plan the next day’s scavenging. we would collect and store our food to keep it safe for the winter. We would tuck cookies in our underwear drawers, and hide cheese in the heater vents. Our stashes did not always fair so well when dairy products began rotting in the vents of our mobile home.

We felt pain but didn’t know we did not know we were hungry.

That emptiness was just a part of being young, it left space for the joy and hope. It left room for romance. My hunger pangs fueled my imagination: Laying on the particleboard floor at nine years old gently touching my stomach. I’m pregnant. I smiled and hummed to her, caressing where I imagined her foot was pressing against the inside of my skin.

We didn’t fill our childhood sitting at the table learning manners. We never learned how to hold a fork properly, how to sit without wiggling. We became excellent readers, and fierce scrabble players. We learned to carve our names in the dirt, so that by the time we were twelve, we had the signature any 30-year-old would envy.

Somehow, we always knew the food would come. But being hungry for us, was believing in God. We never knew when or where, but it always came. And when it did, we celebrated: Canned spam pan seared in stewed tomatoes, a delicacy we read our in our books.

Most families celebrate around Christmas meals, but we celebrated around every meal. And Christmas was no different; we delighted in our cinnamon apples as we sat on a living room floor with no chairs. Just apples. Our mother’s hair smells like cinnamon.

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My first literacy Narrative: Mom

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Learning to Write
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My earliest memory of writing was in preschool. My family of four, my mom, my older sister, me, and my mom’s boyfriend (who we affectionately call Rocket) lived in a run-down, two-bedroom house near the train tracks on the south side of town. My sister, who was five years older than me was obsessed with reading and writing. And although I was not old enough to comprehend how words on a page could form images in your brain, I was eager to participate in such rituals.

One day, I recall exclaiming I was going to teach myself how to write. I took a pencil in my little hand and grasped it like I was holding on to the handlebars of my bicycle, clenching my fists around the tiny piece of wood, and I pressing it against a yellow, striped notebook. Carefully, I’d move the pencil up and down on the page as my wrist scanned left to right, watching the grey lines flake onto the page. The tip of the pencil was running up and down hills creating meaning, I was sure of it.

“Does this say something?” I’d ask my sister, waiting and watching her face for excitement.

“No.”

And I’d tried again.

“No.”

All she would say was no. Not “close!” Not, “almost.” It was painful and discouraging. How had she learned to make words? I’d scratch the page with the eraser end of the pencil, leaving desperate, pink shavings in my lap. Then, I had an idea.

I thought of my mom’s writing — how her letters were not like the hills my sister wrote, but roller coaster loops. And so a reassessed my plan, adding a loop to my strategy. Taking my pencil in my hand, I coaxed it up and down and added the loop, ending with a few more hills and a curled end.

“What about this?” I inquired. It must have been the 20th time, and my sister was exhausted looking up from her book in annoyance. I was distracting her. Her face was strained, her eyes slanted.

But then her face changed. The corners of her eyes relaxed. Her lips moved from pursed to gentle and parted.

“Actually…yes,” she paused “It says Mom. In cursive.”

I was like a baby speaking my first words. I felt overjoyed at my ability to teach myself something. Not only had I written something, it was something that had the ability to make my mom proud, to give her joy and move her. I expected praise, but Corrinn was not impressed. She went back to reading her book.

I studied the word on the page, the straight parts, the curves, and my favorite — the loop which turned my stomach with excitement. I took my pencil in my hand again and copied those beautiful shapes in the page. Mom, Mom, Mom, I wrote, preparing to share it with my mother the moment she walked in the door. She would be so proud and understand the amount of time I took to carefully practice those lines.

I sat on the couch looking out the window, watching the sunset, waiting for her car to pull into the driveway. It was cold by the window, and the heat from my impatient forehead created flog against the evening, so I traced the letters on the glass. Mom. Where was she? I dreamt about her reaction and woke up to the sound of the door closing. “Hello!”

Oh no. I’d missed watching her drive up.

I rubbed my eyes, and frantically searched for the notebook which had jammed itself into the crack between the cushions and the back of the couch. I ran to her and held up the notebook like a masterpiece. I was an artist, and I’d save my lifework for her. She smiled down at me and praised my sister for teaching me how to write my first word.

I gave my sister a glare and ran back to my room in silence.

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