She Moves, Part 1
She didn’t really want to move to Pennsylvania, but it’s not like she had much of a choice. Stuck between the dependence of childhood and the liberation of adulthood, adolescence is like having your feet bound but your hands free. Her mother, Pamela, affectionately called The Pamster by all her cases, said she felt trapped under the weight of what was her lifelong stint in San Francisco at the time of their move in 1995. They had visited PA a few times to see distant cousins whenever The Pamster got the itch to travel so they’d have someplace free to stay combined with an excuse not to stay too long. Her mom didn’t give her much of a reason for why they ultimately packed up and drove across the country, but she didn’t feel like asking because she didn’t feel like having what she knew would be a taxing conversation. With her mom, she’d learned avoidance early. She saw what set her off, made mental notes to sidestep those landmines in the future. The running list of “off limits” topics grew as she did, but ultimately, she decided it was for the best. Sometimes, saying nothing is the wisest recourse, she’d convinced herself. It made for a lot of silence as they drove the open, lonely roads in middle America, though.
She was pretty surprised when her mom told her they were closing in on their new apartment. She looked around without much enthusiasm: lots of concrete without the charm and character of San Fran, she thought. She could pick out the signs she was still in the same country, but everything looked dingier somehow. To a fifteen year old with red curly hair, a rainbow choker, and a houseplant on her lap, Norristown seemed like the perfect place to avoid. After driving around huffing and puffing for 20 minutes trying to find their new address, her mom pulled their 1986 Chevy Chevette (that she said was “poop brown” just to make her mom mad; her mom loved that car) up to a curb in front of a run-down Victorian-style twin she knew immediately her mom would be vying to paint. They sort of spilled out onto the sidewalk, she with her macrame bag filled with astrology and Eastern religion books and her mom in her kimono she bought at Mr. and Mrs. Chan’s small general store back home.
“Shall we?” her mom gestured theatrically towards the stairs leading to the porch.
