Running as fast as my untied shoelaces would take me, I raced the four blocks that separated me from a dinner time curfew. With the pounding echo of the concrete beneath my tiny feet and the opposing wind fighting to slow me down, my dreams of getting home on time were quickly evaporating with every step. As I sprinted closer to my street, I could hear the laughter of rowdy boys coming from the clearing behind the house at the end of the block. It was the kind of house that you only heard about in storybooks, with broken shutters hanging on by a single rusty nail and the exterior walls taking on the image of a kaleidoscope made out of chipped and weather altered paint. I imagined the boys chasing one another with plastic guns, taking on an unscripted ownership of the made-up role each one of them had decided to inhabit that day. I imagined them screaming the kind of obscene words that would get any young kid into trouble. I imagined the complete inverse of what I was running from.Behind me I left a world of pre-approved make-believe, were the parental endorsements of perfection, domesticity, and etiquette were uplifted to a higher standard than individual thought. I left a hung-up heap of princess dresses that held the power to turn any well-behaved little girl into a jealous and devious woman of intention. I left a put away pile of Barbie dolls that were never allowed to wear the same outfit for more than a moment and yet forced to act out the exact same script day after day. I left the credence that imagination was encouraged, but only if it followed the unwritten, pre-ascribed rules of pretend.
The crunching sound that the dead grass of my front lawn and my pristine tennis shoes made when they finally reached a place of conversation brought me back to reality as the front door to my house came into direct view. As I rushed into the house, I got the same sensation I always got when I came home; the sensation that I could run forever and never hit a back wall; like the inverse of a shoebox diorama, where the front image of our house was what was projected outwards and the rest of our house was what hung in that perfect, exposed, and unchangeable moment. I often think, as an adult looking back, that my distaste for make-believe stemmed from the reality that I lived make-believe. I lived in a fortress of outer walls that sheltered our simulated household from the rest of the neighborhood, providing us the cover of paragon under the disguise of shutters and siding.
Our interior walls serviced only as a way to divide our vast space into functionality, allowing every room to find its autonomous purpose. Our kitchen had perfectly matched dishes and utensils and a spotless and unmarked refrigerator that never held pictures or spelling tests. Our living room had a couch that was always perfectly fluffed; a bookshelf that held novels no one ever read; a television that operated purely as a visual means of diversion; and framed pictures that connected to nothing but the monetary subtraction from a bank account. We each had our individual rooms, but our rooms could have been placed beyond the structure of our walls and they would have functioned just the same; as a socially acceptable way to avoid, deflect, and/or hide from one another.
Dinner was ready when I threw my backpack into the hallway and sat down at the table. My mother was ceremoniously washing pots in the sink, her eyes completely glazed over, clearly retreated into her own mental conversation. My father was sitting at a side desk, Bibles and Lexicons spread out one on top of another and a highlighter in hand, clearly trying to puzzle together the plagiarized and unoriginal thoughts he had written on his piece of paper. My little brother was already seated at the dining room table, his legs and fingertips bouncing about, clearly ready to get the ritual over with so that he could go back to his Transformers and Power Rangers.
As my mother brought food over to the table, my father stood behind her chair, in the same manner that an adult stands behind a child while walking through a buffet line; pretending to be helpful, but, in actuality, just assuring that they don’t fuck anything up. This habitual gesture never stemmed from a place of support or chivalry, but rather from the repressed realization that this was the best he could offer her, as if pushing her chair in every night made up for the fact that he didn’t know how to love her.
It was at our dining room table that I learned how to fantasize; tuning everything out, I removed all of the internal protocols of acceptable daydreams for a little girl my age and for that ½ hour, I forced myself to believe that anything was possible. I fantasized about being a boy; in my limited perspective, being a boy meant dreaming without limitation; it meant thinking without boundaries. Boys got to dream about changing the scenery, while girls had to dream about changing who they were; girls had to become someone else, whereas boys got to go somewhere else. I fantasized about being a missionary in Africa; in my idealistic perspective, going to Africa meant being free of structure and obligation, and getting the opportunity to be something without having to be something for someone else.
Every evening, after dishes had been cleared and nightly routines started in their processes, we ceased to exist as a family. We retreated to our own corners of the house, but being under the same roof didn’t make us any closer than if we had retreated to our own corners of the world. We lived out separated portraits of an ideal family, but that’s all that we were; alienated pictures that held no connection to one another. We were the perfect family of pretend.
