Straight No Chaser

Open-Door Family, or, How I Feel About Moving

i was a hidey child. i used to hide things. for about twelve years my entire life existed in my head, and took flight in offshoots thence--weird drawings, written-down snippets of dialogue, journals, et cetera.

i went through this phase where i was obsessed with breasts, inexplicably. i don't think it was a sexual thing, it was too early for that, but i would stare and stare at cleavage on tv or in magazines, trying to remember every curve and contour so i could draw it later. i drew all sorts of half-naked women; totally uninterested in their faces and clothes, i focused my drawings on their chests, inhumanly huge though they were.

i got this idea, all on my own, that i would make a total fool out of myself by letting anyone see those pictures. i doubt i'd ever heard the word lesbian at that point, and i probably hadn't even figured out that it was creepy for a little kid to be obsessed with any part of anyone else's anatomy, but i was pretty perceptive--i could read my mother's face whenever she found even one of the more "borderline" drawings (one with more clothes, less boobage, but weird anyway). i knew. i tucked the drawings into book covers and squirreled them away behind my bed where, i figured, no one but the housekeeper (who never told on me for anything, ever) would ever look.

then, pregnant women. i drew them, too, starting in second grade. i checked out a book from the school library; it was called watch a baby grow, and each page depicted a cross-section of this cartoon woman's uterus, and the developing fetus inside. it had a seventies publication date and was pretty much a picture book, with no useful information whatsoever inside, but i held onto the book through the entire school year, taking it out every few nights to thumb through the pages again. when i wasn't reading it, i'd put it on the carpeted floor of my tiny closet and cover it with clothes.

my third-grade best friend brigid picked her nose once, and i let her stick the resultant booger on the wall-facing side of my bookcase.

all this is to say, when i turned nine and learned we were moving to a bigger house in a different suburb, i totally, totally, totally freaked out. my web of secrets was extensive enough, i thought, to ruin my life forever if anyone ever stumbled through it. my mother had already threatened all sorts of psychologists and counselor visits if she caught me hiding "secret notes" (little-girl diaries), or trying to sleep with my bedroom door closed, one more time. we are an open-door family, she kept announcing. doors opened, everywhere; strange stubbly white men paraded through our house moving furniture and undoing light fixtures, and i cried that whole day.

everyone assumed it was because i was going to miss the house, or something. what did i care about the house? it was always cold there and my walls were painted yellow. i was ready to move. i just didn't want them to find the busty pregnant ladies or the booger.

i don't remember how that turned out.

i don't really need to hide things anymore--no one has the password to my laptop, and my mom finally decided poking around in my notebooks was too risky for her fragile sense of my normalcy, so any written secrets are safe. i almost never draw anymore, and i'm totally over boobs, ever since it became clear that i was never going to have any. (which i think, by the way, was the root of that whole obsession--i wanted them, so i fixated on them.)

and there's really no room for privacy in a college dorm room, because there's no room for anything. secrets don't fit in a two-person bedroom the size of a non-walk-in pantry. so i leave important, precious things at home where they can't get pawed over or broken, and i keep my college stuff down to the bare essentials. but i still have the hidey instinct; i get an utterly panicked feeling anytime i have to leave someone alone in my room for some reason. and when, a few months ago, my mom started talking about moving again, for the second time in my entire life (the first time having been twelve years ago now), i protested with all my might, thinking, probably, about brigid's booger.