CHAPTER TWO
So, the next chapter of my life began in Dumas. Things were a little bit different there. I learned a few things from my old school. I didn’t speak much.
The teachers just assumed I was slow. The kids, for the most part, thought I was unsocial and just left me alone. Of course, this time, I didn’t tell anyone that I was Russian.
That year, fifth grade, was pretty much a blur. I was still trying to get over the loss of my friend. I made no attempts to make any new friends.
At the beginning of my sixth grade year, we had to write an essay about our summer vacation, and also tell a little bit about our family. As I was reading my paper in front of the class, the teacher picked up on my accent. She asked where my people were from. I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her they were from Russia, so I picked a country that was close by. I told her that they were from Poland.
That started a few chuckles and sneers. The next thing I know, I’m the school idiot. Out came all the polish jokes and I became the butt of them all. Once again, I was pushed further away from my peers and deeper into a world of my own.
There was a wooded area close to our home where I had many new adventures. Tiny was with me there, not physically but in spirit, and together we would storm places, conquer villains, and some days, we even saved the world.
In school, I am called a retard, a Pollock, but in my world, I am the emperor supreme. My world is a better place.
The moment school is over I race home to do my chores. I try to finish them quickly, then eat dinner and leave before my dad gets home. If he gets home and I am there, it’s pretty certain that he will find a reason to hit me, so I do my best to leave before he gets there.
He hits my mom, too, so she understands why I hurry to get out of there. She always covers for me by telling him that I am studying over at a friend’s house. Of course, if he knew I had friends, he’d beat me just on principle, saying that it was to encourage me to try harder. How ironic life can be!
I do my homework in the woods. I do pretty much everything in the woods. It has become my home away from home.
The interesting thing about the woods is that they bordered up to the backs of many different houses. One of my favorite past times was to go to the edge of tree lines and to watch other families as they went about their lives. I would find a good vantage point where I could get comfortable and not worry about being seen, usually a patch of Ivy or some thick bushes. Sometimes, I get up into a tree.
I became an excellent tree climber. I got to where I could scurry up a tree almost as fast as a squirrel. I even started jumping from tree to tree, and when I built up my confidence, from trees onto roofs of houses.
From the tops of houses, I would sneak in through an upstairs window while an entire family was downstairs having dinner or watching television.
On school nights, I had to be home before the street lights came on, but on Friday and Saturday nights, I had no curfew. Sometimes, I would ask my mom if I could spend the night at a friend’s and then I would go exploring. When I was tired, I would sleep in the woods. When it rained, I would end up sleeping in someone’s tool shed. There were plenty to choose from.
I never had any problems with any of the dogs in the neighborhood. They got so used to me that they would get happy when they saw me. Of course, I made it a point to always have some treats on me.
I ended up spending most of my weekend that way, prowling the woods and sneaking into homes in my neighborhood.
I came close to being seen a few times. There were a few nights where I had to spend the whole evening under a bed or crouched down in the back of a closet, my heart pounding in my bony little chest and my body shivering in fear.
Because of these incidents, I soon developed a keen sense of awareness of my surroundings and learned to be very patient.
As time passed, I ventured out from my little neighborhood into the surrounding suburbs and eventually into the city of Dumas itself.
Late at night, I would climb on buildings; department stores, office buildings, apartment complexes, any type of building that I could find. I figured out all kinds of ways to get in and out of those buildings. It made me feel like a big shot.
I imagined myself to be the owner or manager of the place, coming and going as I pleased. I felt pretty special.
I failed to mention this earlier, but my father was an alcoholic and had trouble keeping a job, so we were really poor, and so, having access to all these buildings and homes, it just seemed to reason that in no time, things would stick to my hands.
At first, I would play jokes on people. I would just move things around so they would they would think they were losing their minds. You know, moving keys that was hanging on hooks in their kitchen and then laying them on the roof of their cars. Or, leaving a freezer door open so that by morning, everything inside was melted.
Soon however, the pranks stopped. I graduated to stealing things.
I started out taking small things: video games and DVD’s. It only took me a little while after that cash and other items were of more value: Jewelry, video games, cell phones, etc…
If, while I was prowling around inside a house at night and came upon a safe, I would rig a window so I could get back in, leave everything in the house alone, then come back later when the house was empty.
Through trial and error, I figured out that I could pry the cover plate off of an electric safe and short it out. When the safe shorts out, it automatically pops open to keep from being permanently closed and locking the person’s valuables in there forever. It just pops right open. Nice!
The video games and DVD’s were pretty easy to get rid of—if they were new, I’d take them to the store and get store credit or sometimes cash, and if they were used I would take them to a guy who sold stuff at a flea market in the next town over. I had met him when mom and I had gone there one weekend to get me some clothes. Dad had kept his job for three months (a record!) and mom was making a little extra money working as a part-time maid three days a week for some rich people across town.
As for the jewelry, I didn’t really know where to sell it. I had gone to a pawnshop once, but they wouldn’t accept anything from a kid my age. The guy at the flea market turned me down too. He didn’t want to deal with jewelry at all.
So, needless to say, I began to accumulate quite a bit of it. Since I couldn’t sell it, I ended up stashing it in a hiding place in the woods.
Still, I had a steady flow of cash and goods coming in and as important as I had become in my delusional mind, I was getting picked on and made fun of in school on a regular basis.
My dad’s constant insults and beatings didn’t help either. My self-esteem was very low. But that was soon to change.
One night, while I was out prowling I came upon a business. It had been there the whole time, but I had over-looked it because I had not thought it had anything of value inside. How wrong I was!
It was a martial arts school.
The sign in the window read, “Are you tired of being bullied? Do you lack confidence? We can help you!” Wow. That sounded like exactly what I needed.
Now, I knew my dad would never pay for something like
that. I could afford it, but then I could never explain to him how I’d paid for it. What a dilemma!
I decided I would talk to the teacher/instructor.
He was an old Asian guy, maybe forty or forty-five. Not really old, but since I was twelve, anything over thirty was pretty much almost in the grave. He was very short, maybe a few inches over five feet; about six inches taller than I was at the time. I almost walked out when I first saw him, but I sensed something in him, a confidence and inner strength that I’d never encountered before.
I told him that my mother could pay for the class, but that my father could never know about it. I said that I could tell my dad that I was getting lessons in exchange for cleaning the gym.
Well, the instructor, Mr. Tanaka, immediately saw my need, and it turned out that he did need someone to help clean up the place. He offered to give me a discount: half off the regular price.
Of course, I jumped at the offer and again told him that he could never mention our arrangement to my father, that it would get my mother in a lot of trouble. He agreed. When he shook my hand my confidence went up a little. His hand felt as hard as a rock. I went home feeling pretty happy that afternoon. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad that I had worked out a deal to clean the dojo in exchange for lessons. I was sure he would think that I had done well.
His response wasn’t what I had expected.
“Who would give a job to a twelve year old,” he asked me. I told him I wasn’t getting paid, that I was working in exchange for lessons. Then he asked me why I couldn’t find a job that paid real money so that I could help around the house. Then he upended his beer into his mouth, crushed the can and dropped it at my feet. He belched real loud and cracked open another beer from the case sitting in the cooler by the side of his chair and proceeded to ignore me.
The thoughts that flooded my head at the moment! I would have loved to have told him that I was just a kid you drunken idiot. I couldn’t work legally, and he could have had enough money to give us a more stable life if he didn’t drink it all up.
But of course, I didn’t say all that, for fear he might not only beat me up, but also forbid me from going to the dojo.
That night I stayed inside and tried to get as much rest as I could for my first day of class. But wouldn’t you know it, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep a wink. It was a long, tiresome night, but morning finally came.