Introduction – Who Knew

Bettina Word Press — Sun, 30 May 2010 17:42:17 +0000

I began to realize in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college that I might have to prepare myself for a not so ordinary existence. I didn’t know for sure, but I had an inkling.

I thought I had a normal childhood and I don’t remember noticing, until that summer, that I wasn’t just a plain ordinary girl living in a plain ordinary world full of just plain ordinary folk. I knew there would be an occasional Eddie Haskel or two and maybe a Mr. French, but I had no idea that I would often find myself amongst a plethora of downright bizarre human beings and in situations akin to a Twilight Zone episode.

In retrospect, there were signs before that summer, but they were hidden among a middle class house in a middle class neighborhood with a not so middle class horse farm at the top of Queen Avenue. There was the neighborhood drunk whose car was always parked a little cockeyed in front of his house and occasionally he would single me out and chase me around the street slurring, “I’m gonna getch ya”. There was also the one armed father of seven who could often be seen screaming obscenities on his front lawn while trying to whack the head of one of his children with his only arm swinging wildly and if I happened to be anywhere in the vicinity he would make a beeline for me. But these were just one or two oddities among a street full of middle class people in a middle class neighborhood in a small town in Rhode Island, below a not so middle class horse farm.

I guess squeak-squeak, jingle-jingle could have been a sign. She was the fear inspiring elementary school principal who you could hear coming down the hall with her sneakers squeaking against the shiny wax floors and her keys jingling against each other as they bounced off her hip. Students had more than enough time to stop what they were doing, freeze and smile politely. I had no reason to freeze that fateful morning when she squeaked and jingled up behind me, grabbed me by the arm and hurried me into my classroom, yelling that I was an insolent and disrespectful child as my whole first grade class sat frozen in their seats. Apparently I was reading some important mail I was bringing back to my teacher, but I didn’t recall reading anything and what would I have been able to read in the first grade anyway. Very odd fat old bitch.

Come to think of it – the man with the little pink purses was also rather strange. Gaunt, thin, very pale and probably in his fifties, he often came into the Hong Kong Restaurant where I worked on Friday and Saturday nights from four p.m. to seven p.m. I thought it a little odd, but the first little pink purse with white beads attached was well received by my parents who thought it was a cute little gesture by a lonely old man. I thought the purse was very antiquated and even at that age, seemed to have intuitively known that no good would come from that little pink purse and no good did come. The thin gaunt man would give me many more purses (all pink with beads and less and less well received) over the next few months and he would begin to show up in the oddest places, at the mall, in the parking lot of my junior high school and finally around the corner where Queen Ave intersected with Park Boulevard. He and Earl had words that night and as I watched from my bedroom window, I couldn’t help thinking all could have been avoided if only I had been more adamant about what I sensed. The pink purses were thrown in the trash and I was told never to accept another gift from any strange man ever again, which I already knew.

Bettina Broderick » lesbian literature

Introduction – Who Knew