1996 (remix)

I.

When we first moved to Florida it was June, it was a jungle. My mother cried everytime she drove down belcher road, I caught lizards and wore them as earrings. I imagined writing to my friends back home, writing to my grandmother, I decided this was temporary. My father built a kung-fu school, in the third grade, I'd go with him after school.
The songs that were always on the radio were:
Boyz II Men- On Bended Knee, Des'ree You Gotta Be (You gotta be bad you gotta be bold you gotta be wiserrr) Eninigma return to innocense which then appeared in a movie with jtt who we were all in love with, Melissa Ethridge "I'm The Only One," Elton John- Can you feel the love tonight- remember when the lion king came out? I remember. I remember very well. Lisa Loeb "Stay", TLC "Creep"
This is right before I started listening to "Hey Jealousy" by the gin blossoms (very sadly age eight) and "Name" by the goo goo dolls, age 9. THis is when I bought my first cassettes. The Lion King Soundtrack, Ace of Base &Weird Al. Later on the next summer in Ohio, I got a Coolio cassette single and a sublime Cassette Single of "Santeria."
It was still exciting to go to disney world and since we had no family in Florida my father would take my mother and I to theme parks for all major holidays: thanksgiving, christmas, new years, easter. I liked it. On the drive home we'd stop and get checker burgers. I'd wonder when we were moving back to Ohio.

1994 was the Year of The Kennedy's. Not the Kennedy's you know, but the Kennedy's I know. Kim Kennedy and her adopted daughters who all came to take kung-fu classes from my father. What was his school called then? International Kung-Fu Center, I think. They all had to work for an allowance, Kim sold pogs out of the trunk of her car. For my birthday in the fifth grade, I received a set of OJ Simpson pogs from them. I was very pleased. I got my collection up to three hundred and fifteen pogs because my fifth grade boyfriend liked them. I didnt think things would always be that way, sometimes I thought I'd grow up different. The Kennedy daughters would come around with different bruises on them, I'd ask questions. Always had to ask questions. Before the fifth grade was over I learned a lot of things that people do, I learned why people were adopted, what it felt like to get stung by wasps, and why no one would ever care about my pog collection.

The summer between fourth and fifth grade and the summer between fifth and sixth grade were both spent in Ohio. My father had just had a very publicized affair and I couldnt understand why he was cheating on my mother. I couldnt understand why my mother still wanted to live with my father, I wanted to move to Ohio and stay in my grandmother's backyard with my cousins. I never had siblings, but I have cousins. My endless best friends, my little followers. From the age of four, when my cousin Michael was born, I realized it would always be my responsibility to take care of my cousins. Later on, when I'm eighteen and throwing up into a pile of leaves- Michael holding my hair back, I started to realize why my mother didnt leave my father, why we didnt move back to Ohio, why a lot of women, and a lot of men don't care about backyards.

In the sixth grade I had no friends. My parents made me go to Catholic school, I didn't believe in god, I didnt believe in anything. I'd hang out with older boys and everyone would make fun of me. The girls would hide my gym clothes and the boys would chase me down the hallway until my face was soaked in tears. I'd sit infront of the nuns and listen to math lessons. I believed in hell. Sometimes I'd ask long questions. I'd watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my mother, my grandparents came to spend the winter with us, I started faking sick all the time. I'd fake stomach aches and they'd bring me to the emergency room in the middle of the night. One day, I told my grandmother I was faking it, all of it. I didnt have the heart to tell anyone that I had no friends, that no one would sit with me at lunch, that someone threw a ball at my face during soccer, so I kept that all in. I was allowed to stay home. I switched to public school the next year.

The backyard didnt matter after that, there was no window to stare out of, after I got breasts and boyfriends and my own phone line. After I misplaced my Coolio tape and they cut down the orange trees. I remember all the songs that were playing on the radio when we first moved to Florida.





II.


The thing about the sixth grade that I didn't tell you before was, part of me liked it. Even though I was really sad every day, even though I felt empty all the time- I started to like it. I started to sit in science class and feel that I was in on some really big secret that no one else knew. I would make up long games in my head and play them to pass the time, long games about how my sixth grade class was going to start being nice to me. You know how those rules exist like, if you are going to make cupcakes you have to bring enough for the whole class- if you are going to pass out birthday invitations, you have to have enough for everyone? I got invited to a lot of birthday parties. The first was a pool party at a big spa, it was girls only, it was Erica's eleventh birthday and she was one of the most popular girls in class. I already knew that if I went to the party, nobody would be nice to me, but I became determined to go anyway- ah, yes, Daniela Scrima at ten years old, still thinking "If I just try hard enough I can win the whole world over!" I mean, it's like now, if I'm just nice enough to him, if I'm just selfless enough, if I just let him call me an idiot as many times as he wants and I keep apologizing for everything he has done to me- if I just go to all these ten and eleven year old birthday parties they will see that they really dont have to hate me.

Erica Schienders Eleventh Birthday was held at some luxurious spa in St.Petersburg. There were fifteen girls from the sixth grade. I used my allowance money to buy her a make-up set from k-mart. We sang happy birthday, ate cake, waited thirty minutes and went swimming. All of us lined up on the edge of the pool and everyone told me at the count of three, let's jump in "one, two, three!" I was really excited, you know about my life, in this way that I have always thought, this way that was always too big for my body, all these thoughts that my brain can never hold. ONE TWO THREE JUMP. I was the only one that went in, the rest of them, walked away laughing. I stayed under for a few seconds, and I liked it, I liked thinking that I knew something they didnt know.

So there you go with your head underwater, not in the sixth grade anymore, still thinking- I know something you dont know I know something you don't know. And even though it hurts, even though it hurts like hell and feels terrible, Ill never be able to figure out what makes other people do the things they do to me. I always sit down and make spread sheets, analyzing it- the alignment of the years, the phone calls unanswered, the nightmares I have about text messages. And sometimes it's awful, but even then, part of me likes it.

I'd come home from school in the weeks following Erica's party and write "Daniela is fat," on the cover of one of my spiral notebooks. I'd then write short stories that paralleled the games I played in my head about Daniela being the most popular girl in class, about hte sixth grade dance being the best night of her life. Yes, Daniela was on top of the world, wide ruled notebook paper. I started reading books about the end of the world- I read this book called "Swan's Song," which my mother gave to me, it's still one of my favorite books despite the stuff I read now. It follows the outline of T.S Eliot's The Wasteland, telling a story of five characters and their lives after the nuclear holocaust.........."Once Upon a time, we had a love affair with fire...." it begins and then goes on to have pieces of the poem, "I cannot find the hanged man, fear death by water." In the sixth grade, in church, every friday at confession, I'd confess how I wanted the world to end, I'd calmly tell the priest that my sin for the week was wanting the whole world to explode. I'd get twenty hail marys and complete them easily. I'd go back home and read, I'd watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my mother, I'd go to more birthday parties and I thought I could charm everyone into being my friend eventually, that maybe after the first nuclear bombs were dropped, somebody would need me.

I still have nightmares about the end of the world, of the kids in the sixth grade making fun of me, of the way tears taste in my mouth, the way glass feels on my face. I still wake up, eleven years old giving myself a pep talk about how this is all just a really bad dream. But now, just like then, I kind of like it, part of me, kind of likes it. And part of me knows that in the end, we always float, we're always fine.