— Shout —
a poetry memoir
Laurie Halse Anderson

first blood

When husbands raped wives

in 1972, it was legal.

Property rights were all the rage

you know.

I got my first period

in 1972 and

I didn’t know why

I was bleeding.

When bosses groped women

in 1972, it was legal

because bosses

(all of them male)

made the rules.

We girls saw a filmstrip

in 1972, about

hygiene and sanitary napkins,

so confusing because

it never mentioned

the blood.

When women were fired

in 1972

because they got pregnant

in 1972,

it was all very legal

in 1972,

no questions were ever asked.

We learned boys

were dangerous,

in 1972, cuz their pee

could get us pregnant

and kicked out of school.

The FBI spied on women

in 1972, and it was legal.

Men feared the liberation

movement might change

all of the rules.

My mother lacked a mouth

in 1972, so she couldn’t

explain the mystery

of the blood.

She gave me a

pink box of tampons,

directions hidden inside,

then closed the door

between us.

No words.

fencing

Levy Junior High, seventh grade

long, dark walks to school on winter mornings

world deep-bundled in snow, the game

was to scuttle into the street, grab hold

of the back bumper of a school bus

or the bread truck,

let it pull us down the frozen roads

of Syracuse, sliding toward the Eleusinian

mysteries of adolescence. Mom hated

that school cuz of the knife fight, but I liked

it, though my shyness limited me to the sidelines,

you can learn a lot from watching quietly

a great art teacher taught us

how much fun it is to make things

from scratch

Eighth grade, another year, another school

me, the quiet scholarship kid,

Mom was happy cuz there were no knife fights

there, no fights of any kind, unless you count the

upper-school cutthroat competition

for valedictorian

I was a cheerleader, can you believe it?

One-third of the base of a girl pyramid

pom-pommed in modest, itchy uniforms

I learned to fence with an épée

studied sumacs, danced the steps of fragile

friendships, but it was Mr. Edwards

who changed my life,

he didn’t just teach us Greek mythology,

Mr. Edwards ensorcelled us

with stories of gods and wars, mothers

in search of lost daughters,

and girls fleeing rapists

by turning into trees

I wanted to stay in that school

forever

cemetery girl

When not swimming, my middle

school summers played

out in Oakwood Cemetery

where I lay

on a flat, warm tomb

day after day

and

read read read read read read

book-belly starving

for pages fantastical,

haunted by lost

hungry girls,

I ate red apples

heavy-salted on the tomb

the sleeping Victorian corpses

below fed me secrets

sentinel owls peered

from a grove of old pines,

all of us hoping, waiting on signs

of the change

that was promised

driven

My father first let me drive when I was twelve

in the woods on old logging trails,

only a couple times in town

when he was over the limit.

I drove in sheer terror

never crashed

not even a scratch in the paint

he was proud of me

and that meant a lot.

My mother never knew

that we forged a secret alliance

in the middle of our

Cold War nuclear-family meltdown

so when it was time for her

to teach me how to drive

I faked it, pretending

I didn’t have a clue.

ante-crescendo

My mother hit me in the face

for the last time

when my father lost his job

lost us to the wildfire

that scorched the dining room table

burned up the drapes

while bombs dropped through the ceiling

You have to seriously screw up

to be fired by the Church

cuz love, Jesus, etc.

plus plenty of preachers play

out shame mistakes in glass houses

so they rarely throw stones

but my dad, he was targeted

by petty jealousies and for dumb mistakes,

they called him on the carpet

and wiped the floor with him

subtle, ceremonious excommunication

bell, book, and candlewise

Dad’s pedestal tipped

over and he had a great fall

and all of the king’s horses

and all of the king’s men

didn’t give a damn

I argued with him about something stupid

so confused that our life was in flames

Dad told me to shut up, as he stormed off

I stuck out my tongue at his retreating form

just as Mom came around the corner,

with a mean backhand and explosive temper

she hit me

I was almost as tall as she was,

just as angry

and much, much stronger

we stared at each other

after the blow, on the edge

of annihilation, wordless

combustion

but she was my mother

so I swallowed the lighter fluid

and tilted my head

until my face became her mirror

like I said,

that was the last time

she hit me

packing for exile

We lived in the house on Berkeley Drive

for seven years, long enough to sucker

me into believing that was a home

my mistake

when you’re a preacher’s kid, you move

around a lot, don’t get to paint your walls

or tape up posters; the Church buys the furniture

pays the mortgage and makes all the rules.

Dad sort of disappeared.

No,

actually, he vanished

leaving my mother

to move us

like Hercules, charged with cleaning

the shit-filled stables of King Augeas, she wrestled

a fast-flowing river for the dirty work

refusing to carry the past with us

she threw it all away

stacks of hymnals

her trombone

generations of family letters

quilts, handmade syrup buckets

photographs that made her eyes bleed

chicken pot pies from the freezer

she threw out the memories of Christmases

without tears

the night she went on a rare date with my father

when she wore a black dress with a white collar

perfumed with Joy, lemon-tanged

she tossed out watching the astronauts walk

on the moon

my sister’s broken arm

me singing into a hairbrush

she dumped out Grandpa’s search for his shotgun

when he realized the electroshock

treatment wasn’t working, she trashed

camping in the woods, fireflies dancing

marshmallows toasting over the fire

the only thing we packed in the moving truck

were our carapaces pinned

like specimens to a corkboard

IT, part 1—gasoline

Remember the line in Speak,

“And I thought for just a minute there that . . .

I would start high school with a boyfriend”?

Yeah, that was me

for a couple naive days

when I was

thirteen years old.

We moved in June

four shards of a family,

one apartment of burnt

orange and avocado green,

two bedrooms.

I bought the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

album with my babysitting money. The boy

across the street had a motorbike

he syphoned gas for it every night

the trick, he said,

was only to take a little

from each car,

that way no one noticed.

He grabbed me

once.

Pushed me against a

brick wall, hands greased

with experience

arms metal cables

looping around and encasing me.

I fought, tried to kick

and failed, his mouth dove

for my neck and

I bit him

until I tasted blood.

He backed off, furious

cried that human bites

were germ-filled, poisonous.

I said I hoped that was true.

That boy tasted gasoline dangerous,

but he wasn’t IT.

My sour victory

did not last long.

IT, part 2—trees

We moved to a new

building a few weeks later, I

made friends with girls who shared

candy-flavored lip gloss and giggly fantasies

about Vinnie Barbarino and the Fonz

girls who introduced me to IT,

the friend of a friend of a friend

cuz everyone is your friend when

you’re thirteen and alone.

Broken children

can see each other from miles away,

the original mutants, X-kids abandoned

to their confused scars and rages. I held

his hand, enjoyed our silent summer

swooping circles of bewilderment. Not romance

but comfort, to have a tobacco-smelling

boy, older, bigger, stronger boy

walk by my side.

Looking back, I think his life was a mess.

Looking back, he still scares me.

Looking back, I wonder how many girls

he hurt

and if someone hurt him first

or if he was simply a felony-committing

shithead.

And then green August, melting-hot

days running out the bottom of the hour-

glass, school time marching

relentlessly toward the children of

summer so intent on capturing

every free minute, like flowers

to be pressed between the pages

of a book. We walked down

the hill to the creek, far away from the heat,

the trees our shade companions, the babble

of water overrunning any need to speak

we tossed pebbles in the water

everything was so calm that’s what I

remember the calm cuz I was safe

and happy tossing pebbles in the water

next to this tobacco-smelling boy

friend,

so when he turned to kiss

me

my mouth met his with delight, I was new

to this kind of kiss and happy to play

by the creek with this boy whose hands then

wandered fast, too fast, too far

like a flash flood overwhelming the startled

banks of a creek that never once thought

of defense, of damming or the need for a bridge

to escape

his hands, arms shoulders back

muscle sinew bone

an avalanche of force

the course predetermined one hand on my mouth

his body covering smothering mine

I took my eyes off the rage

in his face and looked up to the green peace

of leaves fluttering above, trees witnessing

pain shame I crawled into the farthest corner

of my mind biding time hiding surviving

by outsiding

and when he was done

using my body

he stood and zipped his jeans

lit a cigarette

and walked away.

IT, part 3—playing chicken with the devil

Lots of boys at our school played chicken

the shifting pecking order of coward and stud

beating a dark bass note in the cold current

of doubt that flowed through their hearts.

One boy lost a game of Russian roulette

for real,

a revolver, six chambers, one bullet

loaded, then spun so no one knew

where it was hiding, the gun

went hand to hand to hand, following the snake-

smoke path of the bong,

laughing, basement smelling of mold

and boy farts, cheap beer, and the gun goes click,

to the next hand click, to the next hand

before the laughter fades,

BAM.

It didn’t kill him. He was smart

enough to tilt the barrel at an obtuse

angle, so the bullet only stole his memories

chewed through his charm and blinded him.

He was a quiet, kind fixture

in the empty garage

where we smoked between classes,

sheltered from the cold,

his black hair long to cover the scars,

white cane in his hand,

old friends standing guard.

Lots of boys at my school played chicken,

countless varieties of the game.

The boy who raped me

on the rocks by the creek

got drunk and lay down

twenty-eight nights later

on a dark country road

he played chicken with the devil,

daring the car that couldn’t see him

to flinch first, to prove him brave

and noble.

I didn’t speak up

when that boy raped me, instead I scalded

myself in the shower and turned

me into the ghost of the girl

I once was, my biggest fear

being that my father,

no stranger to gaming

with the devil,

would kill that boy

and it would be my fault.

But that boy who raped me

on the rocks by the creek

got drunk and lay down

on a dark night to play

chicken with the devil

and he lost.

I begged my father

to take me to the funeral. I lied

and said that boy was my friend.

He looked at me sharply,

my ice-eyed father

my gentle-hearted father, he heard

something in my voice

but after one searing glance, he shut

down the inquiry

wrote the note

got me out

of school and walked with me

to the graveside on

a gray September day cut by winter’s

promise in the wind.

My father kept his arm

around my shoulders, while I cried

so hard I turned myself inside

out, so grateful IT was gone

and it was over.

I did not know

that the haunting

had just begun.

clocks melting on the floor

I didn’t think about pregnancy

for weeks, when it finally hit me

I puked and cried, afraid

that I was puking

cuz there was a baby

but the next day I bled

a stormy river, so grateful

didn’t think about STIs

didn’t know what they were

to be honest

after I was raped

I could hardly think at all

because feelings hid in the closet,

under the bed, shadow-cloaked

and hungry, dark mountains

and oceans of noise threatened

to spill over if I opened

my mouth, I was afraid

I’d never stop screaming

pain management

My parents drank fury and gin

when we lived in places

quick-rented, half-furnished

with couches and beds that smelled

of strangers, the floors scrubbed

with regret.

A wolf, when wounded, retreats

to a dark place, burns out the injury

with fever, lies still so the bones

can knit back together,

or dies alone.

But we were not wolves.

We moved

and moved again, being not-wolves,

with our legs snapped in the metal

trap jaws, livers pecked each night

by eagles,

my parents broke

themselves on the wheels of time and

appearances, drunk

on gin and fury, they ossified.

Of course I got high.

buzzed

giggled

ate molasses cookies baked—ha, I said “baked”—

by my grandmother

drank music: Boston Bob Seger Black Sabbath

Blue Öyster Cult Supertramp Doobie Brothers

Allman Brothers Bill Withers Eagles

Stevie Wonder Steely Dan Lynyrd Skynyrd

Aerosmith

Temptations Santana Genesis Led Zeppelin

Fleetwood Mac

landsliding through my bones

sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

I drew pictures

x-ed them, rejected them with a black magic

marker, threw them in the garbage

weed buzz dulled ^{thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou}

the pain, verdigris skeleton key

turned in my brain’s rusty lock

I understood

I could fucking see the connections

’tween everything and everybody, the

four—

no, the five-dimensional chessboard

we danced on

I scribbled notes in crayon

messages in bottles cast

into the sea of me

then lost in the deep

I got high to escape

sat in sunshine, eyes closed

wanted to peel back my lids,

but I knew a girl who did that,

dead-crazy high on smack

(not weed)

she had pale eyes to begin with, almost as white

as her hair, so when she, dead-crazy high, opened

her eyes for a staring contest with the sun

the sun won

and she couldn’t see too good after that

but she got sober,

for sure

I kept my eyes closed

after smoking, usually fell asleep,

bored and stuck

in hardening concrete

up to my chin

ninth grade: my year of living stupidly

1. I forgot to go to class a lot, even for subjects like French and social studies that I enjoyed. When I remembered to go, it was hard to stay awake cuz I wasn’t sleeping good at night. At first I’d hide in the fantasy section of the library when I forgot to go to class. Then I met some kids who lived a few blocks from school and they were happy to share high afternoons listening to music with me, all of us pretending we weren’t doomed.

2. Concrete burns are lethal. Sneaky, too. Stick your hands or feet into wet concrete and it feels like a milkshake. You’d never guess you were going to need an amputation.

3. I didn’t have real friends because a friend is someone you trust and trust never came easy after that boy raped me. But I had people to get high with, people to share sandwiches with. Sometimes I had people to walk with in the halls. Being mocked doesn’t hurt as much when someone walks next to you. I was grateful for my almost-friends.

4. It’s all about the pH levels. Vinegar is an acid, pH 2.4; skin is acid, too, pH 5.5. Wet concrete is wicked alkaline, pH 12.0; that’s caustic enough to eat you alive.

5. They called us dirtbags: the clan of X-kids who smelled of cigarettes and weed and farm work and clothes worn without washing because the laundromat was expensive and the priority was staying warm. We weren’t the only ones whose parents were drunk or violent or absent . . . but we were the poor kids dealing with that shit. Our school was organized by income brackets, with the kids who skied in Colorado over winter break at the top and the dirtbags at the bottom.

6. It was probably more complicated than that, but that’s what it felt like sitting in the shadows at the base of the social mountain.

7. The concrete keeps burning even after you wash it off your skin. The gift that keeps on giving, the death that keeps on deathing.

8. Once I sat in the backseat of a Chevy with four other people; there were three more up front, plus the driver, and we were profoundly wasted and we drove around the rim of an old quarry and something happened cuz suddenly the driver took us straight back to his house and didn’t say anything for the rest of the night. Next day I went back there and found our tracks; we’d come inches from plunging to the bottom. I didn’t hang out with those guys after that.

9. Concrete burns through your skin and your meat, then it burns down to your bones if you don’t get help.

10. One night I mixed cheap whiskey with spiced Russian tea that tasted like moldy oranges. Numbing drunk was what we did in my family when horrible things happened that we didn’t talk about, like being fired, or having the electricity shut off, or Mom eating cereal for dinner so we could have the hamburger. Or being raped; we definitely didn’t talk about rape. Ever. The color I vomited for hours after those drinks was really quite astounding. I still can’t touch whiskey or spiced Russian tea.

11. I started being stupid to turn down the volume of my internal emergency alert system. But blundering stupid through life makes everything way more complicated, creates cascading avalanches of new problems.

12. I wasn’t just encased in hardening concrete up to my chin; it was pouring down my throat. I was in a race to see if I would die from the outside in or the inside out.