hidden treasures By caroline brown
 
There is a beast that has followed me my entire life. He has no face or eyes; this beast only has a mouth and a belly that hungers for my past and my memories. But what the beast desires most is my treasure. Within the beast is a little pink jewelry box, with a little ballerina who spins in remembrance of every lead moment. The beast—the moving truck—is always there behind me, sometimes I fear he will swallow me up too. Before I reached my first year of age, I was diagnosed with lead poisoning. This wasn’t discovered until after the first of many routine checkups, not until after the doctor tested a sample of my blood. My mom and dad were questioned about chipping paint in the house, lead in pieces of mom’s jewelry that could have rubbed off on my skin, or being exposed to a busted battery. Eventually it narrowed down to something other than the simpler things. Back then, my dad worked as an instructor on the rifle range. As soon as he got home he would pick me up and hold me and play with me for a while, before washing up or changing clothes. Without realizing it, my father was slowly poisoning me with his love. Of course it was the lead from the guns that was poisoning me, being rubbed into my skin as he held me, but if my father didn’t love me enough to cradle me in his arms each night, I wouldn’t have been poisoned. I can only imagine now what that must have felt like to find out that he was the cause of the poison coursing through his child’s veins. The doctor told my parents to make sure my father washed up before holding me after going to the range, and that he wash up well. They said that I would most likely have disabilities, some sort of brain damage. Every day following my diagnosis, Daddy didn’t touch me, until he was positive there were no traces of lead left on him. This was one of the first ways that our military lifestyle affected me. So what else was there to expect in the years to come? As the years continued, I grew up healthy and strong unaffected by lead poisoning. But the military continued to play a huge role in my life. The years and the moves changed me in a million ways, the only two things that seemed constant in my life where my family and the beast—that moving truck. While I was a preschool student, four years old, we moved for the first time. I could see all the faces of the children inside, see them in their seats with fists full of play-doh and shirts covered in leftover cafeteria spaghetti. Some waved to me, others focused on the toys scattered in the bins on the far edge of the class, and then with the simple closing of those heavy wooden doors, I realized I would never see them again. I was an innocent and shy child, but believed making friends would be as easy as it looked on the television shows I had been raised on, like Sesame Street and Barney. Everyone was always happy in that world inside the box, and I never saw anyone have to move away and leave friends behind there. So why did I have to? It hardly seemed fair at all that on TV they got to be together forever, like a family. I didn’t want to move around, gathering families I couldn’t keep; I wanted the one at home and the one outside of it, and just that. The beast followed behind us as we moved to Knoxville, the jewelry box patiently waiting for me to open it again, so the gilt jewelry could gleam in its seemingly sweet way. But for now, it waited in the belly of the beast, packed up in a box that read, “Caroline’s Room,” right beside “Dishes”. My brother Grant was born when I was five and I didn’t want a brother. A little sister would have been better to play dress up with, and share my favorite jewelry with. When I was eight it was time to move again, this time to Cookeville, where the memories all blurred together in the mess of moving with the beast from place to place. And when I was ten years old, I transferred to a new school, moving from Cookeville, to Nashville. The school at first was intimidating, like all schools are at first, but I somehow knew it would be just the same as the others. Math class was buzzing as I made my first appearance, and everyone wanted me—the new girl—to sit beside them. They asked me so many questions, that I couldn’t answer all at once, and I smiled, at least here I would get out of my shy shell of being the new kid in town. At recess, suddenly I was alone, no one wanted to play, but I expected that, I was the new one. Questions were all that I would receive at the moment. I could be patient. Back in class, a little boy named Michael caught my eye several times. He had dark brown hair and dark eyes, with tan skin to top it all off, and he even sent a note while I was sharpening my pencil. “I like you a little,” the sloppy handwriting read. I was instantly in love. And that little note went straight into my jewelry box. After that day, Michael showed no more interest in me. I sent him notes. I chased him on the playground. I made a fool of myself for weeks. Suddenly no one spoke to me at all. I found it strange, because when I had behaved this way in Knoxville—chasing friends and acting silly—they laughed and we became friends. Why wasn’t it working here? The name calling began. “Freak.” “Just go away, nobody likes you!” The names continued for the next two years. I made maybe three friends in all that time. No one ever forgot to call me an idiot, or a loser, or a freak, or even all three when I headed to the swings or the monkey bars. The word “freak” burned into me deeper than the rest, leaving my eyes full of tears at the end of every day. My peers hated me, and I wished I could have changed myself to be more to their liking. No one played with me. When I fell down and scraped my knees at recess no one helped me up. I couldn’t escape the shyness that grew almost as huge as the beast that would follow behind me whenever the next move would be. I was twelve, when it came time to move again. Despite all the pain I’d gone through, I cried helplessly at the thought of leaving Michael, though he had never given me a second glance unless I was chasing him in a sad attempt at flirting. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Michael, my young heart making me believe it was love. I begged my parents not to take me away again, not to drag me away from the few friends I had. If they hated me here after I had it good before in Knoxville and Cookeville, where else was there to go but down? The day we moved away, I imagined Michael missing me just as badly as I would miss him. Deep down, I knew he would forget about me. But I never forgot about the simple little note, “I like you a little,” tucked away safely inside my jewelry box in the bowels of the beast. As I sat in my new room in Indiana, the jewelry box open in my lap and the beast far away, I stared at Michael’s note, and the jewelry that’s gold and silver was chipping away to reveal the lead beneath. I wanted to think that the chipping away was some sort of symbol for things changing in my life, but maybe it was just the chipping away of my ability to deal with constantly changing environments and friends. All I wanted was the stability. At my new school something amazing happened: I was welcomed. I was shy and I didn’t speak much, but I was welcomed, and I thanked God for that. I met so many people that I can barely remember any names now. But in eighth grade I met a person I knew I’d never be able to forget. I met Dona. Dona talked to me like no one else did, she kept her attention on me, most of the time, and smiled and laughed. She became my best friend faster than anyone ever had since I was in the small preschool all those years ago, what seemed a lifetime away. Dona and I wrote a story together about imaginary adventures and far away worlds that existed only in our dreams. We thrived in our make-believe world the way we did in each other’s company, the way the characters from Sesame Street and Barney seemed to be. Dona kept me smiling, she made me happy and sang songs with me, and though she hadn’t pulled me out of the protective shell of shyness I’d built around me, she did a good job of getting that happy-go-lucky girl out of the darkness on paper, through writing. We wrote our own story in a red notebook with a white dragon and Japanese kanji on the shiny cover, and it made me happy. I was still made fun of occasionally like everyone else, but when Dona was there to hear it, she stood and glared. She never backed down until my attacker(s) apologized. I felt safe with Dona. The military—for once, it felt like—had finally taken me to a place where I didn’t have to hide completely, to a place where someone said my name without a grimace, and a place where I had a family outside of home. As mine and Dona’s story in the notebook came to a close, suddenly so did my time in Indiana. I stared into the open mouth of the beast again, the cold, metal moving truck filled with boxes, that had followed behind me all my life. Inside one of those boxes was the jewelry box with the note, but at the moment I could only think of another box. One of those boxes held the story that Dona and I had created. I prayed it would link us together, along with the phone and the computer. I cried, and prayed that God wouldn’t let Dona forget me. I knew deep down she never would. But what would South Carolina have to offer? Dona wasn’t there. I would have to find a way to move on without her. What more could the military take me to? The memory of friends flooded back into my brain, I didn’t want a new family, but then again, maybe here I would find a new one, one that would be better, a forever family and the military would take me to it, just outside of my home.