I think I remember her telling me when she was 12 she stole some beers out of the fridge (I imagine sun pouring in from a small kitchen window and avocado coloured appliances. A tarnished cigarette ashtray on a formica table), tossed them in her front bike basket (I imagine white wicker with a pink daisy embroidered flower on the front), and sped off to the local woods to drink them.
I don’t remember if she was meeting people there or not.
I think I remember her telling me that there was nothing missing. Her father was around. Her mother was around. There was food on the table. She had her own room. Yet she couldn’t stop feeling so sad.
I think I remember her telling me it snowed so much that the snow reached her second floor bedroom window. School was cancelled. They couldn’t even dig out the front door. So her and her brother cracked open her second floor window and slid down.
She says she remembers watching all the neighbourhood kids do the same.
I think I remember her telling me she had mono as a teenager. She was feverish, and it was nighttime. She was wandering the second floor (to get water? Bathroom?). Her father heard her get up and went to check on her. She screamed and screamed and ran away. She thought it was a zombie with its’ eyes falling out.
I think I remember her telling me that when she was a fresh-faced 18 year old single mom, her father would take her grocery shopping. The first time, standing in line with groceries (I try and imagine the price of baby food in the mid-70s, and my sister slung on her jeaned-hip), she said she forgot her wallet. Her father paid. It became a joke, and she started forgetting her wallet every time.
I remember her telling me it was getting hard. I didn’t understand. No one understood. Things were always like this for her. I remember her refusing to learn to drive, turning up the radio, and her lipstick stains on Corningware teacups.
I remember her sitting in the brown-dried (itchy with ant hills) grass in the backyard and she would hang her head and hug her knees. I would watch from the back screen door.
I remember her as a dream where I am not sure what’s true and what I have made up all of these years.
Heidi Allum 
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