Four Feet Tall and Rising Read Free Page B

liked to hide under a white sheet and pretend I couldn’t see her. Eventually, Mom would walk outside, find me and Coco tangled up side by side, and make me sleep in my own bed. If I could have lived in Coco’s doghouse, I probably would have.
    On every family vacation, it was me and Coco in the back of the AMC Hornet wagon—and by “family vacation,” I mean Dad’s idea of a vacation: camping, fishing, and hiking. I hated camping. I hated fishing. I hated hiking. Dad would yell at me on the boat ’cause I wouldn’t shut up. I was bored out of my mind. One time he hit me so hard, I thought for sure he was gonna knock me overboard. I got so mad I threw my pole into the damn lake.
    The only other vacation we took as a family was to see his mom and sisters in Texas. His sister Margie was very wealthy. Her husband owned an air-conditioning business and theyhad a huge house. I loved visiting my grandma Elsie in Texas. She was a tall woman with a big smile, pointy nose, and bright eyes. She loved to give me hugs. I knew when we stayed with Elsie, we were gonna get some good, traditional Italian food, and that she would let me sip her wine. We’d get to sleep in real beds and there’d be no cheap meals around a campfire. Plus, I learned a lot from Elsie. She talked to me like I was an adult and not a kid. I liked being with her.
    I was also lucky enough to get to travel with Nonnie before she was confined to a wheelchair. Nonnie worked as a secretary at the World Vision headquarters in Monrovia, California, for years and years. She was on a set salary, and her rent was paid by the company. They were very good to her. They even paid for her to take vacations. When I was four, she took me to Italy, but I was too young to remember anything about it. When I was twelve, Nonnie asked if I wanted to go to Canada with her. My sisters didn’t wanna go. They were teenagers and too cool to hang with their grandma. Me, I was way into British crap at that point, so I said, “Hell, yeah!” I thought if I went to British Columbia, I’d get to have four o’clock tea.
    We took the train from Los Angeles to Seattle, stayed in Seattle for a few days, and went to the top of the Space Needle. Then we took a ferry from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia. Nonnie knew I loved trains, so she took me to a museum that told the whole history of the steam engine. I loved it. I wanted to stay at the Empress Hotel ’cause there was a huge castle in the water but we stayed at the Best Westerninstead. We went to a restaurant called The Gatsby that had a Roaring ’20s theme. I was impressed with how clean the city was, how they even hung flower pots from the street lamps. When we came back through customs into the United States, I mouthed off to an agent, and told him to get his hands off my bag. Even at twelve, my lovely personality was already in place, but I never, ever argued with Nonnie. Not once.

    Living with Dad and his cheap-ass, racist ways, I used to daydream about how I was gonna break free, own my own house, buy this or buy that, and have the best of everything. It’s not like we wanted for nothing. We had everything we needed, but it was always from a thrift store or was the generic brand or a thousand years old. The most expensive room in the house was the garage, his domain. We were treated like second-class citizens while Dad had the best.
    I decided, if I ever wanted to make good, I’d have to become a lawyer or a businessman. I wanted to be part of the corporate world. I wanted to own my own company, and I wanted to be in charge. I was obsessed with a British TV show about a department store and the people that worked there. They had a corporate executive room and I could just picture my own executive room and my corporate office. I wanted my own British butler. I loved
The Jeffersons
. I was inspired by George Jefferson and how he succeeded and took over the world. I watched
Falcon Crest
,
Dynasty
, and
Dallas
. All the early