Page 35 of Dear Mr. Knightley

Dear Mr. Knightley,

It’s Christmas Eve and all I can do is sit here and cry. Why is it so hard? I need to quit. Everyone knows I can’t cut it. Johnson will kick me out in January anyway. I should go—on my own terms—just like he advised.

The nightmares are back full-force and I can’t sleep.

They’ve been around for months, but the past few nights they’ve been relentless.

I haven’t slept a wink in three days. I can’t look in the mirror.

The circles under my eyes tell of too little sleep and too much pain.

I can’t talk to my friends. Most have gone home, and Josh is in Cincinnati for Christmas. I don’t want to talk to him anyway.

Johnson yelled at me the last day before break—so much for honesty. He asked me to stay after class and then started yelling. He’d probably say he talked loudly, but it felt like yelling.

“Moore, what are you doing? You picked a fine subject, one with meat, bones, and questions; yet you breezed through it. That production is provoking discussions, debate. You addressed none of it. Stop wasting my time.”

He’d printed out my Merchant review—I’m sure just to emphasize his point with all the red slashes. Hard copy is much more devastating.

“I thought it was better, Dr. Johnson. I put myself in there.”

“If that’s the best you’ve got, don’t bother with the January feature. Stop by the office and withdraw on your way out the door.”

“Are you serious? You’re kicking me out?”

“I’m letting you go on your own terms. Come January, I won’t give you that privilege.

” He sat on the edge of his desk. “Look, Moore, a newspaper will assign you subjects; I’m letting you pick them.

Already that’s a leg up. If you can’t handle subjects you select, how do you expect to handle the rigors of daily assignments and deadlines? ”

“I thought I could handle this. I know a lot about literature. I reread the play and saw the production for this review. It’s thorough.”

“I never said it wasn’t thorough. It’s too thorough. It’s a review, Moore, not a dissertation.”

I slumped in my chair.

He leaned forward. “Find a topic in which you can express your voice, your own voice, Moore. I get a new take on you with each exercise, and each is more distant and shadowed than the one before. What interests you? What gets your heart beating? Tell me, where do you find yourself?”

“This is it. This is what I know best.” I shook my review.

“That’s a shame. There’s no more of your voice in that than was in your article on water rights. I don’t know what else to do with you.”

Right then I recognized what Professor Muir was referring to that night. Dr. Johnson is a good man. He’s tough, but he wanted to help me. He was ready to do all he could to make success possible, but I didn’t know what to say. Finally he got up and withdrew behind his desk. I was dismissed.

I said with such bravado that Dr. Johnson would have to kick me out—and I think he did.

He told me to go on my own terms. I should’ve taken his advice and dropped out as I exited his office—because he’s right, there’s nothing more to be done with me.

I’ve been working for five days on the January feature in an attempt to find something powerful and compelling in me, and I’ve come up empty.

If I could just sleep, maybe I’d think more clearly and write better.

But I can’t. I go downtown to join Josh and to have fun for a few hours in the hope that I’ll forget all this.

Then I come home, crawl into bed, and get pounded every night by a different horror.

I awoke last night unable to move—finally I convinced myself that my arms and legs still worked and I was safe.

And then today . . . It was a nightmare and I was fully awake.

I took a break this afternoon and walked into town to do some Christmas shopping for the Conley kids.

They’re so sweet and constantly leave pictures and cookies at my door.

Anyway, as I crossed Clark Street I ran into Sienna, one of Ashley’s English lit friends.

I don’t like her, but I accepted her invitation to Starbucks to warm up.

As we walked the block, a teenager with dirty-blond hair and the most haunted gray eyes asked us for money. I recognized the look; I’d seen it in the mirrors of a dozen bus stops and store windows. And like me once upon a time, she had no coat. In December.

Sienna turned to me and said in a mock whisper, “There are places for these people. We shouldn’t have to see them.” She sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge defending workhouses and prisons.

“Those places are hard to get into,” I said. “This may be the best she can do.”

I pushed some bills into the girl’s hand, but Sienna never paused. She threw back such a condescending sneer, I stopped again. If she were literate enough to have known the line, I swear she would have said, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Instead she tossed her red hair and called in her southern snobby twang, “Don’t you have a marvelous social conscience? Why don’t you invite her for coffee with us?”

She tapped her Prada-booted foot. “You’ve given her money, now let’s go. It’s cold out here.” Then she flounced, yes, flounced, away.

I’m so embarrassed that I noticed her boots and even more humiliated to admit that I followed her. I don’t even remember what I said in Starbucks. I guzzled my latté, mumbled some excuse, and ran out as my life played before my eyes.

What do you know about me, Mr. Knightley?

Really know? No matter what Father John told you or sent you, you can’t know it all.

No one does. I alone carry it each and every day.

And no matter how many characters I hide behind, how much work I bury myself beneath, my past still pushes me every day and haunts me every night.

Before the police took me to Grace House, I spent two months living on the streets.

I spent most nights sleeping under Wacker Drive, hiding in sewage tunnels from men and gangs, crouching in dark doorways, eating from garbage cans and handouts, and constantly moving.

Walking, shifting, drifting—anything to keep warm, stay safe, and avoid the cops.

I remember an old woman gave me a hat from her grocery cart to cover my hair.

She said I’d be safer as a boy. I never let my imagination go there.

I didn’t have energy to think past the simple actions for survival. I didn’t know where to go or whom to trust. I couldn’t risk a shelter—it would lead to a state home, a juvenile detention center, or my social worker, Mr. Petrusky. And he had already failed me.

I should go back farther . . .

I’m about six in my earliest memory. It took me five years to remember that day, and now it won’t leave.

In my mind, I see myself look up as my father runs across a dim room.

I feel weightless, soaring through the air until I hit the wall.

Then I see my father follow me. I feel his steps shake the floor as I try to get small and still. That’s the start of many dreams.

In reality, my father hoisted me up to a mirror and gripped my neck so I could watch myself choke.

My legs danced like a rag doll. I watched them as I tried to shut out the gasping, gargling noises.

I also watched his hands. They grew red as the sounds grew louder.

They were horrible sounds and I didn’t know until much later that they came from me.

I don’t know why he stopped; maybe he thought he’d killed me.

I only remember being carried away as the police grilled my mom.

She didn’t speak or look up. She sat at the kitchen table, tracing a crack with her finger.

I didn’t speak of this. In fact, I said nothing for over a year.

After a stint in the hospital, I was fostered out to the Chapmans.

Mrs. Chapman takes on the glow of an angel in my memories.

I can’t recall her features, but I spent hours in her lap listening to her read.

She smelled sweet like gardenias, and her voice was deep and cheerful.

I felt so safe in their care. Of course, I didn’t stay long.

Mr. Chapman got a job in Wisconsin, and I couldn’t cross state lines.

That’s when I learned what a commodity my life was.

The Desouza family came next, the Gibbons after that.

I only spent a few months at each. It was during my stay with the Gibbons that I found Pride and Prejudice .

Mrs. Gibbons would get so mad at my obsession with it that I hid myself to read.

I have little memory of the homes after that.

I think there were two or three before the Putmans.

Mr. Putman was burly, smelly, and mean. He started hitting me soon after I arrived, and Mrs. Putman would make up lies, expecting me to rewrite each incident in my memory.

“Oh, Sam. You were so silly to leave your shoes scattered across the floor. I’m so sorry you tripped and hit your head.” Her voice was saccharine sweet.

“I didn’t hit my head. You saw him.”

“Don’t tell tales, Sam. Messiness can be such a danger. I’d hate to tell Daddy that you fibbed to me. I’m so good to you, Sam.”

That’s when I found Jane Eyre . How could we not have an instant bond?

I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her .

. . Jane endured Mrs. Reed and Brocklehurst School, and I endured Mr. and Mrs. Putman.

I was only taken away when my social worker quit and a new one, with fresh energy and clear eyesight, demanded my removal.