How I Moved Twenty-One Times Before College: Parcel, 2013 HOW I MOVED TWENTY-ONE TIMES BEFORE COLLEGE Parcel , 2013 1. Decision. Maybe it was made of necessity--a rent payment couldn't be made, a job beckoned on the other side of town, a cruel or wishy-washy or absent husband made a place unbearable. This place doesn't have a good vibe was reason enough, because the reasons didn't matter so much. Reasons were intangible or, at best, details. Action was real life. 2. Notification. Tell the boss, call the utility companies. One last outing at the bar with friends from work, maybe. Family members might receive a casual announcement, at the last minute. Mom told me about her first divorce while we were folding towels on top of the dryer, and neither of us cried. I tried to hide my excitement as I asked to call my only friend on our rural party line to break the news. My dad embraced a drunken depression, as any rational person might, but Mom had about her a thrill, a cat's quickened scratching at the door upon sensing that it soon would open. While Dad silently moped off to construction sites and wheat fields, she filled out change-of-address forms and made to-do lists in gorgeous cursive on dollar-store legal pads. (Also an option: Leave now, report later.) 3. Sorting. We did the grunt work ourselves, of course. I had no idea a professional moving industry existed. We gathered cardboard boxes from grocery stores, avoiding those that had stored produce, as they smelled rotten and had big, square holes in the bottoms. But before we could stuff them with shirts and papers and pictures from drawers, plates and vases from cabinets, wrenches and canned food from basements, we made two piles: things we'd keep, and things for the garage sale to be hosted by whichever family member lived on the highest-traffic street of Wichita at the moment. I spread my toys across my bedroom floor and discerned what I really needed. I implored my four-year-old brother to consider that he never played with that G.I. Joe anyway. Mom was in the living room getting down to business. Hand-sewn Halloween costumes of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, an Indian girl? Halloween is over. Almost-new lamp? Reminds me of the ex-husband who bought it. Coffee table? Piece of junk from someone else's garage sale anyhow. Into the sale pile. Sarah, have you seen my lighter? 4. Sale. The night before our sales, which we called garage sales even when they took place on driveways or front yards, I made signs with cardboard and black, inch-thick markers that squeaked as I colored in the arrows that would point bargain hunters our way. I made the signs because everyone knew I could draw a straight line. Mom, a saleswoman, knew the best price to write on adhesive tags, and Grandma Betty was a formidable opponent in haggling matches. Aunt Pud was good at spotting thieves, and her boyish daughter Shelly could carry a solid oak headboard on one arm. We all had our specializations. On the eve of a sale, after sorting and pricing and spreading items onto long card tables to be kept in the closed garage until early morning, we rigged the homemade sale signs to impromptu stakes, taking care that arrows on opposite sides of the sign pointed in the same direction. We loaded the signs into a pickup bed and lurched around the neighborhood of the moment, the driver idling the engine as the rest of us jumped from pickup to curb, laughing in the darkness as we pounded the stakes into hard earth with hammers. At least one sign would give us trouble, refusing to pierce the ground deeply enough to be stable; at sunrise, when someone went to get a fast-food breakfast and a newspaper--to check on the classified ad we took out (HUGE SALE)--the stubborn sign would have fallen. But we counted ourselves lucky if it hadn't rained overnight and made a soggy mess of the cardboard. If the newspaper ad said the sale started at 8 a.m. on Thursday, the female bargain warriors arrived before seven, their hair wet in the early summer sun, faces makeup-free, agendas fierce. Do you have any lamps, what do you want for the mirror, and would you take a quarter for these tennis shoes because they're pretty dirty. Male patrons often were war veterans who wanted to chat about the old days; they sought tools and antique toys, maybe some dated electronics. Over two or three days our inventory shrank, and the purchase list we kept on a legal pad grew longer. The list included three or four columns to track separately each seller's profits, since the whole family joined in the sale, even if only one person was moving. I sat with a calculator at a card table and made change from a brown metal cash box, as I did every Fourth of July when we sold firecrackers under a tent in a field. Sarah, have you seen the marker? Where are the scissors? Mark down the underwear table to a nickel apiece. Hey, check out the van--plenty of room for them to take our junk. Everyone was sweating. The sales usually ended Saturday afternoon. 5. Donation. After the exhausting, three-day sale, we threw what remained into plastic trash bags and drove it to a thrift store. But before that, a friend of the family would decide to take the floral comforter that hadn't sold. C'mon, let me pay you something for it. Aw hell, just take it. 6. Packing. I put Matt's tiny clothes and my slightly less tiny clothes in boxes. My hands were black with newspaper ink from wrapping whiskey tumblers with Mom in the dining room. Bedding, curtains, pillows, and stuffed animals went into trash bags because they couldn't break and would squish into tight spaces in pickup beds. Last to go were bathroom items, magnets on the fridge, mustard in the fridge. 7. Departure. We loaded a pickup and a trailer hitched behind it. Heavy stuff went in first, or steering would be a real bitch. Then the mailbox was in the rearview mirror, and the cats were in the cab of the truck, clinging to the vinyl seats. Sarah, run in and tell them five dollars unleaded and a pack of Marlboro Light 100s. 8. Transit. During the drive--thirty minutes, maybe--from old place to new place: the lightness. 9. Arrival. We pulled into our new driveway. We unpacked cheap decorations, decided what shelf the extra sheets would go on, cleaned the bathroom the last resident left filthy with thick hairs and rusty razors. What day does trash go out? Did you get the toilet to stop running? Jiggle the handle? Where is the light switch? This bedroom seems to stay cooler. Sarah, write "roach trap" on the grocery list. I found the fan. You see an outlet? Excerpted from Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class by Sarah Smarsh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
