At Seven Years Old

Written by Zyon Lindeblad

Photographed by Mari Silva

It was all swingsets with friends and watching Hannah Montana on VHS tapes. It was shrieking on playgrounds and switching schools again and again and again. It was loving classrooms more than the apartment my family shared. It was recess with teachers, and wearing a bright purple leopard print outfit on the first day of third grade because of an obsession with the eighties. It was “Sunday Sundaes,” watching Newsies or Anne of Green Gables or Now and Then, and loading up on sugar because nobody was there to say otherwise. It was learning how to sleep in cars most comfortably. It was going to swimming holes when classmates invited me, but never learning how to swim.

It was holding my aunt’s hand to cross the street instead of my mother’s. It was all late nights playing make-believe with my parent’s dreadlocks while they slept unmoving and facedown on couches. It was shaking them until, bleary-eyed, they’d tell me to stop. It was wondering why my friend’s parents didn’t move like them, act like them, speak like them. It was thinking that one day, I’d turn out like them. It was tracing the tattoos on their arms while they fiddled with tools I knew, but didn’t know. It was wanting to use them so I could be ‘just like Daddy,’ whom I loved without reason.

It was all silence that followed the phone calls saying Dad would be “home soon,” and seeing him two weeks later.

It was all singing my little brother to sleep, and the beginning of a life of motherhood with gentle calloused hands. It was letting him cling to me while I got our gas station food. It was shielding him from what I could. It was wishing there was somebody to shield me. It was watching him sleep in cozy blankets with cigarette burns and teaching him how to play with boxes and feeling over and over like I was not doing enough. It was running after my mother for a hug and promising never to make my brother do the same. It was me and him against the world.

It was all taking notes from my teacher meant for my mother and explaining, “She’s not responsible,” and subsequently learning what awkward smiles were. It was that teacher ushering me into class every day, and staying in with me during recess. It was that teacher helping me discover a love of reading, and figuring out that I could use it to help me escape. It was a little red motor car on a lawn filled with needles. It was learning what those needles did to my parents, and growing to hate them because of it. It was that beloved little red car getting pawned at a shop and crying for days after, only to be consoled by s’mores around an illegal fire. It was forgetting about that red little car I loved so much because adults were always telling me to be grateful for what I had. It was feeling like I didn’t have much.

It was a loud little girl turning into a quiet older one.

It was all the smell of spray paint and cookie dough and dogs—so many dogs—and the innocent sound of my little brother’s laughter. It was learning what it was to love beyond measure. It was helping my father garden plants I’d never seen before, but would become accustomed to, in our basement. It was watching the pretty blue and red lights through their leaves. It was thinking that those lights were holiday lights, perpetually strung around just for my family. It was meeting Macklemore at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting with my mother, and their slow smiles over warm mugs of hot chocolate. It was my father’s best friend pressing me down and down and down into a bed with the upbeat notes of Bob Marley still hanging suspended in the air after a dance party where I wore my best boots and prettiest dress. It was never wearing that dress again. It was mandala tapestries that fluttered against my cheek at night.

It was all fumbling hands over braids and flyaway curls and reading the Geronimo Stilton books on swimming hole rocks.

It was learning my name means “a place of peace and refuge,” yet not knowing what that was.

It was the sway of Reggae music, the smell of incense, and Buddha candles.

It was praying for a miracle.

It was the loss of religion.

It was laying curled up outside of doors and rooms and life, waiting and waiting and waiting.