[M]y heart would be racing and my breathing labored. I would be in the house, often in the basement or in the scary front hallway that was made into a dark crypt-like room for the mimeograph machine by being blocked off by a bookshelf on one end. I would hear the sound…

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

It was like a giant monster steadily tapping on the roof of the house, trying lazily to get my attention becuase it knew I was in there.

To escape a horrid but unspecified fate, I would have to get out of the house, and more than that, I had to make my way across the back yard to the base of the tree in the corner, where the fences met. This was the climbing tree. It was a medium-sized maple that I could climb quite high in, even as a small child. I could use it to jump into any one of three different yards (and later, as needed, retreat from said yards). I could climb into it and sit perfectly still and silent when my mother or my siblings came into the yard to do some thing, and they would finish their task and leave without ever knowing I was up there hiding. It was my escape tree, my spy tree, my safe tree. I knew I needed to get to that tree and, and then to find the hole at the base. The cage. The cage that was made out of a dug out hole at the base of the safe tree.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Louder. Continue reading Thump →