Her Inner Strength

Big Changes

My dad started dating this woman. She had two sons and moved in with us and into our tiny two bedroom trailer in my grandparents back yard , (remember this trailer, it's important) it was crowded. She seemed nice and let me play with her clothes, she was super skinny and I was a chubby little girl, nothing fit. I can still remember the smell of the clothes, somewhere between the plastic from the Rubbermaid tote and laundry detergent. There were wooden bottom high heeled shoes, silky robes and soft fuzzy robes. She had a really huge bath loofah, I was amazed by it. The feelings of all the fabrics were so nice to me.
I remember going to look at this house with dad, it had a weird green colored room and a not quite red but not quite pink room one of the rooms had green carpet. There was ivy wallpaper around the doorway into the living room, the bathroom was a dark dusty blue color (remember this house)
Before I knew it, we were moving into this new big house in the country. Away from the life I was so used to for the first 5-6 years of my life. It was an emotional and extremely traumatic experience since this lady really wasn't as nice as I had originally thought.
I scream cried for the longest time, I had just started kindergarten on top of moving to a new house and having to learn how to share my dad and moving away from mama and papa. Instead of comforting me, this woman yelled at me to stop crying.
My grandma (Dads mom) passed away right after we moved into our new house. I remember going to the funeral but I was too young to understand. All I know is for a while after that I had horrible vivid nightmares of me and a childhood friend digging up bones in a graveyard. I would wake up crying and go seek the comfort of my dad only to get yelled at in the morning by (we're gonna call her) Hellen.
She slowly wedged herself in between my dad and I. I wasn't allowed to go in the garage with him or do anything with just him. For example, one time he brought home a junk camper and had it in the garage to tear apart. I can still remember the smell of musty old camper and rotten eggs to this day. I was out in the garage with him and Hellen came out to tell me I wasn't allowed to be out there with my dad. I just didn't understand. My little heart was broken. My dad was my world.
My aunt would come over and color with us and try to make candles out of crayon shavings in trix yogurt cups. One night, she had me out with her, we went swimming and had so much fun. We went to visit my dad's good friend Sharon, then Lorie took me home. We hung out in the garage and colored. I'm not sure why we were in the garage but it was cold. When I finally went in the house and got a bath, Hellen only let me have about 6 inches of water in the bottom of the tub and it was cold water. I wasn't allowed with Lorie after that, I didn't understand why.