2002-02-01|10:17 a.m.
"You shall have no other gods before Me."
One warm night my dad was working in his greenhouse and saw that he needed more timber to complete his work for the day. He called out for my mom and asked her to go to the hardware store for him before it got dark.
I was about seven years old. My brother and I were playing in the dirt. Or maybe I was convincing him to eat dog food. It could have been anything. I was a little mean spirited. Before my mom left, my brother was gone and I wandered off myself to play. I had an insanely vivid imagination, I believe. I probably was off fighting dragons. Hours pass.
Suddenly, my dad finds me and lifts me up by my shirt.
"Where is your brother?" he shouts with panic.
"I don't know."
"Dammit M, you are supposed to be looking out for him. Think. Where is he?" his voice quickens. Now he is hurting my arm from his grip. It is almost dark.
I start to cry. I can barely talk. I whimper something about not knowing I was watching for him, but it is unintelligible.
My dad's face becomes distorted and he says flatly, "See this board in my hand? If you do not think about where your brother is and something happens to him, I will hit you."
My mom drives up. My two-year-old brother stumbles out of the car.
"You shall not make for yourself a carved image any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them."
My dad had this amazing greenhouse when I was young. Inside the humid little dormitory of exotic plants, I was the unmoved mover. I was the demi-god of tiny plastic creatures. Standing before a pot of soil, pot figurines in hand, gnomes and eagles danced among rocks and mounds of earth. Their conflicts were short, hours maybe, and involved everything from territory rights to unrequited love. They were my best friends.
"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."
My dad and I loved to wrestle with each other. It would almost always end with my foot slipping or my arm swinging back and hitting him in the nose. He would never get mad, he'd just call it quits. One time, he was really pinning me good, and I was growing tired and frustrated.
"Bastard," I called him.
With one fast, unseen swish his hand came down upon my cheek and my face grew tight and silent.
"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
One of my favorite cartoons ever was Heman and She Ra. At the end of the episodes, as I remember, this small owl-looking creature would be hidden in some scene of the show. Sometimes he'd be in tree, other times on a rock. At the end of the episode you'd have to reveal him before he revealed himself. I thought this was the cleverest thing in the world.
"Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you."
One night I dreamt that I fell out of bed. In the dream and in real life, I stood up and lifted my leg to return to bed. Only I never left it and my body slammed against the wall next to my bed instead. Hitting the wall, I fell backwards (still sleeping) and onto the floor. I woke the next morning wondering how I ended up on the floor and not in my bed.
"You shall not murder."
My dad, loving his plants, hated snails. When he would find one he'd pick it up and throw it far into the street to be crushed by a passing car. I secretly hated this. I'd find the snails and hide them among the grass, cautioning them to stay hidden. They were wise and unhurried, slowly moving among the forest of grass blades. They donned eyes like aliens that protruded upwards, tempting my tiny hands to poke one, at which it would retract and return.
"You shall not commit adultery."
One day in second grade we were cutting out objects to learn precision. A boy that bothered me constantly came up to me and in one swoop chopped a chunk off of my long brown hair and placed it next to me. The teacher walked up and noticed my hair lying on the desk. She scolded me. I apologized. I hated that boy.
"You shall not steal."
My great grandmother's house was full of nick-knacks. I thought they were horrible looking. Full of dust and yellowed by time, their porcelain faces disgusted me. After returning home from visiting her onetime, she called up my parents. She had convinced them that I had stolen one. She saw me eyeing one during my time there and found it missing. My parents demanded I return it. For hours I sat crying on our couch promising her misunderstanding and my innocence.
Weeks later she called back to apologize. She had misplaced it while cleaning before we visited that day.
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
The first "big" word I ever learned was the word nocturnal. I think my dad loved children because he enjoyed filling their thirsty minds with knowledge.
For one year of my life an owl lived in a tree that sat in our yard. Every time I found him in the tree it was daylight, and because owls are nocturnal, he was asleep. After dinner one night, I grabbed a flashlight and sneaked outside. I flashed the light beam straight into his direction. His eyes fully open startled me. His predator face was much different than the dormant one. My dad came up behind me and scolded my intrusion. I realized my invasion and a swarm of guilt came over me. The next day I arose and went outside to apologize to him, begging him not to leave my tree.
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, before I began going to day care everyday, I would walk with my friend Charlene to her house where her mom would watch us. Always before entering her house, we'd remove our small shoes and place them outside. Inside was always the cool, fresh smell of Taiwanese food. Her mother would greet us. Charlene had these unusual looking wooden shoes that had two blocks under them like platforms that she'd put on to walk around her house. I simply walked barefoot in pink socks. Her house was perfect looking. Everything dustless, and uncluttered. And so matched her family.
I remember asking to go to the bathroom and sneaking off to the front door. There was pairs of those wooden shoes lined up against a wall holding a large gold framed mirror. I pulled on the shoes and with two fingers pulled at the corners of my eyes. I was Charlene. Enigmatic and catlike with my wooden shoes and my almond shaped eyes.