Once I Was Eleven Years Old

When I think back to that autumn, it’s not the terrible incidents that unfolded that first come to mind. No, as strangely as it sounds, what I remember before all else is the way the leaves so crisply crunched beneath our sneakers, how the dogs awaited our return home, perched on the sofa and barking through the open window, the way my youngest sister laughed when I told her the stories of her infanthood. Only after that first wave of memories do I begin to recall the most prominent events of my childhood.

I was eleven, going on twelve, just starting my first year of middle school. My parents were excited, their eldest was growing up so fast, they said. My younger siblings, three of them at the time, shared that sentiment, but I couldn’t have felt any different. All I wanted was to return to being ten. Life seemed so much easier at ten.

Eleven, just one year up, changed everyone’s opinions of me. I was supposed to start acting like a proper young woman, I should start to be interested in boys, my personality would start changing at any time. Or at least everyone assured me. I didn’t want to change and I didn’t see why I had to. Didn’t the world have enough proper young women in it already? Surely my friends were enough. They had changed so much over the months, I was afraid they had been snatched by aliens and replaced with different people!

The only person who I think truly understood me was my littlest sister, Alli. At only seven, she saw me as another adult in her life, though I don’t suppose it helped that I consistently called her “little one”, but she treated me no differently than she ever had before. She was the one comfort in a world of bewilderment that I could rely on. My other sister, Anne, wanted too badly to switch places with me (if only she knew I would do so) and my brothers were too rowdy to care. Alli was my only solace.

The memory of the day it started is like an old photo album in my mind. There are yellowed pictures of important parts, and scribbled captions to give you context. The date is written so small on the side.

“‘Becca do you think the sun knows it’s shining on us?” Alli was walking on the sidewalk next to me. She had a yellow barrette at the top of one braid, and a blue one on the other.

“I don’t think the sun knows anything.” I squinted up at the bright yellow circle, then looked forward again. “I think it likes to hang in the sky and shine, and I don’t think it cares what it’s shining on.”

Alli seemed to be ok with this answer. She was always ok with my answers. “I don’t think I’d like to be the sun. It can’t smell cinnamon like us.”

I looked at her. “Why would it want to smell cinnamon?”

She shrugged. “Cinnamon smells good.”

I stuck out my tongue and rounded the corner. A big oak tree stood on it and it was commonplace to touch it in some way as you went by. I’d done this every day of my life since I could remember; Alli too. That day I reached up and pulled down a branch as far as it could go, and orange leaves rained down on us as it slingshotted back up.

When Alli was done playing and her giggles had died down, she said the expected, “Tell me about when I was little.”

I sighed. We did this almost every time we walked together, yet to her it never seemed to get old. Spoiler- it did to me. “One time, you were toying with a fork, and you tried to stab the chair leg. But your aim was pretty bad, even for a baby, and you hit my leg instead.” Alli burst into laughter, much to my faked chagrin. “Hey! I still have a scar and you didn’t even get a time out!”

“You probably deserved it. Trevor says you were a wild child.” She looked at me with her ‘I got you now’ face, and skipped forward a few feet. Trevor was the older of my younger brothers, by four seconds, and the bane of my existence. Alli knew this, and she used every opportunity to put his name in the conversation.

“Trevor wouldn't even remember. He was a baby too! If you want to hear a story about a real wild child, just ask mom about him!” I ran and caught up to her, just to hear a disbelieving hum.

“Mhmm.”

We teased each other a little more before we finally made the turn onto our street. I remember the exact moment I realized something was wrong. The exact moment my brain stopped being confused and started getting concerned. The exact moment my stomach dropped. 

There, right in front of my house, were several police cars and an ambulance. Red and blue lights were flashing everywhere and neighbors were staring from their porch steps. Funny enough, it wasn’t the chaos surrounding my home that made me worry most, it was the way my brothers ran to me from the front lawn.

Elijah and Trevor, twins I swear had to be pulled apart when they were born, the two most annoying brats in the world. They were still ten.

“Rebecca!”

My family never called me Rebecca. It was Becks or ‘Becca, but never Rebecca. I used that in school and in public, but never at home. My heart still breaks when I think of the way Trevor said it too; he was so scared. After that day, Rebecca could only be used at home.

A cop took us in his car before we even knew what was happening. We were taken to the station and the boys were questioned by cops in a different room while Alli and I were made to sit and wait.

As an adult, when I look back at how crazy everything was, I can’t help but feel angry towards the police and other adults for not even trying to help us or explain anything. Everytime I think I might’ve just imagined being held to a higher standard as an eleven year old, I think back to sitting in that waiting room, expected by everyone to comfort my little sister and not freak out myself. Different times, I guess.

The only person that actually seemed to care was an old lady in the seat across from us. She gave us watermelon candies from inside her purse and told us all about her son, who was studying abroad in some far away country. If I could thank that woman now… She doesn’t know how much the gestures meant.

Alli and I waited for half an hour by ourselves, then another with the twins, who filled us in best they could. Elijah was crying, and Trevor wouldn’t stop shaking, and I was the oldest. So I sat on the ground and let them lean into me, and I let Alli sit on my lap.

The story I heard was that Trevor and Eli came home, and walked straight into a stranger with a gun. He forced them into the living room and held them hostage when the cops arrived. They didn’t know who he was or why he was there and they didn’t know where Anne or our parents were.

It seems so crazy to me now, to think that I really didn’t infer what happened. Honestly, I probably did figure out that the man with the gun and our family members' disappearances were linked, but I just wouldn’t admit it to myself.

By the time the night was over, the police had gotten the event straight. The man had broken in for a robbery, most likely, and accidently ran into dad, who he then shot in the stomach. Anne and mom must have heard the gunshot and come downstairs, where mom was shot in the leg and Anne was hit on the head. Then he panicked, heard the twins come in, and used them as leverage against the police. Eventually, he was shot in the chest, and taken to the nearest hospital with the rest of my family.

I don’t remember much after that. It’s all kind of a blur. I know we stayed with my aunt for a little while, as my parents tried to find a new house and get the money for three people’s medical bills, and I know I probably visited dad in the hospital, and probably got over the whole incident with time. But I don’t remember doing any of it.

What I do remember was the way I started getting along with Trevor, how my answers stopped always being ok for Alli, or how I started to become a young woman and didn’t really notice. I remember walking with Alli to her school, and then walking to my new one; never seeing the tree again, and never touching it either. All of the things that had seemed so important, they just weren’t. They never had been.

I’m older now. I got through middle school, and high, and eventually I moved out. I met a boy I fell in love with and I made a family of my own. I tell them stories about my youngest sister when she was a baby, and compare annoying brothers when my oldest child starts to complain about her own. I reminisce about the good old days, and I grieve about the bad. Sometimes I do both in the same memory. But there's only one thing I know for certain in my photo album of life.

I really did change when I turned eleven.