I Am Kemmie

The whole of Kemmie Martin’s childhood was big. Not so much the physical or geographical size of things or because it was full of great events or the greatness of people but in the oversupply of danger and cautionary warnings held within the many spaces and places she was trapped, bounced around or shoved into.

It was in the early enclosures of home that Kemmie, now in her sixties, recalls the tacit need to avoid the shiftiness of her home space by being as small or as close to invisible as possible. Cloaked among the beckoning aroma of home baked pies and the sizzling scent of spray starch met by a hot iron was danger. Predators, as shifty and odorous as tom cats, were ever and always on the prowl to find the moment to rouse or wield their obsceneness on her.

She was about five when her earliest memory of wanting to stop something but couldn’t was; though she had a knowing that it was long before then. She couldn’t stop it then or know the words it was called to speak it; or to who? The who were the familial and familiar; the who were the adults at home and gatherers at others homes; the who were the predators and the unseeing.

On a weekly card games night, the players gathered were a cancer of theses malignant and benign who’s. They sat as usual at the faded maroon, tattered leather card table, flutter shuffling cards, pot belly laughing and hacking on unfiltered gauzy brown lipped smokes. The exhaled ash white smog hung thick around the family of uncles, aunts, gramma, grampa and neighbors framing the cluster like a seedy black and white photo—mom and dad were out dancing the jive and jitterbug at the local dance hall though, being home wouldn’t have mattered.

They all sat complicit, by deliberation or at best ignorance, when the boogie man of the night upon the flush of the toilet, entered Kemmie’s adjacent bedroom at the back corner of the house. Kemmie heard the thick hollowed judder of her warped bedroom door open and felt the influx of dull shadowy air. She expected to hear the big creak from the lifted and wobbly floorboard at the threshold into her room but the dark figure must have known of it, side stepping the bullseye to elicit only a small squinching sound from its margin. The whisper as the dark shape drew nearer shushing,

“Hey, aren’t you asleep yet?”

Before recognition of the voice set in, his hand cupped her mouth and his hefty weight pressed her small frame into quiet and submission. He repulsively smelled like ivory soap, acrid tobacco, musky sweet sweat and brown bottles of drink. Kemmie’s memory stopped here—though the deep distress loitered like a predator.

Through the span of her early years, the dangers of home and the flawed hearth of small-town Mayfair B.C. congealed her senses like tomato aspic. Her young mind meeting the understanding she was no longer a part of the human pack where protection was to be assured—she was dehumanized. Much like a pet dog who has been leashed to be more humanized; conversely, Kemmie had to become more animal. It was not only survival but a change in existence that highlighted her wits and fired her neuropathways to her deepest animal instincts—the onset of which she was mostly unaware.

Her whole being triggered and with the aid of human thought, (not afforded to the domesticated dog) her study of the world was always on. Favorably, small town life provided advantage with consistent familiarity of incoming and outgoing friend or FOE — the lap of an uncle or the touch of a regular family friend. These encounters she noted, could often be avoided or averted. Maybe by finding a room to hide away in—though that had to be carefully considered as it carried the risk of being found and trapped. Or, when possible, by helping the homey aunt in the kitchen with the food. This by far being the most desirable where for arrested moments she could enjoy sounds and aromas un-tethered to danger. Her heightened animal senses basking in the delights of the wooden spoons stirring blooping gravy; the super sweet smell and puffy crunch of Rice Krispies squares being pressed into the tin pan and even the muffled knocks and splashes of dishes being washed in the sink. Sometimes at bigger gatherings, it meant becoming a small attachment at the side of a trusted (benign) one—though that did not assuredly work as a chosen one was not always to be trusted.

“Go sit on uncle Ron’s lap” or “Give Bill a kiss” was often uttered from the trusted one’s mouth. Kemmie would look over at uncle Ron tapping his lap or Bill, the friend, winking the invitation of that kiss. She could then maybe play shy whining low melodic pleas “I don’t want to” or “I don’t like him” into the overly perfumed earlobe which sometimes worked but could just as well elicit more encouragement. If,

“Go on, uncle Ron doesn’t bite”; “He hasn’t seen you in a while”, was rallied back, it would usually spur any number of the others in the room in high-toned sweet baby talk to echo it.

“Go on” with hands flicking gestures towards the two men with the Cheshire cat grins.

Regrettably then, forced by the complicity of the room, Kemmie would have to comply and kiss the family friend or endure the fidgety lap of uncle Ron. Validating assertions would follow, uttered by the many painted lips to the niceties duly carried out.  

“There now, that’s wasn’t hard or so bad, was it?”

Benign—Trusted?

Uncle Ron’s evil flourished under the dismal awareness of the trusted, the ignorant and the lascivious kinship of the voyeur conspirators. Though in later years, Kemmie knew the uncle Ron’s and kissy Bills needed no such fortification from others. They just needed to be locked up!

Living under the constant reminder she was on her own and that more danger than safety was held in those around her, Kemmie bore an increasing disconnection from her family and adults in general. She felt little for them. She did not love nor hate them. Her only regard for them was to witness and detect the seeming or actual evil intents or complicities amongst them and in violation line of her. At each nuance and the failed escape, Kemmie further developed her critical alertness of spaces, darkness, shadows; fixated stares, close standers, enticing tones, “would you like” offers and the pandering of puppeteering women.

Kemmie often observed and would feel like yelling when a child’s mother would parade and proclaim the beauty of her daughter and force her to pay physical or visual homage to the men goggling nods at the invitation to look; baton twirling and cartwheels seemed to be a keen favorite but, what would she yell—Stop? She also found it curious that at gatherings, the girls were always encouraged to pay such physical display to the men but not to the women. They were rewarded by the room for their cute giggles of embarrassment and getting it right. Puzzling though, was that girls weren’t expected to hug aunt Doris or kiss neighbor Betty but were chided to make good of those servitude's to the men. Kemmie knew fully the pathways being paved to those other girls but looks of caution to them did not transfer knowing. The years, decades and centuries of patriarchal social conditioning deeply quieted thought and notice amongst the suppressed women and normalized the passing on of servility and sexual subscription. Unable to feel safe and make sense of her world, Kemmie came to understand the need to also keep quiet but she could not supress her thought and resolve to keep it all away. She became unnoticeable, trusted no-one, watched everyone and saw everything. She got better and better at protecting herself.

At about ten years old, Kemmie was moved from small town life to numerous dirty townships in the closest major city a nine-hour drive west. It was just her and her mom; no grammas, aunts, uncles or family friends. Dad was long gone. Not dead, just gone to other women who would pair with his long Jamaican legs and arms and dance his calypso heart away and bed with him nightly. Mom, now shamefully divorced and having fallen from the Hallmark fiction of small-town facades had to get away.  The judgements and pressures could never be fully remediated unless she began again from scratch following the formula of marrying a local man and living happily ever after. Even then, the stain of disgrace, like blood on white, would still show. Penniless and shamed, mom took Kemmie and left. It was a surprise that Kemmie missed anything about Mayfair B.C. but, having been brought to this dripping damp, wallpaper over black mold room in the first decrepit building of many she would live in and, though housing was never really a home, she had to admit the houses back in Mayfair were homier.

 It has been said that it can be difficult for children coming from small towns to adjust to city life. Like somehow, small town life isn’t as ill as a city though it may smell better. Many children in small towns suffer the ills of social cavities and when of age are forced to either leave or opt for a social root canal and stay with the de-nerved smile of happy pretense. As far as Kemmie saw the only difference between small town and city was quantity and visibility. The illness of the city was too large to contain and spilled like oil into the streets. The dirty township housing allocated to the fallen was as degraded as the occupants’ lives within. Like a neglected kennel, these were the places the dehumanized found shelter. The un-bandaged wounded unable to navigate or abused by the social ills from within the city and from small towns everywhere homed in like pidgeon’s to these places of collective survival. Such was the way of living in dirty town; where the discarded human souls of society were crowded.

When Kemmie first arrived and had seen the hugeness of the city, she was somewhat overwhelmed and felt very small but she was quickly revisited by the good of that. Her empathic view of the populace overall did not shade her familiarity that evil also very much existed here. In the emblematic filth and decay of dirty town, disguised as innocuous outcasts were predators on the lookout; calculating and plotting sexual and social deviance in and beyond the dirty city townships. Intrinsically and gratifyingly, it was only a heartbeat before the acumen, intuition and tools of Mayfair town regained navigational control and furtively fine tuned her senses to the volume and slicker menace of the big city. Kemmie knew that menace used and relied on the power of the small; small motions, small noises, small spaces, small light, small treats and small enticements to prey on the small. Kemmie also knew she had the power of the small. She could detect the smallest menace in the spaces and faces around her, the small to infinitesimal flickering, dashes and flashes of caution in the shadows and light. She could smell deception and trickery like ivory soap. Good and evil know the power of the small. For her, the power of the small was her arsenal to survive.

And she did!