Page 31 of I'm Not Yours
He laughed. “If you were wearing boots and walking through your apple orchard, your feet wouldn’t hurt.”
“That’s true.”
“How about coming with me to the barn dance?”
“I’m not going to the barn dance.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t dance.”
“Yes, you do. We danced in Yellowstone all the time. By the lake, in that field, camping at night with friends . . . near the elk that one time, after we got past that black bear . . .”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“It just was. Let’s say there was magic in the lake or in the waterfalls or something.”
“Huh. Well, there’s magic here in the apple orchards.”
“Haven’t seen it.”
“You will. We’ll dance at the barn dance and you’ll know those apples have something special in them.”
“Apples are for apple pies, not dancing.”
“Bake us an apple pie and then we’ll go dancing in a barn. If you moved away, you would miss next year’s barn dance and that would be bad. Plus, I would miss you.”
“You would?” I loved Jace’s voice. The deepness of it, the totally masculine tone.
“Yes. I’ve always missed you. Come home, Allie. Please?”
“I can’t.” I watched another fish go flying through the air. “I can’t.”
My heart was cracking like a melon split in two by a hatchet. Ten feet away from me a man with a violin started playing a poignant love song, and I teared up.
“Well, if you can’t come home for me, come home for Margaret and Bob, Spot the Cat and Marvin, Spunky Joy and Leroy. They told me yesterday, when I was visiting and feeding them, that they missed you. What about Mr. Jezebel Rooster? What would he do without you? He so enjoys seeing you firstthing in the morning. He’s lonely. He’s lost without you. He’ll never be happy without you.”
I wiped my tears. “I don’t want Mr. Jezebel to be unhappy and lonely.”
“Neither do I, Allie,” Jace said softly. “I don’t want that at all.”
When I hung up the phone I realized that Jace was still pursuing me, even though I told him I didn’t want kids. I assumed he assumed I would change my mind. The tears kept falling.
I left my dad’s dark, decrepit trailer when I was sixteen. Almost panting with fear, I hastily packed a bag of clothes and everything I had brought with me from Montana that had been my mother’s.
I recognized, somewhere in that firestorm of turmoil, in the hail of verbal attacks and neglect from my dad, that if I didn’t leave, I would permanently succumb to my pervasive depression and probably self-destruct.
I had almost no will to live. I missed my loving, kind mother, and my grief had only deepened for her until it was a rock in my soul. I missed the mountains of Montana, and Flathead Lake, and our blue house. I missed feeling safe, feeling loved. My dad told me I was no one—a poor and ugly kid with odd gold eyes—and I believed it.
There was one tiny and shiny spark, however, down deep in my heart, that hoped things would be better, that believed thingscouldbe better, and it pushed me out the door. I am sure that spark was my mother’s love. I remembered how often she had told me that she loved me, that I was a lovely person and showed my “Montana style” with flair and fashion.
My dad worked factory-type jobs until he was fired. Most nights he came home drunk, or he would come home and start slugging it down. Until I was old enough to get a job,I did anything I could to avoid going home after school. I joined sports and arts programs and helped teachers. One of my teachers actually had a sewing machine in her room, and I spent a lot of time making my used clothing look individualistic and modern, with lace, silk, beads, even leather, like my mother taught me. I was desperate for cool clothes so people wouldn’t know the truth. Kids actually called me “Model Allie,” and thought I was a trendsetter because of my outfits. They had no idea the dire straits I lived in—my clothes kept that hidden from them.
I would leave if he was home, pretending I was going to do homework at someone’s house. In reality, I would go hide outside somewhere, usually in the orchard, but I would also sometimes bike to a forest near our home and hike around, sit on a rock and fall apart, watch the leaves change color, or follow a squirrel. It’s where my love of nature started.
Nature didn’t judge, it didn’t hit, it didn’t scream and intimidate, it didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Nature was always changing, comforting, soothing. There was originality and beauty in every leaf, flower, and tree. Nature was a friend who gave back without words. I lived half of my childhood in nature.
