hiding

there is one who hides. she hides in places, like a closet. we remember what she saw, when she used to hide places. maybe she is not real, but we do remember what she saw. she saw a big shadow, it was a man. he went to a little girl in a bed. she was the size halfway down the bed. her head was at the top and her feet were at the middle. that is how big she was. it was at night. the one who hides was inside the closet. she saw the clothes over her head. she saw the shoes on the floor and some toys and some fuzz on the carpet. she looked. the man was still there. he was a nightmare bad dream kind of shadow man. the one who hides stayed inside of the closet.

nobody would see her in the closet. she was super secret safe and hiding in there. she kept looking, waiting for the bad dream to be over. she did not like to hide in the closet but she did not want the bad dream man to see her. she had to be invisible.

sometimes she would hide in other places like behind a chair. she saw things she did not like to see. loud noises happened over her head where she could not see. she would hide anyplace, but sometimes there was nowhere to hide. sometimes she just had to pretend to hide and try to be invisible.

that is one thing we remember.

this is another thing we remember.

it was christmas time. there was a big tree, way over my head, up to the ceiling. there were presents. one of the presents was for me. i could see my name on it. i knew how to spell my name even though i did not go to school yet i still knew how to spell. that was a super important present. it was round and soft and tall. i knew what it was. it was a sleeping bag. i wanted a sleeping bag. loud noises. there were people on the stairs. they were fighting. i looked around the door but then i went back and stopped looking. mommy fell down the stairs but the baby did not get hurt. mommy was holding the baby. it was bad. this night was the night before christmas.

because of that fight and how mommy fell down the stairs, we did not stay there that night. we went to grandma and grandpa's house. they did not live too far away. we went there and we took our presents. maybe santa claus would not find me? i got to open one present that night. i opened the important present. the sleeping bag. it is good i got a sleeping bag because i slept on the floor. i slept on the floor under a lamp. there were four lights on the lamp, in a stack. the lights were on a pole, and they were one, two, three, four, up the pole. i was next to grandpa's chair. my sleeping bag had jungle animals on it like zebras and tigers and elephants. inside it was green. it was new. it was an important present.

we did not stay away though. he came and said he was sorry and he would not do that again. we went back home sometime soon. then we were going to move very far away from everyone. my big sisters did not go with us. they went to a different house to live. i was the big one after that but i did not feel very big. i still felt little. but i was the biggest and i had to help.

i remember one other thing. this is a happy thing. when we moved to the new place there was snow. there was not snow at our old place, it did not get cold at that place except one time when i was very little we went up a mountain and there was snow and i played in the snow. i did not have mittens that time so i put socks on my hands instead and i played with the snow. i liked that. in the new place there was snow everywhere. it was very high. when we were going there, one time it snowed very much and we stayed at a motel and we watched tv all day or maybe more days. the snow got so high it was over the windows and it was dark in there.

then the snow was over and we could keep going to our new house. it was all by itself. and there was a hill of snow. i could take boxes from diapers and slide down the hill inside of them. it was like a sled but it did not cost money. that was a good way to play. then we moved to a different house. it was an apartment. there was a boy there and i played with him. we made a raft and we went onto a pond only it wasn't a pond it was a big puddle. we played there.

after that i was five. on the day i was five we moved again. we got on an airplane. it was a big airplane. it had stairs inside, an upstairs and a downstairs. we could not go upstairs, just downstairs. who was on that airplane with me was my mommy, and my baby sister and my baby brother. i do not remember where the man was. he went away for a while. i do not remember why. then we had to go to live somewhere else because we did not have money to pay for an apartment. but we did not have to throw everything away. we kept some things like my bunny and my sister's bunny that someone at church gave to us. one was pink and brown and one was purple and brown.

that is all i want to write. they say i am supposed to write my name but i do not want to. i do not want to have a name. they say i can say i am anonymous. that means that i am not writing my name.