Bigger

After I was born, we were living in Lincoln Park in Duluth, MN. We had this beautiful house that had natural wood work. My oldest brother would "hang" me from the header on the doorway between our dining room and living room. I was about 9 months old and I would just hang on as tight as I could. When I was able to move around on my own, I would just do what I wanted. One day, as my mom and brother were outside doing yard work, I decided I needed to go inside. My mom looked frantically around the house for me. Right before she was going to call the police to report me missing, she decided to check my bedroom again. She decided to move my bed out from the wall and that is where she found me. I was curled up against the wall and had put myself down for a nap. My brother and I would always put our toys into the wooden banister caps and they would always magically reappear the next day. Our mom would dig them out after we had gone to bed every night. We moved out onto the Indian Reservation out in Cloquet, MN when I was still very young. We then got two HUGE dogs. They were later shot; Thunder had lower double digit shot wounds and Lightening had close to 15 gun shots. They both lived, but my mother was so terrified that we would be next. So while she was 8 months pregnant with my baby brother, we all moved to a different area on the Rez. Right next door to us, there was a fantastic family. The youngest was a little girl my exact age. We became very best friends and even wore a path in the woods between our houses. My whole family called me Beaner because I was just so little, but I would cry and whine that I hated that name and I wanted to be called by my real name. I also was able to figure out a way to control myself while being tickled. But instead of having no reaction, I would tell the instigator that I was going to scream. When they would come closer, but not touching me, I would let out one of those blood-curdling, ear-piercing screams that makes you want to dig your head into the sand. After a few years of living on the reservation, we found a huge house for our huge family just north of Cloquet. There were my dad, my mom, my older brother (but not my oldest), me, my little sister, and my baby brother. My other siblings at that time were my oldest sister, my oldest brother, another sister we didn't know about yet, and another sister who's step-dad wouldn't allow us contact with her.