Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim Read Free Book Online

home nothing was normal. My brother had decided that his experiment in the garage was a success and now insisted on repeating this activity as often as possible. New activities were introduced, usually with the aid of whatever pornographic magazine he was reading that week, and insurrection was punished swiftly and mercilessly. I still have some of those awful visual memories, like the time I almost made it to the front door, my hand slipping off the doorknob as I fell to the floor, and watching my fingernails scrape the hardwood floor, as I was dragged back by my feet.
    I understand how people in these situations can develop multiple personalities. I sometimes wish I had. I learned a whole bunch of stuff nobody, particularly not a child, should learn. I learned how to pretend that hours, days, entire weeks had simply never taken place. I learned how not to cry, how not to show pain, and what to do to guarantee myself a few hours of peace and quiet. I learned how to pretend to be happy when I wasn’t. I learned to play dead. I learned how to lie. I’ve always been fascinated by what people are willing to do to survive, physically and mentally; how the human mind will warp, bend, twist, and adapt itself to even the most unbelievable situations if it thinks there’s a chance of survival. When I was a bit older, my friends used to ask me why I had so many weird books about people in horrible situations—stuff about wars, plagues, the Holocaust. It was because I was fascinated by how these people lived through such horrors and survived, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. I was looking for help in that department.
    I also learned how to do drugs and get high. I understand that some people get through childhoods like this without using any substances at all. They must be a lot tougher than I am. I grabbed a break anywhere I could get it. Of course, the drugs weren’t for my benefit. Stefan was taking every substance known to man and didn’t want to “drink alone,” as it were. I learned to roll joints. I learned to smoke pot, but I would cough too much to hold it in. So he taught me to drink it in tea. That worked.
    By this time, I was eight, and my brother was home all day. He was no longer working. After his show, Land of the Giants, was canceled in 1970, his voice changed, and he grew to over six feet tall. All fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds want to look older, but for a kid actor, that’s death. This freed up his time for other activities. School wasn’t one of them.
    He’d long ago managed to convince everyone that he didn’t need to go to school like “regular people.” The whole business of dealing with teachers and other children, let alone doing homework, seemed impossible for him. It was a great relief to everyone when he got a series where he could be tutored on the set. The trouble arose when they weren’t filming, and he was expected to enroll in a school—somewhere, anywhere.
    For a while my parents tried putting him in what was then the premier school for rich hippie parents in Los Angeles, Summerhill. The only decent thing he got out of that school was a cat. Really. The school cat was named Malcolm X because no one figured out, until it was too late, that Malcolm was really a female (basic biology being one of the many subjects outside of its core curriculum). Malcolm gave birth to seven kittens in our garage. I promptly picked out the cutest one and named it Bonnie after the movie Bonnie and Clyde. It died before its eyes even opened, and we buried it in the front yard as my brother played taps on his kazoo. So I got to pick another kitten, which I called Maude, and she lived for fourteen years.
    Summerhill was a great school for Stefan, as they didn’t ask him to do anything, and he didn’t have to go if he didn’t feel like it. I found this fascinating and begged my parents repeatedly to take me out of public school and send me to this magical place.
    All they said was,