Even a Georgia Peach

On Australian Cattle Dogs, Hamster Trauma, and some guy named Kevin

Me and my friend Darrell in our driveway on Gamel Rd

I’m hiding in the hay when some guy named Randy pulls up to our house in Dallas, Georgia with a U-Haul truck. My parents bring out cages for my three cats, one Australian cattle dog and two hamsters and tell me to go on and say goodbye to my best friend, Polly, up the road.

We’re leaving the South and moving back home to Arlington, Virginia.

Polly’s daddy says this makes ‘bout as much sense as tits on a boar hog and I’m inclined to agree. At nine years old, I’ve just spent the past two years — by far the most formative in my life thus far — basking in dirt roads and sweet tea less than an hour from the Alabama line.

I LOVE Georgia.

Summertime in Georgia means riding horses bareback to 7-11, wads of Skoal that land just before your bare feet by way of a greeting and hours upon hours of small town gossip on the neighbors’ front porch. It means lightning bugs and catching turtles down by the creek and wide open spaces with room to make all the big mistakes.

It’s been awhile since I’ve played in the suburbs of our nation’s capital but I already know it’s everything Georgia’s not — that, among other things, I done got myself an accent that belies the very real knowledge bopping around in my head. Like, for instance, all the names of the moons of Jupiter I just learned on my favorite computer game, Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego ?

Our neighbor in Dallas, of course, ain’t having none of it. “There ain’t but one moon,” he tells me. “And God called it moon.”

But he listens just the same and, when I’m done rambling on about Europa, Ganymede and Castillo, shows me the missing toe he preserves in a bottle of whiskey.

…

Try as I might to plead with Mama and Daddy — to remind them of all the beauty and wonder of our seven acres — their minds are made. We pile into our ‘92 Dodge Intrepid and drive 12 hours to a new rental house in a new neighborhood completely different than the one we lived in before. Before I know it, I’m stuck unpacking boxes in a corner suburban lot just off a major thoroughfare.

Our dog, Lucky, barely has room to chase his own tail.

Just when I think things can’t possibly get any worse, the historic heat wave of 1995 rolls in and I become a prisoner of the new house with nothing to do but document the conditions of our confinement in my diary.

The one saving grace of our new home is a semi-detached basement apartment where I can play my computer games in relative quiet. I set up my two hamsters, Pucky and Billboy, down there as well.

But then… I overhear my mama on the phone with a friend talkin’ ‘bout some guy named Kevin.

One thing you should know about my mama: she collects people in the same way I collect animals. Kevin needs a cheap place to live — her friend wonders if he could maybe rent OUR basement? Or work out a kind of chores for rent kind of deal? 

I take a deep breath and remind Mama the basement is already spoken for — that’s where we’re putting my hamsters! — but she doesn’t seem in the least bit concerned.

“Oh, I’m sure Kevin loves hamsters, sweetie.” she says.

…

Kevin does NOT love hamsters.
Or any animals, really.

He pulls up to our front door with an oversized suitcase and looks non-plussed when I introduce him to Lucky, Pucky, Billboy, Cricket, Snoopy, and Sabrina. When I explain Pucky, my female hamster, is pregnant and graciously ask if he’d like to help name the baby rodents that will soon take up residency alongside him in the basement, he has nothing clever to contribute.

”Why don’t you name one Fucky?” he says.

When Pucky gives birth and eats her own babies just a few days later¹ — I won’t say it’s Kevin’s fault, exactly, but what I do know is he just stands there and watches her chomp them down.

Like a porch light is on but no one’s home.

Except Kevin IS home.
Kevin is always home.

Alongside the weatherman’s warnings re: the heat wave and existential concerns about humanity’s survival, I carefully document Kevin’s behavior to make my case for his eviction.

Of course, Kevin doesn’t seem to like me much, either, but that’s no surprise.

Even my own grandparents don’t seem to appreciate their newly Southern granddaughter. They’re constantly correcting my accent and grammar, imploring me to say “is not,” “are not”, “will not”,  instead of “ain’t.”

They don’t know what to make of the country songs Mama and I love to sing at the top of our lungs in the car, like “Boot Scoot’n Boogie” or “I like my women a little on the trashy side.”

“Too much lipstick and uh, too much rouge, gets me excited leaves me feeling confused!”

And maybe it is Mama’s lipstick that has Kevin confused about where he lives, exactly, because while I could’ve sworn he rented the basement apartment, like a game of Whack-A-Mole I wake up each morning and find him making coffee in our kitchen, breathing our air, eating our food —

— and giving us all kinds of unsolicited advice like,

“Maybe you should train your dog.”

After it bites him.

I have to politely explain our dog, Lucky, is an Australian Cattle Dog, quite literally bred to bite things and get them back where they belong.

Not that Kevin in the basement is an entirely preferable state of affairs.

He gets back at me by banging pots and pans at 3 in the morning —

— and this at a time when I really need my beauty sleep if I’m ever going to make it in this town because the kids in this neighborhood all have moms who clock billable hours. They’re getting their starts in life at HIGHLY structured summer camps while I’m stuck at home with Kevin.

And Mama.

What I don’t say to Kevin, of course — what I don’t know how to quite articulate myself — is that I don’t know where I belong, either.

…

                                      Then, one beautiful fall day, Kevin moves.

…

My parents never told me why Kevin left, exactly. I know one day I came home and declared loudly that Kevin’s face looked like a tennis shoe with the shoe laces pulled too tight — an anecdote that always felt so out of character to me until I stumbled upon my childhood diary. I look back now and feel a little bad that my dog bit him. I feel bad I wasn’t more welcoming. I’ve certainly crashed on my own share of couches over the years and, bless his heart, I think Kevin was actually a pretty decent dude.

Although I will say, with Kevin gone, all my problems did… magically… disappear?

The world moved on to the Blizzard of ’96. I got to play outside and run in the snow. I joined Poetry Club, wrote a sonnet about my hamster trauma, made some friends and even started to write in cursive.

…

So, maybe Kevin really was the source of all my nine-year-old angst that summer of ‘95.

Or maybe the heat can really get to a girl and
make her pitch a hissy fit,

Even… a Georgia Peach.

Further Reading:

“You Can’t Kill the Rooster” by David Sedaris.

Quote: “When I was young, my father was transferred and our family moved from western New York State to Raleigh, North Carolina. IBM had relocated a great many northerners, and together we made relentless fun of our new neighbors and their poky, backward way of life. […] Our parents discouraged us from using the titles ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ when addressing a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would automatically be disinherited.”

1. I think this might have been my first foray into criminal justice reform. To me, Pucky will always be more than the worst thing she ever done.