One thousand, three hundred eighty-four and a half miles. Three days. Two parents in their mid-twenties, two daughters, one elderly calico cat named Piddles. A Dodge sedan and an old UPS truck painted gold and Kelly green. A hand-painted sign that read SHERWOOD FOREST BUILDERS. Jackson's "Thriller" on the radio. Both vehicles packed tight and out of gas on this April day in 1984. This was how we arrived in Jacksonville, Florida, sweaty and bewildered. I was sure I'd just landed in hell.
Before the move from Michigan, the dominoes of our lives began to fall. The domino of my parents buying eighty acres more than they could afford. The domino of my falling in love with that farm and those trees. The domino of meeting God in the woods. The blizzard dominoes, so close together and cutting the power, the roads, the food supply. The Michigan economy and union strike dominoes. The domino of bankruptcy. The domino of the job offers in Florida. The domino of two months to sell everything you own, including the dog. The domino of no time to say goodbye.
These truths happened and led to one another. The fatal finger from the sky knocked those dominoes down, down, down.
But while my parents came to Jacksonville relieved, I came crying.
Because I'd spent my first ten years on wild acreage in the Michigan woods. I knew solitude. Resilience. Creativity and freedom. I'd met God in the trees, not at church. Sweet witches and fairies too. I read often and wrote stories of my own. I loved Fred Rogers, Bob Ross, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I daydreamed of motherhood and authorship—of making my mark on the world in unique and vibrant ways. I'd be an artist mother writer hiker friend.
My second ten years happened in Florida. I came with all that I knew, and what I knew wasn't useful here.
We had pizza at the apartment pool on our first day in Jack-son-ville. I ground the hard consonants of this new town in my head. We'd come from vowel sounds. Es-ca-na-ba. Nothing would ever be the same again.
The dominoes kept on falling.
The domino of an apartment in a blistering hot Southern city, full of foreign sounds, colors, and crowds. The dominos of air-conditioning and cable TV: endless reruns of Perry Mason, Little House on the Prairie, and Trapper John, M.D. I kept a blanket over my head, afraid to go outside. I cried, stopped eating until my stomach ached, and sat in the dark.
A year later, I was eleven, watching R-rated Silkwood and Stephen King's Cat's Eye on HBO in the apartments of kids whose mothers weren't home. I avoided the heat, stayed angry at the world, and started to find my words. I screamed often. My body popped sudden boobs and pimples, like a carnival sprouting in a parking lot. Anger is a stage of grief, but no one told me that, and no one called it grief anyway. They called it adolescence, and it was a problem to solve.
And so, there was the domino of my bad attitude. The domino of my rapid changes. The domino of my parents' efforts to resettle in a new city. The domino of us all feeling so overwhelmed. The domino of a glistening megachurch in the heart of downtown Jacksonville, shining like a beacon on TV, offering hope and belonging. The domino of my dad's resistance against the domino of my mom's persistence. The domino of the magic words from the pastor's lips.
We were sitting in our living room around the TV—Dad, Mom, me, and my younger sister, Monica. My mom wanted us to go to church like when she grew up. She said it would help us settle in better, adjust to Florida. The church promises to comfort the vulnerable and soothe the grieving.
The camera panned the audience—more people than I'd ever seen all together. A bald man with sharp features and a Hollywood suit stood at the wooden pulpit. "That's Dr. Vines," Mom said. "They have two pastors at First Baptist."
Excerpted from A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings. Copyright © 2024 by Tia Levings. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
