The Art of Invisibility: Learning How to Disappear
Let me show you how it’s done.
“Eddie, look! I got straight A’s on my report card!” I screeched, as my parents’ friend walked into the smokey bar room.
“Shhhh!” My mother quipped. “You shouldn’t brag, nobody likes a braggart,” she added as she pointed me back to my coloring table in the corner of the room.
My little 10-year-old heart sank, even when the news was good, I clearly wasn’t supposed to be seen or heard — which is why I had my own table with coloring books and colors at the local American Legion. So I could disappear while my parents got drunk.
As the youngest of eight, the product of an affair, and the red-headed step-child to my adoptive father’s family, I wasn’t supposed to exist, let alone have an opinion, be heard, or be seen.
By the time I was 13, I painted my room black, dressed in black, and did everything possible to disappear. I daydreamed about reinventing myself in a town far away.
Invisibility was a skill I mastered young.
