The Chicken Coop

She had a habit of waking me up in the middle of the night, well, after two in the morning, which is when the bars closed in Wisconsin. She woke everyone up. She called people, drove to the home's of her adult children, knocked on neighbors doors; there were no limits to what she would do to find someone to stay up with her after a night of drinking. There was also no predicting her mood. As I grew into a teenager and started to develop sexually she became obsessed with me, and not in a good way. When she woke me up in the early hours of the morning, she was cruel, persistent, repetitive, violent, and intolerable. One summer night at the age of fourteen I waited until she passed out, packed a knapsack, and sneaked myself and my bike out of the house. I rode the couple of miles to the next small town where "friend's" lived. They were guys who had an apartment where I would hang out and buy and smoke pot after school.

When I arrived with my knapsack at four in the morning, they were still awake but not happy to see me. "What the hell are you doing here?" one asked. After all I was an under age high school kid who may have been entertaining but my arrival at this hour certainly was not a good sign. "I ran away from home". My pronouncement was met with an unequivocal, "you can not stay here." I told them I couldn't go home, my mom was abusive and I was going to try to become an emanicapted minor.

They must have seen my resolve so they helped me devise a plan, knowing their place was too hot. DeForest was a very small town and they had been visited by the cops more than once. Even Go-Go had been by to drag me out of their apartment.

I was hid in a small apartment of one of the local stoners. It was a top secret operation, sneaking me through the little town of DeForest into the apartment of a man who felt he could be arrested for being seen with me. He was not happy, but must have felt sorry for me. He allowed me to sleep on the floor of his small apartment, and in the morning my sister picked me up.

She and her musician husband lived in a converted chicken coop in Morrisonville Wisconsin. As tiny as you might imagine, it had three small rooms and an add-on bathroom. I slept on a cot in the living room and when school started the following fall, I rode my bike through the country roads from Morrisonville to DeForest and back home at the end of the day. I continued to waitress in my step dad's truck stop restaurant to help with rent and food.

Living in the chicken coop allowed me to thrive. I did well in school, joined the swim team and broke school records for the 100 meter crawl and IM (individual medley). I felt free and adventurous. I excelled in school, took drafting, shop, and small engines (the first girl to have ever branched into the boys territory).
The only rules were that I could do anything I wanted as long as I went to school and did my homework. One of my fondest memories is spending Saturday mornings smoking dope, cleaning the house, and listening to Joni Mitchell, over and over. When my Dad came to visit, he would pick up my brothers from home, and then come to the chicken coop to get me. Life was good in my sophomore year of high school.

Occasionally Go-Go still made her way out to torture us with her drunken diatribes. But now I felt protected in a way I never had living with her, with them. Pete, my brother-in-law, always managed to get her out of the house, even if he used me as an excuse, after all, I needed sleep for school. I didn't care, really. I felt free and safe and was certain I would never have to live with with her and be that vulnerable to her again.