Inclined to Me

Chapter 1: 1950s Catch a Falling Star When I was five years old, I asked for a ball and chain for Christmas. I have no idea what was going through my head. It’s not as if I was from a family of reprobates. It may have had to do with my love for comic books, even as an early reader. Because that was also about the time I informed my family as I skipped downstairs, my brown ponytail bobbing, that I wanted to change my name from the woodsy-sounding Robin to Letitia, a name I associated with a diner waitress, don’t ask me why. I must have read about a Letitia character or seen one on TV, and I know I had seen pictures of prisoners in black and white stripes dragging their balls and chains. My mother did not go for either of my requests. “My gawd, Robin, where did you get that idea?” Mom would say between puffs on her Kent’s cigarette. It was the mid-1950s and life as I knew it was all Howdy Doody, Mouseketeers, Captain Kangaroo, playing cowboys and Indians in the woods, and wishing for, besides a ball and chain, a ride in the baby blue ’55 Buick Century convertible that sat across the street. Our family had a plain black Ford, and before that a Studebaker that looked like it had had one too many nose jobs. Even though I was never into cars per se, I liked style, and I knew it when I saw it. Maybe I wanted a ball and chain so I could be chained to such wealth as that cool hot rod and driven somewhere exotic. Or perhaps I was just stating the obvious: I was captive in a prison I could not yet define. Might as well accessorize. A year later, in first grade, I ran away from school.