felicia is never gonna get out of the city.  this probably isn't even true but the only proof either way is in support of that first statement.  felicia is never gonna get out of the city. 

felicia isn't even from the city so how on earth could this have happened?  true she was first generation out of the city & maybe the gravity of that recentness was just too strong a pull to resist.  who knows.  she doesn't know.  she never knew she wanted to be there, but nearly a decade a later & she still is.  but one thought, one memory, a sensory memory really, though she can remember the place, just kinda sticks in her soul, her skull really.  ick, sticks in her skull, makes the memory sound like schrapnell doesn't it...  anyway, here's the memory, like a fish out of water:

the house felicia grew up in had a front yard that grew one ringworm like ring of tall grass.  there is a simple explanation for this & i assure you it wasn't an intentional landscaping flourish.  you see not too far down in the earth below that spot was the septic tank.  suffice it to say that, that ring of earth was well fertilized & the grass grew quick, lush & tall while the rest of the yard stayed sandy & barren, pine barren to be exact.  in fact, one christmas when felicia's little brother paul was chubbilly propped on the shopping mall santa's lap & asked what he wanted for christmas he replied, "grass".

Felicia had many fond memories of that ring of grass, she spent many a sunny day next to her hawaiin tropic scented mother on equally as oiled canvas chairs sunbathing in that ring.  not to mention the pride filled moment when she finished reading her first entire book, a book on dinosaurs, in that septic fueled wavy grass ring.

oh, but none of these are the memory, though its relevent to mention that she surely could have & probably did have the sensory experience during those times in the ring. 

the memory is this:

sitting in the ring, brighter than bright sunlight, so bright!  so bright that she can't even keep her eyes open.  sometimes she opens them, just a blink really, & all she sees is that bright white yellow sunshine & that tall spiky swaying greener than green grass.  she closes her eyes but not in an attempt to block it out, she just cant help it, its too bright, it makes her giddy.  it makes her feel goooood.  she is drenched in sunlight, not just head to toe but inside out.  her closed eyelids do not see darkness, but red orangey bursts & swirls, closing her eyes was like swallowing, gulping the sun.  a smile spreads across her face like a glorious chill.  she feels it all through her body, maybe she's 6 years old?  maybe she's 9 1/2.  she cannot remember now if it was a time when her parents were still together?  if both her grandfathers were still alive?  if the neighbor boy had yet to come by to borrow a bottle of ketchup just as she was walking through the living room completely naked.  the sunshine was captured delicately & precisely in her child mind without any other details to give it a specific year, & she liked it that way.  unadulterated.