grow.
Despite our wondrous appliances, life in Phoenix wasn't total luxury. We
had about a gazillion cockroaches, big, strong things with shiny wings.
We had just a few at first, but since Mom was not exactly a compulsive
cleaner, they multiplied. After a while, entire armies were scuttling
across the walls and the floors and the kitchen counters. In Battle
Mountain, we'd had lizards to eat the flies and cats to eat the lizards. We
couldn't think of any animal that liked to eat roaches, so I suggested we
buy roach spray, like all our neighbors did, but Mom was opposed to
chemical warfare. It was like with those Shell No-Pest strips, she said;
we'd end up poisoning ourselves, too.
Mom decided hand-to-hand combat was the best tactic. We conducted
roach massacres in the kitchen at night, because that was when they
came out in force. We armed ourselves with rolled-up magazines or
shoes—even though I was only nine, I already wore size-ten shoes that
Brian called. "roach killers"—and sneaked into the kitchen. Mom threw
the light switch, and we kids all started the assault. You didn't even have
to aim. We had so many roaches that if you hit any flat surface, you were
sure to take out at least a few.
The house also had termites. We discovered this a few months after we
moved in, when Lori's foot crashed through the spongy wood floor in the
living room. After inspecting the house, Dad decided that the termite
infestation was so severe nothing could be done about it. We'd have to
coexist with the critters. So we walked around the hole in the living
room floor.
But the wood was chewed through everywhere. We kept stepping on soft
spots in the floorboards, crashing through, and creating new holes.
"Damned if this floor isn't starting to look like a piece of Swiss cheese,"
Dad said one day. He told me to fetch him his wire cutters, a hammer,
and some roofing nails. He finished off the beer he was drinking, snipped