I remember when they had the wedding. I was not there, but I remember it clearly because it was the only time I'd ever seen Jessica in a dress, dirty-yellow like she'd lolled around on the ground with it on. She showed up at our screen door that forsythia afternoon, pressing tiny fingers against the insect-webbing, telling me, "I have a new daddy now." Jessica was always like that, showing up when we least expected it, like right after church, when we were still in our good clothes, or during dinner, or on footsie-pajama cartoonshow Saturday mornings, when she stepped across the threshold of our den with those eyes of hers (crazy candleflame yellow) and they were enough to take me away from Snoopy or Scooby or Inspector Gadget's latest one-dimensional endeavor in a box, in a world which was not ours. So we went across the street to the Big Red House (a box that was ours) and on the crazy lawn we took off our shoes and pressed our toes in crabgrass and dandelions, clover and cicada carcasses. And they lived in the Big Red House, then, the four of them-- Jessica, the Mother, the Young One, and the little brown dog with the squinty eyes. Later, when the Mother's Friend became the New Daddy, he lived there, too. And there were always neighborhood kids-- Melissa from the yellow house and Katie with the braids and the twins, who only called each other Luke, fighting imaginary lightsaber duels on the corner of Deerfield Road and Lynn Street. There was even my own brother before he got old enough to know. Those days when basements were encapsulated in the glow of Light Brite and brothers pulled off Barbie heads, outside the Fathers watered the pachysandra and the Mothers wiped our popsicle-sticky mouths with wet dishrags and made us eat our peas. Jessica and I took turns riding my bike barefooted down her driveway into the street, and sometimes we fell and we bled and we spat on the pavement like one of the Lukes said baseball players did, and I cried, sometimes, over hopscotch kneescrapes and bicycle elbowgashes, but Jessica never did. She bore her wounds with fire-eyes and sturdy legs and the heart of someone embroiled in a battle, the red marks lashed across her skin like merit badges on my Campfire Girl sash. She did not cry, even, when the brown, squinty-eyed dog died, and they buried it behind the Red House and Jessica and the Young One and I brought forsythia boughs over to the sad hump of earth. But I cried. And the Young One-- whose real name was Pearl, but for a while I did not know-- always looked as if she were crying anyway, eyes tinted translucent cerulean blue, spilling over onto a woman-child's, tragic mask face. The three of us stuck there that day like some still-life image on that backyard dandelion hill, silhouetted against an August sun, a three-pronged shadow: the tallest one weeping over the hump of earth, the littlest with old child's eyes, lagging behind, clutching a ragdoll named Electra, and the middle one in the forefront, standing steady on defiant knees, her eyes blazing like fire. When dandelions and crabgrass tickled the earthy grave, we started going to my backyard instead. In my rotting maple tree, there were always plans for forts, and wed pilfer my father's tools from the garage and then argue about the blueprints for our great edifice, allotting it an attention span the size of most children's. Then one time we went inside and forgot about the tools. I did not remember about the tools even when I heard the drops on the roof while my father watched me chew green beans at our wide oak table. And I always assumed that's where Jessica went, too, in the evenings, to supper at some rectangular table in the Big Red House, watching a man named Carter on the TV screen and being told by the Mother's Friend to wash her hands and chew her beans and bending her tiny yellow head and saying Grace before she picked up her fork. My father woke me up that night with my rainjacket and boots in his hands and a redness in his face and wordlessly directed me to the tools in the yard, standing in the shadow of the insect lamp over the back door while I fetched them. When I brought them inside he watched me wipe them down, and there was a lock on the garage door everyday after that. (And, I thought, the tools were just like his car huddled in the garage, not allowed out in the rain). We never spoke of it afterwards. But my father did not grab me by the ear like the Mother's Friend did to Jessica and the Young One, too, sometimes, when we were playing and he wanted them home, while the Mother came out of the house in her bathrobe only, sometimes, shrieking, "For Godsakes, Jason, don't hurt her!" No, my father never dragged me by the ear. Continued... [return to main page] [go to next page] [Get your FREE subscription to Kruller] |