Here it is....
I’ve always wanted a house on the
cul-de-sac. One with green shutters and a blue door and a dog named Elvis
Presley. A mailman would hobble to our mailbox shaped like a golf ball and ask
me what I thought of the weather. I wouldn’t know what to say, but I’d smile
and nod and let the man with the leathery bag walk down to the next driveway.
In Parma, Ohio, 1963, it’s
considered normal for the mailman to know your name. It’s considered normal for
the ten Bradley children to fill up the school bus with their hand-me-down
sweaters and brown-bagged lunches, and for the drunk Mr. Keeler’s cat to eat
tar off the pavement. And so it wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary to wait for a
thunderstorm from your screened-in porch in the middle of July.
Today, the trees are bowing to our coarse
brown lawn and I know a summer storm is coming. I panic, but then remember that
my flashlight’s under the bed and the extra batteries are in the top drawer of
my dresser. I remember this because I’m claustrophobic, but only when it’s dark.
However, when I told Mother this an hour ago she rolled her eyes.
Go play outside, she said. So I sat on
this doorstep and haven’t moved since. I pull at the collar of my red
sweatshirt and try not to sweat. Today, the mailman would say it’s never been
this hot before. But I’m wearing a sweatshirt anyways because of the breeze.
Every season’s flu season, Grandmother used to say.
I sit with my back to the house so that I
don’t have to look at the slanted, rusty gutter, or the pink paint flaking away
from the siding. We should get that fixed, Mother says. But by now I know not
to believe her.
I think it’s easier to walk away from a
pink house. To sit with you’re back to it. I love going out to the mailbox in
the morning to look out at the other houses and pretend that behind me, mine
looks exactly the same. Grandmother used to love going to church on Sundays
because she hated that thin coat of pink paint. Sometimes, if I listened hard
enough, I could hear her praying for a different colored house. Or at least, I
pretended I could. Because that was much more interesting than counting the
linoleum tiles of the chapel floor. Even Mother, although she’d never admit it,
loves going to her weekly Bridge game to walk away from the pink house. Yes, my
mother plays Bridge. And although I can’t explain why, I am intensely proud of
her for it.
And when a yellow taxicab had pulled up
to the house—the romantic cabs you watch pull up in movies—, I strangely
understood why my father stuffed his black suitcase into the trunk.
The week after he left, Mother made me
grilled cheese sandwiches. I guess she thought they were my favorite, and I
guess I didn’t have the nerve to tell her that they weren’t.
The grilled cheese making started one day
when Mother took all the cheese from the fridge—the only food that was still in
there, since Mother refused to go to the grocery store alone— and melted slices
on Wonderbread using her metal iron and the stained ironing board. I never have
friends over for dinner for exactly this reason: my mother can’t cook. Eating
bread soggy and smushed too flat, I nodded and tried to smile with sticky
cheese stretching across my teeth. Any good? Mother would ask. And then, she’d
spin around and make another before I could say no, not good at all.
Late at night, after Mother made her
final wet cheese sandwich and fell asleep on the couch, I’d take a preventive
swig of Pepto-Bismol and brush my teeth twice. Just in case, Grandmother used
to say. And I would brush my teeth again.
Then, I’d lie down on top of my plain
white sheets with the fan spinning above. And just before I would close my
eyes, I pressed on my kidney, or the place where I thought it should be, and
checked for kidney stones.
From my seat on the doorstep, I can see a
legion of boys in t-shirts and baseball caps coming towards me, and at first
I’m scared. I try to stand up, if only to block the view of my pink house.
Stand by the mailbox; it’ll look cooler. I worry about whether or not I put on
sunscreen, but only for a moment, before the boys are calling my name. But
they’re just shouting hey Kid or hey You, and I look up. I lean on the mailbox,
but feel it quiver beneath my elbow. Stand up straight; you’ll get Arthritis,
Grandmother used to say. I scratch at the top of my hands; I don’t want
Arthritis.
Hey, you have a glove? We need one more,
a boy asks. He’s the tallest, and his hair is reddish and freckles look like
they were spat on his round face. But he laughs and the others laugh and I wish
I were him, but only for a second.
I slip my sweaty palm into my
father’s hand-me-down mitt, but quickly take it out again. Mother always tells
me I was horrible at making decisions. You wanna come play? They ask again. But
I hate sports.
to be continued...
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