She just lay there in her bubblegum pink, silver sparkle leotard. Her hair, pulled tight into a band of puffy feathers, hands splayed, the blades of her skates now mated with the air.
I watched her lie there. Everyone watched. When I saw that she was not making any attempt to get up, I put my coffee down and walked over to her. I knelt beside her and she smelled so beautiful and I thought, nobody here that is watching us, none of these people knows this, about her lovely smell.
I reached down and gently touched her on the shoulder blade.
I said, “Come on. You need to get up. All of these people…”
She said, “I know. I will. I will when I am ready.”
There was a “don’t fuck with me” resonance in her voice that was clear and clean so I got up, shrugged my shoulders at the waiting cars, and walked back across the intersection to get my coffee.
Their Daughter Played in the Boxes
The neighbors got a new washer and dryer this weekend. I heard the truck. It came early. I heard the metal slide and slam of the truck’s loading door or whatever it’s called. It sounded like WAKE THE FUCK UP! And also, I AM BRINGING NEW THINGS! I felt happy for my neighbors. New appliances are so exciting for at least three weeks. Week four they become just appliances. Week five and beyond you open and close them. Their noises that in the beginning were Tinkerbell pretty and magical now sound familiar. They do what you expect them to; their new and different skills are forgotten and taken for granted. It’s like they were always there, like this. Like the crappy old ones that were hated and cursed and kicked at never existed. Like life had not been improved after the trucks’ metal door slammed down and rumbled away. They are reliable and take up space.
I have appliances. They’ve been here for a long time. I think. Maybe not. Who knows? I forget. I want to recognize their Tinkerbell sounds. I should try. But all I hear is nothing new.
The Mill Pond
All of my tank tops are striped the wrong way for a girl of my size. They are also too short. My belly bulges out from beneath the bottom like, “Hey, wanna play with me?” My corduroy pants are also striped, but in the fabric. That is how they are made. My hair hangs like greasy blanket fringe. I feel like a stripe. I am a stripe. A big bulging stripe painted down the middle of a highway by a drunk highway stripe painting guy — probably my dad.
My mom won’t buy me new tank tops because she thinks forcing me to wear tops that are way too small for me is motivation for losing weight. I don’t tell her that the only motivation it is giving me is to put on my shortest tank top, go out in the backyard to my old playhouse, and kill myself with her sewing scissors.
“We can go shopping for some new clothes when your belly fits back inside, Tinker.” She says this in a voice that I would like to punch. Also, it is hard to judge an infant, I know, but there should be laws against naming your baby daughter Tinkerbell if the baby’s father’s family has a history of obesity. Seven pounds, two ounces at birth turning into 160 at age thirteen on a 5’2” frame is a recipe for misery. “Bertha” would’ve been kinder.
The tank tops belong to last summer. My belly belongs to this summer. My mom won’t buy me new tank tops because she is cheap and also poor, so she is blaming it on me and my belly. I wear my cords because I won’t wear shorts because of my thighs. They are too wide for the style of shorts they sell now. My thigh flab bulges out from the too tight leg holes. I tried on a pair of light brown ones once and my thighs looked like upside down ice cream cones. The flavor they looked like was a sort of watery peach strawberry swirl, like how if those two flavors melted out on a white kitchen floor in long thick strips that looked exactly like my legs.
There is no way I am going to wear boy shorts or my mom’s shorts. She actually told me, “It’s stupid to wear pants all summer, Tinker. Why don’t you wear one of my old pairs?” Then she held up a pair of jean shorts that looked like a perfect light blue square. I walked out of the trailer and after the screen door slammed shut I heard her say, “What?” and then, to herself, “I like them.” I could picture her through the side of the trailer, holding them in front of her, against her straight waist, a square on a square. I kicked a rock at the dog and then walked to the Shop N Save to get a Suzy Q.
Even in my cords my thighs rub together. My pants don’t wear out in the knees first. Ever. And, if I ever ran — which I never do — smoke would wisp from the hot friction, especially in cords. Something about the raised stripes mixed with the valleys between them. Air flow mixed with fusion energy or something. I think we learned about it in science class but I sit in the back, in the corner, away from everything, not paying attention, so I could be wrong. There is a window in the back of that classroom that looks out toward the road. Across the road there is an old farm. Next to the farm there is a field. Behind the field there is a row of trees. Behind the row of trees there is another field and then another row of trees and then there is the mill pond. I go to the mill pond a lot and so when I sit in the back of class and Mister Lewis is teaching about fusion energy and molecules and things, I stare out the window in the direction of the mill pond and his voice becomes cicadas.
***
I take the long way to the mill pond now. Last summer I would take the shortcut through Mister Dean’s property because it cuts out almost a mile. I’d duck through the broken part in the fence that separates his property from the road and I’d follow the chicken wire alongside his east garden until it hit his cornfields, and then I’d walk through the widest row until I came to the end of it and go through the fence and down to the dried riverbed before following that to where the field for the mill pond started. If you kept going straight on the riverbed, you’d get to the outside of town and that’s where the Shop N Save was. Cutting through Mister Dean’s property was the quickest way for me to get to both of my favorite places.
He’d always be out there in his garden. I’d hear him first. Whistling and humming, whistling and humming. He wore a ladies straw hat and it would bob above the tomato plants like a lady was there picking the ripe ones.
I never really paid attention to Mister Dean and I didn’t think he paid much attention to me, until one day he was just there leaning against a fence post like he was waiting for me.
“Your name’s Tinkerbell, right?”
“Yes.”
“Where you going all these times you walkin’ ‘cross my property?”
I didn’t want to tell him the mill pond because I didn’t want anyone to know about my secret place, so I just told him I was going to the Shop N Save to get a drink.
“I got a drink,” he said. “I got Kool-Aid. Why don’t you come up? It’s hot.”
I looked at Mister Dean and then I looked at the fence post and then I looked at my feet and then the fence post and then Mister Dean again.
“You come up or you don’t come ‘cross my property no more.”
And because I dreaded going the long way and because it was really hot and because I didn’t know what else to say, I came up.