The summer before I turned fourteen a great calamity pulled me from my gritty mismatched sheets to the door across the hall from my bedroom. The prior summer, my half-sister Rona, newly pregnant, and Marco, the Cuban who did the deed—the man who supposedly belonged to our mother’s best friend—left Black Lake Mobile Court in the rv he called Lady Liberty. She sailed out quietly like a houseboat under a full moon leaving lot #10 empty except for succulent weeds and a rusting barrel barbeque pit.
The sun was fuller and many times hotter, and another boat-like creature was now floating into the trailerpark, a brown-and-white ship connected to a big-wheeled truck belching blue smoke. I stood in my underwear watching the commotion until Mona stirred on the sofa bed at the other end of the hall, half asleep, reaching for a cigarette. The tv at the foot of her bed was on and was playing calamitous music to accompany the cartoons I usually found myself in front of on a Saturday morning.
I dressed and made my way out the front door, pausing in the kitchen for the Fruity Pebbles. Mona was sitting up, half awake, blowing clouds at me. I avoided eye contact. Before I was able to close the door all the way she called after me, “Close the god-damn door.” It took everything I had not to slam it.
Outside, the new trailer home was jackknifed around the flagpole. Several men were darting around all those many wheels, pulling this, pushing that, like men setting up a circus. They were darker and skinnier (and probably younger) than Marco but they all had the same oil-black hair and they spoke their Spanish over the rumble of the truck ignoring the old fat Cuban behind the wheel pointing his cigar here and there.
I reached the bottom of the cereal box and stuck a tongue-moistened finger down into it for the last bits of sugary dust. The men kept at it; it took them several hours to get the trailer home into position. Whenever they noticed me watching from the railing of Victor the Vietnam Vet’s wheelchair ramp, they tipped their chins at me in silent greeting. I returned the gesture and they either smiled or winked back at me. I imagined what it would be like having this cheerful group of men living across from me, but then they left. When the wooden porch was placed under the front door, the men bounded into the cab of the truck like a team of clowns, larger ones first, smaller ones after. The truck hopped away from lot #10 and ambled across the cracked shell courtyard out to Route 21 and gone forever, leaving only a dark blue cloud hanging in the wet air.
It was the summer between junior high and high school. I wanted my play to have a different quality to it, less childlike or something, I wasn’t sure what. It was my first summer without Rona to pick on me or Marco to take up for me, and Mona and Brenda were gone all but three days a week at the Keystone Inn where they cleaned rooms for a living. I had a lot of time to myself, and spent most of it watching the trailer home in lot #10. I moved closer and closer until I could reach out and touch it. I tried to look in the windows but the shades were down. I crawled under the trailer home sometimes and lay there dreaming. Even if I ran off to watch a passing train or into the woods to look for small creatures, I had an ear out for the trailer home, I wanted to be present when it happened.
A couple of weeks passed before the trailer home came to life, and it didn’t come from within as I had convinced myself it would. On a Wednesday morning an orange moving truck pulled into Black Lake Mobile Court and parked in front of the trailer home. A few moments later, a long powder blue car pulled up beside it. Each of the vehicles had two passengers. The truck carried a man and a boy. The boy was taller than the man but it was obvious he was a boy and the other was a man. The man was tiny and black, black-black, the first black person I had ever seen so close up.
The car had a woman and a girl in it. The woman was big and white, bigger even than Brenda who was growing fatter by the day because she had been going through a gallon of rocky road ice cream a week ever since Marco ran off and left her lonely.
The girl looked more like the boy, caramel brown, somewhere between the man and the woman. I heard her call the man and woman “daddy” and “mama” and it struck me with a weird sort of surprise that the little black man and the big white woman were the parents and these were their children.
The four of them emptied the contents of the moving truck and the Crown Victoria into the trailer home, sometimes laughing, occasionally bickering, but mostly in concentrated silence, at least from what I could see from my hiding place under Brenda’s trailer home in lot #5. I ignored Mona calling my name as the two of them climbed into Brenda’s El Camino on their way to work at 11:35 a.m. I could have reached out and grabbed her by the ankle and held her there, but I had no reason to want her to stay home.
The woman introduced herself to me as Mrs. White, wife of the black man who was named “Clifton White.” This fact caused Mona and Brenda to sputter and make jokes like “You can call ‘em white but that don’t make ‘em white!”
Mrs. White was outside often, hanging clothes on the round clothesline between their trailer home and Victor’s. She was always smiling, always dripping with sweat. Whenever she saw me outside, she waved me over for “small talk.” She had a funny way of talking which I learned was because they were coon-asses, which is what she said people from Louisiana were called. She determined that her daughter Diamond and I would be good friends because we were starting high school together in the fall and would probably ride the bus together, unless Rich managed to pass the test to get his driver’s license. Rich was the boy; he was sixteen and had already failed twice before because he wouldn’t slow down. “That boy just won’t have nobody tellin’ him how to be,” Mrs. White laughed.
Rich had been a star on the wrestling team, but Keystone High didn’t have a wrestling team—which he was pretty upset about—so he would probably play football or basketball, and Mrs. White was sure he would do well because he was such a natural athlete.
There was a certain twinkle in her eye when she talked about her son. I understood. Before I met Rich, I often watched him from underneath Brenda’s trailer home or my own. Most of the time he didn’t have a shirt on and I was convinced he had the perfect body. Diamond was pretty, but Rich was prettier, even though they looked a lot alike. Somehow, that kind of pretty looked better on a boy than a girl. Of course, I wouldn’t ever call him pretty to his face; I knew he wouldn’t like being called pretty anymore than I liked being called Pansy Rear-end, even if it was the truth.
I was worrying the big ant bed at the base of the flagpole when the Crown Victoria rolled slowly by me. Rich was behind the wheel, sitting as tall as he could so nobody would mistake him for the boy that he was. Mrs. White waved a clammy hand at me from her place leaning against the passenger door. I was sure she sat that way so she never had to take her eyes off of her beautiful boy.
They got out of the car and Rich walked directly over to me carrying a red shoebox in both hands. The sun bounced up off of the box and seemed to set him on fire.
rich: Hey, my name is Rich White.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out so I squinted up at him and waved the stick. He sighed.
What’s your name?
me: Randy Reardon.
rich: Hey.
me: Hey.
rich: What choo doin’?
me: Killin’ ants.
rich: How come?
me: ‘Cause they bite.
He set the shoebox on the ground and looked down into the holes on top.
rich: Wanna see?
me: Yeah.
He unfolded the box lid to reveal a long, scaly and green four-legged creature with spikes down its back. I pulled my head back.
rich laughed: You scared?
me: What is it?
rich: She’s a iguana. I call her Mary Todd.
The iguana slapped her tail against the side of the box. I waved at it.
me: Hi!
rich: You funny.
me: Am I?
rich: Yeah.
me: …Does it bite?
rich: Tsk, naw. She just done that ‘cause she don’t know where she at yet.
me: What’re you gonna do with her?
rich: She gonna make babies!
me: What?
rich: I got me another iguana in my bedroom. I call him Abraham Lincoln. Get it?
me: Like the president?
rich: Right! An’ Mary Todd’s gonna be his First Lady and she’s gonna make babies!
me: Huh?
rich: This iguana is gonna be Abraham’s girlfriend. They’re gonna have sex. –Wanna come watch?
me: Huh?
rich: Wanna come watch Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd have sex?
He grinned.
me: Yeah.
He already had the box folded back shut. He picked it up.
rich: Less go then!
I tossed the ant stick toward the middle of the courtyard and followed Rich back to his trailer home and stepped into a very clean and orderly version of my own home. The Whites had the same brown shag carpet, but it wasn’t hidden under dirty clothes, Harlequin romance novels, ashtrays and fast food bags. They also didn’t have a permanently open sofa bed taking up the whole front room. The Whites had a black leather couch, a wood-and-glass coffee table, and two recliner chairs backed up to a wall of gold-flecked mirror tiles. The mirrors doubled everything in the room except me. I looked for myself in the wall but across from where I was standing was an open door, and beyond that a big bed with mounds of white and black flesh swirling together.
Rich made a noise. He was standing at the top of the hallway, box at his waist. He waited just long enough to make eye contact then entered the hall. I followed. The smell of fried chicken hit me as I passed the kitchen. I stopped and saw a cast iron skillet with a layer of whitish grease in the bottom of it sitting empty on the stove.
The first two doors in the hallway were slid shut. An fm radio and Diamond’s singing issued forth from somewhere within. Rich rolled his eyes and smiled at me, pushing the tip of his tongue through his teeth. I blushed. He stepped into the third door, his bedroom, same as mine, across from the trailer home’s back door. At the end of the hall a washing machine thrummed. We didn’t have a washing machine because Mona and Brenda took our clothes to work and did them there (even though it was against the rules). I was mesmerized by the washing machine, the way it seemed to be dancing to Diamond’s singing. Rich called after me and I stepped halfway into his bedroom.
It was the exact same layout as mine, a small wood-paneled box with a built-in desk and chest of drawers with faux antique early American drawer pulls. His twin bed was in the same place as mine, under the small, high rectangular window. His bed was made and his plaid bedspread matched the curtain.
In the middle of the floor was an aquarium with a screen on top of it. Rich squatted next to it, dragged a long-armed lamp over by its cord and looked up at me.
rich: Shut the doe.
me: Huh?
rich: Shut the doe.
I stepped the rest of the way in and slid the door behind me.
Turn out the lights.
The light switch was in the same place as it was in my room; I did as he instructed.
Come over here.
I went.
Closer, closer.
I knelt down and finished the journey on my knees. Rich took off the screen and pointed into the tank.
Look.
me: What?
There was no water in the aquarium, just dirt and sticks, a jar lid with a wet sponge in it and a few shriveled up lettuce leaves. I leaned closer down and my forehead touched Rich’s afro; my skin prickled. He reached in and stroked the spiky back of a smaller, dark green iguana, camouflaged until that moment on a log right in the middle.
rich: That’s Abraham Lincoln.
me: Wow…
Rich’s long, slender fingers were clutching the top edge of the aquarium; his fingernails were clean and shiny, like they had been manicured, with perfect little smiles at the base of each. My eyes trailed up his arm to his elbow, his shirtsleeve, shoulder, collar, neck, chin, thick licorice lips. A mole like a drop of Hershey’s syrup sat on the side of his broad nose waiting to be tasted.
rich looked up at me: What?
me: What?
rich: What choo lookin’ at?
me: Nothin’. –He’s littler.
rich: Tsk, naw he ain’t! He just looks littler ‘cause he ain’t in a little box like Mary Todd is.
He opened the box, ready to prove his point, then stopped and stared silently down at his latest purchase, twice as big and half as green. Rich chewed his lips then licked them, blinked his big, sad eyes; everything about him glistened. The room was electric with silence even with Diamond coming through the walls.
I leaned closer to Rich.
me: See?
rich, finally: He ain’t little; she just big.
me: Well, I hope Abraham likes big girls.
It was an innocent comment, an attempt to comfort Rich. He stared at me with wide-open googly eyes for a second then spit out a laugh that seized him, knocked him off his elbow flat on the floor. He laughed and held his ribs, like they might come bursting through his skin otherwise.
rich, between gasps: Daddy sho-nuff do!
me: What?!
rich: I say my daddy sho-nuff do like big girls!
me, laughing and mimicking him: Daddy sho-nuff do!
rich: My daddy sho-nuff do!
We repeated the line and laughed, our legs tangling together on the floor, until the humor in it faded. Rich sat up, suddenly serious, looking back and forth between box and aquarium, big iguana and little one, light one and dark one, Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln.
me: You think they’ll make babies?
rich lifted Mary Todd out of the box: I dunno. Only one way to find out.
He lowered her down into the aquarium holding her with both hands. Her legs swam in the air beneath her but her expression read boredom. Abraham looked up at the approaching shadow, poked out his tongue and plunged off of the log and splatted into a glass wall, landing on the sponge.
Mary Todd latched onto Abraham’s log and lorded over him. She shook her head and worked the flap of skin under her chin into a shiny red quarter-sized disc. Abraham kept flicking his tongue, which didn’t seem like a good idea to me.
me: Why does he keep sticking his tongue out at her?
rich: That means he submittin’.
me: What?
rich: He’s tellin’ her she’s the boss.
He chuckled.
Just like my mama!
Mary Todd whipped her tail against the aquarium floor sending up a puff of dust. Ignoring Abraham’s submissive stance, she jumped headlong at him, teeth bared, latching onto the bump on the side of his head. Lettuce leaves and dirt exploded from their corner of the aquarium. Rich reached in and pulled Mary Todd off of Abraham and put her back in the pet store box. There were high-pitched screams which I thought were coming out of Abraham, but which turned out to be me.
rich in a scolding voice: What choo doin’?
me: What?
rich: Makin’ all that noise!
me: Sorry…
He examined Abraham. There was a small red circle behind his eye. Rich held him over to me and another squeak escaped me.
rich laughed at me: Look, she tried to assassinate him, just like the real Abraham Lincoln.
I had no idea what he was talking about. I noticed dark wet trails running out of Abraham’s eyes and nostrils.
me: He’s cryin’!
rich: Tsk! No he ain’t. Iguanas don’t cry. He ain’t no crybaby, like you.
Had he heard something from somebody at school, how I couldn’t keep from crying when kids called me names on the bus, in the halls, in pe class? I was planning on high school being different. I felt the same old knot in my throat and the tears in my eyes.
me: I gotta go. Mona’s gonna be home soon, and I’m supposed to be there when she gets home.
rich: Who’s Mona?
me: My mama.
rich: Why you don’t call your mama “mama?”
me: I dunno. She doesn’t like it.
rich: Your mama’s weird.
me: I know.
Mona was off work on Thursdays, Brenda on Tuesdays, and they were both off on Sundays. They spent all of their Sundays together, playing cards, watching tv and drinking cocktails they made in the blender. The Sunday after I met Rich, it was piña coladas. They were at the table between the kitchen and the living room and I was close by, sprawled on Mona’s sofa bed watching The Hardy Boys and drinking a virgin. There was a light tap on the storm door that caught all of our attention, but none of us was sure we had heard anything. We looked at each other.
brenda slurped the bottom of her drink through a chewed up straw: Was that the door?
mona lit a cigarette: Randy, get up and answer the door.
There was a louder rap as I was getting up. I turned off the tv and opened the front door to find Rich standing silently in the middle of the porch. Mona and Brenda were straining at their chairs to see. My heart thumped excitedly.
rich shoved his hands into his jeans pockets: Hey.
mona: Randy, who is it?
me: It’s Rich.
I turned briefly toward her then back to him.
Hi.
mona to Brenda: Who?
brenda arranged playing cards in her hands: It’s that black kid from over in Marco’s spot.
mona squinted: I don’t see anybody.
brenda cupped a hand to the side of her mouth but didn’t lower her voice: That’s ‘cause he’s black!
mona laughed: Tell him to smile so I can see where he’s at!
They cackled and banged on the tabletop nearly upsetting their drinks. I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed.
me: They’re drunk.
rich ignored me: You wanna camp out with me tonight?
me: Camp out?
rich: In a tent. In the woods.
me: Tonight?
rich: Yeah, now.
me: I don’t have a tent.
rich: I do. It’s already out there. In the woods.
me: I don’t have a sleeping bag.
rich: Tsk! You don’t need no sleepin’ bag! –You wanna or not?
me: Yeah, but I gotta ask Mona.
We stood staring at each other for a moment.
rich: Well, you gonna aks her or ain’t ya?
I was momentarily paralyzed by thoughts.
me: You go on out, I’ll meet you there.
rich: How you gonna find me?
me, looking around at nothing: Wait for me at the trail next to Victor’s trailer.
rich: The wheelchair man?
me: Uh-huh.
rich: How long you gonna be?
me: I’ll get there as fast as I can.
rich: I ain’t gonna wait all night.
me: Okay. I just gotta ask her…without you here.
Rich narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, then seemed to understand something I wasn’t even sure I understood.
rich: Awright.
He walked down the stairs and looked back at me once before he disappeared around the front corner of the trailer home. I wasn’t sure what my plan was. Perhaps I would sneak out the back door and they wouldn’t even notice.
I went inside, nonchalant as I could be, turned on the tv, headed down the hall. Mona caught me halfway.
mona: Where are you goin’?
me: Bathroom.
mona: What’d that little pickaninny want?
Brenda snickered.
me: Huh?
mona: That kid, at the door, what’d he want?
I walked back up the hall.
me: He was goin’ campin’ and wanted to know if I wanted to.
mona: Campin’?
me: Yeah. In the woods out by Victor’s.
Mona took a last puff from her cigarette and lit another one from it before stubbing the first one out. Brenda stood up gathering empty glasses.
brenda: You want another, Mo’?
mona: Sure thang, Bren’.
brenda: Comin’ up!
I turned back toward my bedroom.
mona: Randy! I ain’t done talkin’ to you.
me: I gotta go to the bathroom.
mona waved her cigarette: Well, go on, god-damn it!
I went into the bathroom and pretended to pee, even though I didn’t need to. I flushed and went back into the hall. The blender was screaming but Mona was waiting for me. She hollered over the blender and waved me back to the table.
me: What?
mona: Did ya put the seat down?
me: Yeah.
mona: You better have. –What are you doin’ now?
me: I don’t know. Nothin’.
mona: What’d you tell him?
me: Huh?
mona: What’d you tell that kid, about campin’?
me: I told him you prob’ly wouldn’t let me so there wasn’t any sense in askin’.
mona: Why’d you tell him a thang like that?
me: ‘Cause I figured you prob’ly wouldn’t let me.
She took several drags on her cigarette; her head disappeared in a cloud. Brenda returned with fresh piña coladas.
brenda: Here ya go, Mo’!
mona: Thanks, Bren’.
She sucked on the straw a second. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.
I don’t have nothin’ against them kinda people, Randy. …And I don’t want them thankin’ I’m some kinda racist nigger-hater redneck or whatever. You understand?
me: I guess.
mona: –And you watch too much tv!
me: Mona—
mona raised her hand: Don’t talk back!
There was a pause as Mona puffed and Brenda slurped her drink obscenely.
brenda: There’s some left in the blender if you want it, Randy.
I ignored her.
mona took a drink and talked with a mouthful of glop: Go on, if you want. What do I care? Go on and have fun, for all I care.
She looked at Brenda and danced her head behind the straw. Brenda gave her a funny look.
What?
brenda chuckled: I didn’t say nothin’!
mona: Well, what are you laughin’ at then?
brenda: I ain’t laughin’!
mona: You sure as hell are!
brenda picked up her cards and shook her head: You’re funny, Mona.
mona: Why? What do I care?! He doesn’t have any friends. We’re scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel here, Brenda.
Brenda laughed; her body shook and the chair she was sitting in squeaked in rhythm.
brenda: Barrel of monkeys!
I ran down the hall and jumped out the back door before Mona had a chance to change her mind. They were snorting like pigs when the door slammed shut. I ran to the back end of Black Lake Mobile Court, breaking a sweat in that short distance because of the many emotions swimming in my head, and ran right into Rich because he had taken off his shirt and was standing in the dark. He caught me as I plowed into him; my hands were on his chest. I pulled away quickly.
rich laughed: That was fast!
me: Yeah! She didn’t care.
rich: Cool. Follow me.
He turned and stepped into the overhang of palms and pines and disappeared except for a thin horizontal line at his waist, which was the band of his Fruit of the Looms. I followed it like a beacon, didn’t look where we were going, just stayed focused on the bright white line swishing ahead of me like a hypnotist’s tool.
Rich had fashioned the tent out of a blanket draped over a low straight pine tree branch and jabbed into the soft ground at four corners with sticks. The pond I had always called Black Lake (because I didn’t know) was nearby; mosquitoes sang around my head. Everything was dark and green and pulsing from within, the pond, the trees, the earth, Rich.
I turned around slowly, taking it all in.
me: This is cool!
Rich beamed, his smile seemed to be illuminated from inside his head.
rich: You wanna go swimmin’?
I stopped.
me: Swimmin’?
rich: Ain’t choo never been swimmin’ before?
me: Yeah, but I don’t have my swimsuit.
rich: Aw, you don’t need no trunks; we can skinny-dip!
me: Skinny-dip!?
rich: Yeah; you know, nekid.
me: I dunno.
rich kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks: What’s the matter, you scared?
me: A little.
rich: Tsk! There ain’t nothin’ in that water that’ll get ya. –Sep for me!
That was what I was scared of, but I didn’t say so. He picked up a shoe and threw it at me. I squealed.
me: Hey!
rich: Come on, Randy, get nekid!
He unfastened his jeans and pulled them and his underwear off in one move.
me: Underwears too?
rich: That’s nekid!
He stood in front of me with his hands on his hips. The moon lit him from behind and made him look like a big microphone. I undressed slowly, my shirt then my shoes—I didn’t have on socks.
me: Go on ahead.
rich laughed: You sure are a whitey!
me: Shut up! I can’t help it.
I held my hands at the top of my jeans and paused. Rich ran several feet into the pond and squatted. I undressed quickly, holding my breath, and ran in next to him, concealing myself in the mucky, sulfurous water. Rich bounced up and back down like a jack-in-the-box.
rich: You got a boner!
me: Nuh-uh—
rich: Show me!
me: No!
rich hollered into the woods: Randy’s got a boner!
me: Shh!
He jumped up again, his long penis flopping like a cottonmouth. Then he came at me, his hot flesh swallowed me. We wrestled laughing in the water and I tried to keep my erection out of the way. One of his hands landed between my legs and swiped my penis; I screamed.
rich ran out of the water laughing: You definitely got a boner!
He waggled his penis at me; I stared.
What choo lookin’ at, Randy?!
me: Nothin’. –This water is smelly.
rich: It’s the mud. Come outta there.
me: I’m gonna pee first.
rich dismissed me with a hand and gathered up his clothes: I’m goin’ to the tent.
me: I’ll be right there.
After a few minutes of chastising myself, my erection faded and I was able to get out of the pond and put on my clothes. I carried my shoes with me around the tree and stood at the opening of the tent in front of Rich’s long, bony feet, which stuck out conspicuously. There was a pile of clothes at the side of the tent, which I knew were Rich’s because his calves were also bare. I shivered in my clothes in the warm night; it was a strange sensation.
rich stirred: What choo doin’ out there?
me: Nothin’.
rich: Get your white ass in here!
I considered undressing, considered asking him if I should, then just knelt on the ground and crawled in, leaving my shoes behind. Rich was lying on his back in bright white briefs, which were all I could see at first.
me: It’s dark in here.
rich: It’ll lighten up.
Rich’s breathing was deep and steady, like he was sleeping—or at least very relaxed. I inhaled but my lungs felt pinched off. I lay on my side propped up on an elbow and watched Rich’s half-naked body come slowly into view.
He was taking up more than half of the space. It was his tent, I told myself, so he should be able to take up as much space as he wants. His arms were folded behind his head like a pillow. There were sprigs of hair in his armpits and a pungent odor hovering around him that wasn’t the smell of the pond. It was Rich’s body and I wanted to bathe in it.
The moon shed its cloud cover and a tiny beam entered the tent, fell across Rich like a sash from one shoulder to the opposite hip, cutting his briefs in half.
me: Your underwears look like they have a light bulb in them!
Rich lifted his head to see what I was talking about. He took a hand to his crotch and danced his fingers in the moonlight then cupped his hand over the lump in his briefs.
rich: Light bulb!
I laughed.
Watch this.
He lifted both knees into the air, grabbed his butt cheeks and let a fart sing out of him, then exhaled in relief and laughed raunchily. I grabbed my nose.
me: Eww!
rich sat up fanning the air: Shoo-wee, that’s gonna stank!
I rolled onto my stomach laughing and holding my nose; I rolled into him. He climbed on top of me and pulled my hand off of my nose and wrenched both of my arms behind me. I couldn’t laugh; I felt like I was suffocating. My legs flailed behind me and Rich must have sensed my panic. He loosened his grip.
me, gasping: Get off me!
rich: What’s wrong?
me: I can’t breathe.
rich: Tsk! If you can’t breathe, you can’t talk.
I lay there in a silent panic. Rich tossed my rag doll arms away; they landed on the ground over my head. He rolled off of me and I held back the tears. Rich lay quietly next to me for a few moments, then jostled me with a hand.
I was just tryin’ to show you some of my wrestlin’ moves… Did I hurt you?
me: No. I just didn’t know what you were doin’.
rich: I was just showin’ you some of my wrestlin’ moves. I was district champion back in Slidell.
me: Your mama said you were good.
rich slapped a hand to his head, embarrassed: My mama?
me: Yeah.
rich: She told you ‘bout me?
me: A little. We talk sometimes.
There was a long silence. Frogs talked back and forth from pond to pond. I returned to my elbow prop facing Rich, but my shoulders ached. Rich mimicked me, faced me on his side, his head propped up on an elbow.
rich: Do you sleep in your britches?
me: Huh?
rich: Do you sleep in all your clothes?
me: Are we goin’ to sleep?
rich: Tsk, naw… I was just curious, that’s all.
He rolled onto his back and lay silently staring at the stick holding the blanket in place.
me: I sleep in my underwears usually, unless it’s cold out, then I sleep in my pjs.
rich, after a moment: I sleep nekid. Always.
me: Even when it’s cold out?
rich: Always.
I found the thought titillating; I rolled onto my back.
me: …Hm!
Our breathing syncopated, deepened; the frogs and other creatures outside the tent played a rhythmic symphony; a distant train whistle sounded at just the right place in the song to make me chuckle.
rich, in a whisper: What choo laughin’ at?
me, whispering back: The music.
After another moment, I heard the sound of movement, Rich’s arms moving to his hips, fingers tucking into his waistband, briefs sliding down his thighs; and my heart thumping wildly. He pushed his underwear to his knees then worked them the rest of the way off with his legs and feet, kicking them out of sight.
He lay back, adjusted his position, returned his arms behind his head and exhaled. I slowly rolled my head to the side. The moonbeam lighted his penis; it was big and maybe erect.
I sucked in a deep breath and undressed with my eyes closed. The blood pumping in my body glub-glubbed in my ears drowning out everything else. When I was completely naked, my pink skin glowed unnaturally and I shook like a small creature that had lost its fur. I lay next to Rich with my eyes squeezed tight, afraid that he would see my throbbing little penis, afraid he would know it was throbbing for him.
There was a mumble-jumble of noises that matched the sound of Rich’s voice, but they weren’t words I could understand. The tighter I held my eyes, the louder the metallic hum in my head. I tried to relax my eyes without letting them fall open.
The right side of my body, the side next to the blanket wall, was cold; the left side was warm, then warmer, then Rich’s hand bumped into mine, and then my limp left hand was being lifted and moved through space. Suddenly it was burning hot and full of meaty flesh. I thought I would throw up or pass out, so staggering and new were these emotions flooding over me.
My memories of that night in the tent with Rich blurred beyond recognition at that point. Things happened in the dark; Rich did things to me that scared me and hurt me, but they excited me, too, and I didn’t have even a moment’s pause about any of it.
The next morning, I woke up naked, sore, and all alone. It was very early in the morning; a fog draped the pond mysteriously and a passing train peeked through the trees at me and my nakedness. I smiled then grimaced; my jaws ached, my bottom, even my ribs. I found my clothes scattered about around the tent; they were inside out and dirty. I fixed them and shook them out, but grit trickled down my legs all the way home.
A crow spotted me from his morning perch on a Route 21 telephone wire; he told the world my secrets then flew over me laughing. I had to jump three times to catch the back doorknob and twist it open. I hoisted myself into my trailer home—not sure where the strength to do it came from—dragged myself across the hall into bed and slept fully dressed until I heard Mona heading out the front door for work, slamming it behind her.
I didn’t see Rich again for a week. I watched for him, sometimes from a window, sometimes from underneath one trailer home or another, but he never came out. I thought maybe he had locked himself in his bedroom with his iguanas because of something I had done, or something I had made him do to me. Or maybe he had run away. But no, if that were the case, I was sure Mrs. White and the rest of them would be out looking for him day and night. From what I could tell, life was going on like normal for them even as my life had been forever altered.
I didn’t dare venture outside when I saw Rich’s mama hanging laundry on the line because she would surely call me over for small talk. I was afraid of what she might say, what she might know about Rich and me and our night in the tent. I even considered that perhaps I had woke up in the Twilight Zone, in an alternate universe where everything was the same except that there was no Rich White and never had been. I could hear big, round Mrs. White’s overly cheerful laugh when I asked her about him, the skin tags in her armpits bowing and standing upright as she handled the laundry. “Oh, ha-ha, ain’t choo funny, Randy Reardon,” she might say, “we only gots the one precious girl-child Diamond; you know dat!”
But then Sunday came around again. It took a lot longer to arrive than any Sunday before it. Mona and Brenda were next door this week so they could watch some movie on Brenda’s bigger, better tv set. I had just crawled into the sofa bed with a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies, ready to watch my usual Sunday night Hardy Boys when I heard the knock. My first thought was that it was Mona and Brenda, arms full of their party-makings, having changed their minds about the movie. Then I suddenly recalled the week before when Rich came over. I fell off of the sofa bed trying to get to the door before there was a second knock.
He was standing in the middle of the porch in the same jeans and t-shirt he’d had on a week earlier, as if he’d arrived in a time machine from the past.
me: Rich!
rich smiled sheepishly: Hey, Randy.
me: Where you been?
rich: Over at my place.
me: All week long? I didn’t see ya.
rich: Oh, I been workin’. I got me a summer job.
me: Ya wanna come inside?
rich: Is your mama here, and that other lady?
me: No, they’re over at Brenda’s.
I held up the cookie bag.
Ya wanna cookie?
rich: Yeah.
He shoved his hand into the bag and pushed against me; I tingled. He pulled several cookies out of the bag and started feeding them into his mouth.
me: How’s Abraham and Mary Todd?
rich, talking around a mouthful: Tsk, aw, I took her back to the sto’; she was no good.
me: Oh… But ya still got Abraham?
rich: Yeah, I still got Abraham. –He’s awright.
me, eating a cookie: Where are you workin’?
rich: At a lumberyard in Gainesville.
me: Wow, that’s a long way away.
rich: It ain’t too bad. I get to practice my drivin’. For my test. –You wanna camp out tonight?
The question caught me off guard; I shook my head and Rich thought I was saying no. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Awright then, I gotta go.
me: No! –Rich, I didn’t mean no. I was just—Yeah, of course I wanna.
rich: You gotta aks your mama?
me: No, they’re drunk. They won’t miss me.
rich: Well, I gotta eat first.
me: Okay. I’ll meet you out there.
He left me with a racing heart. I watched him descend the stairs and round the front corner of the trailer home before I made a move, then I hurried back to my bedroom and stuck clothes under the covers to make it look like I was sleeping—something I had learned from a television mystery show. I turned off my bedroom light, slid the door shut, turned off the tv, grabbed the cookies and headed out the door for the woods, walking carefully past lot #5 so Mona and Brenda wouldn’t see me.
The tent was still set up in the same place. I knew it was because I had visited it daily and fixed the blanket when the wind blew it and kept a sort of watch over the area just in case. I sat at the opening and started eating a cookie and Rich showed up almost immediately. He had a pie tin loaded with fried chicken and a cold bottle of orange soda.
rich: Mama told me to bring these out an’ share wit choo.
me: Wow.
I took a drumstick.
Your mama’s nice.
rich: She’s awright.
me: We can share these cookies too.
rich: Awright.
We ate in relative silence. I had so much to say. I wanted to ask Rich if we were going to do again what we had done the week before; I wanted to ask Rich if he had ever done anything like that before; I wanted to ask Rich all kinds of questions. I wanted to jump into his chocolate eyes and look at the world through them, to see me the way he saw me. I was afraid to say anything, afraid that it would sound stupid or that it would ruin everything, so I ate silently and waited.
After he finished two pieces of chicken and tossed the bones into the pond, Rich took a swig of orange soda, wiped his hands down the front of his jeans, wiped his mouth on a sleeve, wiggled his eyebrows at me, and crawled silently into the tent. I turned to face the dark opening, still chewing, watched the blanket walls wobble. One shoe then another shot out of the tent and landed near me, then a t-shirt, jeans, socks, and finally his bright white Fruit of the Looms.
I swallowed hard, tossed the bone I was holding into the woods, crawled in after him. There was an awkward silence, no playful banter. I undressed next to Rich as he lay on his stomach looking out the back of the tent past the pine tree ignoring me. Because he was on his stomach, I thought maybe he wanted me to crawl on top of him. I felt myself trembling again looking at his round butt. When I was naked, he jumped to his knees and forced me down. I tried to find his eyes, to see his smile, but he held my head so that I couldn’t move it. He spit into his hand, rubbed it on himself then cut into me, scraping my insides with grittiness. He made grunting noises close to my ear. I smelled chicken and body odor; my face bumped against the ground, dirt got in my mouth. I held my palm tight to my mouth and moaned; it hurt terribly, yet I didn’t want him to stop.
But he did. Too soon. Rich thrust himself roughly into me one last time and squeezed my hips close to him, sighing long and slow. His head was extended beyond mine. I looked up and saw his Adam’s apple straining at his neck, like a dull spearhead about to pierce him from the inside.
And then he was gone. Before I got all the way rolled over, he was out of the tent, pulling on his jeans and shoes. I lay there, my body clenched in anguish, as his footsteps retreated.
The following morning at the first light I woke and dressed shamefully. I reached for the Chips Ahoy and upset a line of ants filing into the opening. I threw the bag toward the pond and my stomach seized up on me. I needed to go to the bathroom right away. I ran all the way home, climbed in the back door and sat on the toilet just in time to keep from soiling myself. My insides oozed out of me; I thought I was dying.
Again, Rich disappeared for a week and reappeared the following Sunday evening. We played the game again with fewer words. We started meeting at the tent every Sunday night just after dark and did so all summer long. There was no chicken, no cookies, few words, just twenty minutes in the dark tent followed by Rich’s quick departure. I stayed. I took a pillow and sheet out to the woods so I would be more comfortable, and slept in our special place and dreamed that it was more than I knew it really was for either of us.
Then high school happened and everything good ended. Rich was a junior but was such a valuable athlete, he was put on the senior varsity football team. He quickly found a girlfriend. Her name was Susanna; she was popular and blonde and very white, a cheerleader whose father owned the lumberyard in Gainesville where Rich continued working on weekends.
Diamond wanted to be popular, so she attached herself to her brother and his girlfriend. Susanna taught Diamond her squad’s cheerleading routines and invited Diamond and her best friend Cindy to hang with her friends at the football games and in the cafeteria.
Rich drove the Crown Victoria to school, taking his sister with him and picking up Susanna on the way. I rode the bus. Doyle the bus driver arrived before any of the lights in the Whites’ trailer home went on. I was the first passenger on the bus and the last one off. We meandered through Melrose and Putnam Hall and the outskirts of Keystone Heights, and then to the elementary and junior highs before finally pulling up to Keystone High where I, the one lone high schooler on the bus, exited.
The bus shed was on the far side of the parking lot past the practice football field. Many mornings I would catch Rich and the girls piled into the front seat waving at me with their toothy smiles as I crossed in front of them. When we passed in the halls, Susanna and Diamond always said hi and Rich always tipped his chin. He even chased away a group of bullies from eighth grade who thought they were going to pick up where they’d left off before summer. Rich gave a stern, “Hey!” and they scattered like rats and I never had any problems with them again.
On my way to the bus shed one afternoon, the varsity football team was running around the practice field in their maroon and yellow uniforms. I stopped to watch along with a few other students, but I was there long after everyone else was gone. I couldn’t tell which of them was Rich White, but I knew one of them was, so I kept watching. Eventually, I saw Doyle across the practice field in the bus I was supposed to be on heading out to the main road.
I yanked my hands from the cyclone fence. They were cramped and had deep red creases in them from where I’d been holding onto the fence for so long. It hurt to straighten them out. So I put them back in the holes of the fence, latched on for good, deciding that I could get a ride home with Rich. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?!
The coach blew a whistle and the players scattered in a dozen directions then reformed into smaller groups walking toward the gymnasium, except for one who turned out of his pack and headed away from the others toward me. He unsnapped his chin strap and pulled off his helmet releasing the glistening afro belonging too Rich.
me: Rich!
rich: What choo doin’ standin’ there like that?
me: What? Nothin’. Watchin’.
rich: Don’t.
me: Why not?
rich: ‘Cause it ain’t right, Randy. It makes you look like a queer or somethin’ standin’ there like that watchin’ all these guys.
me: I wasn’t. I was just watchin’ you.
rich: That ain’t right. Go home.
me: I can’t. I missed my bus.
rich: No you didn’t.
me: Yes I did. They’re all gone.
rich: You missed it on purpose, standin’ there.
me: Can you give me a ride?
rich: No!
me: Why not?
The sun was beating down on us fiercely. Rich held four fingers to his brow to shade his eyes. His jersey rode up over the top of his yellow pants revealing the trail of kinky hairs that had grown thicker over the summer.
rich: I don’t know what choo think, Randy, but we ain’t friends.
me: Rich, I’m sorry.
rich: Don’t apologize. –We ain’t friends, Randy. Get it?
me: Rich.
rich: Go home.
me: I can’t.
He swirled his tongue in his mouth and spit between us. His hand came down from his brow like a final salute.
rich: Go away, Randy. Leave me alone.
He turned his back on me, started walking away. I watched his buttocks swishing under the polyester. The ground became soft and my feet sank into it; I held onto the fence more tightly to keep from being pulled under. I cried out.
me: Rich!
He turned to face me but kept walking, shifted his feet so that he was now walking backwards, continuing away from me, slipping away forever. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, turning the ground to quicksand. Rich held up a fist, the middle finger sprung straight up from it. He turned and never looked me in the eyes again.
I cried silently walking along Route 21, useless tears that evaporated before they hit the ground. By the time I got to Black Lake Mobile Court, the sun was setting. My head hurt from crying and from hunger. Diamond and her parents were sitting on lawn chairs eating chicken and laughing. They all waved and smiled, even Mr. White, with whom I’d never had a conversation because I couldn’t understand his accent.
Mrs. White called me over and asked if I had seen Rich. I told her I hadn’t. She laughed and said, “Who knows what that boy is gettin’ into now!” Mr. White said something that sounded to me like a cat caught under a lawnmower, but it made Mrs. White and Diamond laugh. I stood there weakly, not responding. Mrs. White asked if I was hungry. I told her I wasn’t. I had already decided I would never eat fried chicken again.
I said goodbye and they all wished me a good night and I tramped to my trailer home, up the steps, inside and to my bedroom past Mona on the sofa bed with her cigarette and the tv blaring her Thursday night shows. During a commercial she banged on my door and asked me what I thought I was doing. I quickly wiped away the tears before she opened the door.
me: Nothin’. I’m sick.
mona blew a cloud into my room: Well, god-damn, Randy, look at your face! You’re gonna get your sheets all dirty, and you know how hard a time I have gettin’ past the guards at the inn. Come ‘ere.
I went. She put a hand on my forehead and the sunburn on it hurt.
You look like shit. Go in there and wash your face. –What’s got into you?
I walked past her without answering, into the bathroom. My face was streaked with black and gray lines from walking and crying on the shoulder of the highway while eighteen-wheelers and automobiles flew past depositing soot on me. I climbed into the shower and watched the gray water splash at my feet for a long time. I scrubbed my face and it hurt but I didn’t care. My arms were bright pink from the sun, and when I got out of the shower the streaks on my face had also been replaced by sunburn.
I didn’t go to school the next day, and Saturday morning, I crawled under Brenda’s trailer home and lay there until after lunchtime. Susanna showed up in her car and Rich drove off to work in it, then Susanna, Diamond and Cindy, who had spent the night, sat under the clothesline which Diamond had draped with a big flowered sheet so it functioned as a kind of umbrella for them. They sat in lawn chairs drinking orange soda out of jelly jars and pretending they were something they were not, their voices pinched up and ladylike and their postures like birds on the marsh, bursting into girly laughter once in a while. I was disgusted by them but couldn’t stop watching.
They talked about The Future.
Of course, Susanna was going to marry Rich; they would move to Gainesville so Rich could take over her father’s chain of hardware stores; they would raise their family there, two boys and one girl, in that order. Cindy jumped in to say that she could cater Susanna’s wedding because she was going to become a chef after high school, the kind who travels to exotic places to feed the rich and famous. And Diamond said her band could play Susanna’s wedding. Diamond was going to be rich and famous, she didn’t care how, but most likely a rock ‘n’ roll star like Joan Jett from the Runaways. They laughed and toasted their rosy futures with their make-believe cocktails as I squinted my eyes and cursed them under my breath.