(no subject)
That summer was very sticky. The pool in our apartment complex was never clean. It was always full of leaves and bugs and looked the consistency of a stew-like sludge. It was like the color of the stucco of the buildings had gotten into it. The water shone the same greenish brown and you could not see through it, not ever. I didn’t know what color the bottom was. One time, Alex and I tried to clean it together but gave up after only a half an hour. Our arms got tired.
Alex is into poetry. She always wants to read me her poems, and I agree to listen to them mostly because she is my sister and I want her to think I care. We share a room, our twin beds opposite each other. We lie down at night, her sprawled and me stiff, and she reads them out loud. My mind usually wanders off after only two lines and I never really get them. She likes to mimic the sound of old poetry so her poems always have lines that start with words like “nay” or “sir.” They all sound so tragic and dull to me when she reads them, even in her lusty poet voice. I think they are much too serious. I think about things, but I don’t always like to write them down or even say them so I never have much to show for them. Alex has pages and pages.
Alex is tall, with broad shoulders that loom over the rest of her body. Her chest has always been bigger than mine. By the time we were teenagers she was much larger than I would ever be. She is always pondering about something or another and has something to say. I am less imaginative.
We live in the River Scene Apartment complex with our father, a mechanic. He is usually greasy and doesn’t talk to us so much. The nicest thing in our apartment is his leather chair, an overstuffed thing that takes up half our living room. The leather is always smooth, his slick body rubbing off on it, and it looks the color of a moss-covered stone. Our mother went away when we were small, leaving Alex and I to curl each other’s hair and talk to each other about things that should be shared with a mother. Our father is never home, and when he is, he is asleep on his chair. I am glad at least that our mother had Alex after me. I think that I would have been terribly lonely without my sister, even if I don’t like her sometimes.
I only remember one thing about her, my mother. She wore a gold necklace that glittered like sand. The chain looked heavy and a cross hung at the bottom, fell to its resting place at the bottom of her neck. I always thought they were just lines. No one explained what it meant. When I think of my mother, all I think of is two straight lines.
That summer started off like every other one. Every day we would go to Foodland and saunter the weirdly white aisles. The music always sounded very far away so we felt like we were in a movie or something. Foodland is really a one-stop shop. They have makeup, ice cream and magazines so we like it just fine. They also have at least ten fans that are always on high, always abuzz. It’s in the strip mall a mile from our apartment complex, the one with beige stucco buildings stained with dripping filth and uniform signs that buzz red at night. It’s home to Jesse’s Nail Palace, the Donut Factory, Hair Club and Clean Day Dry Cleaners. We used to stop into all the other places but decided that they don’t have much to offer. We like Foodland best.
That summer was also the summer that a girl named Rose went missing. Her family bought the only billboard in town and put a huge picture of her on it. It must have been taken a while ago because I don’t remember her like how she looks in the picture. Underneath the picture it read: Help Us Find Rose. After they did that, it was like she was watching over the whole town, which I don’t think her parents would have wanted to hear. We passed the billboard daily. We didn’t know Rose because she was home schooled, but we felt like we knew her from all the fliers and the billboard. The summer rolled on anyway, no Rose to be found. We went on with our lives. Everyone did. In our case, we passed the days by going to Foodland.
We liked Foodland because their ice cream was really good, they always had grape crush in stock and now, this summer, we liked it because of Thomas. Thomas was that summer’s ice cream scooper. For the first time that we could remember, the ice cream scooper at Foodland had our complete attention. Before, we would only get ice cream maybe twice a week and now we found ourselves bringing up the idea of walking to Foodland almost everyday. Thomas wore a black t-shirt under his red vest that was embroidered with “Foodland” in all-capital letters. He had rough, dark hair and hollow green eyes that reminded me of the leather that made up my father’s chair.
We went in on his first day and, after looking at the endless rows of makeup, which we liked to test on the tops of our hands, we saw him come in. I guess I couldn’t say who saw him first because of this. We both perked up as we saw him. Alex’s clear eyes looked like they had been lit with a match. He walked in, limbs on stilts practically and took his post behind the counter, leaning back on the sink, his arms folded against his chest. His legs reminded me of a waterfall. He walked slowly, no hurry. There was time.
Alex wanted to talk to him every time we went in but I was more reserved. But she would march right up to the ice cream counter, her bra-less chest protruding under her heather grey tank top, cut off shorts with holes and black rubber flip flops on her feet, her toenails painted orange. I stood a bit behind her, my shorter frame practically underneath her. She would ask him about his summer, if he liked working at Foodland. “It’s alright,” he’d reply, staring at my hands. I felt very aware of myself when I was near him. I shifted the weight from my right foot to my left, arms folded to cover my own chest. He was probably a decade older than us. We’d walk home, cones in hand, dripping onto our arms and matting the hair. Alex always had something to say.
“What do you think of him?” Alex asked.
“He’s sort of strange.”
“I know. I was thinking that, too. I think we should find out where he lives.”
“You can.”
Rose stared at us from her rectangular home, as we walked along the sidewalk that was cracked and spotted with old gum that was once pink but now glared up at us practically black. A pearly tooth looked at me from within a crack, surrounded by rocks. Was it a tooth? There were three men in the parking lot of the strip mall, their dark skin shiny in the sunlight. They had spread out a sheet over the searing asphalt, the loose pebbles made it look uneven. On it there was an old television, a drill and a few VHS tapes. The air hit us like waves. We were quiet the rest of the way.
One day Alex went to take a placement test. She was to enter high school that year. She was nervous for the math part. Numbers didn’t always make sense to her. She was better with words, or so she thought. Left to myself, I roamed around in the dust. That day wasn’t so hot; I put on sneakers instead of flip-flops. The laces were tied tight. I waited until noon to go to Foodland. I told myself I was going for a crush and that was that. It’s not like there was anything else to do, anywhere else to go. The walk to Foodland was quiet. There was a soft wind that grazed the tops of small patches of browned grass. I thought I heard whistling somewhere; carried by the breeze.
I got to the parking lot. The asphalt’s cracks spread out everywhere. The building looked like a temple to me in that afternoon. The automatic doors rushed open, I walked in. The air from the fans touched my body. There were beach towels and balls on display front and center even though the nearest beach was three hours away. The brightness of the inflatable balls was startling. I went to the ice cream counter, stood there for a minute. Thomas wasn’t there. No one was. The whole store was quiet except for the artificial hum of the fans and the distant sounds of the stereo. Then he appeared. I had been staring at the tub of pistachio when I heard him.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Oh, uh, I’d like a single scoop of pistachio.”
He picked up the scooper and then reached for a cone. He slid open the door to the freezer and bent over, the scooper struck the ice cream. He handed me the cone. His eyes were on me as it went from his hand to mine over the counter. I stood on the balls of my feet to reach it.
“Thanks,” I said. His eyes were all over me. I felt them like I felt the heat; both were unavoidable, inviting. I turned to walk toward the register.
“Where’s your sister?” he said. I turned around, looked at his eyes, saw their greenness, saw his face for the first time, really, saw it’s lines. I couldn’t answer him. I walked to the register, paid for the ice cream, and walked out. He watched me like how you would watch a flower bloom: cautiously.
Alex got home later and asked what I did that day, without her.
“Nothing at all,” I assured her.
After a month of eating ice cream cones, at the most sweltering peak of the summer, we decided to follow Thomas home. We knew he had the late shift at work on Wednesdays and so one Wednesday we snuck out of our house, walked past our father’s chair, which he was reclined in with the television blaring, his greasy hands folded in his lap, and got to Foodland just as Thomas was leaving. He stepped outside and lit a cigarette, the smoke wafting upward and mingling with the fluorescent glow of the store’s enormous sign. Everything was hazy. We followed him at a distance, but I knew he heard us. I knew he did, but Alex didn’t. Where was halfway? We didn’t know where we were going. The sky was a translucent black, grey clouds clustered like blackberries. We walked on, slowly chasing Thomas’ silhouette. When we got to Updike Avenue and he made a left, we stopped. We waited a minute. Our breaths were shallow. Then we went to the corner of the street and peered at which house he went into. His house was painted white. It was an old home, not like our apartment. It was made of wood with a porch and a garage on its side. He unlocked the red door and went in. We began the walk home.
“I don’t know why you were so afraid of going,” Alex taunted.
“I wasn’t afraid, just uninterested.”
“Then why’d you come?”
“Because you wanted to.”
One afternoon, a week later, Alex and I were in our room. She was alternating painting her toenails and reading. The book she had open on her bed was aged, mildewed, full of poetry. There was dirt under my fingernails but I didn’t care. I never painted my fingernails or toenails. The one fan we had in our room was going from left to right, left to right, rustling papers and only sort of chilling the room. The heat was still on everything.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I said.
“To where?”
“Nowhere, really. Just to walk. I’ll be back.”
“OK, see you,” Alex muttered, more interested in her toenails and the poetry than what I was saying.
I crept past our father, again in his chair. His striped, collared shirt was buttoned to the top. He was sleeping. I made it outside. The air was still stifling. It never felt fresh, just old and tainted, close to death. Thomas hadn’t been around Foodland that week. We went twice and both times he hadn’t been there. The manager, Kim, served us our ice cream. I thought only of his hands and wondered if they were rough.
The pavement was cracked, slight greenness shone through. I was in a floral dress, with rubber flip- flops on my feet that smacked against the pavement. The sun was beginning its descent but I still had a little while longer of languid yellow. It was poured all over everything: the tops of buildings, trees and cars glistened. Our apartment complex was exactly three miles from Thomas’ house. I was almost there, I knew my way this time. I got to Updike Avenue and made a right. My footsteps made foreign noises on the concrete. Everything seemed illuminated. The house was standing there; I saw it, walked alongside it. It was then that I saw him, on the windowsill, naked. His body was shrouded in sunlight, the groggy yellowness making his skin seem unreal. He was hugging his knees, alone in the garage. I was halfway across the sidewalk when his head turned, his eyes searched me. I saw his nakedness, up against the clear window, covered in sunlight. It all seemed so hazy. The green of his eyes caught mine and at that moment I was silenced. My feet were halted. The garage door loomed open, beckoned to me. I didn’t know where to go. Suddenly, I saw him. The rays parted. I saw him, his tender softness dripping below the windowsill, the glass resonating his image. He smiled at me, his messy teeth on display in his parted mouth; they shone like candles in a sleepy night. I didn’t move. I watched him, felt a shiver rise up my back. But I spun around then, suddenly, looked away. I stood with my back turned to the garage. My breath was heavy like my mother’s gold chain. I started in the direction of home. Darkness would be here soon but for now I only saw lightness. I started to run, felt everything speed up, saw the colors of houses and the blackness of the street blend together. I ran the three miles home. Ran just to run. I got in past the vertical black bars of the gate before I tripped, ended up in the dark, thick sludge of the pool. I saw Thomas’ face against the darkness. His hair was wild, his eyes lit, his mouth was on fire. Alex grabbed my hand, I emerged from the thickness of the water, made it up to the sunlight.
“Are you OK?” she asked. I tried to get air into my mouth.
“What happened? I heard you...
“I would have been fine.”
The sun was sinking behind us.
Alex is into poetry. She always wants to read me her poems, and I agree to listen to them mostly because she is my sister and I want her to think I care. We share a room, our twin beds opposite each other. We lie down at night, her sprawled and me stiff, and she reads them out loud. My mind usually wanders off after only two lines and I never really get them. She likes to mimic the sound of old poetry so her poems always have lines that start with words like “nay” or “sir.” They all sound so tragic and dull to me when she reads them, even in her lusty poet voice. I think they are much too serious. I think about things, but I don’t always like to write them down or even say them so I never have much to show for them. Alex has pages and pages.
Alex is tall, with broad shoulders that loom over the rest of her body. Her chest has always been bigger than mine. By the time we were teenagers she was much larger than I would ever be. She is always pondering about something or another and has something to say. I am less imaginative.
We live in the River Scene Apartment complex with our father, a mechanic. He is usually greasy and doesn’t talk to us so much. The nicest thing in our apartment is his leather chair, an overstuffed thing that takes up half our living room. The leather is always smooth, his slick body rubbing off on it, and it looks the color of a moss-covered stone. Our mother went away when we were small, leaving Alex and I to curl each other’s hair and talk to each other about things that should be shared with a mother. Our father is never home, and when he is, he is asleep on his chair. I am glad at least that our mother had Alex after me. I think that I would have been terribly lonely without my sister, even if I don’t like her sometimes.
I only remember one thing about her, my mother. She wore a gold necklace that glittered like sand. The chain looked heavy and a cross hung at the bottom, fell to its resting place at the bottom of her neck. I always thought they were just lines. No one explained what it meant. When I think of my mother, all I think of is two straight lines.
That summer started off like every other one. Every day we would go to Foodland and saunter the weirdly white aisles. The music always sounded very far away so we felt like we were in a movie or something. Foodland is really a one-stop shop. They have makeup, ice cream and magazines so we like it just fine. They also have at least ten fans that are always on high, always abuzz. It’s in the strip mall a mile from our apartment complex, the one with beige stucco buildings stained with dripping filth and uniform signs that buzz red at night. It’s home to Jesse’s Nail Palace, the Donut Factory, Hair Club and Clean Day Dry Cleaners. We used to stop into all the other places but decided that they don’t have much to offer. We like Foodland best.
That summer was also the summer that a girl named Rose went missing. Her family bought the only billboard in town and put a huge picture of her on it. It must have been taken a while ago because I don’t remember her like how she looks in the picture. Underneath the picture it read: Help Us Find Rose. After they did that, it was like she was watching over the whole town, which I don’t think her parents would have wanted to hear. We passed the billboard daily. We didn’t know Rose because she was home schooled, but we felt like we knew her from all the fliers and the billboard. The summer rolled on anyway, no Rose to be found. We went on with our lives. Everyone did. In our case, we passed the days by going to Foodland.
We liked Foodland because their ice cream was really good, they always had grape crush in stock and now, this summer, we liked it because of Thomas. Thomas was that summer’s ice cream scooper. For the first time that we could remember, the ice cream scooper at Foodland had our complete attention. Before, we would only get ice cream maybe twice a week and now we found ourselves bringing up the idea of walking to Foodland almost everyday. Thomas wore a black t-shirt under his red vest that was embroidered with “Foodland” in all-capital letters. He had rough, dark hair and hollow green eyes that reminded me of the leather that made up my father’s chair.
We went in on his first day and, after looking at the endless rows of makeup, which we liked to test on the tops of our hands, we saw him come in. I guess I couldn’t say who saw him first because of this. We both perked up as we saw him. Alex’s clear eyes looked like they had been lit with a match. He walked in, limbs on stilts practically and took his post behind the counter, leaning back on the sink, his arms folded against his chest. His legs reminded me of a waterfall. He walked slowly, no hurry. There was time.
Alex wanted to talk to him every time we went in but I was more reserved. But she would march right up to the ice cream counter, her bra-less chest protruding under her heather grey tank top, cut off shorts with holes and black rubber flip flops on her feet, her toenails painted orange. I stood a bit behind her, my shorter frame practically underneath her. She would ask him about his summer, if he liked working at Foodland. “It’s alright,” he’d reply, staring at my hands. I felt very aware of myself when I was near him. I shifted the weight from my right foot to my left, arms folded to cover my own chest. He was probably a decade older than us. We’d walk home, cones in hand, dripping onto our arms and matting the hair. Alex always had something to say.
“What do you think of him?” Alex asked.
“He’s sort of strange.”
“I know. I was thinking that, too. I think we should find out where he lives.”
“You can.”
Rose stared at us from her rectangular home, as we walked along the sidewalk that was cracked and spotted with old gum that was once pink but now glared up at us practically black. A pearly tooth looked at me from within a crack, surrounded by rocks. Was it a tooth? There were three men in the parking lot of the strip mall, their dark skin shiny in the sunlight. They had spread out a sheet over the searing asphalt, the loose pebbles made it look uneven. On it there was an old television, a drill and a few VHS tapes. The air hit us like waves. We were quiet the rest of the way.
One day Alex went to take a placement test. She was to enter high school that year. She was nervous for the math part. Numbers didn’t always make sense to her. She was better with words, or so she thought. Left to myself, I roamed around in the dust. That day wasn’t so hot; I put on sneakers instead of flip-flops. The laces were tied tight. I waited until noon to go to Foodland. I told myself I was going for a crush and that was that. It’s not like there was anything else to do, anywhere else to go. The walk to Foodland was quiet. There was a soft wind that grazed the tops of small patches of browned grass. I thought I heard whistling somewhere; carried by the breeze.
I got to the parking lot. The asphalt’s cracks spread out everywhere. The building looked like a temple to me in that afternoon. The automatic doors rushed open, I walked in. The air from the fans touched my body. There were beach towels and balls on display front and center even though the nearest beach was three hours away. The brightness of the inflatable balls was startling. I went to the ice cream counter, stood there for a minute. Thomas wasn’t there. No one was. The whole store was quiet except for the artificial hum of the fans and the distant sounds of the stereo. Then he appeared. I had been staring at the tub of pistachio when I heard him.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Oh, uh, I’d like a single scoop of pistachio.”
He picked up the scooper and then reached for a cone. He slid open the door to the freezer and bent over, the scooper struck the ice cream. He handed me the cone. His eyes were on me as it went from his hand to mine over the counter. I stood on the balls of my feet to reach it.
“Thanks,” I said. His eyes were all over me. I felt them like I felt the heat; both were unavoidable, inviting. I turned to walk toward the register.
“Where’s your sister?” he said. I turned around, looked at his eyes, saw their greenness, saw his face for the first time, really, saw it’s lines. I couldn’t answer him. I walked to the register, paid for the ice cream, and walked out. He watched me like how you would watch a flower bloom: cautiously.
Alex got home later and asked what I did that day, without her.
“Nothing at all,” I assured her.
After a month of eating ice cream cones, at the most sweltering peak of the summer, we decided to follow Thomas home. We knew he had the late shift at work on Wednesdays and so one Wednesday we snuck out of our house, walked past our father’s chair, which he was reclined in with the television blaring, his greasy hands folded in his lap, and got to Foodland just as Thomas was leaving. He stepped outside and lit a cigarette, the smoke wafting upward and mingling with the fluorescent glow of the store’s enormous sign. Everything was hazy. We followed him at a distance, but I knew he heard us. I knew he did, but Alex didn’t. Where was halfway? We didn’t know where we were going. The sky was a translucent black, grey clouds clustered like blackberries. We walked on, slowly chasing Thomas’ silhouette. When we got to Updike Avenue and he made a left, we stopped. We waited a minute. Our breaths were shallow. Then we went to the corner of the street and peered at which house he went into. His house was painted white. It was an old home, not like our apartment. It was made of wood with a porch and a garage on its side. He unlocked the red door and went in. We began the walk home.
“I don’t know why you were so afraid of going,” Alex taunted.
“I wasn’t afraid, just uninterested.”
“Then why’d you come?”
“Because you wanted to.”
One afternoon, a week later, Alex and I were in our room. She was alternating painting her toenails and reading. The book she had open on her bed was aged, mildewed, full of poetry. There was dirt under my fingernails but I didn’t care. I never painted my fingernails or toenails. The one fan we had in our room was going from left to right, left to right, rustling papers and only sort of chilling the room. The heat was still on everything.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I said.
“To where?”
“Nowhere, really. Just to walk. I’ll be back.”
“OK, see you,” Alex muttered, more interested in her toenails and the poetry than what I was saying.
I crept past our father, again in his chair. His striped, collared shirt was buttoned to the top. He was sleeping. I made it outside. The air was still stifling. It never felt fresh, just old and tainted, close to death. Thomas hadn’t been around Foodland that week. We went twice and both times he hadn’t been there. The manager, Kim, served us our ice cream. I thought only of his hands and wondered if they were rough.
The pavement was cracked, slight greenness shone through. I was in a floral dress, with rubber flip- flops on my feet that smacked against the pavement. The sun was beginning its descent but I still had a little while longer of languid yellow. It was poured all over everything: the tops of buildings, trees and cars glistened. Our apartment complex was exactly three miles from Thomas’ house. I was almost there, I knew my way this time. I got to Updike Avenue and made a right. My footsteps made foreign noises on the concrete. Everything seemed illuminated. The house was standing there; I saw it, walked alongside it. It was then that I saw him, on the windowsill, naked. His body was shrouded in sunlight, the groggy yellowness making his skin seem unreal. He was hugging his knees, alone in the garage. I was halfway across the sidewalk when his head turned, his eyes searched me. I saw his nakedness, up against the clear window, covered in sunlight. It all seemed so hazy. The green of his eyes caught mine and at that moment I was silenced. My feet were halted. The garage door loomed open, beckoned to me. I didn’t know where to go. Suddenly, I saw him. The rays parted. I saw him, his tender softness dripping below the windowsill, the glass resonating his image. He smiled at me, his messy teeth on display in his parted mouth; they shone like candles in a sleepy night. I didn’t move. I watched him, felt a shiver rise up my back. But I spun around then, suddenly, looked away. I stood with my back turned to the garage. My breath was heavy like my mother’s gold chain. I started in the direction of home. Darkness would be here soon but for now I only saw lightness. I started to run, felt everything speed up, saw the colors of houses and the blackness of the street blend together. I ran the three miles home. Ran just to run. I got in past the vertical black bars of the gate before I tripped, ended up in the dark, thick sludge of the pool. I saw Thomas’ face against the darkness. His hair was wild, his eyes lit, his mouth was on fire. Alex grabbed my hand, I emerged from the thickness of the water, made it up to the sunlight.
“Are you OK?” she asked. I tried to get air into my mouth.
“What happened? I heard you...
“I would have been fine.”
The sun was sinking behind us.