more schools; soon Annie will be just anotherface without a name, and I will forget whatever it is that is happening to her right now, behind the dark windows of her house.
I leave the party without kissing the guests good night. From the top of the stairs I turn to watch them. My mother smiles directly into the eyes of a man she has just met, while my father entertains the man’s wife in the kitchen. Around them move people without faces, speaking in high, excited voices, and in the middle of the room Annie’s parents sit together, staring around them with big haunted eyes. I try to guess what my mother is thinking as she smiles at the man, if in her mind she is groping for a five-letter word for frying pan or mousetrap.
From my bedroom window, I watch Annie’s house, dark except for the kitchen and the flickering glow of the television downstairs. I turn out my light just as Annie comes out of her house. She sees me and waves me over, but I pull back out of sight. I cannot cross the street to meet her; downstairs is a room full of people I don’t know, and ahead of me there are rooms full of people I don’t know. Under my skin the nerves are moving like tiny people trying to get out. I watch Annie walk around her yard, collecting papers, twigs, early leaves, which she piles in ragged mounds against the brick wall of her house. She turns to me again, and in the darkness her face is a pale little moon, lit by the bleak shining faith that she can somehow cause the dry bricks to burn and save herself in the flames of a fire that can never catch.
LOCUSTS
The car is long and black, with fake wooden sides that are peeling away from the body in thin metallic strips. It honks even before it stops in front of our house, but my parents pay no attention.
The car continues to honk, and finally my mother lifts her head from her book.
—Jesus, she says, then walks to the bathroom and locks the door behind her. My father rises from his chair, dragging his eyes away from the baseball game on the television.
—Helen, he says sharply to her, then notices me by the window. He smiles grimly and wipes his hands across the front of his shirt.
Francine launches herself from the car first; she is splendid in hot pink, blue designer jeans, and breasts, which are clearly distinguishable from the soft bulk of her back and shoulders and stomach. They are a new addition since her last visit here two summers ago when she and I lay on the hot pavement at the pool spreading our hands flat across our chests, searching for even the slightest swelling in the flat bony shapes of our bodies.
This summer we will not go to the pool, since I am still recovering from an unusually severe and inexplicably contracted bout of hepatitis that kept me out of school for the first half of the year. I know that Francine will be uneasy about my hepatitis; she will wonder where I got it and how, but she will decide immediately, looking me over, that its origin could not have been in anything sexual. For the first few nights, I know she will lie awake in the bed across from mine and listen to my breathing, trying to detect germs issuing from my mouth in a thin stream, heading relentlessly toward her. There will be some satisfaction for me in Francine’s first few sleepless nights.
Aunt Louise and Uncle Woody follow Francine up the walk, Aunt Louise looking vaguely displeased with the sky and the street and the air, Uncle Woody rubbing his thick palms together as he comes up the path to the door.
Francine drops her little square night case on the floor andlooks me over, then looks outside. —What’s that noise? she asks.
—Locusts, I tell her. —Seventeen-year locusts.
The locusts have been here since the beginning of summer; quietly breathing underground for seventeen years, they have emerged to their few months of life, and they are everywhere, eating. It is only the first of August and already the bare branches of trees are beginning to show through;
I leave the party without kissing the guests good night. From the top of the stairs I turn to watch them. My mother smiles directly into the eyes of a man she has just met, while my father entertains the man’s wife in the kitchen. Around them move people without faces, speaking in high, excited voices, and in the middle of the room Annie’s parents sit together, staring around them with big haunted eyes. I try to guess what my mother is thinking as she smiles at the man, if in her mind she is groping for a five-letter word for frying pan or mousetrap.
From my bedroom window, I watch Annie’s house, dark except for the kitchen and the flickering glow of the television downstairs. I turn out my light just as Annie comes out of her house. She sees me and waves me over, but I pull back out of sight. I cannot cross the street to meet her; downstairs is a room full of people I don’t know, and ahead of me there are rooms full of people I don’t know. Under my skin the nerves are moving like tiny people trying to get out. I watch Annie walk around her yard, collecting papers, twigs, early leaves, which she piles in ragged mounds against the brick wall of her house. She turns to me again, and in the darkness her face is a pale little moon, lit by the bleak shining faith that she can somehow cause the dry bricks to burn and save herself in the flames of a fire that can never catch.
LOCUSTS
The car is long and black, with fake wooden sides that are peeling away from the body in thin metallic strips. It honks even before it stops in front of our house, but my parents pay no attention.
The car continues to honk, and finally my mother lifts her head from her book.
—Jesus, she says, then walks to the bathroom and locks the door behind her. My father rises from his chair, dragging his eyes away from the baseball game on the television.
—Helen, he says sharply to her, then notices me by the window. He smiles grimly and wipes his hands across the front of his shirt.
Francine launches herself from the car first; she is splendid in hot pink, blue designer jeans, and breasts, which are clearly distinguishable from the soft bulk of her back and shoulders and stomach. They are a new addition since her last visit here two summers ago when she and I lay on the hot pavement at the pool spreading our hands flat across our chests, searching for even the slightest swelling in the flat bony shapes of our bodies.
This summer we will not go to the pool, since I am still recovering from an unusually severe and inexplicably contracted bout of hepatitis that kept me out of school for the first half of the year. I know that Francine will be uneasy about my hepatitis; she will wonder where I got it and how, but she will decide immediately, looking me over, that its origin could not have been in anything sexual. For the first few nights, I know she will lie awake in the bed across from mine and listen to my breathing, trying to detect germs issuing from my mouth in a thin stream, heading relentlessly toward her. There will be some satisfaction for me in Francine’s first few sleepless nights.
Aunt Louise and Uncle Woody follow Francine up the walk, Aunt Louise looking vaguely displeased with the sky and the street and the air, Uncle Woody rubbing his thick palms together as he comes up the path to the door.
Francine drops her little square night case on the floor andlooks me over, then looks outside. —What’s that noise? she asks.
—Locusts, I tell her. —Seventeen-year locusts.
The locusts have been here since the beginning of summer; quietly breathing underground for seventeen years, they have emerged to their few months of life, and they are everywhere, eating. It is only the first of August and already the bare branches of trees are beginning to show through;
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