her hand frequently, fingered the cross around her neck and offered her thoughts, generally framing them as direct from her Father or her father. She declined to engage in certain required reading, brought notes from her dad that forbade her from doing so.
Adolescence had descended on us, though not without our knowing. Jackson and I didn’t speak of the mysteries of antiperspirant versus deodorant, or the different kinds ofunderwear the girls in the locker room began to wear, but we related to each other differently, as if circling. We sat on my stoop but spoke of doing something else. We played catch from farther and farther distances down our street, and sometimes, watching the baseball land somewhere besides our mitts, neither of us went to grab it.
One of the first afternoons of spring that year, Jackson and I settled on my front lawn with our Spanish textbooks in our laps and conjugated verbs, learning all the different ways to eat, to listen, to cry, to run. Somewhere between past and present tenses, we lost direct contact with the newly returned sun and found Heather in its path there, blocking our warmth. She was clad in the deep sort of pink that looks good on no one, her backpack adjusted high up her shoulders.
Sensing my choice not to speak, Jackson did. “Hey,” he went, without warmth.
“Hi, Ida.” Heather spoke from her nose.
“I saw your father out walking late last night,” she accused.
“He likes to do his thinking like that.”
“My dad saw too. He says it must be hard on you.”
I went back to quiet, poured my energy into I go, you go, she goes, we go, they go.
“Growing up the way you do. Your dad always working. He thinks it’s not right, you spending all your time alone with those boys . But you know? I told him the Lord forgives you. Having basically no family and all. You’re always welcome for dinner at our place, you know. It might begood for you to be around a father and mother. People who really care for your soul.”
“Hey, Heather!” Jackson speciously enthused in the same voice he used when tricking James into doing his chores by some clever trade or another. “Wanna see something we just found? Out back?”
Her eyes lit up like she hadn’t just been pushing at the weakest folds of my heart, and she followed him but immediately.
The tree outside our living room window was sickly and small, but it served its purpose. How long Heather remained hanging there, strung by her wrists and ankles by a string of Christmas tree lights, a bandanna tied around her mouth, I’m not sure. She did not cry out or protest, and right before Jackson covered her thin, pallid lips she asked God to save us.
“Shut up!” cried Jackson. “Shutupshutupshutup,” his words coming fast like a metronome gone mad.
When I returned after dinner, terrified, the preacher’s daughter was gone, the ghosts of tiny lights hanging in apostrophe of the day’s events. I tore them violently from the branches, shaking boughs and loosening leaves, crossed the street, and placed them in my neighbor’s garbage can. The thud of the black plastic lid falling behind me as I raced across the asphalt was deafening, and I expected every window on the street to fill with light as if to ask: What are you doing? What have you done?
Just as the first evening we spent tenderly examining each other’s bodies—an act with implications we were far,then, from understanding—was never mentioned, neither was what we did to Heather, or what Heather did to me. In school she made every effort to pass by my desk, sometimes giving my hair a little tug; I would look up from a spelling test to find her looking at me, unblinking, and she would grin and grin and grin. I spent the months after that waiting for a knock at the door, or to be summoned into the living room to find my father and the preacher, a balding man with hairy, stubby hands, talking in low voices about me, about Heather.
The knock never came. One day Heather
Adolescence had descended on us, though not without our knowing. Jackson and I didn’t speak of the mysteries of antiperspirant versus deodorant, or the different kinds ofunderwear the girls in the locker room began to wear, but we related to each other differently, as if circling. We sat on my stoop but spoke of doing something else. We played catch from farther and farther distances down our street, and sometimes, watching the baseball land somewhere besides our mitts, neither of us went to grab it.
One of the first afternoons of spring that year, Jackson and I settled on my front lawn with our Spanish textbooks in our laps and conjugated verbs, learning all the different ways to eat, to listen, to cry, to run. Somewhere between past and present tenses, we lost direct contact with the newly returned sun and found Heather in its path there, blocking our warmth. She was clad in the deep sort of pink that looks good on no one, her backpack adjusted high up her shoulders.
Sensing my choice not to speak, Jackson did. “Hey,” he went, without warmth.
“Hi, Ida.” Heather spoke from her nose.
“I saw your father out walking late last night,” she accused.
“He likes to do his thinking like that.”
“My dad saw too. He says it must be hard on you.”
I went back to quiet, poured my energy into I go, you go, she goes, we go, they go.
“Growing up the way you do. Your dad always working. He thinks it’s not right, you spending all your time alone with those boys . But you know? I told him the Lord forgives you. Having basically no family and all. You’re always welcome for dinner at our place, you know. It might begood for you to be around a father and mother. People who really care for your soul.”
“Hey, Heather!” Jackson speciously enthused in the same voice he used when tricking James into doing his chores by some clever trade or another. “Wanna see something we just found? Out back?”
Her eyes lit up like she hadn’t just been pushing at the weakest folds of my heart, and she followed him but immediately.
The tree outside our living room window was sickly and small, but it served its purpose. How long Heather remained hanging there, strung by her wrists and ankles by a string of Christmas tree lights, a bandanna tied around her mouth, I’m not sure. She did not cry out or protest, and right before Jackson covered her thin, pallid lips she asked God to save us.
“Shut up!” cried Jackson. “Shutupshutupshutup,” his words coming fast like a metronome gone mad.
When I returned after dinner, terrified, the preacher’s daughter was gone, the ghosts of tiny lights hanging in apostrophe of the day’s events. I tore them violently from the branches, shaking boughs and loosening leaves, crossed the street, and placed them in my neighbor’s garbage can. The thud of the black plastic lid falling behind me as I raced across the asphalt was deafening, and I expected every window on the street to fill with light as if to ask: What are you doing? What have you done?
Just as the first evening we spent tenderly examining each other’s bodies—an act with implications we were far,then, from understanding—was never mentioned, neither was what we did to Heather, or what Heather did to me. In school she made every effort to pass by my desk, sometimes giving my hair a little tug; I would look up from a spelling test to find her looking at me, unblinking, and she would grin and grin and grin. I spent the months after that waiting for a knock at the door, or to be summoned into the living room to find my father and the preacher, a balding man with hairy, stubby hands, talking in low voices about me, about Heather.
The knock never came. One day Heather
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