n the dream, I get up—my eyes are still shut, but my feet are steady and sure, and I run. Running fast and hard, I run right through the olive green canvas, it breaks open like delicate paper with a trapped bird inside. Like I’m flying, I run home, steering my wings into my own bed. Then I sleep. I sleep until I can’t remember the dream at all when I wake. I can’t remember being brave. I can’t remember being afraid. I think I must have acted fast to stop it all. I can’t remember though. It all seems like a dream now.

 

During the beginning of school my sixth grade year, I started putting food coloring into my urine. With the white porcelain bowl as background, a few drops of red food coloring created the illusion of blood floating in the toilet. The spidery red veins of color were intriguing, and created a response much like playing with matches or stealing change from my mother’s purse. I knew right away I shouldn’t have been doing it but the impulse seemed so strong and irresistible I didn’t try to stop myself.

At first I added a few drops just to see what would happen. The first drops landed and scattered like a phrase describing an emotion. Magically, the mystery, danger, and caution of blood appeared. When I decided to call my mother in for her reaction, I didn’t know what to expect.

By the time I’d added the drops, called her to come and see, and she arrived on the scene, a pink tinge of color was all that was left. The thread-like strands of deep red, the most effective part of the trick, had dissolved in the volume of water in the toilet bowl.

My mother, however, did not let me down as easily as the food coloring. She played her part, showing just the interest I hoped she would. She stared into the toilet, her face set and serious. Then she stared at me, thinking of something to say.

“Do you feel okay, Carla?”

Part of me wished she would see right through the pink tinge and call me on the gag, but her concerned look only encouraged me to continue the game.

“Yes, I feel fine.” Didn’t she get it?

For almost four weeks I faked blood in my urine, practicing during the day when my mother worked. When my mother was home, I staged going to the toilet. From behind the closed bathroom door, I would summon my mother to come inspect. Living in the hope that she would make it in time to see the spidery threads of red before they dissolved I started waiting until I heard her on the stairs before dropping in the food coloring. The effect of bloody vein-like strands in the water seemed much more alarming.

There were no other symptoms, though. No tummy ache. No blood in my underpants. After feeling my head for fever, and asking how I felt for weeks, my mother was totally mystified. Based on the flimsy evidence of pink pee water, my mother scheduled an appointment for me with the doctor.

Dr. Clark was a swarthy little man with bad breath and hard, rough hands. He pressed on my belly and listened to my back with his stethoscope. I knew he wouldn’t be as easily fooled as my mother so I decided not to make up any other symptoms. My mother did all the talking anyway, referring to me with her eyes only, and talking about me as if I weren’t in the room.

“She has no other symptoms, but I saw the blood myself.” My mother was more convincing telling the story, one she believed to be true.

Dr. Clark rested his hand on my shoulder but he was facing my mother as he spoke, “Mrs. Caruso, I wish I could tell you more but all we can do is keep an eye on her and if it continues we can run some tests.” Then Dr. Clark turned to me, “Could you give us a urine sample today, Carla?”

I shook my head no and slid down from the examining table out from under his grasp.

“No problem, but if this continues we’ll need one.” Dr. Clark began scribbling onto the top page of papers clipped into the manila file folder he was holding.

“Could it be her period, her grandmother had an early period?” My mother asked at a loud whisper, “But why would it last so long?”

“It could be.” They both looked at me in the same moment. “But then she would have blood in her underpants, too.” The doctor’s office was a large room so I wandered into the far corner under the pretense of searching for a lollypop. I picked through the lollypop basket while eavesdropping.

“Her emotions have been running pretty high, too, lately, Dr. Clark,” I heard my mother say. “She came running home a few weeks ago sobbing uncontrollably.” My mother sounded less worried, but I think she was still nervous.

“If it’s her menstrual cycle beginning, we’ll know soon enough. A pelvic exam at this age could be intrusive so let’s put that off until there’s something more indicative.” Dr. Clark clicked his ballpoint pen, quickly with his thumb, to punctuate his final remarks.

“Thank you Dr. Clark.” My mother was courteous, and I liked when her voice got so gentle. We both watched him turn towards the door. There was a strength and straightness across his shoulders and the way his white lab coat hung down his back so stiff and clean seemed reassuring. He was a medical authority. Perhaps Dr. Clark would figure out my game.

“Come right back if it continues.” He said his last words over his shoulder as he reached the door. When the door closed my mother remained silent. I think she was expecting more of an answer, but the doctor couldn’t give her one yet.

 

In the dream, it feels gentle and soft like a caress. In the dream it’s something I want to feel. The stirrings of my own desire. He’s touching me. My body gets warm and loose and relaxed. My eyes are shut and I can see different colors as he touches me. It’s like we’re painting a picture together. He’s holding my hand as I move the brush. It’s mostly blue sky and little flat clouds. A thin pink line creeps across the horizon widening into a rosy haze. I want to open my eyes and see his face, in the dream. When I wake up and there’s only blackness.

 

It’s funny how memory arouses its own truth. Time goes by however fast or slow and the human brain’s ability to recall can bring memories flooding back as if they happened only moments ago. A single detail from familiar surroundings can bring immediate replay.

All the apartments in the veterans’ housing project had the same set up: four apartments in each unit with four sets of clotheslines behind each. It was often the neighborhood activity for us kids to cover the clotheslines with anything that might fit or provide shelter and shade from the elements. The housing unit apartments were too small for much indoor play. Kids used old sheets, blankets, anything to cover the clothesline, creating an enclosure for play and privacy. Tenting we called it, our mobile, disposable neighborhood clubhouse.

My brothers and I used a canvas army tarp. We’d teased my father, whining in chorus until he bought it for us at a flea market. It took the three of us to carry it home. Set up right, though, ten people could sleep under it. We played cards under it in the rain, held magic shows and haunted houses in spring and fall, and spent the night out in it on many hot summer nights.

When we got tired of playing sports, which usually ended in a squabble or even a bloody fight, we’d cart out the tent and unfold it. It was a thick olive green canvas and had a musty grassy smell, especially in hot weather. The fresh grass we trampled onto it would hide in the heavy creases, only to be crushed before being freed in the next unfolding.

It was the last Saturday before school started up again. I remember, I was going to be in the sixth grade, the highest grade in my elementary school. We were setting up out in back of Janice Mathews’ house. Her father, a retired Navy man, was bigger and older than many of the other fathers in our housing project neighborhood. His voice was deep but somehow muffled as it groaned out of his throat. Not like most of the other fathers who came out to play with us sometimes, he was an unknown. Janice looked just like him with her red hair, but he seemed more like her grandfather with his weathered face and hoarse-sounding voice.

Janice’s older brother, Scott, had returned from Viet Nam that year. I had a secret crush on Scott. He was always clean-looking and seemed like he didn’t belong with the adults or the kids, but somewhere in between, somewhere mysterious, more interesting. Janice also had a sister, Karen, who was married and had moved away. Janice acted older, too, even though she was the same age as the rest of us. She smoked cigarettes, inhaling easily, when most of us could barely keep the puffs of smoke in our cheeks long enough to blow it out before choking. She wore tube tops and hot pants, hand-me-downs from her sister. My hand-me-downs came from my brothers in the form of cut-off jeans and faded t-shirts.

Janice liked to swear, too. I didn’t know what most of those words even meant, but she seemed to and used them so easily. She laughed at us when we talked about our favorite TV stars and liking boys. Janice had already kissed lots of boys. She seemed to know more about most things, which is why we sought her out and wanted her for a friend.

Janice introduced us to the appeal of danger but also the allure of indifference. She did things because she wanted to and didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought or said. In Janice’s world, you were either with her or against her. She didn’t care which. She was the kind of girl you invited to your birthday party but she would never show up. She’d never mention it afterwards, and you’d probably ask again the next year. I’m sure my parents would have preferred me not associating with Janice because of her rough reputation but they never said so.

My parents didn’t have many rules. They managed us in hindsight. According to my parents, mistakes were a privilege of childhood, and the only guiding principal of their parenting decisions. When it came to my parents, the veil between experience and perception was rarely lifted. They saw what they had time to, what they could understand and fix, and the rest stayed hidden inside us kids.

Mr. Mathews liked to play jokes on us kids. Once when I was waiting for Janice in their kitchen he called me into the living room. “Carla, thatchu, c’mon in heeeer.” His voice sounded like gravel pouring out of a truck. He was sprawled back in his orange corduroy recliner when I entered the room. The television droned from the corner in front of him.

He sat up quickly as if surprised by my presence. He motioned to me to shut off the television and then recoiled the recliner footrest and placed his can of beer on the floor next to his chair.

He remained sitting on the edge of the recliner, holding out his thick hand, palm up towards me, and said, “Betcha I can make ya laugh.”

I wasn’t afraid of Mr. Matthews but I wasn’t sure what he expected from me so I just stood there waiting for the joke or funny face he was about to make. I could feel my face getting warmer. Then flush, as I waited. I didn’t want him to know I didn’t know what he wanted so when he reached and grasped my wrist to pull me towards him I didn’t resist. The surprise rendered me captive and willing in the same instant.

I was trying to decipher the blur of tattoos on his forearms when Janice came bounding down the stairs into sight. “Just do it,” she said impatiently, “so we can get outta here.”

“Jaaanice,” called Mrs. Matthews from upstairs. Mrs. Matthews was on constant bed rest. I’d only seen her once, another time when she called for Janice out the upstairs window. I was with Janice in the backyard, we both looked up to where the voice was coming from above us. Her mother’s facial features were blurred by the surface of the window screen but I remember she had a lot of red hair and it seemed to fly off in all directions.

I remember Janice’s mother asking her that day if I was her boyfriend, her finger poking at the screen, probably because of my short haircut and tomboy clothes. Janice just threw her long tanned arm around me that day and kissed my cheek while her mother squinted through the upstairs window screen.

Janice didn’t answer her mother then or now. She pranced through the living room and was in the kitchen rattling through the cupboards when the call came from upstairs, “I need you to go to the store for me.”

“Put your hand out like this,” Mr. Matthews showed me with his free hand. Both my hands were clenched in defensive fists.

“C’mon,” he teased. As if I had no choice, I laid my fist on his outstretched palm and slowly opened the fingers. He arranged my fingers, gently pressing them flat onto his hand.

“Now, I bet I can make ya laugh by touching only one o’ ya fingers,” he looked into my eyes as he spoke.

I turned and looked over my shoulder for Janice. She was still in the kitchen, raiding the cupboards. I was alone, and clenched in Mr. Matthews’ huge hands.

He squeezed my hand hard. “Pick a finger.”

Mr. Matthews’ then shook my shoulder with his free hand. With no idea what trick he had in mind, I pointed to my pinky finger. He massaged my hand for a moment, seemingly to relax it, then he curled the pinky finger I’d chosen inward, guiding it with his giant thumb.

All at once, excruciating pain shot through my hand and up my arm. He was crushing my little finger. For all I knew he was breaking it off. I looked up into his blue eyes now dancing with delight. A smile widened across his leathery face. I wanted to scream. I couldn’t. I could barely breathe.

When I looked down I could see he had folded my, now bloodless, finger back onto itself at the knuckle and was applying pressure with an unstoppable force. I struggled catching my breath.

“Janice...I know you heeear me,” came the voice from upstairs.

There was no breaking free. He was too strong. Mr. Matthews was holding my elbow and had clamped my finger in a vise grip. My face, still flushed, started sweating, while I winced in pain. I tried to pull free with the rest of my body. He seemed most amused by my resistance.

“Laugh...idiot! Laugh,” said Janice from behind me. “He’ll stop if you laugh,” she said with a mouthful of cookies.

Strained squeaks of laughter came from my tightening throat. Then with all the nervous energy I could control, I laughed again. In a halting voice, I laughed, louder, and then louder as if the release of my tortured limb relied on the volume of my laughing. It took tears to stop the shrill laughter.

“I tol’ ya I could make ya laugh with one finger, dinnin I?” Now he was laughing. His voice was husky and soft, “Wan me to do it again?”

“No thanks,” I said, and he returned to his recliner. Nothing had ever hurt so much before. I shook my hand gently to restore some blood to the throbbing finger joint. Mr. Matthews had resumed his reclining position as if nothing had ever happened. He groped for his open beer can. My neck was damp with sweat and my chest and shoulders ached from clenching so, and trying desperately to laugh.

Janice switched the television back on for him, as if distracting him.

“Come on. You coming?” Janice asked as she headed out through the kitchen. I retreated after her like a tired dog. The screen door slammed shut before I reached it. Stunned and cradling my injured hand, I pushed open the screen door with my foot.

“Jannnnnice,” I could hear her mother’s voice all around me.

I didn’t stop. I pushed my way past the screen door and out into the waiting daylight. I could feel my chest expand as I began to run. Janice was in sight. I called to her in the streaky sunlight, “I’m going home,” I yelled as I darted around her housing unit towards my own before she could respond. Tears welled up in my eyes. My throat tightened as I ran. My mouth was dry and I started cough just as I got to my front steps.

Inside my own house I sputtered and cried. My mother tried to understand but there was a limit to the time she could spend on my dramatics, as she called them. I knew the limit and it was about up. My account of what happened came in sporadic bursts between sobs, “Mr. Matthews.” I tried to catch my breath, “my finger.” I held out my hand. No words would settle enough to speak for me.

“Is something wrong with your hand?” I could tell she was concerned. My mother didn’t like tears. “Tell me,” she demanded, “What is it?”

Then I had the urge to laugh. I wanted to laugh, just for relief, because I was safe at home, but nothing came.

My mother stood turning my hand and arm gently.

“What hurts? She asked again. “I don’t see anything.” She said finally. My mother was right, my fingers, my hand and my arm all looked the same as they had when I left the house earlier. She held my arm in her warm soft hands, turning it over, searching for the cause of my tears. But nothing was broken, no deformity revealed how I’d spent the last fifteen minutes in the Matthews’ house. My finger wasn’t broken as I was sure it had been. There was no sign whatsoever of the painful incident. Even Mr. Matthews’ fingerprints were gone by now, replaced by my mother’s loving touch.

The words dissolved as I said them. “Mr. Matthews played a trick on me.” I held out my throbbing pinky finger, surely it was at least swollen.

My mother, if she did believe my story would have lit out after Mr. Matthews, right? Of course she would have. If he had in fact broken my finger, if the pain I’d felt had colored my injured limb incarnadine, an arrest might have been made. Sirens flashing, the bastard would have been led away in handcuffs. Where was the proof though? There wasn’t any, just my feeble, gasping words. I had become the story, and words weren’t enough to prove any injury. Confronting Mr. Matthews would have been a difficult thing for my mother without some visual proof. In my neighborhood people didn’t just go looking for trouble, not without good cause.

So what is it about memory that our imagination thrives on and draws blood from? Being a child, I lived fully in the moment, attached to feelings organically like a flower to its roots and stem. So, why do we recall and remember what was painful once, reconstructing those experiences we worked so hard to escape when we were caught in the moment? What’s the use?

 

In the dream, I get up, stand up. I’m strong. My eyes are still shut, but my feet are steady and sure, and I run. Running, I run right through the olive green canvas. It breaks open like delicate paper with a bird trapped inside. I run like I’m flying. I run home into my own bed. Then I sleep. When I sleep, I can’t remember being afraid. I didn’t do anything to stop it and I remember.

 

That time, the summer before I started sixth grade, when we were held together under the canvas tarp, the tent, it was like being in a garden. We grew side by side, separately and simply. The tent, an army surplus canvas my father bought us at a flea market. He paid twelve dollars for it. It took three of us to carry it home.

We found a different use for it every time we unfolded it. Throwing it over the clotheslines made it into a puppet theater. Standing in front of it made it a curtain for the shows we performed. When we discovered it was waterproof we made it into a shallow swimming pool using tipped over chairs and clothespins. Spreading it flat again, we used it as a wrestling mat. Rolling it up and turning in the ends made it a soccer goal. There were endless uses for it: usually it was the roof of our fort, but it could also be the sail of a pretend ship. If we dreamed it, the tent could do it.

This particular Saturday, and with the creative placement of our street hockey sticks and some lengths of clothesline, we set up the tent out in the middle of the field behind the housing project we all lived in.

“Treat her like the rest of the boys,” was my father’s motto when it came to me. In my neighborhood I was allowed to play hardball with the boys even when Little League excluded girls. Being a girl or a boy didn’t matter as much as how well you fit in with the rest of the crowd. Being born in the middle of four brothers also carried the same kind of expectations, like not crying when the ball hit you in the face or running away when we played pull down your pants. I remember clearly the day I was forced to reveal I was wearing a pair of my brothers’ underpants. It didn’t matter that my mother was behind on the laundry.

I remember the sound of them counting, and the sweaty smell in the tent as if it was moments ago. “1, 2, 3.” On three I was supposed to drop my shorts and show my underwear. I stood alone in the middle of the enclosed tent. The air inside was thick and warm. The sweaty hoard looked up at me after counting. “Come on, Carla, everyone does it or it’s not fair.” They counted again. This time they did put their heads down. Some of the smaller kids’ heads bobbed in the heat, eyelids fluttering lazily. I motioned for them to put their heads down.

“One...Twoo,” some were gasping for air others just mouthing the numbers. “Three.” My shorts were down. I was too hot and tired to be ashamed. Half the kids didn’t even notice. It was too hot to stay in the tent. All that breathing and closeness of sweaty bodies fogged up the inside. I’d complied, but the interest was lost in the suffocating condition of the tent. Outside in the fading sunlight, revived, a few of the older kids hooted and pointed, but by now my shorts were up around my waist and fastened—the collective attention of the group scattered across the field. Kids staggered home to their housing units in small groups. It was close enough to dinnertime. I was almost home when I heard my name being called tauntingly in the distance.

“You sleeping out tonight?”

I raised my hand and waved it over my head, “Yes, probably.”

It was late summer, the last weekend for neighborhood tenting. Some kids were off on vacations by a lake, or fishing in the mountains. Both my parents worked. They saved their money and vacation time for the one week we all spent together on Cape Cod.

It was late and dark. The smell of damp grass was seeping into the tent. No cars were driving in the distance. Night had fallen heavily under the tent. I might have been asleep for hours or minutes it was hard to tell because I wasn’t dreaming when I was awoken. Chinese lanterns from across the field (hanging on someone else’s clothes line) shone through the canvas as colored specks on the dark walls of the tent. The night air crept under my blanket. I woke up cold and hungry.

Someone was in the tent. Someone different. Someone tall. His presence shook the sides of the tent. He had a flashlight, and I could see his back was to me. He cupped the flashlight in his hand as he turned. I watched him as he shined his light on the thick canvas, casting light over the sleeping bundles of bodies and not on them directly.

As he turned towards me, I snapped my eyes shut. I had learned to fake sleeping when I discovered the secret of Santa Claus, a corruption quite significant in the third grade.

I felt someone looking down on me. He stood over me for several seconds. I froze my face in stillness. Did he know I was sleeping? Did he want me to open my eyes? I could hear the fabric of his pants bending with him as he knelt. I felt the weight of my blanket rise as he drew it up and pulled it back in slow motion.

A coolness crept over me and I heard the blanket drop gently next to me. I held my body still as if I was a single finger of a huge hand. No one else around me stirred. I twitched my arm and mumbled, pretending to be asleep, a routine that had satisfied Santa.

The intruder stood up. He remained, though, and I smelled a familiar sweetness: a pleasant fragrance, but not comforting like lilacs or cotton candy or the bakery on Grove Street. It was a clean smell, but not soapy. Distracted by trying to identify the smell I no longer knew where the intruder was without peeking. I turned onto my side facing the canvas wall and looked for a shadow.

Was he still there? Had I dreamt him, I wondered. As I rolled back again, eyes shut, I realized he hadn’t moved, not even to cover his light. He was standing motionless next to me.

In my mind I was running, “I’m going home, Janice,” I called over my shoulder as I ran around the housing unit and headed for home. My heart was pumping faster and my legs sped up. My blood was awake. I’m going home, I thought. I’m going, I shouted. I‘m going home, I sobbed.

Those were the words clear in my mind, but they remained silent and deep inside me in the tent that night. I was stuck there, too. My body trapped. Nothing seemed to move in the tent. My pinky finger began hurting again, throbbing quietly, but I held it still with the rest of my fake sleeping body.

The man smell grew stronger as if it were settling on me like smoke. It was a combination of a waxy, soapy, coconut oil. It must have been Scott Matthews, I thought. Janice’s older brother. I recognized the smell. He had come to school with Janice when he came home from Viet Nam. His khaki uniform smelled like this. I liked the way he kept his khaki tie tucked neatly between the third and forth button of his khaki shirt.

He was kneeling behind me. I felt his dark shadow on me. Then I felt his breath on my cheek and ear. I couldn’t move now even if I had wanted to. I was frozen in his closeness and clean smell. My eyes stayed shut as he unbuttoned the top button of my pajama top. I started to turn. His flashlight was turned off. My eyes opened, I stared into the blackness. He had his hand positioned firmly on my back. Working his other hand slowly and softly, he moved to the next button. And the next. My body tightened and clenched as he opened my pajama top away from my bare chest.

His hand on my back drew me forward and I felt a cool wetness on my chest. A kiss feels different when you don’t see it. His warm lips and wet mouth rested there a moment. Next he brushed his cheeks over my undeveloped breasts. I could feel short blasts of breath coming from his nostrils as his face worked its way down my ribs to my belly drawing the sleep out of my skin.

I didn’t struggle. I tried desperately not to move. My eyes stayed closed the darkness, still hoping he might think I was asleep. Pretending helped me hold my eyelids shut. I didn’t want to see. Couldn’t look up and out, instead I pulled myself inward. I wanted to shrink and disappear.

His face was like a small soft animal exploring my body. In my ignorance I believed he meant no harm. No one had ever touched me where he was touching me, or put their mouth on me, or breathed on my skin like this. His hands felt bigger and heavier as they moved over my body.

His fingertips, much larger than my own, crept under the elastic waistband of my pajama bottoms. The snap at the waistband released itself as his hand made its way towards my legs. His fingers spread wide caressing both my legs at the same time. He was moving more slowly, softly rubbing one leg then the other. His hands moved quicker, then stronger and more firmly.

I was holding my breath now. He was between my thighs. Reaching. One finger at a time, seeking entrance. My buttocks tightened. There was a cool wetness on the inside of my thighs. One finger applied pressure then two fingers sliding into me. I felt cool and warm at the same time. I had to take a breath. But when I inhaled my legs pulled up and away from his hand. He forced them back down and secured them with his leg. A warm wet hand fell across my face and tightened over my mouth. Then let go.

I could smell his breath; it was different from the rest of him, a hot sharp scent spilling onto my face and neck. My back stiffened in the cold blackness. With one arm around my waist he pulled me onto his lap. In the sudden motion a sound escaped. I felt his belt buckle scrape under my thigh. Then without thinking or knowing that I might, a sound came out of my throat. Sort of like a nervous laughing choke, a single misplaced musical note, a gasping squeak of noise. It’s hard to describe, it wasn’t a sound I’d ever heard or made before. His chest was heaving and his breath was pouring down on my head at the time, but in the instant we both heard the sound I’d made he froze.

There was no restoring the silence he’d so stealthily broken. His presence in the tent and my obvious awareness of it shattered the stillness. The sound I’d made was like a light being turned on, a light that made the inside of the tent darker though. Blackness covered us both. I didn’t struggle or move to get away from him. I didn’t have to, in my compliance he guided me back onto my side next to him. He draped my blanket over me and rose as mysteriously as he’d arrived. The ends of the canvas tarp slapped together as he exited.

Under the growing warmth of my blanket I could still feel the weight of his long hands. I pulled my blanket tightly around me as the tiny specks from the distant Chinese lanterns faded into the light of the coming dawn.

I lay there awake, listening to the day begin. A few birds chirped loudly. A car engine started in the distance. I fell asleep before the rest of the world had fully awakened. And when I awoke again the world was set in wax. I felt waxy and fuzzy, too, my limbs, my lips, even my heart felt as if it were made of wax. Invisible indentations covered my body. An imprint of what had happened in the dark under the tent covered me like color and line. The ground beneath me, cold and hard, urged me up onto my feet. My body moved in slow motion, weary and worn as if months had passed in the tent that night.

Bundles of lifeless bodies and mounds of blankets and sleeping bags, some empty, surrounded me. I didn’t stay to see who was left in the tent. I gathered my blankets and pillow, put my sneakers on, and headed home. The world seemed orange and round, like I was inside a bubble, and I felt like a reflection in the mirror, flat and sharp. No one was awake when I got home. Something kept me from entering my bedroom; instead I sat in the bathroom. When I heard my father stir for morning coffee, I went into the shower.

 

Time passed for me under the hot spray. School started. Sixth grade was supposed to wonderful, but it seemed dull and empty there. An invitation to Janice’s birthday party came in the mail. My stomach ached. I was in the bathroom. Sitting. Red food coloring comes in a small plastic bottle, small enough to fit in a pocket unseen.

The red food coloring scattered in the toilet water like the intertwining routes on a road map. Red alert. Something has happened, something that can’t be told, something that must be seen. Traffic jam. Look at me. Look closely. See what happened.

No sobbing tears came, no bursting lungs full of wordless air.

Not just my skin, not just my sex, or my heart or lungs, but all of the rest of me; my bones, my face, the blood swimming in my veins, and that little flightless bird of a soul we respond with as children, all of these, in a hot wave of uncomfortable fear and shame, were exposed and evaporating in the wash of my memories of that summer. Having my brother’s underpants on. The loose fit. They were clean and soft. My secrets creeping willingly into the sunlight, stranded in a place where I discovered kindness rarely visits, coloring the truth, and waiting for my mother to see.

 

[END]

© 2005 Kendra Brooks - Contributor's Bio

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