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Home > Books > Throwing Roses Excerpt |
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I went outside, letting the screen door slam behind me. A dense net of mosquitoes grabbed me and pricked me with their stinging little needles. I waved my arms, swatting them away, but they left the scent of sweet blood and swamps as they buzzed around my head. I walked out to the square flat patch of short yellow bug-bitten grass where my father once built a swing set. The swing set originally had three wooden plank swings, which I played on so often that I wore a small oval depression into the ground. The depression was always visible. It was the first spot to freeze in autumn and the last to thaw in spring. Eventually the swings rotted and fell away. After that my father tied an old rubber tire to the dented aluminum frame, and I played on that for many more years.
As I walked outside I saw that the tire was still there. I climbed into it carefully, tucking in the pleats of my dress and balancing my braced knee just outside the rim. "Stupid dress," I said, as the shiny satin squeaked against the rubber. From where I sat I could see the light through the bar window and I could hear the juke box, spitting out tinny Motown tunes, as Gerry, a Diana Ross fanatic, fed it quarter after quarter. I imagined I was a stranger drawn like a fly to the heat and the light of the bar. I would walk in and pretend to be happy.
A thin figure appeared in profile at the door, and as it moved toward me, I realized it was Critter. She kept her head down and wouldn't look at me, but she came straight toward me with a determined stride. As she got closer I could hear the soft swish-swish of her skirt and blouse and the soft crunching sound that the dry grass made under her feet.
She stopped and sat down on the ground just in front of the tire with her back to me. I swung back and forth. She did not move out of the way as I tapped her back with my toes. I could see over the top of her head. Critter had a face full of cleanliness and order. Her chin-length, cocoa brown hair was cut evenly all around and now pulled back at the eyebrow with a single clip. Her skin looked like freckled milk. She was very slim and narrow-boned, and through the back of her white blouse I could see the curves of her ribs and shoulders. I was so intent on looking at her face that I didn't notice right away that she was grabbing her left index finger just below the knuckle and twisting the skin back and forth rapidly, until her finger began to swell.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Don't you get it, Branda? Don't you remember? Our American King Super Spy Rings? They had little reflectors on them and we used them to send messages. Don't you remember?" she asked, voice trembling.
"No," I told her honestly.
"We sent away for them. Eight box tops from Captain Crisp! Imagine, eight box tops!" she said, as if their value were incalculable in ordinary money. "We were really into spying then, me and you. When the wooden swings were here, remember those swings?"
I nodded that yes, I did remember the swings.
"We used to swing as high as we could, pretending we could see through the roof and into the bar. We had little notebooks and we wrote things down, things about the men sitting there drinking. We said we were gathering enough information so we could go back and tell their wives what they were doing."
I thought for a moment. I could remember none of what she had said. But the way she said it, with so much earnestness and longing, made me believe right away that it was true. Critter's slim fingers curled themselves around her face and I could see by the quivering between her shoulders that she had started softly crying.
"What is it Critter?" I asked, stopping still, wanting the world to stop until I could catch up with it. "What's wrong? What's so different about me—so I can't remember some things, so what? What's the big deal?"
"Oh Branda," she said, catching her breath and resting her fingertips on her lip. "It's the little things that make the difference. It's not your memory. It's your eyes. Like you're looking past me now. Inside, when I gave you that make-up thing, your eyes were so far away. It's the little things that make me sad. Like I know now our kids will never be friends. We always said we'd name our babies after each other, and I'd be godmother to the little Critter and you'd be godmother to the little Branda, and they would be as good friends as we were. But I look at you now and I know that won't ever be true. You'll never be like you were before, and that makes me sad for both of us."
She leaned back against the tire and closed her eyes. The tired jiggled, so I tried to hold it still by wedging my strong foot into that hollow patch of ground. The folds of my dress sprang loose and I realized that Critter's face was just inches from my brace. I tried to hold myself perfectly still while I touched the ground. My foot was firm against that coldest piece of dead earth but my mind was alive, above me and soaring on the long-gone wooden swing, looking over the top of the tavern, looking in on the people beneath, looking deep into all the lives waiting just beyond its crooked wooden form.
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