Ten Years Old

With my knees on the couch and my arms on the windowsill, I stared out at the front yard to the rain-polished street. The cars, hunched and cautious, made their way through the intersection of Verdugo and Catalina, the shush sound from the tires a counterpoint to the rain steadily drumming the roof. Maybe I wasn’t born into this family. Maybe I was seed-swapped at the last moment by some advanced space alien civilization testing an invention. The rain fell louder than the moment before. The window steamed in the corners. The slow sadness fell like drapery.

Manoog

Junk Uncle Manoog lived alone in Ventura. Uncle Harry told me the house was small and run down, but there was a long walk to the front door and there were roses and bougainvillea all along the pathway, and that he lived where the air was fragrant with flowers and the ocean. Inside the house though, it was dark, chaotic, cluttered with a cats and car oil odor. There were disassembled clocks and small machines on tables, and there were pulleys, chains, gears, sketches, and tools. Junk Uncle Manoog was an inventor who never sold any of his inventions and never finished most of them, Uncle Harry said.

Sad, Dumb Story

I opened my eyes and saw a tangle of branches pushing the sky. I lifted myself with my elbows and saw the empty pint. The wood of the picnic table was old and raw. To the left, the park, empty except for grass, trees and a lazy wind. To my right, the girl, a stranger in a dress with orange and yellow flowers, asking if I was ok. I told her the whole sad, dumb story and she listened. We kissed for a while, then I walked away. When I looked back she was still standing by the picnic table with her hands at her side.

Fight

In the breezeway heading to my classroom I saw two girls nose to nose, their mutual hatred so intense that the other students left a large space and kept moving. I approached, with no idea about what to say. I got as close to them as they were to each other and picked the one who glanced at me for half a second, tapped the shoulder of her blue sweater and said, “You go that way,” and sent the other in the opposite direction. At my room I thought that I left open the possibility that they might just fight later.

The Message

The bleachers made a semi-circle around the campfire. The fire burned high, popped loud, sparks flew to heaven. The pine trees, dust, night air and smoke from the fire were like incense. The cheerful, funny lead counselor with the blue eyes, embroidered shirt and shiny face stood before us. He held his hands together for a moment, and then he spoke.

 

“Did you ever see a cute little baby, and you know, ahh, how cute! How adorable! And the way a baby smiles makes your heart happy. And you know what? That baby is dying. Because we’re all dying, right?”

The Lock

The Impala was parked on Catalina Street and I wasn’t going to let anyone ruin the engine by pouring sugar in it. I went to Pep Boys on the Golden Mall, paid six dollars, when I could have bought two used records. The lock was chrome, with a ring of red on its face and words that I’ve forgotten. Heavy as a hand grenade I thought, although I had never held a hand grenade. It came with two keys; I gave the second one to Mom. It was about the same time that Dad fixed the back door so it locked.

Practice

I could read a coach’s wristwatch, even if it was upside down. Close to five o’ clock meant wind sprints, from the goal to the 10 and back, then to the 20 and back, then to the 30 and back all the way to the 50 and back. Then each 50 yard dash winner got to go in. I looked forward to wind sprints because it meant the end of practice. I was tired, sore; I longed for the quiet of the kitchen, the ignoring of homework, and the solace of pilaf and pot roast. I would touch the kitchen window and feel the cold, blind, dark night.

Mild Memory Loss

The brain stores everything. I once read an article in college claiming that with the skull opened and a little electric stimulus, words from the past would come right out of your mouth. But not willing to open my skull and afraid of electrical currents, I had to find a different method.  I forgot my favorite quote from Mom this morning at breakfast. I pushed my brain to open files but nothing arrived. “Mild memory loss” the doctor had said to me. Comes with age. Not too unusual.  I remember all but one word of Mom’s words. Then I recall  the dreams after she died 25 years ago. “Speak faster,” she said, “before I die again.”

Finally, Mom’s words emerge: There are two things in life, memories and hope.

Ill-Gotten

I sit on the curb at Catalina and Oak; vomit frantically escaping my body through both my mouth and my nose, its pungency charging up olfactory nerves, inspiring an encore. My cousin’s voice floats over my head, “It’s ok, Jackie. You ate too much, too fast.” But such is the path of ill-gotten gains. I had seen him take money from his mother’s purse, and I had eaten almost a shopping bag full of Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, and Snowballs. “Calm yourself, Jackie,” my cousin says. I look down and see a sow bug running for shelter under my sneaker.

Hammer and Nail

It may have been before kindergarten when I held a hammer that Dad had handed to me. I didn’t know the phrase “re-modeling the house” or the words “floorboard” or “two-by-four.” We were together in the room that was going to become the new master bedroom. He had tapped a nail into the floorboard where it was needed. The nail stood tall and straight. The echo of the hollow room had stopped. It was quiet for a moment.

“Now you finish it,” he said, when he handed me the hammer.

I understood that he meant for me to do what he had been doing—hitting the nails until they were all the way down. I took hold of the hammer but it was heavy and I gripped it with both hands.

“NO! Not like that. One hand!”

It was the voice that made me shake inside. I pushed back the panic and gripped the hammer half way up the handle.

“You won’t have any power that way,” he shouted, grabbing my hand and pushing it to the end of the handle. “Now, hit the nail. All the way to the end.”

When I lifted the hammer, it wobbled. My heart was a small wild animal making a run for it. Hitting the nail square on the head was my only hope of not creating further problems. But the face of the hammer glanced off the side of the nail.

“No! Not like that!” he shouted, and I as I readied myself to try again, he took the hammer out of my hand. I was scared but annoyed, too. I was sure for some reason that the second try would have been the winner.

“Like this, see?” It took him three clean shots to drive the nail into the wood where you couldn’t see it any more. I stared at the flat top of the nail indented in the board. The wood seemed soft like clay, and it gave off a sent that made me think of pudding. I hugged my knees and considered all the nails in the room that had already been hammered, and then thought about those that were still left. I liked the noise of the hammer hitting the nail. I liked the echo in the room. I liked the smell of the suffering wood. I liked the exposed walls with black paper and chicken wire, something unseen, like being able to see inside your own body, this was the inside of the body of the room. I liked thinking about the room going from not a room to a room, from nothing to something. I liked the damp, cold smell of the empty room, looking so big and nothing at all like a bedroom, and how without a light there was a darkness in the room, even in the daylight, like it was holding a secret.

Thinking about these other things was soothing even if it couldn’t take away the embarrassment, the hurt and fear caused by not doing as Dad asked.

“…so just do it like that, ok?”

The realization that Dad had been talking, explaining something to me, caused my heart to cause my heart to take off at full sprint all over again. He must have seen my face full of worry and confusion.

“Ok, watch.”

He took a new nail, found a spot in need of a nail. He tapped it a few times, then drove it until there was a less than half an inch left. He handed me the hammer.

“All right, now hit the nail the way I showed you.”

Now I had a new set of problems. Did he mean they way he showed me when I was listening or the way he showed me when I wasn’t listening? Also, he had knocked the nail almost all the way in anyway. What did that mean? He didn’t think I could do the whole thing? Would I ever be able to? Would he be happy with just this already hammered most of the way in nail, or would I be there with him all day until I did it myself?

Summoning all my five year old concentration I took the hammer, held my breath and holding it with one hand at the bottom of the handle, brought it down with a force commonly inspired by fear, anger and frustration and hit it square with a big boom.

“That a boy! Now make it smooth.”

I wanted to smash it, to finish it off. I suddenly felt I might damage the wood or even break the hammer. So I tapped it down gently instead and handed the hammer back to Dad. We squatted by our accomplishment silently for a moment, father and son, 50 and 5. We were thin, all protruding elbows and knees and shoulder blades, but with balance, thinking about everything, deriving one thing from something else, and on and on, bigger than the hammer and nail. Each in his own way, each together.

“Ok, that’s all for today. Thanks for being my helper.”

I was a kettle full of mixed feelings when I ran out to the backyard, straight off the porch, past the patio, directly to the lemon tree.

There was none quite like it. The trunk, for instance, short and hidden in a chaotic umbrella of low hanging branches that bent toward the ground, which made the tree appear to be a very large bush. And the business of seasonal fruit was a matter of confusion. Blossoms were present on one side but lemons were on another, and green, not yet ripe lemons were under development on yet another section of the tree. There was never a time in any part of any year when there were no lemons available. Even at the age of five I sensed the tree’s magical difference from the loquat tree, which bore fruit at Easter; and the apricot tree, which bore fruit in June; and the plum tree, which bore fruit in July. I sat down under the lemon tree. There were thorns near me but the presence of the lemons, and the shining smoothness of the leaves, and fragrance of the blossoms offered something good, something that I didn’t have a name for yet.