Jessica Hollander
Ben was my summer boyfriend, my “older man,” Mom called him. He was twelve, and I was eleven, a skinny eleven, though I believed my breasts appeared acceptable to those who mattered. Ben had a beautiful red face with a scar outlining his jaw from once playing basketball and diving into the pavement. He was known as a diver, though he didn’t swim. He even refused to stick his ankles in the baby pool my parents packed with beer and coke for their parties.
…..The first Monday of summer, Mom stayed home from work. She had me on trial. Would she have to take a leave or could she trust me alone? No money for a sitter. In our neighborhood, kids ran around like abandoned animals, but we knew to be civilized when it mattered.
…..I made lunch in the microwave, not the stove, which my father said had the potential to explode when used by small hands. Cheese warmed between two slices of bread. I ate in the living room, reading about different breeds of cats, and humming. Multi-tasking. Mom had the television on in the basement. She had already pounded up the stairs once to check on me. She was having fun, pretending to care.
…..I finished lunch when Ben turned up, outside the picture window, carrying some pillowcases. With my hand on the doorframe, I swung toward him and we kissed for the first time in nine months.
…..“You smell like cheese.” He gave me a pillowcase, which was smooth and fancy. “I need to borrow your backyard.”
…..At the top of the staircase, I yelled to my mother, “I’m heading to be responsible out back.”
…..“I’ll be watching,” she called.
…..Ben went toward the pine trees, where so many years worth of needles covered the ground. He dropped to his knees and shoveled piles of them into his pillowcase. He said his dad had a new girlfriend who carried a tape measure in her purse. “At breakfast she measured my height. No one should be measured like that in the morning.”
…..“How tall are you?” Some kids in the neighborhood called him a shorty. Whenever I brought him up they said, “That shorty?” Though never to his face.
…..“The girlfriend asked if I knew you. She called you ‘That silly girl who ties something around her chest.’ She said that’s not what breasts are supposed to look like.”
…..“As if she knows.” I sat cross-legged in the needles and sorted out the sharpest. They were increasingly snappy, the further down the pile. I got bored and just sat there, snapping them. “Breasts don’t all look the same.”
…..“They had a conversation about it.” Ben filled another pillowcase. “Dad called your breasts ‘hypothetical.’ Or, I don’t know, ‘parenthetical.’”
…..“I guess your house is a house of hysterics.”
…..Mom came outside with a watering can. She watered the yellowed weeds near the back porch, watching us. Ben waved and smiled at her, and she took it as an invitation.
…..“I wondered when someone would have the initiative.” She nodded at the stuffed pillowcases. “Garbage bags would be more efficient.”
…..“Yes ma’am,” Ben said. “It so happens I have a need for needles just as you have a need to be rid o’ them.”
…..She gave me a look like we were weird. I groaned as she went for the bags. “I’m officially on the chain gang.”
…..“What’s wrong with her hand?” he asked.
…..“Don’t look at my mother. What’s wrong with you?”
…..“Her hand’s the color my chin turned a few days after I messed it up.”
…..I took a handful of pine needles like I meant to throw them at him. I squeezed until my hand hurt. “Probably the same thing,” I said. “She banged it on something trying to make up for being short.”
…..Ben took my hand and brushed away the needles.
…..“You’re a crappy boyfriend.”
…..He kissed me quick on the cheek, watching the backdoor. “You’re a good kid.”
…..He had a crazy eye that twitched occasionally. Not too often. A few times. We spent the afternoon filling trash bags with pine needles, and then we snuck across the street. Ben emptied two bags of needles between his father’s sheets. We tried to smooth the comforter over top. He said last night he thought about the two of them. He showed me three small burns in the comforter.
…..“You notice things better left unnoticed,” I said.
…..We heard the front door open, and my mother, “Carrie, you shouldn’t be here!”
…..“Come to the park,” I said. A bunch of the gang would be there. “It’s summer.”
…..“That doesn’t excite me.” He fluffed one of the pine-needled pillows. The bed was prickly and splotched. “Have fun with your ugly friends.”
…..Instead, I went home with Mom. My wrists crossed behind my back like they’d been handcuffed. “You know how to be responsible,” she said. Boys’ homes were enemy territory.
…..I sprawled on the living room carpet almost until dinner. Dad’s car pulled into the drive. “There’s a gorgeous girl on my floor!” The screen door snapped behind him. He took off his shoes. “How’s my doll?”
…..“Tired and dirty.” I turned away from him, toward the kitchen. Mom was making sloppy joes.
…..“Your mother still mad at me?”
…..I didn’t answer. He tiptoed over me, though there was room to go around.
…..“Let me see it,” I heard him say. I closed my eyes. All afternoon, Ben didn’t kiss me. There was a bed. There was his anger. I felt like a failure.
…..“You can go to work tomorrow,” Dad said.
…..Their voices dropped.
…..“She looks ridiculous,” he said.
…..“Don’t say anything.”
…..More whispers. I imagined how it would feel, climbing into a soft space and getting pricked with a thousand needles.
…..Pan-on-stove noise. Clinks and ticks, the potential for explosion.
…..“She shouldn’t pretend,” he said.
…..“She’s happy,” Mom said. “It’s summer.”
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Jessica Hollander has a bio with a list of publications. She also has a website where she web logs about her failed beginnings – a virtual playground of stories that never grew out of toddlerhood – with accompanying anecdotes and whining. Visit her at jessicahollanderwriter.com.
