A Summer Life (8 page)

My guardian angel was a light sleeper. He saved me from speeding cars, playground fights, and mercury splashing in my face. That was in fifth grade when we stole balls of mercury from the science teacher to shine coins and belt buckles. Finished, we closed one eye and flung the mercury at each another and giggled all the way to lunch.

He saved me from Frankie T., the schoolyard terrorist, and the pain of having my Valentine lollipop crunched loudly in my ear by the wrong girl. He saved me from taking a baseball in the face. He breathed “No” in my ear when I was popping open my mother's coin purse where bitter pennies slept.

Three times I was supposed to die. The last time, I fell off a waterfall, God knows how many feet. The ride over rock and slimy moss scared me. Just as on TV, I saw my life flash before me. For me, life was mostly summer days tramping in cut-offs and a peach-stained T-shirt. I loved my life, and loved playing and eating the same meal over and over and even the loneliness of a thirteen-year-old in jeans bursting with love. I survived, though. I sprained an ankle, limped for two weeks until the sparks of pain stopped, and then decided I should limp the rest of the summer because girls seemed to notice hurt guys.

Now I need my guardian angel more than ever. My soul is filled with holes, and both knees hurt from years of karate. Sometimes I scare my black brothers, but mostly they chase me around the karate floor because I'm the black belt with low kicks and wimpy punches. They hit and kick me, but not too hard because they know I'm the only one with a good job. They're struggling to live on a jingle of quarters, dimes, and green pennies. They just want to scare me, to send me driving home with a footprint on my chest. I enjoy showering and then sitting in the living room, nursing my welts with a cold beer in my hand.

Motorcycles scare me. From the front window, I see them speed by, reckless as stars let go from heaven. Sports cars scare me too, and dogs with mismatched eyes, widows in black, and fungus on newly picked apples. I'm suspicious of candles that sputter in church. Sometimes when I look up from prayer at 5:30 mass, I see a candle waver and go dead, sending up a spine of smoke. God is looking, I feel, the Lord is letting go of another meager soul. I clear my throat and think that someone is not being prayed for, someone in limbo is receding farther away, a dead father on a rack of dank earth, a mother with the slack smile of a failed life.

My angel was with me for years. I could do as I pleased and return unharmed. Now I'm uncertain. In the backyard, the leaves of the apple tree rattle across the lawn. The pond is black, and the slats of the fence are vented with disease. My friends are far away. Their crisp letters bring a fear of getting old. I close my eyes and pray that I'll know what to do with my free time. I'll listen to my breathing, make it stop and go, and catch the angel off guard. Is he really there? Is he that sigh in the trees? Is he hovering over the clothesline or standing upright among the shovels and hoes? I want nothing more than to be happy by next fall, by the time the orange trees hang heavy with the water of perpetual fruit.

______

W
HENEVER ANY
aunt or uncle brought out a Brownie camera, my brother and I began fighting. We grunted and wrestled, the hot snot of anger shining our upper lips. We growled, teeth bared, and karate chopped with one eye on the camera. When we fell, our bony elbows ripped holes into their lawns, and worms squirmed to get out of the way. We breathed hard and cussed when a button came loose. We smiled at our relatives fumbling for coins in their pockets. We thought people liked to watch fights, and even better, liked snapshots of front-yard fights.

I visited my Aunt Jesse on a Saturday and sat on her long flowery couch, which was sealed in a clear plastic, and looked through her album of ancient snapshots also sealed in plastic. I drank from a ceramic coffee cup, laughed, and spilled four ugly drops of chocolate on the couch. I moved over, and let my jeans absorb the drops.

My aunt, chicken-print dish towel in hand, pulled a chair up next to me, careful not to rake the legs across her shag carpet. She wiped the couch and sat down. We pressed our heads together and looked at the photo album. In one black and white snapshot, I'm on the ground, balled up like a potato bug. In another, Rick's face is slurred from a right cross, and in the next Rick has me in a head-lock but both of us are smiling into the camera. In still another, only my legs are showing, and the shadow of my sister with a pin-wheel. The pinwheel, I remember, was later ripped from her hand when she hung it outside the car window. I liked the snapshot of Brother and me baring our new, grown-up teeth to the tops of the gums. Our fists are held high and Rick's cowlick is standing up like a feather. And there was one in which Rick has me pinned to the ground while blood wiggled from his nose to his cheek. I remember that well. He was mad because an elbow caught him in the face, and he had to go to our cousin's wedding with a bloody shirt.

“You kids were really something,” my aunt said. She picked up my cup from the end table and wiped the ring of water. When she offered me a cookie, I smiled but refused because a grain or two of crumbled cookie might fall on her rug.

In the same photo album there were nice snapshots of beaches and new cars and houses. Grandfather is standing in front of his avocado tree. Grandmother is pinching aphids from a rose bush. Mexico is a still-water fountain splashing forever in the dusty light of Mexico. My aunt pointed to a distant uncle with a
guitarron
in his arm, and tapped a long red fingernail on the face of the Raisin queen of a 1940s parade. “This is a friend of mine,” she said, and then said, “she didn't last long like that,” meaning her flat tummy and pointed breasts, meaning her hair piled up and the flashy beauty of straight teeth. She followed my aunt to the cannery and a dull marriage of stewing diapers on the stove.

When I turned the page, we returned once again to brotherly snapshots, this time in color. Rick and I are leaping high from a playground swing, our arms crossed and our faces stern as mad genies. In a creased snapshot, we are flinging down a handful of popcorn to a gray sea of pigeons. Sister's shadow is flat on the ground, minus her pinwheel, and there's the start of another shadow which may well be our mother's.

I bit into one of my aunt's cookies. Three crumbs fell on the rug and immediately she dropped to one arthritic knee. I turned the page of the album. There were photographs of my cousin's wedding in San Jose. No one looks happy or young, except Rick and me. We had discovered the laundry chute and two wet mops that we used as lances as we ran down the hall. We had discovered that we could eat and drink as much as we pleased.

My brother and I loved fighting at family get-togethers. We were lucky not to lose teeth. We didn't bruise easily or break arms when we fell. Neither of us liked the sparks of pain, but neither of us could quite stop windmilling our tiny arms at each other. It was too much fun.

Now at Christmas, we stand next to each other talking about money made and money lost. We open expensive presents and make funny faces into the Polaroid camera when we've drunk too much. Rick likes to bare his teeth, and I like to lower my head slightly so that my eyes roll up like a doll's peering through its frontal lobe. My sister's shadow falls on the wall. I look and catch her licking sweets from one long, red fingernail. She likes to eat, and likes to bring in money. I wonder if she remembers her pin-wheel and the time when she stomped a black shoe in a little dance. Back when our uncles stood around fumbling for coins in their pockets. When the days were black and white, and Brownie cameras sucked in a part of our lives through round, smudged lenses.

______

F
OR THREE DAYS
of my eleventh summer I listened to my mother yap about my cousin, Issac, who was taking gymnastics. She was proud of him, she said one evening at the stove as she pounded a round steak into
carne asada
and crushed a heap of beans into refritos. I was jealous because I had watched my share of “Wide World of Sports” and knew that people admired an athlete who could somersault without hurting himself. I pushed aside my solitary game of Chinese checkers and spent a few minutes rolling around the backyard until I was dizzy and itchy with grass.

That Saturday, I went to Issac's house where I ate plums and sat under an aluminum arbor watching my cousin, dressed in gymnastic shorts and top, do spindly cartwheels and backflips in his backyard while he instructed, “This is the correct way.” He breathed in the grassy air, leaped, and came up smiling the straightest teeth in the world.

I followed him to the front lawn. When a car passed, he did a backflip and looked out the side of his eyes to see if any of the passengers were looking. Some pointed while others looked ahead dully at the road.

My cousin was a showoff, but I figured he was allowed the limelight before one appreciative dog who had come over to look. I envied him and his cloth gymnast shoes. I liked the way they looked, slim, black and cool. They seemed special, something I could never slip onto my feet.

I ate the plums and watched him until he was sweaty and out of breath. When he was finished, I begged him to let me wear his cloth shoes. Drops of sweat fell at his feet. He looked at me with disdain, ran a yellow towel across his face, and patted his neck dry. He tore the white tape from his wrists—I liked the tape as well and tried to paste it around my wrists. He washed off his hands. I asked him about the white powder, and he said it kept his hands dry. I asked him why he needed dry hands to do cartwheels and back flips. He said that all gymnasts kept their hands dry, then drank from a bottle of greenish water he said was filled with nutrients.

I asked him again if I could wear his shoes. He slipped them off and said, “OK, just for a while.” The shoes were loose, but I liked them. I went to the front yard with my wrists dripping tape and my hands white as gloves. I smiled slyly and thought I looked neat. But when I did a cartwheel, the shoes flew off, along with the tape, and my cousin yelled and stomped the grass.

I was glad to get home. I was jealous and miserable, but the next day I found a pair of old vinyl slippers in the closet that were sort of like gymnastic shoes. I pushed my feet into them, tugging and wincing because they were too small. I took a few steps, admiring my feet, which looked like bloated water balloons, and went outside to do cartwheels on the front lawn. A friend skidded to a stop on his bike, one cheek fat with sunflower seeds. His mouth churned to a stop. He asked why I was wearing slippers on a hot day. I made a face at him and said that they were gymnastic shoes, not slippers. He watched me do cartwheels for a while, then rode away doing a wheelie.

I returned inside. I looked for tape to wrap my wrists, but could find only circle band-aids in the medicine cabinet. I dipped my hands in flour to keep them dry and went back outside to do cartwheels and, finally, after much hesitation, a backflip that nearly cost me my life when I landed on my head. I crawled to the shade, stars of pain pulsating in my shoulder and neck.

My brother glided by on his bike, smooth as a kite. He stared at me and asked why I was wearing slippers. I didn't answer him. My neck still hurt. He asked about the flour on my hands, and I told him to leave me alone. I turned on the hose and drank cool water.

I walked to Romain playground where I played Chinese checkers and was asked a dozen times why I was wearing slippers. I'm taking gymnastics, I lied, and these are the kind of shoes you wear. When one kid asked why I had white powder on my hands and in my hair, I gave up on Chinese checkers and returned home, my feet throbbing. But before I went inside, I took off the slippers. My toes cooled on the summery grass. I ran a garden hose on my feet and bluish ankles, and a chill ran up my back.

Dinner was a ten-minute affair of piranha-like eating and thirty minutes of washing dishes. Once finished, I returned to the backyard, where I again stuffed my feet into the slippers and did cartwheels by the dizzy dozens. After a while they were easy. I had to move on. I sucked in the summer air, along with the smoke of a faraway barbecue, and tried a backflip. I landed on my neck again, and this time I saw an orange burst behind my eyes. I lay on the grass, tired and sweaty, my feet squeezed in the vise of cruel slippers.

I watched the dusk settle and the first stars, pinpoints of unfortunate light tangled in telephone wires. I ate a plum, cussed, and pictured my cousin, who was probably cartwheeling to the audience of one sleeping dog.

______

I
PROMISED
to rake the leaves and gather the tools from the lawn before it rained. I promised to make my bed. I promised to replace the cap to the toothpaste and wipe the sink of water spots and renegade hairs. I promised to stomp on the oil-spotted bags of garbage when our can was overflowing and ready to burst terrible gases. When my mother spoke, I said yes. When my stepfather spoke, I said yes, right now, and searched for the nearest broom. When an ambulance passed, I crossed myself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Promise. That's what Monsignor asked on the last day of school when he pressed papers into my hands and said that I should think of others. A dusty wind fluttered the school roll-up shades of St. John's Elementary. Sister Marie cast a meager shadow when she floated down the hallway. The picture of Jesus, flame to his brow, followed me out of the classroom and into the sunlight where my brother hid behind a corner with his crumpled report card.

I seemed pretty holy, inside and out, and to keep myself under control I promised to stay away from my older brother. Still, when he threw his report card at my face, I chased him around the card, tripped, and scuffed a knee and raked my palms against asphalt. My brother laughed, spit, and ran away without his books.

That was the beginning of summer. The heat was already yellow and fierce. I tried to be good. I played with my little brother who was bored of Tinkertoys and mud. I did the dishes without my mother's asking. I ran a finger across our furniture, collecting dust that I wiped on my jeans. I read three pages a day, prayed for the sick and the lost, and on Sundays lit puddly candles at my own expense. I promised myself to keep my drawer tidy, the balled socks in one corner, and the folded T-shirts in another.