“Hurry up and take your bra off so we can go swimming!” Girl yelled across the beach. Stepmother’s cheeks got a little red as everyone turned to look at her, the only clothed person at the nude beach. Sometimes she even swam in her underwear, though it clung uselessly and sagged at the bottom when wet. It embarrassed Girl. Both of the children were good swimmers but they weren’t allowed in without a grown-up watching because you couldn’t see through the greenish-brown water. Someone had to count their heads and make sure they surfaced.
“It’s okay, you can go ahead,” Stepmother said, and the children ran into the pond. Girl dove down to find the cool water close to the silty bottom and swam underwater as long as she could hold her breath, pretending to be a frog princess. Water streamed from her hair when she surfaced, and the sun was hot on the top of her head. The pond was sun-warmed and opaque, filled with tadpoles and fishes the size of her hand. If you could swim in the clouds and the birds were fish it would be just like this, she was sure of it; only the smell would be brighter.
Girl got a big inner tube to float around in, careful to make sure the valve stem was pointing toward the water so it wouldn’t scratch her back. She stuck her butt through the hole in the middle and leaned her head back against the hot black rubber, her feet hanging over the other side. She paddled her hands to make the inner tube float in lazy circles. The best part about swimming naked was that she didn’t have a bathing suit going up her crack. She closed her eyes and breathed the warm tire smell blended with the scent of diluted mud and sunshine.
Brother swam up to Girl. He had the littler inner tube around his stomach, the top half sticking up in the sky like a skinny black donut. “Let me have a turn in the big one,” he whined.
“No. I got it first,” she said, kicking her feet to get away. Thwunk! A wad of wet mud hit Girl in the back of the head.
Girl scrambled out of her tube so she could chase him properly. As soon as she was free, Brother doubled back and snatched the big inner tube, leaving the little one floating nearby. Girl grumbled at him, but knew that it wasn’t worth chasing him. His legs were longer and he could swim faster than Girl could. She pulled the smaller tube over her head, forgetting to check for the valve stem and scratching a red line down her stomach. She dog-paddled around the lily pads and daydreamed about Indians and wolves, wondering when she’d be old enough to get her own Swiss Army knife. There would be marshmallows later, and singing around the campfire, and swinging with Stephanie in the white rope hammock that left cross-hatched lines in the backs of their legs as they tried not to breathe in too much scratchy wood smoke.
Stepmother was still sitting on a blanket at the nude beach, trying to get up the nerve to get fully nekkid. Stepmother had thought she had left behind all the hang-ups from her southern Methodist upbringing, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to unhook that bra. She watched Girl raise her knees high as her daughter entered the pond, mud dripping from her feet and falling with a glop into the greenish-brown water. The little girl’s bottom was still white—it was the beginning of summer—but her forearms and legs were browning up in the sun. Stepmother wasn’t sure that a nude campground was such a good place to take a little girl. She didn’t like the idea of adult men seeing her daughter’s vulva even if she didn’t yet have breasts to speak of, but Mother had been going here for years and it was important to her, so Stepmother had caved and said okay. Besides, she loved camping and singing songs around the fire and collecting pinecones and little bits of things she could glue together into animals or whatnot. Once she found a burr and told the children it was a “porky-pine egg,” and they watched and waited so long for it to hatch that she worried they’d never give up.
Stepmother had brought her canoe, strapped to the top of the station wagon. It had been hard to get up there—she was only five foot two—but she had managed it like she managed everything else. She was strong—even though she was well-padded, thick muscles lined her shoulders and arms under her pale white skin that always freckled and burned in the June sun. She didn’t need a man for anything—she was the man, only with these breasts that hung down nearly to her waist and got in the way of everything. Stepmother had been a professional Girl Scout, going through all the ranks until she was employed full-time as a camp director. She had always been happiest walking down dirt paths inside the cave of the forest branches. Stepmother looked for white fungus growing along the sides of fallen logs, and when she found one, she took her pocket knife from her front pocket and pried it from the rotten log. That was another problem with being naked—she had nowhere to store her stuff. She always kept her sneakers on and stuffed her penknife in her sock.
When Stepmother got back to the campsite where they had an army-green, four-person tent for the kids and a pop-up camper for Mother and herself, she sat in the folding chair outside and carved pictures of mountains and rhododendron into the face of the fungus, then set it on the folding tray table to harden. The woods always reminded her of the good parts of back home: the mountains and flowers and camping with the Girl Scouts, and the smell of the mildewed tents.
That night, at the campfire, she brought her guitar, but Michael was the king of the group and always led the songs. She could sing much better than he could, but what could she do? She hadn’t been there as long, and he stayed all summer, as opposed to the week or two she managed. Still, one day she’d get her chance to sing John Denver or Judy Collins and strum the chords, and then they would see all that she had to offer—see that she was better than Michael by a long shot.
Earlier that day when she snuck away to the two-person outhouse—she was always constipated out here, because the outhouse had only three sides and no door—Michael had walked in and plopped down on the second seat next to her, chatting as he made a BM. Stepmother finished up as quickly as she could and decided to try again later, hoping he didn’t notice how red her face was.
Mother had found this place back when she was in college. She told her brother about it, and he had gone, too, but they always coordinated their schedules so they’d never run into each other. Or they had tried to, until her brother’s wife decided that was silly and had made them go on the same day. Mother still laughed when she thought of it—her brother sitting on his blanket next to her, both of them staring straight ahead, so careful not to look at each other. She missed him.
Mother worried that her children suffered from the lack of a strong male role model, and wished yet again that her father or brother were still alive. Her father had been the best man she knew, and she had always been “Daddy’s girl,” calling him Pop, or Popsicle when she was feeling silly. Her brother had been four years older, and he had always looked out for her. Once, back in high school, he hit his best friend in the mouth and knocked out a couple of his teeth when his friend wouldn’t stop kissing his girlfriend in front of her. Mother’s brother had been an Eagle Scout, and he had helped her with math in college, and she, in turn, had helped write his essays. If only he had lived … but he got chicken pox, and that led to pneumonia. Her brother had gone into the hospital one day and died the next. When a nurse pulled Mother aside and told her that she could sue, that mistakes had been made, Mother had walked off, refusing to listen. There was no point in thinking about things like that—no point in blame or what-ifs.
Mother liked going camping—Stepmother was happy, the kids played by themselves, and she could read a paperback novel all day long with no chores or guilt about what she should be doing instead. Mother wore thick prescription glasses, and the sunglass tint was on the purple side of black, tinting the pages of her book slightly lavender. She swatted absentmindedly at a mosquito buzzing around her thigh and glanced up at the children. The sun picked red tones out of her daughter’s brown hair. Her son’s glasses were slightly askew, and Mother smiled her closed-lipped smile as she watched them standing on the raft. Brother used the long pole to push them around the pond, and Girl lay on her belly, her head hanging over the edge, watching the opaque wate
r flow by.
That night in the tent, after Brother went to sleep, Girl’s hand went between her legs as she thought about penises and wondered what they felt like. They looked so vulnerable, flopped over on the legs of the men at the beach. She wondered if testicles felt like hardboiled eggs (they seemed to be the right shape and size). That night, she fell asleep and dreamed that she was a doctor. She carefully slit Batman and Robin’s scrotums open and removed their testes, replacing them with assorted objects: golf balls, cherry tomatoes. Then she carefully sewed them up and put the superheroes in little cradles hanging from a tree, where the wind could rock them softly until they healed up enough to put their tights and shiny crime-fighting briefs back on and return to the TV show she watched every afternoon with Brother.
alaskan unease
There was something creepy about Father that Girl couldn’t quite put her finger on. He told too many dirty jokes and he talked too often about sex. He never wore clothes around the house or hid the fact that he and #Four smoked pot and had sex with other people. The children knew that Wanda with the long, gold fingernails slept in Father’s bed with and without #Four. Father always stayed at Sarah and Ira’s house on the occasions he came to Rochester, and Father and Sarah weren’t embarrassed when the children caught them taking a nap together in the afternoon while Ira was at work. No one asked the children not to tell Sarah’s husband. Girl assumed they slept all together in one big bed.
Once when Girl and her brother were young, maybe seven and eight, they were spending the summer in Alaska at Father’s house. They snuck into the living room where Father and #Four slept on a king-sized futon. In the corner was a heap of multi-colored floor pillows #Four had made that they used instead of a sofa. Brother and Girl burrowed into the mound. The children hadn’t gotten dressed yet, and wore the big T-shirts with no bottoms they had slept in.
“Shhh!” Girl hissed at her brother, “We’ll get caught.” Brother hit her with a cushion and they both buried their faces in the fluffy pile, which only kind of worked to stifle their giggles. The children were about as quiet as a pack of chattering squirrels, but they were bored and wanted Father to get up; they just didn’t want to get in trouble for rousing him. The children could hear Father and #Four stirring and knew they had succeeded.
Instead of getting out of bed, though, Father and #Four started kissing. #Four lay on top of him, their uncovered naked bodies squishing into each other and moving back and forth. Girl and Brother watched silently. She had never seen anyone have sex before, but based on the description in the books Mother gave her, she knew that was what they were doing. Girl was fascinated—it had never occurred to her that women could be on top during sex.
When they were done Father called “Good morning” to the children. “Come snuggle,” he said, and Brother and Girl climbed into the futon bed with them, even though it didn’t seem quite like something they should be doing. After a few minutes, Father went to pee and everyone got off the futon. Girl had heard about condoms but didn’t see one. She didn’t know there were invisible ways to prevent pregnancy, so she wondered if Margaret was going to have a baby now.
“I went inside #Four,” Brother told her later, but she didn’t believe him.
“Father rubbed between my legs,” she lied, trying to keep up with Brother. She knew any flopping contact was accidental … probably. She told herself that she should have been wearing pajamas bottoms or underpants, like a normal girl. She knew that if they told anyone, they would be told that they should have known better, and if they told Stepmother they wouldn’t ever be allowed to go to Alaska again.
listwood
During the school year, Girl walked one of two ways to Listwood Elementary. Normally Girl went down Belmeade to the path—a cut through between two houses with a dirt track worn in the grass by dozens of children’s feet. From there it was three more blocks to the main entrance. Sometimes, though, Girl turned left on Gardham and walked four blocks straight over, then cut behind the high school to arrive at the back of the elementary building. It was the same distance either way, but the walk got boring, so she mixed it up. If Girl went behind the high school, she passed the smokers on the corner, just off school grounds. She was afraid of the loud teenagers with their tight jeans and denim or leather jackets, because sometimes they’d jump out at the little kids and yell, sticking their tongues out like Gene Simmons. Sometimes Girl saw her cousin Peter, with his black curly hair and athlete’s build—he was so cool. If she saw him she knew she was safe. He’d always say hi, even though Girl was just a dorky kid and he was a teenager. Once past the smokers, Girl cut across the high school running track, walking on the top crust of the deep snow. Mostly she was light enough to walk on the ice layer on top of the snow, but sometimes the ice crust broke and she fell into the snow up to her crotch. Girl was proud to be so little, and never wanted to be tall. Her sister Juli was a dwarf, and she wanted to be just like her. The snow on the field was blinding white, like being inside a diamond. She had to squint as she walked in her ugly, cheap, brown duck boots. She wore bread bags over her dirty socks because her boots never stayed dry.
Girl never had enough socks, so the ones she had turned permanently gray from too few washings. She hated when the colored bands at the top didn’t match. More than that, she hated when she wore the tube socks the wrong way and the heel was on the top and it rubbed a red spot on her skin and wore a hole in the sock. Girl couldn’t figure out how to put her socks on the right way, even though she was in third grade. She’d hold them up and look for the dented-out heel part, but because she got it wrong so often, Girl could rarely find it just by looking. Once on her feet, she didn’t have time to take them off and try again. When Girl walked across the snow in her brown duck boots the heel of her sock rubbed the top of her foot raw, and she wished she had turned the sock around before she left.
Girl liked to lie on her back and make snow angels before dinner, looking up at the stars. She wanted to make a snow fort, and had a plastic brick-making form, but her endurance never matched her ambition. It was better to find a drift left by the snow plow on the six-foot-wide strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. If Girl and Brother found a big enough pile, they would hollow it out together, making a fast though inconveniently located fort. She was a girl who liked taking shortcuts.
The best thing in winter, almost as good as Christmas, was when Mother half-woke Girl, whispering, “You don’t have to get up, it’s a snow day.” Girl’s bed was pushed up against the wall, and the window gently seeped cold air onto her cheeks and the tip of her nose, her body warm in footie-pajamas and wrapped in her puffy comforter. Everything good about childhood was wrapped up in her mother: her kisses, her lap, her pillowy body covered in a yellow bathrobe that went all the way to her toes. Mother smelled of Jean Naté and Nivea hand cream, and when Mother wasn’t home, Girl would go into the bathroom, open the After Bath Splash, and smell the bottle. Girl rubbed the thick, white Nivea cream into her own hands and put them to her face, sometimes getting cream on her nose in an effort to get closer to her Mother’s scent. An extra day of Mother was all that Girl ever wanted in the world.
sleep
Girl woke up in the dark with a sharp inhale, the fear clawing at her ribs, burning in her chest. Terror was acid and Girl felt it in her lungs. The fear was all around her and inside her and she had to make it go away, she had to make it stop before its heaviness smothered her.
“Mommy?” Girl said her name softly and it made her blink fast—when she said the name aloud it made the fear more real, made her voice box get heavy and sore.
Girl tiptoed down the hall to Mother and Stepmother’s room in her Strawberry Shortcake nightgown. She stopped in front of the heavy white door, held her breath, and turned the doorknob as quietly as she could. Stepmother slept closest to the door, and she was a light sleeper. If Girl woke her up, Stepmother would stand at the doorway in her underpants yelling for Girl to go to sleep and leave her mother alone
. Then there would be no Mommy, no making the fear go away. If Girl eased the door open really quietly, tiptoed past Stepmother’s side of the bed, and got to her mother first, Mother would hug Girl and tuck her in again and make the scared feeling disappear until morning. “It’s all right, Stepmother,” Mother would say as she padded on bare feet around their bed in the dark bedroom—she never wore slippers. If it was a really bad night, Mother would put on her yellow bathrobe and take Girl downstairs and make them both hot spiced milk in a pan on the stove. Girl didn’t know why Mommy slept on the side of the bed farthest from the door.
Girl held her breath, leaned back, pulled the door toward herself, and turned the knob up and to the left so it wouldn’t creak, but the door was locked. The eye-hook rattle woke up Stepmother, who unlatched the door and pulled it open before Girl could run back to bed. Girl couldn’t believe how quickly Stepmother went from dead asleep to standing straight up in the middle of the night—like a jack-in-the-box.
“What? What do you want?” Stepmother demanded, her hair sticking up in all directions. “Mother needs her sleep. She has to work tomorrow. Go back to bed!” Stepmother loomed above Girl, angry in her men’s cotton undershirt and white underpants that sagged in the back and had a rip along the waistband, so a strip of her stomach was visible. (She never wore a nightgown like Mommy, and never wore the satiny underpants Mommy liked. Stepmother despised all things pretty. She often told Girl that she was pretty.)
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