Lemon Reef
Page 5
“Hi, Jenna,” she said when she noticed me.
“Hi.” I stood up. “We’re just trying to figure out what to do tonight.”
Next, ten-year-old Nicole fell with full forward momentum into the room.
“Del, you should see the tire marks Mom left in the driveway.”
Nicole was skinny and knobby kneed, with straggly blond hair and delicate facial features. She was either on the edge of erupting emotionally or over it, and it was never clear what made the difference.
“Jenna,” Nicole said, “you’re here!”
I began walking toward the door. “Del and me are gonna—”
Del interrupted, “I.”
“What?”
“Del and I.”
I twisted my face and glared at her. “I hate when you do that! Now I forgot what I was going to say.”
Del shook her head. “Can we get out of my room, please?” She was ushering us toward the door. “Can we just figure this out somewhere else?”
Three-year-old Sid was standing near the refrigerator in a diaper. He had located a pan of leftover oatmeal and was making his way through it by handfuls.
Del shrugged her shoulders. “That works.”
She poured some milk in a cup and handed it to him. Then she patted his head and dutifully turned her attention to the others. “Do you girls want leftover chili and rice?”
Mimicking Del’s parentified tone, Nicole began, “Do you girls—”
“Shut up, Nicole,” Del said. “Quit teasing me.”
“Quit teasing me,” Nicole taunted. “Who died and left you boss?”
Nicole’s green eyes narrowed as she picked up the milk carton, held it up to Del daringly, and began to tilt it, threatening to pour the milk onto the floor.
Ida crossed her arms and fought tears. “Nicole, just stop.”
“Shut up. You fucking orphan. Go back where you came from.”
Ida was actually Pascale’s niece. She had come to live with Pascale a few years before, after her mother died in a car accident.
“Nicole!” Del said. “Don’t say that. We’re her family.”
I noticed a bag of marshmallows on top of the refrigerator. “Hey, Nicole,” I said lightly and in the interest of distracting everyone, “let’s roast these.”
“Where?” Del asked. “There’s no fire.”
Nicole, who had put the milk carton down upon mention of the marshmallows, clamped her palm to her forehead in frustration. “How do you stand her?”
It took me a moment to realize the comment was directed at me. When I did, I felt thrilled but also worried at the implicit acknowledgment of Del and me as a couple. “Huh?” I was stalling, trying to figure out how to answer her.
Del recognized my evasive maneuver and giggled as if at a private joke.
I persisted in my task of distraction. “We could make a fire in the yard.”
“Oh yeah,” Del said sarcastically. “And let’s just burn the house down while we’re at it.”
“We won’t,” Ida said, pleading. “They’ll never know.”
“It’s easy,” I said. To Del, “Remember, my brothers made one in the sand at the beach party the other night. They just dug a hole, put some rocks at the bottom, and then, you know, paper, wood, and matches.”
Del reluctantly conceded and grabbed Sid. The girls cheered, and the group of us stampeded into the small yard on a new adventure. The fire going, Sid perched on Del’s lap, sticks in hand, marshmallows distributed, we competed for who could roast and eat a marshmallow the fastest, guessed at their shapes shifting under the flames, ate two and three at a time, made our teeth black, our lips sticky, and our throats dry.
Del shared her marshmallows with Sid. He sat in her lap, watching her face, the palm of his hand pressed firmly against her cheek. Nicole poked Ida with her stick. Ida cried. I bopped Nicole on the head with my stick. She threw dirt at me then got up and ran. I chased and caught her. Brute, the dog, circled us and barked with excitement, as we rolled in the mostly dirt lawn under the few scraggly fruit trees, laughing.
When the bag was finished, Del and I went to the corner store to buy more.
“Hurry, Jenna,” Del said, “the kids are alone with a fire.” Also, we had left Nicole in charge.
The storeowner, a burly russet-skinned man with a patchy beard and one thick eyebrow, was staring at the outline of Del’s breasts etched through her fitted V-neck sweater—so much so, he seemed not to notice the six-pack of beer she put down in front of him. He just rang it up and pushed it over. I tossed the bag of marshmallows down on the counter, noticed the beer, and then I noticed the man behind the counter ogling Del. Del ignored him. She packed the beer into a brown bag, pressed up against me, and said softly in my ear, “It’s for us, for later.”
My cheeks flushed and my stomach fluttered as I tried to count out the change to pay. We had combined what little money we had, hers from babysitting, mine from allowance. Del’s demonstrative gesture toward me made the middle-aged man visibly uncomfortable. He averted his gaze, looked at the sprawling change and then lost interest in it altogether, shoved the bag at us, and urged us out of the store.
“Get out,” he said, pushing at the air in the direction of the door with both hands. As we walked back, her arm inadvertently brushing against mine, Del said, “I’m not sure we should let Nicole have any more sugar tonight.”
“Why?” The comment had irritated me. Del sounded like fifteen going on forty, and she was trying to take me there with her.
“The doctor said she has attention deficit disorder.”
“More like deficit of attention disorder,” I said. “You can stop her from having more marshmallows if you want to, but I’m not doing it!”
Del laughed. “I love you.” She pressed my fingers, which were now loosely hooked with hers. Then, quietly and more to herself, she said, “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
I didn’t respond. I hadn’t told her yet that my parents were not going to let me come over anymore. She was no longer welcome at my house. We couldn’t do sleepovers on weekends, or spend vacation days together, or fall asleep talking on the phone, as we tended to do on the nights when we didn’t sleep in the same place.
Later that night, all five of us sprawled out on the living room floor with pillows and blankets and watched television together. I fell asleep, my head in Del’s lap, Jimmy Stewart on the bridge. Del tickled my nose with a loose chicken feather. I woke up to her quietly smiling down at me, her shiny hair falling around my face, her affection for me amplified by the deep crinkles near her eyes. She gestured with a slight lean of her head for me to follow her. We stepped over the small, skinny, sleeping bodies washed in the television light and made our way down the hallway into Del’s bedroom.
Once inside, Del locked her bedroom door, the sound of tectonic plates shifting. We left the lights off and made our way around gracefully, guided by shadows and familiar communicative gestures. A stream of moonlight bent through the window above the bed, ricocheted off a mirror, and splashed unevenly over the off-white walls we had recently finished painting. A soft beige-and-maroon bedcover drew remaining refractions of light down into itself, absorbing them as sand does the heat from the sun. I traced the light with my eyes, imposed a pattern upon it, subjected it to order, attributed intention to it. At fifteen, I still believed it could make sense.
“Merry Christmas, Jen.” Del kissed me, her eyes already leading toward a wrapped present. “I got you something.”
I opened it to find a collection of short stories by Franz Kafka.
“This is a joke, right? You’re just giving me this to make fun of me.” I was angry all over again that The Metamorphosis, which I had nominated for that year’s Christmas play, lost to an acid-influenced rendition of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. “Oh yeah,” I said now, “and I’m the cynical one.”
Del laughed lovingly, pressed her forehead to mine, and said, “No conspiracy theories tonight.”
She was telling me, as she must have sensed, there was not much time left.
I took her present out of my backpack and gave it to her. The gold crinkly paper it was wrapped in drifted to the floor, and she held a painted wooden carving in each hand. One was a blue-skinned character clad in bright yellow-and-purple silk, wearing a golden headdress and wielding a flaming sword. The figure accompanying him was his proud white horse.
She studied the figures closely. “Where did you get these? They’re beautiful.”
“At the Hindu market in Coconut Grove.”
Dubiously, she asked, “Your mother took you?”
“No.” I shrugged. “I rode my bike.”
“Jenna, that’s like fifteen miles.”
“It’s okay. I made Gail go with me. I didn’t tell her where we were going. She bitched at first, but by mile ten her competitiveness kicked in.”
Del was smiling and shaking her head disbelievingly. She placed the gifts on her dresser next to about a dozen other carvings of, as I had come to understand, the Hindu God Vishnu. Del had explained to me that Vishnu visits the earth in different forms called Avatars, marking and advancing its evolution. The Vaishnavas, his believers, await Vishnu’s arrival in the form of Kalki, a man on a white horse. Kalki will bring about an end to evil in the world.
Del had learned about these myths from her neighbor Omri, who had moved in next door when Del was twelve. Del was tending to two baby marijuana plants she was growing in her backyard when Omri raised her head over the fence and asked about Del’s interest in gardening. Gardening led to afternoon teas, during which Omri would tell Del stories about the wooden carvings. Pascale, eager for Del to do her chores, could only spit and swear at the old woman under her breath. Omri gave Del three signed, hand-carved figures. When I met her, Del was trying to complete the collection and had found several reproductions of the statues in local stores.
“I have all but one of the ten incarnations now.” Del plopped down on the bed beside me. “I still need Kurma.” She was excited about this.
“Which one is Kurma?” I asked.
“The turtle. It carries the world on its back.” She ran her fingers along her neck to sweep her hair back from her face and gave me her green-gold eyes. “Well, actually, she carries a mountain, but it might as well be the world.”
I noticed the bruise on Del’s cheek again and touched it gently.
“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” She shrugged nonchalantly. I sensed she felt ashamed. Del paused, glanced away thoughtfully, changed the subject back to me. “So,” she said matter-of-factly, “are they flipping?”
“My parents?” She nodded. “Yeah, they’re going on and on about ‘nipping this in the bud’ or something like that. Mostly they’re talking to each other about it, but when that’s not possible they walk around the house talking to themselves.”
She laughed once. “I nipped your bud eight months ago.”
We exchanged a mischievous grin.
I said, “They don’t know that.”
She asked softly, “What do they know?”
“My neighbor told them he saw us fooling around when we were babysitting for him the other night.” My tone rote, I numbly recounted for her. “Came home early, didn’t have a key, knocked, went around the back when we didn’t answer, saw us through the window. Something like that. I didn’t wait around for the details.”
“He couldn’t have seen much,” she said. “We didn’t take our clothes off.” Suddenly a little shy, Del looked at me sideways. “What were we doing?”
“He said we were making out.”
Del put her hand on mine. She watched my eyes and moved my hand to under her sweater. I lightly touched her nipple, buried my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of the Paris cologne I’d given her for Chanukah. I kissed her once on her neck.
“What happens now?” she asked sadly.
I could tell by her breath and her firming nipple she was getting stirred. I let my palm fall to the soft inside of her upper thigh and come to rest there.
“I don’t know.” I paused, wishing I didn’t have to say what was coming next. I said it lightly while my heart pulsed with pain. “They’ve got these bizarre new rules, like I can’t see you outside of school anymore.”
No response. She just looked at the floor.
“And,” I was embarrassed to say it, “I can’t be out with girls at all, unless I’m with at least two people. Well, except for Gail.”
“Wait, you mean…?” With her sweet smile and crinkly eyes she said, “You have to be with at least two girls because…” She paused, shook her head in amazement. “You’re kidding.”
“Yes,” I said, with a straight face. “I can’t be trusted to be alone with another girl—except Gail. Oh, and I can be with Katie, because, well, you know her reputation.”
The exchange was playful, but the gravity of the content and the imminent separation were weighing on us—that and knowing we were at the mercy of such fools.
“Leave it to Norma.” Del smiled at me, then looked the other way. Her words were slightly strained, her movements more mechanical than usual. I could tell she was trying to seem relaxed, but she felt frightened and small. Del slid onto the bed on her side and patted the space next to her. I folded in beside her.
“You better not be alone with Katie.” She was playing at being jealous, but it was also true that Del and Katie Dunn were competitive over their looks, and they tended to be interested in a lot of the same guys.
Del’s head was resting on her open hand propped by her elbow, her copper hair spilling over, her eyes, the color of straw, cradling mine. I watched her silver earring dangle, another trap for light. She played distractedly with my necklace—a gift from her neck to mine prompted by a compliment.
“I love you more than anything,” I said. I was stroking her hair. “I will always love you.”
“Jenna, don’t…We both knew this could happen.” Her tone was both pleading and angry.
“Del.” My voice was softer than usual, imploring her to look at me. “I promise you I won’t let go of you. I promise. No matter what happens, I will never let go of you.”
“You’re the only thing I care about.” Her inflection was accusatory. “How I feel about you is the only thing that matters to me, it’s the only thing keeping me here.”
She kissed me, her confidence returning. I heard her submit to what was taking hold between us, her now-familiar sounds launching my stomach in fits and starts.
I stopped, took hold of her face, and whispered, “I’ve never been able to handle that.”
She was mildly annoyed by the interruption. “What?”
“Your sounds.”
She bent her face away. “You’re embarrassing me, Jen.”
“Why would you be embarrassed?” I kidded. “I’m the one it makes quick-cum like a boy.”
She laughed.
I touched her bruised skin.
She smiled and wrapped her hand around mine, holding it tightly against her face.
“I’m worried about you,” I said.
“Don’t be.” She was staring at me intently, almost transfixed. Then, in a resigned tone, she said, “Some people make it and some people don’t.”
I started to fight with her, but she looked so sad. I was afraid anything I said would make her sadder still. Without moving her gaze from mine, she played with the button on my jeans until it came undone and then pulled clumsily on my zipper.
I stopped her hand. “I don’t think we should do this now.”
“Please,” her lips pressed against mine, “I need to.” The “to” fell off at the end, nearly indiscernible.
I spread my legs for her and kissed her back.
*
A jolt in the plane left my stomach hanging a few rows behind me. The stewardess, approaching with my second drink, performed that trick of her trade of turning momentarily to rubber rather than clutch a passenger or even a seatback. My Bloody Mary
lifted and fell slightly in her hand as though she was offering a silent toast, and then she delivered it to me with notice of ceremony, collecting my four dollars as part of the same efficient gesture.
I thought about a nine-year-old boy I had represented right out of law school. While visiting with him at his foster home, I watched in disbelief as he stepped to the edge of a tall slide, called out to me, and then took an elaborate swan dive, landing headfirst in hard sand. I leaped from the bench to the ground beside him, taking hold of his arm.
“Are you okay?”
Working to bring me into focus, he said of the sand, “I thought it was water.”
He was mildly embarrassed, but mostly confused, and even a little amused. Glad that he was not physically injured, I brushed the sand from his forehead and hair and helped him to his feet.
The professionals around me wondered why I was not more concerned about this “hallucination”—why I did not feel the need to rush this boy to the nearest psychiatric hospital and insist that he get some kind of medication. I couldn’t explain it to them because I didn’t understand my reaction myself. I didn’t feel casual about what he had done, exactly. It’s just that I had recognized this moment, and I saw his confusion more as a right to be protected than as a symptom to be eradicated. Now, seven years later, I understood. I could see how on that night with Del in her room, I had swallowed many mouthfuls of water before realizing that it was sand. And I would not trade all of the horror of that realization and the pain of what followed for those few moments when I believed we could survive.
Seat-belt indicators went on overhead, simultaneous with the universal single chime that sounded in anticipation of the pilot’s announcement. “Remain seated, fasten seat belts, and prepare for more turbulence.” I downed my second drink and fell asleep. The next thing I knew, we were landing.
Chapter Five
Tuesday
The plane landed. Tombstone gray whizzed past the oval window, matching the color of the dream from which I’d just awoken. In the dream, Del and I were at a park. I was a mime dressed in a sari, and I was gesturing to her, communicating something. Now I couldn’t remember what I was trying to say. The low-grade hum of the plane’s engine, a sudden rush of air, and the rough-and-tumble of the wheels on the runway added to my disorientation and stirred in me momentarily the belief that I was shooting through a portal. Carts piled with luggage zipped by, driven by dark-skinned people in beige uniforms with drenched armpits.