I Will Always Be Ten Years Old

10

Sweet tea and cigarettes. That’s what I smell. The green smell of tea leaves mixed over the stove with too much sugar. The smoke and nicotine that carries itself into the house from the garage. That’s what I’ll smell at the end of all ends. That smell is the perfume on my neck. It’s in the hair on my arms. I can conjure it in a second –just a thought!

I am bending down, picking up the ice cubes that fell out of the dispenser, and dropping them into the dogs’ water bowl. Corgis, always corgis. I can hear them running around the house now – their nails on the wooden floor. Five corgis, all running around the house, nipping at kids’ ankles, and I am dropping the ice cubes into the water bowl.

There is mud soup getting stirred into the hollow knot of a tree in the backyard. There are fairy houses being built out of sticks and moss by the creek. There are pine needles falling onto the trampoline, waiting to stab my feet when I come back down out of the air.

A thunderstorm is rolling in right now. The sky is dark gray, and the thunder is a little way off. Cicadas are in the trees, invisible and humming and omnipresent. The pool is 87 degrees. Like bathwater. I float, and I don’t stop floating. The thunder is always rolling.

Irene is eating Watergate salad. Irene eats dessert first on Thanksgiving before everyone else sits down at the table for dinner. It is green, and her hair is orange. People are always telling Irene to stop dying her hair orange. Irene is 84 years old and doesn’t care. She keeps dying her hair orange, and she keeps eating her Watergate salad before dinner.

Anne is rolling her eyes. When Anne rolls her eyes, she doesn’t stop. She looks up at God as she yells. God, give me the strength to deal with this man. She is yelling and rolling her eyes and looking up at God.

Bridget has long, long hair. Brown and straight. I comb it and braid it. Matt has no hair. He is bald, bald. I look at Matt’s bald head while I braid Bridget’s hair.

I reach over the chain link fence to pet Angus. The fence is just a little too tall for me, and the top is pressing into my armpit painfully. Angus stands on his back legs. Even then, I can only scratch the very top of his head with my fingertips. I am always reaching for Angus.

It’s the fourth of July. There are melting popsicles and sparklers and cousins all dressed in matching shirts from Old Navy. The sun has set, but it is still hot. I am catching fireflies. I cup one in my hands gently, and it crawls around my fingers. This is the moment right before it takes off again. Its butt glows.

Three bodies, and their feet are buried in the South. They are always walking around the house. Always smoking. Always making sweet tea and potato salad with mustard. My feet are in the South. Let me walk around the house.

16

I am driving Katie and Colleen to school. The music is too loud. It shakes the windows of the Corolla. I am on the bridge. The sun is rising. Blinding. Melting the leftover frost on the windshield. I put down the visor, but I am too short, and the sun is still too low. I am driving straight into the sun, with my foot on the brake just in case.

Two mothers, two now, walk around the neighborhood in the purple evening with their children. On the leash is the last corgi. The last corgi waddles when he walks. He is getting old in his bones. They walk past an elementary school and laugh at the name. They laugh at Weems Elementary School and the last corgi waddles as he walks.

Four sisters sleep together on two twin mattresses pushed together on the floor. Sydney falls into the crack between them at night. Her eyes open in her sleep. Sydney is always falling in the crack between the mattresses. She is always asleep, watching.

Jen is decorating a birthday cake. She scoops chocolate frosting out of the container with the spatula. She writes a message with candy letters. There aren’t enough N’s to spell Nona. Jen writes Noma instead. Jen is laughing at Noma.

Michael steals vodka from the freezer. Michael drinks the vodka with soda and sits in my new bed at night. Michael wonders. He questions. He thinks something is wrong with him. I listen. I do not know. I never know.

I pass bedroom doors and wince when the wooden stairs creak. I am sneaking out now. My hand is on the doorknob. I listen for my father’s snoring. I can hear him snore from anywhere. My hand is always on the doorknob.

There’s a blue and white beach ball floating in the pool. There are bathing suits drying on lounge chairs in the sun. There are naps being taken on couches in the sunroom. There are boxes, old and dusty and precious, sitting in the shed.

The minivan drives south to Savannah. There is residue from stickers on the win dows. There is goo in the door handles. There are cardboard signs promising boiled peanuts and billboards promising eternities in Hell. The minivan is shaking with the cracks in the road.

In the backyard, Mom asks the four sisters to sing again. We look at the fire pit and brush marshmallow on our jeans. The four sisters are always singing.

Mom drinks vodka and cranberry juice out of a plastic tumbler. It is just me and her in the living room, and the electric fireplace hums out a weak heat. She cries. She apologizes. She misses her mother. I cry too. I am scared. I am looking at myself.

It is dark, and everything is dim and quiet and covered. I’m in the ditch with snow up to my shins, soaking through my boots and jeans. I can hear kids on the hill in the distance, but I cannot see them. They laugh and shriek and it echoes in the ditch. I am standing there alone.

22

I am breathing in the smoke of the first cigarette at Dell Pond. It is midnight. It is Easter. Sarah is coughing. Sarah is saying Oh My God as she coughs. I look at the little circle of ash on the stone wall. I am still breathing in the smoke.

I am leaving home for the last time, but I don’t know that yet. The car is cresting the top of a hill somewhere in Keswick. The trees are casting patchy shadows over the road. The sun is casting patchy light. I am speeding up at the top of the hill. I am speeding up in anticipation of the drop.

Under the covers, I am taking off my socks. I am scratching the tops of my feet. I cannot sleep at night because all of my nerves are in the skin of my feet. My fingers are in the bands of my socks, itching.

I am sitting at the breakfast table my father built. The whole world is early morning blue gray. There are bare feet on cold linoleum. There are baby bowls with suction bottoms. There is the bus outside, missed for the third time this week. I am always a child in this chair.

I am sitting on a rock on the bank of the Rappahannock. Somewhere out in the water, something new is floating on its back. We are watching the heat lightening above the trees. We are looking across the water for just a glimpse. In the last light of the day, we are calling his name.

There are felt cowboy hats being worn during a debate. There is the echo of ten nis balls hitting rackets on the courts across the street. There is the forgotten oven, heating up the kitchen.

A stick floats in the still waters of a canal, dropped from the bridge above. In the ugly yellow light of a streetlamp, I see the algae creeping back toward the stick. Like flesh, like a mouth, it is healing, it is consuming. I feel the algae entomb the stick.

Two daughters are hiding in the basement. Two daughters are remembering the house as it used to be. For just a second, I can smell it again.

Three graves, and I kneel over them. The heat of the sun is in my hair and on my back. I clean the headstones. I wipe away the dirt. I burn my fingers on the granite. I stand where I have always stood, where I watch them lower her into the ground. I watch for ten years. I clean the graves.