Are You My Mother?
“I was trying to find her hiding place,” I said. My mouth runs on about the mango and avocado trees I cut in my aunt’s backyard. “There was this snicker. And it was everywhere, all over the yard.”
I don’t tell Steeple Hands about Big Sister. And I don’t say he smells familiar. I don’t ask whether he knows my mom, Grizzly who stinks the same, like cheap aftershave and smoke whenever she stays gone from my aunt’s house for whole days sometimes. (I want to ask him where she goes… where he goes.. where they all go.)
I see my Aunt Ally’s confused glare, the street traffic on Miracle Mile and become part of the stream of big and little thighs (though I do not consider long where my sunburned hips and her tanned ones fit in all of that). It is as if she knows I am thinking about her size and she can read minds. Your muscles do not glisten the way whole superstars do in magazines. Work harder. Her stare slaps me in the face.
“Who were you trying to find?” Steeple Hands asks. But I shake my head.
“I’ll never tell.” His eyes stay cool and calm, focused behind silver spectacles. He keeps staring through me until I spill about what happened in the yard.
“I thought she hid my wig. She never agreed with it.”
“Why do you think she'd do that?”
“You’re free right?” I ask.
I put my hand up as if he should understand what I’ve just said explains everything and there will be no more questions.
“I’m not your mother,” Steeple Hands says. “Got back to the part about your hair. How come you thought she hid your hair?”
I rummage through my purse for candy and find an old lollipop. Even if Steeple Hands offers me trips to Jupiter for a year and breakfast and dinner with the fairy girls, Big Sister is my secret. I roll my eyes and crunch down on the old candy. He spins towards my aunt. And I think about all the questions Mickey asked - all the questions I didn’t answer the first day we met, and how in addition to having cancer, Mickey now believes I am a Wave girl too after what I said and how I acted at practice.
“I understand how it is with after school schedules and other kids,” Steeple Hands says. Then he asks me to leave so he can ask my aunt the same questions about the branches I butchered, my cherry pink wig and what she thinks I’m into. But when that door closes, I don’t hear the whispered words I usually get. The ones Grizzly calls made up circus-sounds, language only clowns understand. Grizzly told my Ocala aunt she would rather take me to a psychic. (And I always wondered if the psychic would see Big Sister - the way her skin glows when she drops into wherever I am, how she’s glossy (when she wants) as if she popped out of a magazine with shinier blonde hair and flawless wide blue eyes. She straddles the line between a ghost and an imaginary friend; she says, if you jump on any trains, you really are Bozo’s twin.
I don’t tell Steeple Hands about Big Sister. And I don’t say he smells familiar. I don’t ask whether he knows my mom, Grizzly who stinks the same, like cheap aftershave and smoke whenever she stays gone from my aunt’s house for whole days sometimes. (I want to ask him where she goes… where he goes.. where they all go.)
I see my Aunt Ally’s confused glare, the street traffic on Miracle Mile and become part of the stream of big and little thighs (though I do not consider long where my sunburned hips and her tanned ones fit in all of that). It is as if she knows I am thinking about her size and she can read minds. Your muscles do not glisten the way whole superstars do in magazines. Work harder. Her stare slaps me in the face.
“Who were you trying to find?” Steeple Hands asks. But I shake my head.
“I’ll never tell.” His eyes stay cool and calm, focused behind silver spectacles. He keeps staring through me until I spill about what happened in the yard.
“I thought she hid my wig. She never agreed with it.”
“Why do you think she'd do that?”
“You’re free right?” I ask.
I put my hand up as if he should understand what I’ve just said explains everything and there will be no more questions.
“I’m not your mother,” Steeple Hands says. “Got back to the part about your hair. How come you thought she hid your hair?”
I rummage through my purse for candy and find an old lollipop. Even if Steeple Hands offers me trips to Jupiter for a year and breakfast and dinner with the fairy girls, Big Sister is my secret. I roll my eyes and crunch down on the old candy. He spins towards my aunt. And I think about all the questions Mickey asked - all the questions I didn’t answer the first day we met, and how in addition to having cancer, Mickey now believes I am a Wave girl too after what I said and how I acted at practice.
“I understand how it is with after school schedules and other kids,” Steeple Hands says. Then he asks me to leave so he can ask my aunt the same questions about the branches I butchered, my cherry pink wig and what she thinks I’m into. But when that door closes, I don’t hear the whispered words I usually get. The ones Grizzly calls made up circus-sounds, language only clowns understand. Grizzly told my Ocala aunt she would rather take me to a psychic. (And I always wondered if the psychic would see Big Sister - the way her skin glows when she drops into wherever I am, how she’s glossy (when she wants) as if she popped out of a magazine with shinier blonde hair and flawless wide blue eyes. She straddles the line between a ghost and an imaginary friend; she says, if you jump on any trains, you really are Bozo’s twin.
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