In The Stillness of Remembering

The first day of the second summer after my dad died, I came in thirteenth place out of fifteen people in a watermelon seed spitting contest. Of the two people who placed behind me, one of them was a five-year-old boy, so that was embarrassing, to say the least.

The contest had been some kind of charity event. You were supposed to pay a dollar to play, and Sardis Baptist Church was going to use all the money for their Sunday School program or something. Thing is, I didn't know that until I got there, and so I only had two nickels and a bobby pin in my pocket. The short woman with too much lipstick that was too pink who was running the event asked me where my mommy was, maybe my mommy could give me a dollar, to which I responded that my mom was at home and I doubted she'd give me a dollar even if she had one.

“Got two nickels, though,” I posited as an afterthought, shrugging.

The woman’s eyebrows drew together, and I imagined two chubby caterpillars whispering to one another. The sprinkles on her voice were gone when she told me I could keep my money but waved me through to the participants section anyway.

Which is good, I suppose, because then I came in thirteenth place, and that would have been a lousy way to spend ten cents.

I was getting ready to walk back home before it got too dark, but this older girl came up to me while I was tying my favorite pink sweater around my waist and held out a thick slice of watermelon to me. “Your name’s Annie, right?”

I nodded, a little taken aback.

"Well, you get this. You know, for participating."

It occurred to me I recognized her. Her name was Joan, and she had been in eighth grade two years ago when I was in sixth. I didn't think I’d ever spoken to her before. She was also, I realized now, the girl who had come in fourteenth place. I shook my head and told her, "I don't want any, thanks."

"Come on, take it. They brought way too many and they're trying to get rid of ‘em."

"I don't like watermelon."

"How do you not like watermelon? It doesn't taste like anything. It's just cold."

I blinked. "Of course it tastes like something. How can a food not taste like something?"

"Lots of foods don't taste like anything. Cucumber, pasta by itself, watermelon."

"Then how come there are watermelon flavored candies?" I challenged. "What do those taste like?"

Joan laughed, not very hard or very loud, but she tilted her head back to do it, sending her curtain of straight-as-string, dirty blonde hair down past the waistband of her bell-bottoms. “Those just taste like sugar,” she said matter-of-factly, straightening back up, “it doesn’t matter the flavor. Now come on and take it, will ya? I’ll walk you home, it’s getting dark.”

“Alright,” I muttered. I thought it would be rude to refuse both the watermelon and the offer to see me home safely.

We walked in silence down the length of the church’s gravel parking lot, me awkwardly managing the watermelon at my side, having to hold it out a little so it didn’t brush against my pink sweater and get fuzz all over it. We were about halfway down Unionville Street when Joan asked, “You’re starting senior high this year, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Her bright green eyes shone feline-yellow in the thickening dark. “Excited?”

I shrugged. “Not particularly.”

Joan gave me what I’m sure she thought was a gentle nudge, but it startled me so much I almost tripped over my own sneakers. “Why?” she asked, “Scared or something?” She looked like she was going to laugh at me again. Or maybe her face just looked like that no matter what.

“I am not scared. Just don’t see a reason to get worked up. My dad always used to say that panic causes tunnel vision.”

The bright smile that had taken up most of Joan’s face fizzled like a candle at the end of its wick. She looked like she wanted to drop my gaze, but I was glad she didn’t. People were looking away from me all the time, and it made me feel like I couldn’t be seen right. Like I wasn’t even taking up space proper.

“You don’t have to be like that just because my dad is dead.” It was blunt and I meant it. The anger wasn’t at Joan, though; I didn’t really get angry at other people often. It was mainly towards my dad, because if he had just had the decency to not die, the rest of the town wouldn’t have made such a big deal out of it, or out of me. “I can talk about him, you know. I wouldn’t if I didn’t want to.”

Joan was at least smart enough to look embarrassed. “Sorry,” she managed, clearing her throat. She looked down at her shoes for just a split second, and then looked back up at me with hard determination to ask, “So how did he die, anyway?”

I would have very much liked to roll my eyes at her, but Mama was always telling me that people don’t particularly enjoy the company of young ladies in need of an Attitude Adjustment, so I managed not to. “Well,” I said, “it goes like this, see, he was always complaining about work, and about how he felt like everything was just routine, you know? Get up, go to the office, come home, go to bed, do it all over again. So Mama told him he ought to try something different on the weekends, take some sort of class or something. And what does he decide on? A hot air balloon flying class. So one day, he’s up there, flying this hot air balloon, but the winds get real bad, and it sweeps him out way over the edge of town, and he can’t control the thing worth a bucket of warm spit, and what do you know, he ends up right over this huge field where all these kids at some sort of camp or something are practicing archery. Some kid’s arrow goes a bit high, and he brings down my dad’s balloon. Horrible crash, no one would have expected him to survive from that kind of height.”

I did my best to look as bummed out as possible, but it was a sight harder than it sounded with Joan giving me the hairy eyeball the way she was. The silence between us was thick and syrupy, stretching about ten paces, before Joan finally said, “That’s bologna.”

I shrugged.

Joan narrowed her eyes. “Well, how’d your old man really die, then?”

“I reckon that’s none of your business.”

Now it was Joan’s turn to shrug, and I felt my lips twitch up in a bit of a smile. “Suit yourself,” she told me, but I could tell she was curious.

We were getting closer to my street now, probably less than five minutes walking distance. As the street lamps flickered on around us, Joan looked over and asked, “So what were you doing at a watermelon seed spitting contest in the first place?”

I raised my eyebrows at her. Dad had always laughed when I’d done that. He’d say that I looked just like a regular little rebel. “I could ask you the same thing,” I pointed out.

That made Joan laugh again, and I decided that maybe that was better than the silence. “My Mom works at Sardis,” she said, “I was just helping out. Giving people their watermelon, walking them home, you know.” She gave me a smile that was softer than the rest, a smile that felt like it was just for me. I could feel myself blushing and willed the sun to set faster.

“I just wanted something to do,” I admitted, which was about as honest an answer I could give without bringing my dad back into things.

Joan nodded sagely. “Got a long summer ahead of you?”

“Looks that way.” Mama just stayed in keeping house most of the day to the point of neurosis. That’s all I’d ever known her to do ever since I was little. She hardly ever asked for my help with anything (except dusting, now and then, made her sneeze), and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters that needed looking after, so I mostly had to rely on myself if I was looking for any sort of entertainment.

“You could come hang out with me tomorrow if you want. I don’t live but a few blocks from here.”

Joan’s suggestion so caught me off guard that I almost missed the turn for my street. I stopped by the faded red stop sign on the corner and turned to look at her, feeling like if I gave her a second she’d realize that she’d really rather not spend much time with me at all, that there was no reason for her to want to spend the start of her summer with a girl who hadn’t even started senior high yet. But she didn’t say anything like that, just kept looking at me like she had all the time in the world to wait for my answer, and so I told her that yes, that sounded great, and I’d really love to, and I could come by after breakfast tomorrow if she wanted me to.

Looking at Joan’s smile made me wonder if I even could smile like that, it was so big and real. “That sounds great,” she told me, then rattled off her address. I repeated it back to her to make sure I had it right and, somehow, she managed to smile even wider. “Perfect,” she told me as I stopped in front of my driveway, “hopefully we can find something more fun to do than go to a watermelon seed spitting contest.”

For a moment, I felt like anything I said would have been too small, next to a woman like Joan. Woman. It felt strange to say even in my head when she was only about two years my senior, but gosh if those two years hadn’t done to her things that still embarrassed my Mama when she tried to talk to me about them. That didn’t seem like a very good thing to say either, though, and I could feel myself blushing again. Thank the Lord the sun had already gone down, or I’m sure I would have been quite a spectacle, standing there gaping and gawking. I had no idea what had come over me. But I managed to nod and finally got my wits together just long enough to say, “I think you’re just jealous I beat you.”

Joan stood at the edge of the driveway while I made my way inside, and I immediately looked back through the keyhole to watch her leave once I had closed the door behind me. The way her hair was throwing off the light of the street lamps made it look less straight than it had seemed at first. I caught myself inadvertently raising a hand to my own brown, frizzy curls, wishing they were longer and more manageable.

“Annie? That you?”

I turned away from the door, slipped off my shoes before stepping onto the carpet, and called back up the stairs, “Yes ma’am!”

“Don’t tell me you were walkin’ back in the dark like this all by yourself, I thought you said you’d be home before supper! I’ve already done cleaned most of it up.”

I made my way up the stairs two at a time and found the door at the top open, leading into my mother’s bedroom where she sat in the wicker rocking chair in the corner, dressed in her nightgown, glasses on the very tip of her nose, book in her lap. She looked up at me sternly. “What’s that in your hand, child?”

I’d almost forgotten. “Watermelon. A friend gave it to me. She walked me home.”

Any displeasure my mother might have been having with me at the moment gave way to surprise. “Friend? Who?”

“Joan Upton, from three blocks over. Mrs. Upton runs the daycare center at the Church.” I held the slice of watermelon out towards my mother. “Want it? I don’t like watermelon.”

She kept on looking at me rather curious for a moment, then set her book down on the dresser next to her, took her glasses off and rested them on top of the book, and took the watermelon from me gingerly. “How was your day?”

“It was alright. I came in thirteenth place.”

“That’s lovely, dear."

When I decided it was a safe bet that she didn’t have anything else to say, I asked Mama, “Can I make a phone call?”

She nodded absently, looking at the watermelon slice rather than at me. I wondered if she was going to eat it at all. “Yes, dear, if it’s local.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly, leaning forward to place a quick kiss on her cheek. It seemed to surprise her more than anything, and if she even bothered to look up at me, I was already turning around and leaving her bedroom as she did.

We only had one phone in our house – downstairs in the living room on the small coffee table next to my favorite chair. Mama never sat there because she said it was no good for reading since the light coming in from the windows on the other side of the room hurt her eyes, and the angle was no good for watching TV, so what was even the point? Come to think of it, Dad never really liked it much either. Said it made his back hurt. Sometimes he’d cuddle up with me when I was watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, so long as I wasn’t in that chair. But I loved it. It was big and wide and mine, as far as I was concerned. I always left my favorite blanket there, and I could always tell when Mama had cleaned the living room (which was just about daily) because it would always be folded and draped over the couch’s off-white arm, like now. I sat down, curled up, pulled the blanket over my shoulders and the rotary into my lap (the cord stretched just far enough) and dialed in the familiar phone number.

“Hello, Pharr Yarns Accounting Office, this is Chuck speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hey Chuck.”

“Oh. Hey, Annie.”

“Late night?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

I smiled. Chuck worked late nights a lot, which was good for me, because he was usually still in the office when Mama had already gone upstairs for the night, and I could have a bit of privacy.

“How’s your day been?” I asked.

“Solid. This week’s shaping up to be much better than last. Got a lot of spreadsheets finished and handed in, boss man seems happy. Can’t complain. Wouldn’t help even if I did. You?”

“Okay. Someone asked me how my Dad died.”

Chuck went all quiet. I wondered what kind of face he was making. I wondered what he even looked like. I’d never met Chuck before. But he worked in the same office my Dad used to, and a few weeks after he died, I called his old work number because my hands had already forgotten how to do pretty much anything else. And Chuck had answered. “They transferred me in from Tennessee,” he told me, and when I said he’d taken my dead Dad’s old job, that seemed to be news to him. But he let me talk, and since Mama never really did, it had been kinda hard to stop. So I kept calling Chuck, and he kept listening, and he wasn’t really anything at all like my Dad, but sometimes I worried my fingers would straight fall off if they forgot how to dial his number.

“What’d you tell him?”

“Her. Her name’s Joan. We went to junior high together. I told her that he entered a pie eating contest at the county fair one year, but what he didn’t know was that there was an internationally wanted spy from Russia who was s’posed to be there as well, and the CIA was trying to poison him. Only problem was, they got the pies all mixed up, and my Dad got the short end of the stick. Dead before his second slice, but at least it was pecan, which was always his favorite.”

Chuck sighed. I imagined him to be the kind of man to wear glasses, considered him taking them off and massaging his temples. “Annie, when are you gonna stop telling people this bull?” There was a pause where I think Chuck was expecting me to answer, except I didn’t. “I mean, pardon the French, kid, but honest, you call me up twice a week to give me another cockamamie story about how your Dad died, and I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

Another sigh. “Alright, well, I gotta go run a few papers down to advertising before I head home. You okay?”

“Course I’m okay.” Chuck asked me this a lot, and I responded this way a lot, and I also wondered a lot about what he would do or say if I ever told him I wasn’t.

“Good. You take care then, Annie.”

“Yessir. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Annie.”

Mama kept looking at me all funny while I scarfed down my Captain Crunch the next morning.

“It’s a summer Tuesday, where on Earth could you possibly be trying to get to so early?”

“Joan told me we could hang out at her house today. I haven’t gone to a friend’s house in a long time,” I added, trying to ward off the suspicion I saw creeping across Mama’s tired looking face.

Mama softened, but only for a moment. “Annabelle Mae, if you are not back in this kitchen by sundown, so help me – ”

“I will be!” I promised, jumping up from the table with dishes in hand. Mama shot me a look that let me know I wasn’t going anywhere until that bowl was washed, dried, and put away, so I didn’t push my luck. The whole time I was moving around the kitchen, I could feel her eyes on me, feel her stillness as she opted to focus her attention on me rather than the steaming mug of coffee in front of her. As I dashed upstairs to get dressed, I wondered if she’d ever eaten that watermelon.

I barely even got my third knock in before Joan opened her front door.

Her hair seemed to have miraculously grown two inches overnight, and I had to forcefully tell myself not to stare. She was wearing faded, cut-off overalls with nothing but a light lavender bandeau on underneath; it was the kind of thing Mama would have sooner died than let me out in. I wondered if Mrs. Upton was home and if I would meet her. This thought was closely followed by wondering if I looked like an idiot just standing on her doorstep like this.

“Hey.”

“Hey!” Joan stepped aside, looking taller and willowier than I could possibly imagine myself looking once I got to be her age, “Come on in. Glad you found it okay.”

I stepped inside and instinctively went to nudge my sneakers off, but Joan just laughed. “Keep ‘em on, it’s fine, let’s go upstairs.”

As strong as the force of her gravity was, I couldn’t help but slow down and take her house in for a moment. It felt so much more lived in than my place, and I loved it. There were toys all around the living room, a few dishes on the coffee table, and even some stains on their carpet. Mama would’ve had a fit just standing here. But I felt like Mrs. Upton probably did more with her days than just obsessively scrub at everything in sight. There were squeals and gleeful shouts coming from the backyard, to which the back door, left wide open, was leading through the kitchen.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

Joan laughed again as she made her way to the stairs, not pausing to check and see if I was following behind her. “Yeah, three little brothers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke.”

I didn’t care if it was rude – I couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. “And you’re Joan?”

“Hey, I told you my Mom worked at the Church, didn’t I?”

I was still giggling as she led me into her room, which had long strands of beads hung over the doorframe instead of a proper door. She moved them aside like they were made of glass (maybe they were) and let me walk in under her arm. She smelled like oranges.

Everything about her room was starkly different than mine. Her walls were painted a bright yellow, but you could barely tell for all the posters. There were bean bag chairs under the window, some potted plants on her desk, a small black journal spine-up on her unmade bed, and throw rugs all over the carpet. I was still rooted to the spot looking around while Joan was fingering through a shoebox of cassette tapes next to the stereo on her desk. She sent her sheet of hair swishing over her shoulder when she swung her head to address me:

“Do you like Fleetwood Mac?”

“My Dad didn’t.” I realized that wasn’t really an answer at all, so I quickly added, “So I’ve never really listened to them. He’d always change the station.”

“You’ve gotta listen to them, Stevie Nicks is outta sight.”

“Who’s he?”

I liked that when Joan laughed it was like it was dribbling out of the sides of her mouth, like the laughter itself was part of what was funny. “She,” she laughed, gesturing with her shoulder towards a poster of a woman with feathered blonde bangs hanging over her desk while she slid one of the cassettes into the stereo. Once the music started, she crossed to one of the bean bags (lime green), picked up the pillow resting there and lowered herself into its place. “She’s their lead singer. ‘pparently Don Henley’s her boyfriend right now.” Joan locked her eyes onto mine, her face unpassable. “You ever had a boyfriend?”

I paused at the top of a breath without meaning to. By the time I’d realized and let it out, I’d decided which test I’d decided I was less willing to fail: I told the truth. “No.” The tone of defiance sent my own stomach squirming at my childishness.

But Joan let her stoic look soften. “Groovy.” She patted the pink bean bag next to her. “So, you gonna tell me how your dad died today?”

It was pretty obvious that she had sat on this for a while, that she had been weighing whether or not to say it at all. Right now, she didn’t look all that secure in her choice, but I could feel something go out in me, some tension I’d been holding in muscles I couldn’t name. How long had it been since someone had mentioned my dad to me jokingly?

“I told you yesterday.”

“Come off it.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, moving to take the bean bag next to her. “Here’s the truth: My Dad’s got a sister who lives all the way up in New York City, and she told us we should come up one Christmas to see the Rockettes with her. So we go up, just the two of us, it was my first time on an airplane and everything, and in the taxi from the airport to my Aunt Carolyn’s place, we get T-boned at the first light we drive through. He died right in front of me on the street a few blocks outside of JFK, but get this: his sister’s a lawyer, she files this whole crazy suit against the taxi company, and all of a sudden Mama’s telling me I’ve got twenty thousand dollars in settlement money with my name on it for when it’s time for me to go to college.”

Joan didn’t speak right away. Finally: “That’s a lie too, then?”

“Not the twenty thousand dollar part, actually,” I grinned to myself, twirling the bean bag’s pink fringe between my fingers, “but I’m not really sure where the money came from. Life insurance or somethin’ or other. Mama does say I have to use it for college, though.”

Joan considered this quietly for a moment. Finally: “Well, what do y’know. The Lord taketh away, but he does giveth afterall.”

The rest of the glittering early afternoon passed mostly like this: Fleetwood Mac reeling off the ribbons of the cassettes that Joan got up to flip and swap out intermittently, the two of us reclining her bean bags as the sun beams broke trickling through the window broke over our heads, laughing at whatever topics breezed between us as if we’d been practicing. She gave me the lowdown on a few of the freshman class teachers at the senior high and would occasionally quiz - and subsequently educate - me on the various musicians and actresses on her posters. (No men.) I asked her what it was like having so many brothers and people to play with all the time and she asked me what it was like to never have to share. I told her I liked her room and her hair.

She laughed when I said that. “Hey, tell you what, can I do something?”

I blinked. “Something like what?” It was her house, after all.

She grinned. God, those eyes. Talk about green. “Something nuts.”

It wasn’t until my knees hit hers that I realized we’d both been leaning in. I caught my breath. “Go for it.”

I figured Joan would stand up, but she did no such thing. Just like that, she was more on my bean bag than hers, and she had already been kissing me for a second before I even realized it.

When she pulled away, I panicked that it was because I hadn’t kissed her back. I wouldn’t have even known how. But she was smiling, and when she tossed her hair over her shoulder, it looked bouncier than ever. “Can I try again?”

It didn’t feel much like she was the one who needed a do-over, but words felt hard just then. I nodded.

“Rad,” she whispered, and she was kissing me again, and I knew it for sure this time.

Talk about something else. I was thirty-five years old and six feet tall and sparkling head to toe while sitting there in that pink bean bag. I’d never been so aware of how my lips were shaped, and I felt like my body was happening, instead of just being, and everything was so pretty and bright –

– until Joan put my Dad’s hands on my hips.

I jerked away so fast, my head hit the windowsill behind me. Eyes watering from the sharp pain, I could hardly make out Joan, but she was definitely moving away. “Hey, are you cool? Everything okay?”

I was shaking. Even though they’d been gone a year and a half, my Dad’s hands were back and they were touching me again and they weren’t ever supposed to do that ever again, and I had no idea how missing him was supposed to work but it wasn’t this, and I stood up so fast I almost pitched over forward.

“Annie, what’s up? You’re scaring me.”

“I have to go home.”

“What? Are you mad? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I gotta go.” I was already heading towards her door. She didn’t get it. As far as she was concerned, she had only ever had her own hands, and they’d never hurt anyone. They’d never made missing so twisted and hard.

“I gotta go,” I repeated, “I’m not mad.” But I wasn’t okay, either. “I’ll come over tomorrow. Can I come over tomorrow? I have to go. I really gotta go.” And I was running out of her room, down her stairs, out of her house without even giving her a chance to follow.

“You’re home early.”

Mama barely looked up from the glasses she was polishing as I came to a skidding halt in our kitchen. I was shaking so bad, and I’d run so far, and it felt like I’d left all my words in Joan’s bedroom. Joan. I wanted to dissolve.

“Mama, can I make a phone call?”

“You just got in!”

“It’s important.”

She sighed. “Just no – ”

“Long distance, I know,” I called over my shoulder as I dashed into the living room. The rotary already halfway in my lap by the time I got the words out of my mouth. I dialed by touch, looking at the clock hung over the television in our living room. Hopefully Chuck would be back from his lunch break by now.

“Hello, Pharr Yarns Accounting Office, this is Chuck speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hey, Chuck. You wanna hear the story about how my Dad died?”