| WORLD VOICES DANCING FOR MY MOTHER
BY DUFF BRENNA |
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Voices Home |
Your
girlfriend at
this time is Ginger. She has bronze-reddish hair and is slim and the
cutest
girl who has ever liked you. She calls you the Duffer. The two of you
kiss and
hug whenever you can, but not anything more. You go roller skating
together.
You have a silver ring you found at the pool last summer. Someone left
it and
instead of turning it in to the Lost & Found you kept it. It is way
too
large for your largest finger, so you wind tape around the bottom until
the
ring fits. One night at the rink you ask Ginger to go steady. She’s
willing and
she says, Aren’t you going to give me your ring? You quickly calculate
that she
will see the tape wrapped around it and know that you’re faking because
your
fingers are so skinny. I’ll get you a better ring, you tell her. She
pouts and
without another word turns her back, skates away. You take the ring
off, unwrap
the tape and skate after her. But when you try to give her the ring she
says,
Never mind if you don’t want to. But I want to! you say, pushing the
ring at
her. She finally takes it. But going steady doesn’t work out. Just like
Karen,
Ginger starts avoiding you. You don’t understand it. You do understand
Karen
not liking you anymore because you were a coward the day Phillip of the
green
buckteeth beat her up. But what did you do wrong with Ginger? Was it
because
you hesitated to give her the ring? He who hesitates is lost? Is that
it? Who
understands how girls think? Your love for Ginger stays big in your
heart for a
long time, but her love for you goes away. You can see it’s gone every
time you
look into her eyes and she frowns. You’re only ten but it feels like
your heart
is broken. She never returns your ring. After
the year is
over, Pappas is discharged from the Air Force and your family prepares
to move
back to Aurora, where he has a job waiting for him at the Rocky
Mountain
Arsenal. The night before leaving, your parents go out with some
friends, and
Karen comes over to say goodbye. You take her down to the basement and
sit on
the steps, but can’t find much to say to each other. The only noise is
the
furnace. You tell her how you were always afraid of the furnace. There
it
squats near the coal bin, its slotted gate closed, flames leaping in
the slots,
its belly growling, its octopus arms reaching out and up to the
ceiling. Karen
agrees that the furnace is pretty scary. You hug each other. You’re
thinking
she will give you a goodbye fuck if you want to. But it doesn’t feel
right to
do it when you’re so sad about moving away. Finally
Karen goes
home and you go sleep on the blankets in the living room with Carol
Marie and
Michele Renee. In the morning your parents wake you and tell you to get
ready
to go. And yes damn you to hell you have wet yourself! You feel like
crying,
but do that and you’ll be in worse trouble. You get some underwear from
your
suitcase and change as quick as you can. And the last thing you do in
that
house is take your wet pajamas down to the basement and throw them in
the fire,
which is banked and smoldering. The pajamas send smoke-prayers to
Gitche
Manidoo, until whoosh! they burst into flames. You run upstairs. Your
mother
looks at you and says, What did you do? You tell her you couldn’t take
them wet
like that. She shakes her head, closes her eyes and says, Hopeless.
Help your
dad load the car, she says. After the car is loaded and you’re all
inside and
the engine starts, you’re staring straight ahead at your friends’
houses,
fixing them in your mind for the last time. Pappas is looking over his
shoulder
backing out. Get the fuck out of my way! he says, slapping your right
ear (a
bell clap Grandma Inez would call it) and it’s like he’s jabbed a
pencil in
there. The pain makes you cry out. You hold your ear and curl in a ball
on the
seat, keeping your head down while Urbana, Illinois disappears from
your stupid
life. 23
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