Minor Elements

UNE

I haven’t swapped spit with a soul in junior high, but I catch mono that’ll linger for months. My mother takes me to TJ MAXX to buy underwear and pajamas because I plan on sleeping away seventh grade. A pair of black panties is on sale, pressing up against the plexiglass. It’s mesh and lacy and covered in thready red kisses. The sides are black ribbons that must be cinched into bows in order for the panties to stay on my hips. The longer I stare at the pair, the more it becomes a need.

“What are you going to do with them?” my mother asks.

“Wear them,” I say, tossing the underwear into the cart.

When the sheer triangle rubs against my girlhood, I just about die. It feels so good. The underwear fits the new girl mouth I’m sending to try-outs. These wild stroking hands and legs feel manmade. I stand in the mirror. I am a twenty-foot-tall kitten kicking up a sandbox of glitter. When scratched, I smell like warm donuts sprinkled with my sister’s powdery Jean Naté. I wonder when someone will look at me, when I can show off these silky things like the girls in creepy Benny’s Playboy.

I push the underwear deep into the dresser drawer, but they won’t shut the hell up. Those red lips keep talking, whispering…feel this…feel that…you’re not just for show. They growl like all of those pairs of bright lips once did in the 1970s, when PBS broadcast a segment late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. On my bedroom TV, I watched a 4 X 5 grid of smaller television sets, every screen filled with a mouth drenched in bright red lipstick. At first, the lips spoke in unison; but then the pacing slipped, a second of discord, and the mouths appeared to be yelling at each other, yelling at me. if I…if I...fuck you, if… I…If… I…fuck you, will you buy me a Mercedes Benz? I wondered how many times I would ask the same question.

DEUX

It’s Friday night in October. Jenny. Nicole. Me. We’re huddled behind the domed ice skating rink. It’s eight months before Jimmy Larkin loses his face. In the pale field behind us, he’ll light a match too close to a gas can. Jimmy melts his smile, and sends it to cool off on his chin. His face permanently hardens into pale, soggy drips. His skin heals smooth and looks like the waxy bags used for egg rolls and fortune cookies.

Nicole pulls out a lighter along with the minty cigarette she pocketed from her mother’s purse. Ooh, we are so cool in our jean jackets and our lacy high tops. I study Spanish. My name is Isabel. Later when I switch to French, it will be Pauline. In the hallways, I’ll say je t'aime and te amo, making the steps from junior high into high school one long, romantic period. We pass around the cigarillo, trading lip-gloss we stole from stores last winter. Sometimes, we wear the Lip Smackers dangling around our necks by a rope. Dr. Pepper and bubble gum-scented tubes beat our chests as we run laps in P.E.

We howl at the moonlit cattails drying out in the distance. The same cold air crisps our hair. Jenny holds a warm pretzel covered with slashes of salt. She likes to dip it into a cup of melted cheese. We share a big Coke mixed with six pumps of every other flavor of soda, something the concession boys call a suicide drink. We use one straw, passing around the suicide, taking sips. We share everything: Mr. Benjamin, Izod shirts, arcade quarters, geometry.

p.s. My orthodontist is dreamy. He pushes his fingers into my mouth and pulls. I share him, too.

TROIS

There is a wizard on the Cape Coast with man-boobs who stumbles around naked and smeared in mud. He claims the swollen protrusions on his chest belong to his 16-year-old granddaughter. He often borrows her breasts at night.

In preschool, I wanted to steal my mother’s breasts. I thought they were the tits. They are the toy sacs Santa left under the tree. When mom lies on the bed, I pretend they’re humongous eggs. I try to scramble them or make them jiggle. She slaps my hand away, telling me to stop. It hurts.

My stepfather accidentally films her breasts, and both of my aunt’s breasts, and the breasts of a few moms and girls in campy red and orange Burger King uniforms—instead of my sister’s birthday party. Five is a big age. Tips of party hats and boobs appear in each shot. In St. Louis, he misses the Arch, entirely. Missouri is a series of panned cleavage.

I love my mom’s mouth. She has cute pink puppy lips that say horrible things. Her lips peak into a soft ‘M,’ the shape of a pencil-drawn seagull. It’s a scribble that a kid draws after a hard day of chewing taffy, bearing down on a crayon that’s close to snapping. Mom’s perfect mouth shows me how to scream and lick dirty pacifiers. I learn that I know how to do everything wrong in the same breath I’m told that I can do anything.

Her lips say words that don’t make sense in English—Bright Hell! Dog’s Blood! These are words she’s learned from her scornful parents. The three of them drive down cow country roads, munching on seeds they steal from fields. Think it’s no big deal, waiting for sunset to cut off the heads of strangers’ sunflowers. Some say a bowl of seeds on a grave helps nourish the dead. The shucking thieves in my family eat the hearts of blonde-haired, brown-eyed beauties; and spit the remains into their hands. Out the window the leftovers go, helping no one but roadkill.

QUATRE

The fire-tin smell of a camper. Kool-aid in Dixie cups. Dogs melt in the sun, trying to hide under the picnic table, while up above we nibble on strawberries. My sister and I would sit pretzel-legged by the pond eating sandwiches, soggy bread with the wet goose smell of summer sausage. We wouldn’t wait half an hour to jump into the algae-jeweled water. One-two-three—Kalamazoo, Michigan, we’d sing as we plunged below and emerged to swallow waves glittered in brown diamonds and crushed emeralds. There were points near the dock, places the sun would gold, letting our eyes chase catfish and their eidolon shadows. A shoulder shimmy and we’d break apart a hocus-pocus rainbow. Buckets on our heads turned us into magicians.

I like a tent full of bodies (mom, dad, my sister and me; my turtle Sprite and my dogs Benji and Twinky) covered in morning sweat; one that’s pitched close to the bait shop where I can go to cool my hands over the bubbling tanks of minnows. I can pet the small-fish backs without anyone noticing. I buy candy bars for a quarter. The magazines in the rack smell like embers smoldering in a dark room full of musty life vests. Every page I open and turn smells of mildew, making the mossy crypts of Creepy mag come to life.

The woman with smears of light blue eye shadow lets me behind the front counter. I push the register’s thick buttons and help collect money for worm hooks and cans of soda pop. Kids I don’t know yet open the ice cream freezer. Later, we’ll be friends playing ghost in the graveyard.

 The push-ups, snow cones, firecracker popsicles, chocolate-covered vanilla on a stick, frozen Snickers, all sleep inside the big white chest plugged into the wall. The freezer is big enough for me to sink down in and take a bath. Campers’ tan hands push up the top lid, whoosh, releasing cold air.

Down the aisle, long silver marshmallow forks hang over squat blue jars of Noxzema. I’ll sit by the fire making s’mores while mom delicately pats the minty cream on my sunburned shoulders, trying to cool my skin so I can get some sleep.

The shop lights turn off one by one, shutting down for the night. The building disappears into darkness, except for the lavender-milk glow of the bug zapper hanging in the corner, under an eave. The deadly lantern purples with every zap. It’s an electrifying kiss that beckons moths to come too close. The iridescent wings collapse, again and again. The insects roast and turn into ashy ghosts.