Hera lived on the other side of the street from me. We were exactly 362 days apart and were both maladjusted from parental neglect: I the second youngest of four boys, with no distinguishing talents or defects; Hera, being a mistake, an only-child who never knew her father. I spent a great deal of my childhood at Hera’s house; she had a pool. Once when I was six, I dove in and chipped half of a front tooth. Hera and I called for her mother, only to realize she wasn’t at home. We then scurried across the street to my house, where my parents didn’t seem at all concerned that Hera’s mother had left such young children home alone by the pool. I don’t think Hera’s mother ever heard about the incident. My top left front tooth is still a slightly different color than the others.
Hera, though younger, looked and acted older than I once puberty began to ravish our bodies. Several times, I was mistaken for her gawkish younger brother. She had a face like a china doll, creamy fair skin peppered with perfectly symmetrical caramel moles, wispy yellow hair, and a self-confidence that often overflowed into immodesty. She was also about twenty pounds overweight, but she obviously didn’t think so. She would proudly strut about in a string bikini, a figure hugging dress or even her underwear, seemingly oblivious to any undulating pudge. She reminded me of the pale, portly subjects of nude renaissance paintings. At fourteen, Hera could convince the clerk at the convenience store on Olympus Drive that she’d left her ID at home. I appreciated the cigarettes, though she always bought Camel No.6′s.
Hera got a car the day she turned sixteen; I was still without a license. She would drive me about aimlessly. The car had manual transmission, and whenever she’d move her left foot to the clutch, her legs would open, and if she was wearing one of her many miniskirts, I could see as bright as day her red panties. My first few sightings of her panties were intensely awkward. I’d use all of my might to avert my gaze, stare out the window and will away any boners that might arise. With time I grew used to the view and familiar with her assortment of red underwear which I skillfully examined with my peripheral vision. She had a cotton pair with faint pink stripes on which there was a small brown stain from blood, and a lace-trimmed nylon pair the fabric of which was penetrated by a few coarse pubic hairs. Most were cotton, some solid, some with flowers or polka dots, but they were always red. Though, I do remember that once they were a pale green, like mint-chocolate chip ice cream or seafoam. I got the distinct feeling that she had done that on purpose, to catch me off guard.
Most summers, Hera’s mother would pay me $50 to mow their front lawn every Saturday—which was a lot considering their yard was treeless and rather small. I felt guilty and oddly powerful for never telling her she should be paying me half that, especially as I usually missed the corners and pushed the mower in a less than straight path, leaving ribbons of taller grass weaving through their yard.
The summer after I graduated from high school, before I moved to Arizona to live with my oldest brother, Hera’s mother left town for three weeks, letting Hera laze at home alone. Right before she left, she reminded me to mow every Saturday, promising compensation upon her return. Hera didn’t care if I mowed or not, and seemed to almost prefer the untamed forest her lawn became when her mother left, as well as the devious and small sense of satisfaction she got from knowing her mother, who was already paying me too much, would be giving me $150 for only one shoddy mowing.
Hera and I would lie in her lawn at twilight during those weeks, smoking cigarettes, watching the quaint suburb glow. Mosquitoes never bothered her, and I’d pretend they ignored me too. We spoke of disappointment, adolescent adversity and the elusive unnamable aspects of our lives, which, we fathomed, if discovered, would complete us. We discussed our perceived familiarity with sex, our pressure-driven escapades with drugs, and gave overblown accounts of our banal love lives.
If I laid on my back and curved my spine, arching it to lower my line of vision, the top of my head flattened to the ground, I could focus completely on a single gently folded blade of overgrown grass and imagine what it was pointing at—each filament perfectly angled to site exactly a planet in another universe, a dying star, a lost spirit. This contortion caused the blood to rush to my eyeballs and left my neck stiff, but I found myself bowing my spine and driving my head into the ground every time I noticed Hera had nodded off.
I let myself explain to Hera about the grass one evening while we lay in her yard stoned. She giggled like it was a faux-philosophical musing of an inebriated teenager. I had thought she would have found me deep or expressive. But even stoned she wasn’t impressed.
“The grass points at nothing,” she said dreamily, sardonically. It rolled off her tongue like my meditation was nothing at all—like her simple response completely erased it from our collective memories. She jammed the butt of the No.6 into the ground, then flicked it off into the forest of St. Augustine grass.
I was too high to be crushed by her lack of enthusiasm. I returned to arching my back as to gaze at the blades of grass, the maps of the universe. She pretended she didn’t see. I never mentioned it to her again.
New neighbors had moved in next door to Hera. We had only met them briefly one evening. They were unloading the moving van as we lay in Hera’s front yard. They approached us, standing over our recumbent bodies and bending forward to shake our hands which we limply raised. The Deuces were twenty-something extroverted newlyweds from California, blonde and bright-eyed with great clothes and two new cars. They looked strikingly similar, too, like brother and sister. After our introduction, they would gesticulate with neighborly enthusiasm whenever they happened to enter or exit their house while we were outside. We only condescended to give them half-hearted waves of acknowledgment from our bed of grass.
One particularly hot afternoon during the weeks of Hera’s mother’s vacation or business trip or whatever it was, Hera and I reclined in lawn chairs by her pool in the backyard sunbathing. She was chomping loudly on an apple. Tiny drops of juice would squirt upon each bite she took, landing on and then quickly evaporating from the lenses of her oversized silver sunglasses, leaving a glistening sticky residue.
The Deuces must have been having a housewarming party. We could hear the bongo drums of world music over the shuffling of strappy summer sandals and compliments about the decorating. Despite their avid waving, the Deuces had not invited us to this shindig.
“Do you remember Grant?” Hera asked me with a tone of forced spontaneity, as she untied the top string of her red bikini for tanning purposes, still crunching her apple. I could tell she had been trying all day to casually work Grant into conversation. And she couldn’t tan anyways. She’d just burn.
“The thirty-year-old?” I spat.
“He’s not thirty,” she spat back, a tiny piece of apple flying from her lips. “He’s twenty-seven.”
“I was rounding up.”
“Anyways,” she took another bite of apple and proceeded to speak through her mouthful. “I ran into him at Blockbuster the other day, he looks great. Anyways,” another bite, “he asked for my number again and all that jazz, but I wasn’t expecting him to call, y’know?”
“Oh but he did!” I interjected facetiously.
Hera rolled her eyes then continued to prattle about maybe going out with him again. I remembered Grant from last summer, though we’d never been officially introduced. Hera had met him at a reggae concert and was absolutely and obnoxiously smitten with him for some three and a half weeks. He was a deli supervisor at the local Randall’s and told Hera he was living in his parent’s basement so he could save up money to buy a motorcycle and ride across Mexico for a year like Che Guevara. Hera had gushed about him like she’d never met a pseudo-Marxist stoner before, that was, until he broke it off for some vague reason into which she declined to give me much insight. Hearing her rhapsodize about him again brought about an unwanted revisitation to last summer’s irritation. But with Hera, history often repeated itself: first as a tragedy, second as a farce.
The clinking of crystal carried over the fence; a toast to the happy couple and their beautiful new home.
Once there was no more flesh to gnaw from her apple, Hera refastened her bikini top, stood up, and pitched the core over the fence into the Deuce’s yard where their guests were gathered. She tossed her sticky sunglasses aside and dove gracefully into the pool before quickly surfacing. I remained reclined as she hopped out of the pool and toweled herself.
“Fuck,” she said, gently fingering her crimson shoulders and chest. “Why didn’t you tell me I was burning?”
I figured that Grant never called Hera after that, because she never mentioned him again. I can’t say I minded, but she seemed to speak to me less and less as those three weeks drew to an end. Lying her yard, I was overcome with anxiety at the idea that she was irritated with me. I’d stroke her back awkwardly and ask her about death and love and life and god. Her responses were curt, cursory. I wanted to remind her I was leaving for good once summer ended in hopes that we could better relish our remaining time together, but every way I could think of to word it just sounded like a threat.
Hera’s mother was to arrive back on a Sunday. I mowed that Saturday morning. The lawn, being so overgrown, was exceptionally difficult to cut, but I managed to get every corner and every ribbon.
Hera and I couldn’t lie in her yard that night. The excess of clippings and blunted blades made our ritual rather uncomfortable. Instead we went to a park on the other side of town to lie in different grass, this time under a sickly, old and beautiful tree. Hera didn’t mention her mother’s return and was a different and cold kind of quiet that night. I thought that if she would just look and see and speak, she’d find the tree to be desperately sad. She’d see it, shaped like an opening hand, reaching for the planets to which the grass pointed; she’d know the tree was to die soon; she’d be upset that her mother was to return the next morning; she’d realize and be heartbroken that I, along with the summer, was almost gone; she’d know the grass points at something.
I thought to myself: if she could see what’s in front of her it would break her wide open.
Hera, though younger, looked and acted older than I once puberty began to ravish our bodies. Several times, I was mistaken for her gawkish younger brother. She had a face like a china doll, creamy fair skin peppered with perfectly symmetrical caramel moles, wispy yellow hair, and a self-confidence that often overflowed into immodesty. She was also about twenty pounds overweight, but she obviously didn’t think so. She would proudly strut about in a string bikini, a figure hugging dress or even her underwear, seemingly oblivious to any undulating pudge. She reminded me of the pale, portly subjects of nude renaissance paintings. At fourteen, Hera could convince the clerk at the convenience store on Olympus Drive that she’d left her ID at home. I appreciated the cigarettes, though she always bought Camel No.6′s.
Hera got a car the day she turned sixteen; I was still without a license. She would drive me about aimlessly. The car had manual transmission, and whenever she’d move her left foot to the clutch, her legs would open, and if she was wearing one of her many miniskirts, I could see as bright as day her red panties. My first few sightings of her panties were intensely awkward. I’d use all of my might to avert my gaze, stare out the window and will away any boners that might arise. With time I grew used to the view and familiar with her assortment of red underwear which I skillfully examined with my peripheral vision. She had a cotton pair with faint pink stripes on which there was a small brown stain from blood, and a lace-trimmed nylon pair the fabric of which was penetrated by a few coarse pubic hairs. Most were cotton, some solid, some with flowers or polka dots, but they were always red. Though, I do remember that once they were a pale green, like mint-chocolate chip ice cream or seafoam. I got the distinct feeling that she had done that on purpose, to catch me off guard.
Most summers, Hera’s mother would pay me $50 to mow their front lawn every Saturday—which was a lot considering their yard was treeless and rather small. I felt guilty and oddly powerful for never telling her she should be paying me half that, especially as I usually missed the corners and pushed the mower in a less than straight path, leaving ribbons of taller grass weaving through their yard.
The summer after I graduated from high school, before I moved to Arizona to live with my oldest brother, Hera’s mother left town for three weeks, letting Hera laze at home alone. Right before she left, she reminded me to mow every Saturday, promising compensation upon her return. Hera didn’t care if I mowed or not, and seemed to almost prefer the untamed forest her lawn became when her mother left, as well as the devious and small sense of satisfaction she got from knowing her mother, who was already paying me too much, would be giving me $150 for only one shoddy mowing.
Hera and I would lie in her lawn at twilight during those weeks, smoking cigarettes, watching the quaint suburb glow. Mosquitoes never bothered her, and I’d pretend they ignored me too. We spoke of disappointment, adolescent adversity and the elusive unnamable aspects of our lives, which, we fathomed, if discovered, would complete us. We discussed our perceived familiarity with sex, our pressure-driven escapades with drugs, and gave overblown accounts of our banal love lives.
If I laid on my back and curved my spine, arching it to lower my line of vision, the top of my head flattened to the ground, I could focus completely on a single gently folded blade of overgrown grass and imagine what it was pointing at—each filament perfectly angled to site exactly a planet in another universe, a dying star, a lost spirit. This contortion caused the blood to rush to my eyeballs and left my neck stiff, but I found myself bowing my spine and driving my head into the ground every time I noticed Hera had nodded off.
I let myself explain to Hera about the grass one evening while we lay in her yard stoned. She giggled like it was a faux-philosophical musing of an inebriated teenager. I had thought she would have found me deep or expressive. But even stoned she wasn’t impressed.
“The grass points at nothing,” she said dreamily, sardonically. It rolled off her tongue like my meditation was nothing at all—like her simple response completely erased it from our collective memories. She jammed the butt of the No.6 into the ground, then flicked it off into the forest of St. Augustine grass.
I was too high to be crushed by her lack of enthusiasm. I returned to arching my back as to gaze at the blades of grass, the maps of the universe. She pretended she didn’t see. I never mentioned it to her again.
New neighbors had moved in next door to Hera. We had only met them briefly one evening. They were unloading the moving van as we lay in Hera’s front yard. They approached us, standing over our recumbent bodies and bending forward to shake our hands which we limply raised. The Deuces were twenty-something extroverted newlyweds from California, blonde and bright-eyed with great clothes and two new cars. They looked strikingly similar, too, like brother and sister. After our introduction, they would gesticulate with neighborly enthusiasm whenever they happened to enter or exit their house while we were outside. We only condescended to give them half-hearted waves of acknowledgment from our bed of grass.
One particularly hot afternoon during the weeks of Hera’s mother’s vacation or business trip or whatever it was, Hera and I reclined in lawn chairs by her pool in the backyard sunbathing. She was chomping loudly on an apple. Tiny drops of juice would squirt upon each bite she took, landing on and then quickly evaporating from the lenses of her oversized silver sunglasses, leaving a glistening sticky residue.
The Deuces must have been having a housewarming party. We could hear the bongo drums of world music over the shuffling of strappy summer sandals and compliments about the decorating. Despite their avid waving, the Deuces had not invited us to this shindig.
“Do you remember Grant?” Hera asked me with a tone of forced spontaneity, as she untied the top string of her red bikini for tanning purposes, still crunching her apple. I could tell she had been trying all day to casually work Grant into conversation. And she couldn’t tan anyways. She’d just burn.
“The thirty-year-old?” I spat.
“He’s not thirty,” she spat back, a tiny piece of apple flying from her lips. “He’s twenty-seven.”
“I was rounding up.”
“Anyways,” she took another bite of apple and proceeded to speak through her mouthful. “I ran into him at Blockbuster the other day, he looks great. Anyways,” another bite, “he asked for my number again and all that jazz, but I wasn’t expecting him to call, y’know?”
“Oh but he did!” I interjected facetiously.
Hera rolled her eyes then continued to prattle about maybe going out with him again. I remembered Grant from last summer, though we’d never been officially introduced. Hera had met him at a reggae concert and was absolutely and obnoxiously smitten with him for some three and a half weeks. He was a deli supervisor at the local Randall’s and told Hera he was living in his parent’s basement so he could save up money to buy a motorcycle and ride across Mexico for a year like Che Guevara. Hera had gushed about him like she’d never met a pseudo-Marxist stoner before, that was, until he broke it off for some vague reason into which she declined to give me much insight. Hearing her rhapsodize about him again brought about an unwanted revisitation to last summer’s irritation. But with Hera, history often repeated itself: first as a tragedy, second as a farce.
The clinking of crystal carried over the fence; a toast to the happy couple and their beautiful new home.
Once there was no more flesh to gnaw from her apple, Hera refastened her bikini top, stood up, and pitched the core over the fence into the Deuce’s yard where their guests were gathered. She tossed her sticky sunglasses aside and dove gracefully into the pool before quickly surfacing. I remained reclined as she hopped out of the pool and toweled herself.
“Fuck,” she said, gently fingering her crimson shoulders and chest. “Why didn’t you tell me I was burning?”
I figured that Grant never called Hera after that, because she never mentioned him again. I can’t say I minded, but she seemed to speak to me less and less as those three weeks drew to an end. Lying her yard, I was overcome with anxiety at the idea that she was irritated with me. I’d stroke her back awkwardly and ask her about death and love and life and god. Her responses were curt, cursory. I wanted to remind her I was leaving for good once summer ended in hopes that we could better relish our remaining time together, but every way I could think of to word it just sounded like a threat.
Hera’s mother was to arrive back on a Sunday. I mowed that Saturday morning. The lawn, being so overgrown, was exceptionally difficult to cut, but I managed to get every corner and every ribbon.
Hera and I couldn’t lie in her yard that night. The excess of clippings and blunted blades made our ritual rather uncomfortable. Instead we went to a park on the other side of town to lie in different grass, this time under a sickly, old and beautiful tree. Hera didn’t mention her mother’s return and was a different and cold kind of quiet that night. I thought that if she would just look and see and speak, she’d find the tree to be desperately sad. She’d see it, shaped like an opening hand, reaching for the planets to which the grass pointed; she’d know the tree was to die soon; she’d be upset that her mother was to return the next morning; she’d realize and be heartbroken that I, along with the summer, was almost gone; she’d know the grass points at something.
I thought to myself: if she could see what’s in front of her it would break her wide open.
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