one girl itchin’ and one boy tongue-tied
Monday June 1st, 2009
It’s a terrible thing happens round this cottage every year, ’bout this time. You might think I’d be expecting it by now, that I’d prepare myself and spare my poor heart the disappointment. But hope is a powerful thing.
I can’t be the only one who finds herself buyin’ into the promise of the sun come springtime. It tells me all sorts of lies about lazy days ahead, ice cream and picnics, nothing to do and loads of time to do it in. Then Aunt Kitty shows up by my bedside, first morning after school lets out, and there it is in her hand: The Summer Chore List.
So while I was pinning Ben’s undershorts and Aunt Kitty’s knee-highs to the clothesline, Pilot and Wilbur took themselves off on a little adventure up the hillside. Now it wasn’t till after I spent the evening cozyin’ up to Pilot on the back porch, not till after Wilbur crawled into bed with me that night, not till I woke up next morning to the sun in my eyes and a terrible itch under my skin, that I realized Pilot’s and Wilbur’s little adventure had taken them through a mighty crop of poison oak.
Now in case you’re thinking Aunt Kitty might have taken pity on this poor, rash-ridden girl, let me just wipe that thought clean out of your head. Aunt Kitty, she’s of the “Take your mind off it and it won’t hurt no more” way of thinkin’. When the preacher shared last Sunday ’bout how Martin Luther would counsel a man struck with the blues to hitch up the horses and go spread some manure, Aunt Kitty was noddin’ her head so hard she near to bounced right out of the pew.
When she found me doubled over in the kitchen, attacking those itchy spots with a potato masher and Ben’s best grillin’ spatula, she shoved a bar of Fels Naptha into my hand and sent me off to the bend in the creek to give Pilot and Wilbur a bath.
Well if you’ve never suffered from a fire under your skin, I’ll thank you to keep your judgment to yourself. By the time we reached the creek I was near to goin’ out of my mind, and I won’t be ashamed that I stripped off every lick of clothing and sat my bare, burnin’ bottom right down in that muddy bend of the creek. I scooped up a handful of that lovely, rocky silt and scraped at the redness on my arms and legs. It’s not the first time Pilot and Wilbur looked at me like I was nuts, but it may be the first time they were right.
If Pilot hadn’t perked up his ears and jogged away, I might’ve never known that boy was standin’ there in the trees.
I scrambled to the water’s edge with as much dignity as I could muster, which was hardly any at all, and I shouted at him:
“Ezekiel! What in tarnation are you doin’ here?”
That boy said nothin’, not a single word! I crouched behind Wilbur and tried to draw my clothes closer just by thinkin’ about them.
“I got some rope back home,” I told him. “We could tie up that misbehavin’ jaw of yours, ‘fore you swallow a fly or somethin’.”
Still, nothing.
“Oh, get on!” I hollered. “Ain’t you seen a girl naked before?”
His jaw was closed now, but there was somethin’ in his eyes I didn’t understand and it shut me up. He turned and left the way he came, but none too fast, and darned if I know how he left me feelin’ like I was the one who should apologize.
I’ll tell you one thing though. Aunt Kitty and old Luther may be on to somethin’. I clean forgot about that fire under my skin for a good thirty minutes or so.
