My hands turned red against the cold. It was summer, but the nighttime brought a chill across the overgrown grassess and sent all the kids inside to hunt for jackets. I sat down on the lawn, freshly cut grass poking the undersides of my thighs. The house looked smaller than it had before. I remember being twelve years old and thinking it was a mansion, all my friends thought so too. I heard Sophie yell for me but I sat there, still. I looked over at the swimming pool. My Grandma and cousin Riley pulled the pool cover to the other side. Riley stepped over the slide and tripped. I knew he had just stubbed his toe because I had done it a thousand times before in the exact same spot where the concrete wasn't level. Sarah and Eli played on the deck. They sat near the kiddie pool under the pine tree; its trunk was wrapped in Christmas lights that had been put up when my Grandpa was not a Grandpa. They dipped their toes in the freezing hose water, in the same place I had been when my Grandma passed out on the hot cement. She doesn't remember how long she had been lying there but when she woke up I was upright, blissfully unaware. I did not know what cancer was. I did not know what chemotherapy was. I felt the way the basketball court burns and blisters the soles of your feet on a hot day; I could smell charred hot dogs. I saw the wet bathing suits hanging out to dry on the handrail. Grandpa smoking in the garage. Watching deer near the salt lick. I looked into the kitchen window. My mom rinsed her hands at the sink, the men sat in the living room drinking Pepsi's. Probably watching the Cubs, probably cursing. I got the strangest feeling in my stomach. A mixture of every emotion I had ever felt, most of which, I had felt in that house. I was reminded of the bad. I heard Sarah in the back of my head, her image sticking to the ends of my eyelashes. A pink bathing suit with silver flamingos in sunglasses, sunscreen dabbed in the center of her forehead. She begged me to go swimming. "Pleeeeeease," she squealed. I came up with a lie as to why I couldn't, I rubbed in the sunscreen with my fingers. "Sarah, I have a headache." "You said that on Saturday." "Leave me alone." "You said that on Saturday." I remember how everyone looked at me that summer. How many times I got asked, "Aren't you hot in those jeans?" I don't blame them now. There’s no way they could have known. But small pieces of me wanted them to. I was hot in those jeans. I remembered staying up at night, staring into the mirror of the upstairs bathroom. I remember hating myself, I saw the white horizons etched across the tops of my thighs, the insides of my arms. I looked at my reflection and wished the mirror would shatter into a million pieces, engulfing me in the glass ashes of myself, someone I had grown to hate. At the end of the driveway, near the road, the For Sale sign laughed at me. It was not my last day here but it felt like I was saying goodbye. Maybe not to the house, but to the people I’ve been in the house. To the girl in the bathroom mirror. Sophie noticed me from inside. She opened the door and ran out. She slammed the door behind her. My Grandpa was probably pissed. I remembered a time when I couldn't stand her. She still followed me around like a lost puppy, her and Riley. The sky exhaled on the back of my neck and every image of the two of them painted its way into my memory. I held Sophie’s hand; she clutched a baby doll that was not much bigger than she was in the other. We walked down by the water; the sky was a color of blue that I have yet to come across again. Riley trailed behind, picking up rocks and throwing them at birds. Sophie sat down next to me and an overwhelming happiness crashed over me. We both lay down in the grass, our toes touching the point where the lawn meets the blacktop. I wondered if she had ever felt the way I did and if she would ever feel the way I did. I looked at her and I saw myself and it frightened me. I then realized she was everything I wasn't and I remembered the good. The sun settled on the tops of the trees in the woods. My Grandpa puffed on a cigarette outside and watched the ball game through the living room window. His hand was cupped around his left eye to stop the glare of the glass, his nose pressed against it. He once told me that he didn't like to babysit me without my Grandma because I was scared of him. I would sit at the edge of the couch and cry until she came back. One afternoon he discovered a box of Hostess Cupcakes in the drawer under the oven mitts and dish towels, the ones with the chocolate cake and the perfect white swirl on top. He said I ate one in three bites and fell asleep on the bottom stair. From then on, he required Hostess Cupcakes and cigarettes to watch me. He still keeps them around. The cupcakes and the cigarettes. I remembered the big red ball I carried around the yard for a whole summer. I pretended it was my brother. My Grandma laughed, "Well, Mindy, you can tell she's an only child!" I could almost touch my Grandma Iris. I could see her sitting on the back porch and although it was warm, she wore a sweater. She smiled up at me and called me her Angel Baby. I felt the wind chasing me on the back of the four wheeler, Riley was driving. Beech tree branches whipped me at my ankles. The air was dry but it reeked of oil, the exhaust pipe blew steam under my feet. I was half asleep on a float in the pool; the sun beat down on my bare belly. I could hear the kids whispering as they neared me with the hose, I knew it was coming but the cold water still shocked me, I fell into the water and we all laughed. Eighteen years clung to the ends of my fingertips and pulled me deeper into the Earth. I felt it all, even the things I hadn't been there for; the drinking, the separation, the intervention. I looked at Sophie, her eyes were shut and her calloused hands held fistfuls of grass. I remembered all at once what happiness felt like and I filled my lungs with the air that had filled my summers, sunk my hands into the soil, and forgave the girl in the bathroom mirror. Most things in life are sold, traded, or abandoned; it is a blessing that they are almost never permanent.
