For an early summer, 3rd grade slowly crawling to a close, the pool still flat in its first sunbeams, in which freckles were soon lillypadding our faces, the schoolyard came abuzz for one last time.
Within all cliques and corners, underneath desks and sitting on top soaky gym benches, heads began sticking together as soccer stickers doubling as trading cards, carefully weighted by both rarity and the man's mane, exchanged hands.
With the album safely tucked away in the backpack, all the real treasures were collecting up in my chest pocket.
The boys from Brazil had replaced the usual assortment of popsicle sticks, chewing gum, and a bug or two. All unburdened now from the shirt mysteriously disappearing in the washer for weeks on end.
Since Mom's funeral, everything had flown out the window and my trusty faux-french polo grown onto a second skin.
And as attempting to not only fill the void within our atomized family, Dad kept the sticker packs coming. For once, 'long now observing a full six days of TV dinners, a coping mechanism I could deal with. We'd still take the Volvo over to Burger King on Sundays.
“… and not a word to the Aunties.”
Toast-in-mouth, I made myself disappear in my bedroom, one by one fired my sneakers into the corner, fished the sticker album out the backpack, balanced the still naked Wonderbread on top of the ant farm-in-a-making cocoa container, to finally plop onto my bed.
Flat on my tummy, the album flipped open on England's double spread, a good layer o’ ersatz Nutella now blanketing the toast, I fumbled my last pack of stickers out of a grass-stained back pocket, where it had been patiently waiting since today's incarnation of mystery meat avec peas.
Glistering in the bedside lamp's light, the thin aluminum wrapper crackled with a small promise.
Running my fingers above its embossed trademark knight, I at last reached for the tear-off strip lingering across the top.
I closed my eyes and held onto a mouthful of air.
"God, please not another Lothar Matthäus!"
The smell of tight sitting glue emerged, one only rivaled by the thick, carrot-like tang embodied into the pulp of a million mimeographed worksheets, that had us all grown into suburban, soon cold bunny till September, junkies.
I opened my eyes and, one by one, freed the squad out of their own casket.
It were mostly minor mullets, and fast thumbing through the album: doubles! -But! sporting green kit, reflecting a sheepish smirk and what looked like a forced haircut of his own: Jesús.
I quickly finished up the toast to tuck the sticker album under my pillow. Slightly askew, Mexico’s number 16 awaiting the rest of his teammates.
Perhaps tomorrow I could trade some in, maybe John would be back too. It was still a full week till the first World Cup matches came beaming in from across the Atlantic.
Shame my sister wasn't collecting –
After tunneling out of my shirt, leaving behind the bread's last fragments in the fabric, I, as doubling as a boyhood bible, unearthed Pippi Longstocking in the South Seas out from the depths of my nightstand drawer.
Where as mimeographed, Mom’s molecules had become embedded within the browning pages.
It still smelled of black coffee
and hospital hallways.
words,
mimo
like waves,
memo
rolling,
rolling,
mammo-
rolling.
Mama
gram.
cresting
over
my
head.
It had been eight weeks,
the book a life raft.
No land in sight.
I untangled my fingers and kept leafing on, across side notes and dogear treasures, till England’s silver-metallic Three Lions came gleaming in, still guarding our last page.
With Pippi Longstocking jacketing my chest, the lamp’s light cone collapsed into a black hole.
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