The Taste of Red

The taste of Red


Sh ha sh-ha sh-ha whoo- fa fa fa fa fa… can’t breathe. The air against me is hot and sticky and I know that I am running because my legs are going up and down and my thighs are burning except I feel like I am not moving. It is like swimming in soup. It is like running in place it’s like the roadrunner in those cartoons when he runs in place hurry hurry the coyote is coming. Or quicksand. I’ve never seen quicksand but on tv it always drowns you up to your neck. I can’t get there fast enough. It is almost six o’clock and the light on the grass is purple as I run. If I run fast enough I can catch up with the light before afternoon disappears into the night. If you step on a crack you break your mother’s back. Lucky I’m on the grass there are no cracks. I have maybe an hour before home and dinner. The air comes in and out and chafes my lungs like the way I chafed my knees last summer when I insisted on going down the Big Hill on Craig’s skateboard. Gotta stop for air. Gotta- gotta- gotta. I stand panting at the entrance to where the grass becomes woods and hope that Mr. Newman isn’t looking out his window. He doesn’t like the kids going on his property but the woods are the shortest way to cut through to the aqueduct. I try to catch my breath but don’t want to stay in one place. The minute I stop and stand I remember, and I don’t want to I don’t want to remember, I want to go to my lick-me place and be alone and quiet. My shorts are sweaty in my thighs and my face is burning. I used to love summer but I don’t anymore. I wish this summer would end and my cheeks would stop burning. Everything’s sticky and hot and I can feel my ears falling off, they are so red. I can hear someone’s lawnmower starting and the soon the smell of cut grass fills my nose. Cut grass is the smell of the beginning of summer, when school is out and July fourth comes along and I can wear a short sleeved shirt for the first time. I love that smell when Aba cuts the grass and asks me to fill up the sacks and throw them out. Grass smells juicy and clean and rainy like a frog and camping with wet twigs. No more frogs now, it’s almost the end of summer and I’m sick of cut grass and brittle leaves.
That’s enough. Got my breath. I take off into the woods, down the path, jumping over the mushroom trunk by the rusted cart. When we play hide and seek in these woods someone is always hiding under the rusted cart. That’s so unoriginal. I always try to find somewhere new to hide but it’s always according to where the rusted cart is. By the rusted cart, to the left of the rusted cart, behind it. The woods can look all the same without the rusted cart to keep you on your path.
I need to get to my lick-me place, up the hill and along the aqueduct. It’s not a real aqueduct anymore, but it used to carry water and there is a footpath along it where all the kids walk from the library to the pool. It runs along the top of a hill, all the way to the Fairville Pool. There is a spot there where you can slide down the hill, and not stay on the path, where there is a tiny little lake with lilypads. I call it my lick-me place because that’s where I go to lick my wounds. Ima taught me what it was to lick my wounds. When Bianca had kittens and disappeared under the stairs, I couldn’t understand why she disappeared. Ima said she had gone off to lick her wounds. That means being alone when something hurts. I was plenty hurting – I don’t want to think of it till I get there. I go there sometimes without having wounds. Sometimes I need to lick me even without the wounds.
Almost at the end of the woods now, I can see the remains of the light on the tall hill on the top of which is the aqueduct. The crickets are chirping at full blast now and I stop for a second, trying to spot one. Those crickets. They fill your head, making so much noise but you can never find the source or shut them up. The only cricket I’ve ever seen is Pinocchio’s friend. I don’t think I even know what they look like. Aba says they rub their wings together to make that noise. I try to imagine a bird rubbing its wings but the only thing I can imagine is feathers rustling and coo coo cooing of pigeons.
“She made me do it,” I say aloud, knowing that I am alone and no one can hear me. “She m-made m-me do it,” I say once again, as the lump in my throat explodes and the snot and tears and rage come pouring out of my eyes. Crying now, I begin running blindly again, in the general direction of the fading light. This is feeling sorry for yourself like when Gil pins me against the floor and I cannot move and I have to give up and yell that I am younger and a girl and LEAVE ME ALONE. “You feeling sorry for yourself yet?” he always says, shoving off me and letting go. I am sorry for myself now, I am I am. “Shut up,” I snivel at the crickets. There is a sudden silence, and I am so surprised I stop crying for a second. Then the crickets continue and I bawl into the purple light. “It’s not my fault,” I pant, climbing up the side of the hill. “It’s not – my – fault.”

Drama class had been Ima’s idea. I make them laugh at dinner by getting up on my seat and making voices. “We should send her to Drama camp over the summer,” she had told Aba. When Ima says “we should” it always happens. “We should buy a new dishwasher. We should get Gil some new shoes for school”. So I went to the Fairville Drama Workshop and discovered Mr. Santini with the mustache who was our teacher and “playwright in residence” (I have to ask Ima what that means), and plot and front stage and center stage and backdrops but most of all I had discovered Beautiful Karen. Beautiful Karen was an eighth grader, and the oldest in our Drama class. Beautiful Karen who has big brown eyes and two lovely pink spots like marshmallow in her cheeks when she says her lines. Beautiful Karen who is the star of our play. Mr. Santini wrote our play and he cast Beautiful Karen as his star Amy. Her face is so clear and so clean and she always smells like shampoo. Beautiful Karen who is in eighth grade and who plays my older sister and who wears skirts and is taller than the rest of us. Most of the fifth graders play extras like “a crowd” or “the student body”. But Mr. Santini picked me for the part of Mimsy, Karen’s younger sister, who wants to be a star. That means I have three lines with Beautiful Karen. Only me and this other fifth grader, Wendy, have lines. But I am Karen’s favorite. Really. Before opening night, she gave me a kiss on my cheek. That was ten days ago, but I still remember. I don’t think about it when I am around other people. Those are thoughts for my lick-me place. So I am going to my lick-me place and trying not to remember that Beautiful Karen will never speak to me again.
I am on the top of the hill now, walking along the trampled grass that is the “path” above the aqueduct. There are bicycle treads and a can of Dr. Pepper. Kids go by here all the time. I hope no one comes now. I don’t know if what is running down my face is sweat or tears but I don’t want anyone to see it. “It wasn’t my fault,” I mumble.

I could watch Karen play Amy again and again, especially the prom scene when she dances with Keith her boyfriend, played by Jason, an icky eighth grader with dandruff. I knew their dance because I practice it at home even though it’s not my part. Sometimes I would be Keith and I hold Amy. I wonder what it would be like to hug beautiful Karen like a teddy bear, to hug and hug her like icky Jason does. Then when Karen plays Amy I watch and imagine that I am Keith onstage and not only in my bedroom. We’ve already had five shows, every other night, and I sit offstage watching until it’s time for my lines. When I watch her onstage I almost forget where I am. Her eyes shine and she looks at Jason, icky Jason, as if he were the most beautiful and amazing prince. She doesn’t even look at the audience. The last time I watched her I got dizzy and suddenly realized I was forgetting to breathe. Even in rehearsal sometimes, it’s true.

Wendy Rahv had waited for me outside rehearsal yesterday. Although we’ve already put on the show, and it will play throughout August every other day till school comes back, we still have rehearsals, “to keep us on our toes”, Mr. Santini says. So we did our run-throughs and Wendy and I, the only fifth graders in the show with lines, finished our scene and waited out for the rest of the play. Outside the red brick Arts building, Wendy had been leaning against the wall waiting for me to come out. “Hey,” she had said, “you think Karen is really Jason’s girlfriend? In real life?”

I had not considered this. We all had our parts in the play, but Jason was Jason and Keith was Keith. I was Keith. Keith, according to the play, was “Amy’s boyfriend, a down and out youngster with big dreams and an even bigger mouth”. There was no Keith. Keith was only something on stage. Jason was icky and had dandruff. He always had cranberry juice in a box and salami sandwiches. Yuck.
“I don’t think so,” I said. But I must have looked doubtful because Wendy elbowed me in the ribs and said: “you know, I caught them sneaking in the girls’ bathroom together. In one stall. You think they’re making out?”
“No!” this was too much. I tried to picture Karen and Jason, Amy and Keith, him with the dandruff and her blue flowery dress that was so pretty. “No way.”
“Yes way, I swear! I bet they do it again tomorrow after rehearsal. I dare you. Dare you to peek on them.”
“No!” I had yelled and shrugged loose from Wendy’s sweaty grip and trudged home, my thoughts as heavy as a sudden August raincloud.

I find my spot by the small lake that is really a puddle. It smells of mud and wet leaves and something gross, like wet gym socks. I sit down. Right in the mud. The wet brown will make a stain on my butt. I don’t care. I jab a stick into the nearest lilypad, trying to overturn it into the murky water. It’s getting kind of hard to see. “It wasn’t my fault,” I mutter sullenly. “She made me do it.”

I didn’t sleep all night. Wendy was so sure of herself that I could be wrong. What if Beautiful Karen was icky Jason’s girlfriend? She had kissed me on the cheek on opening night, and I had never so much as seen her near Jason except when they did their lines. But what if?
When Ima woke me for camp this morning I leapt out of bed. I felt like I hadn’t slept all night. I had to get to camp. Have to see it for myself. I don’t even remember rehearsal today. I’ve been feeling feverish and my heart has been racing all day, pounding in my ears. I don’t know how I made it through, I guess I really do know my lines well, cause I can’t remember saying them. I think I remember Beautiful Karen looking at me funny, but I don’t know what I did or said.

Shame burns in my cheeks like that weird Crayola color – burnt sienna I think. Or crimson. The lump in my throat actually seems to swell and my eyes are stinging. I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I say out loud to the grass and the pond and the lilypads, tears running down my scorching face. She made me do it, she made me.

Beautiful Karen will never talk to me again. I can’t go back to Drama camp. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to make it all go away, her surprised look, her eyes open wide and then small, turning into anger. Looking at her from above, peering over the wall of the bathroom stalls, she had looked so small and alone, her long legs folded underneath her as she sat on the toilet. She will never talk to me again. I can never talk to Beautiful Karen again. Go away, go away, I say, a fresh burst of tears spilling out of my eyes. Go away! She had yelled. It all comes rushing back at me, burning like a thousand paper cuts in salt water. “---Respecting people’s privacy,” I heard Mr. Santini say, “toilets are private places.” “---can’t go looking on people-” “---wouldn’t want someone looking in on you-“
“She was SPYING on me, the little snake—“

It is almost completely dark. Soon it will be safe to go home. The night will protect me. In the dark there is no color. The night will disguise my burning face and the stain that is spreading on my butt. I can bawl like a baby at the top of my voice, and the crickets will drown me out. I will slink home through the glistening grass, leaving my thin trail behind me. My smelly existence will be covered by mud and by twilight. Soon it will be safe to go home.