The cacophony of voices pushing and
shoving, everyone seemed to be taller
than I was and they all seemed to know
what to do. The teacher showed impatience
with my tiny body, frozen in fear by the
giant circular stone apparatus where
twenty children washed their hands. It was
clear that she liked the kids whose last
names were Johnson and whose parents
owned farms on Highway 15. They all went
to the Methodist Church in Town. I wished
I was blonde with a raspy voice like Doreen.
I showed my plaid cotton tennis shoes and
sang “Old **** Tucker” while dancing my
best country jig for show-and-tell. This was
when I learned that it was “Dan Tucker”
and that “****” was a bad word. My daddy
said ****, and he wore work boots with
stiff golden laces that crisscrossed onto
metal fasteners twelve inches up his calves.
The boots kept time when he played guitar;
his eyes and lips smiling and laughing over
some absurd thought he had the temerity
to speak out loud. Daddy was the most
interesting person I knew. He quit school
after 8th grade, but understood humanity
more than most. He wore cowboy boots
when he played the fiddle, and if he said
****, then it must be okay. I still felt good
about singing my song and proud of myself
for having mustered up the courage. I did
not have fancy toys or artifacts from family
vacations like the other kids. I had never
heard kids call each other names before
I made the acquaintance of the school
playground. It was strange how they
ganged up on the boy they said was hyper
and had ***** eyes. I did not know what
either of those things meant, but I knew it
made him sad and made me afraid to talk
to him. They said I looked like a ghost, I
did not know if that was good or bad.
Doreen was not afraid of the ball, and that
made her okay. My Mom decided to pick a
friend for me, but I did not like Linda. She
did not know how to play with dolls; she
did not make up stories about their lives
or pretend to be their mommy, she just
looked at them. Linda was tedious. The
boy with ***** eyes made more sense
to me. He lived in the yellow house that
had a dog who would bite and scare
the nice people away. I finally talked to
him in 6th grade on the hour long bus rides
home. Once, an older boy named John
snapped a rubber band on his eye over
and over until it swelled completely shut,
my friend just sat and took it until the
bus driver intervened. John’s older brother
played with guns, and John was scared of
him, and older brother was scared of father.
We hated when the brothers rode the bus.
I decided that most boys were mean and
that to be a boy must be terrifying. One
year, ***** eyes almost drowned during
gym class, the other kids said he tried to
**** himself. They thought it was funny.
Girls will never know the horrors of the
8th grade boy’s locker room. When he
was 15 he crossed in front of a semi on
his moped, they found his foot half a mile
away from his body. I wonder if the kids
thought that was funny too. I was too
afraid of my emotions to go to the funeral.
Ghost to ***** Eyes: I am sorry that they
hurt you Vincent, and sorry that I am
scared to see your innocence reduced
to road **** in a coffin.