In sixth grade, Brother stopped doing his homework. He just stopped bringing it home or worrying about turning it in. Girl wished she could be so blasé about it, but she hated to be in trouble, hated the teacher’s disapproval when she missed an assignment. Brother just stopped caring. Stepmother was enraged, and he was more or less permanently grounded. Stepmother threaded a tiny luggage lock through the hole of the TV plug to keep them from watching it after school.
“I know it’s not fair to you, Girl, but Brother is grounded, so neither one of you can watch television,” Mother said. Brother didn’t mind that, either—when their parents were gone, he just straightened out a paperclip and picked the lock.
Stepmother and Brother fought often and loudly, screaming throughout the house. When Stepmother yelled, Mother grabbed her keys and left.
Girl didn’t know what Brother had done this time—or hadn’t done, most likely. Chores, homework, or both maybe. This time, Stepmother took him to the basement.
“I refuse to listen to this!” Mother yelled, slamming the green side door behind her. Girl ran outside, but by the time Girl got there, Mother’s car was pulling away from the curb. She was never entirely sure if Mother was coming back.
Girl could hear Brother scream from the basement, but she was too afraid to go downstairs. She stood frozen in the kitchen, listening, loathing churning her stomach for her own inaction. Someone needed to save Brother, but she wasn’t brave enough.
Years later Mother told Girl, “Stepmother always knew where I was. I went to the movies, always at the Webster Theatre. I’d get a large popcorn and watch a movie by myself—whatever was playing at the time. If I was really mad, sometimes I’d watch two. But I always came home.”
When Girl went into the basement the next day, there was a blue wooden paddle broken in half on the ground, the end splintered and frayed. She didn’t throw it away—it was the only proof they had. She wanted to outline it in chalk like a crime scene, so Mother couldn’t ignore it.
“The paddle wasn’t that thick. You are always so dramatic,” the children were told.
camping
Every summer, the family went camping. Stepmother’s bronze Datsun station wagon left the paved road and turned down the dirt path into the trees. The turnoff was marked by a small green sign that only said, Welcome Friends of Sabra. The sign was round and only a foot wide, hidden among the wildflowers at the edge of the woods. No one would notice it if they weren’t looking. Grass and small flowers grew in the hump in the middle of the dirt road, and the trees were so thick they formed a dark tunnel speckled with sunlight. Bushes and branches sometimes brushed the sides of the car, and the children reached their hands out the windows to grab them. The dog sat in the middle of the back seat between Girl and Brother, and once they turned off the main road, the dog whined and wagged, the wispy fur of her tail slapping the children in the face.
When there was no longer any danger of being seen from the main street, Girl and Brother were finally allowed to shed their clothing. Girl frantically pulled off her too-short pants and marginally fashionable shirt in a race to return to her natural state before the car stopped. Her chest was as flat as Brother’s, but she was only eight. Their limbs were long and thin and their round bellies stuck out. They both had outie bellybuttons and dark brown hair, but hers was long and his was short.
The children hurled themselves out of the car, untangling their long legs from the balled-up clothing at their feet, and ran down the hard-packed path toward the pond. Their bare feet slapped the powdery dirt as they ran through clouds of gnats congregating in sunbeams that filtered through the forest canopy. There were evergreens and maples, oaks, and trees Girl didn’t know the names of. Blackberries and raspberries grew wild at the sides of the path, and they’d stop to pick them, staining their fingers and chins before they ran off again, racing to get to the beach first. The gnats chased them, but the children were too fast.
They couldn’t swim in the avocado-colored pond until their parents came down to the beach, so instead they looked for their summer friends, Stephanie and Steven. They said hi to the adults they knew, too. Vicki was pregnant, and she didn’t mind Girl looking at her popped-out bellybutton on her naked belly. It looked just like a brown barnacle. Vicki’s nipples were brown, too, and her breasts high and firm, her bottom round and full with pregnancy. Vicki was beautiful with long brown hair, and she was thinner and younger than Girl’s parents. There was no Sabra of Sabra’s Pond. Vicki and George owned the campground and they were gentle and kind people with no tan lines, their skin evenly golden brown all over. Girl’s arms were darker than her chest and belly from having to wear clothes all the time at home.
There were a few men at the beach lying on their backs in the sun, their soft penises flopping to one side and resting on their legs. Girl looked at them out of the corner of her eyes. She knew not to stare, but penises were fascinating, even if they were attached to ugly old grown-ups. They were all circumcised. Did men have to put sunscreen on their testicles so they didn’t get sunburned? No one looked twice at her here. She was just a naked kid in the woods.
You couldn’t tell it was the seventies—without clothes or TVs or radios, the family belonged to no decade. No one could tell Girl was a nerd without her out-of-style clothing. She could be anyone or anything she
