The family had a cookout in the backyard after the parade, and Girl and Brother rode their bikes down to the town hall for the craft fair and street party and the fried dough. The siblings watched people throw balls at the dunking booth, but they never tried because they were both very bad at throwing baseballs and the firefighter in the booth always made fun of the people who missed. They very much liked to watch him suddenly drop down into the tank because he was so mean and obnoxious and the children knew that water was cold and grown-ups were always big babies about cold water. Girl and Brother rode back and forth between the front yard of the town hall and the backyard of their parents’ house, where Mother and Stepmother had grown-up friends over. Their parents didn’t have many friends who had children.
Everyone went down to the town hall together for fireworks: the children, their parents, and their friends, Shirley and Betty. They always got a good seat on the curb. They never brought a blanket because the grass was full by the time they get there, and more importantly, Stepmother said that the view was better from a little way back. Girl looked scornfully at those people on blankets who didn’t know they were sitting too close. Girl and Brother always saw someone from school and said “Hi” and then stood there awkwardly for a minute before running back to their parents to wait for full dark.
“Don’t cheer when he gets dunked,” Stepmother said as they passed the man in the dunking booth. “They are poor migrant workers and they deserve respect. I just wish they found a way to raise money with more dignity.” She didn’t realize that the “Point Pleasant Pea Pickers” were the local firefighters’ union, not people who picked vegetables.
The fireworks started and Mother’s friend Shirley asked Girl, “Which ones are your favorites?”
“Bacons,” Girl said, knowing it was a silly made-up word, but not knowing how else to describe the ones that sizzled on the way down like bacon grease in a black cast-iron skillet. “Like that!” she explained, pointing her popsicle-sticky index finger up at the white balls, the sizzle lighting up inside her in the same place that the bass drum hit, but fireworks made her soar inside like she was coming out of her body entirely.
“More bacons!” Shirley yelled, as they clapped wildly. Girl loved her so much for not laughing at the silly word. The white bursts snaked down the blackened-blue sky and the grand finale went up, one firework after another after another, colored ones that opened like paper umbrellas, each one larger than a house, ones that cracked and boomed. Smoke trails snaked down and hung in the air brownish-black, before they wafted away. When it was over Girl was surrounded by too many grown-up legs moving too quickly, and Mother took Girl’s hand and pulled her close, like she knew that the crowds had turned her small, like Girl was too precious to lose.
flying to alaska
Girl and Brother had started spending every summer as well as a week or two every winter in Anchorage back when they were four and five years old. At first, they made the eleven-hour flight with various chaperones, then graduated to Unaccompanied Minor status when Girl was seven or eight. They flew every summer, leaving right after the Fourth of July and returning at the end of August.
Girl and Brother ran across the wet lawn in their socks. Girl was excited to get going and Mother and Stepmother were taking forever to load the car and Girl knew she’d be sitting for a long time. She decided then and there that socks were just right for running in the grass. They were warmer and softer than bare feet, but without the loss of the texture and sensation of the grass stems, anthills, and rocks. It was perfect, but she never did it again.
When the children returned to the house, Mother and Stepmother were in a tizzy. Every stitch of clothing the children owned was packed in two powder-blue Samsonite suitcases so full their sides curved out into a rhombus and they had to be duct-taped shut. The children had no other dry socks. Stepmother was so mad she had drops of spittle on her lips, but then it never took much to send her over the edge. It would be five more years before Girl was given the words clinical depression as rationale for Stepmother’s constant anger. All Girl knew then was that Stepmother had a very short fuse, and just about everything the children did would turn Stepmother’s face red and her words harsh and full of fury.
Today Girl wasn’t concerned in the least. Stepmother could yell, but she could never strip away the feeling of the grass beneath Girl’s socked feet, and she couldn’t stop the children from going to Alaska. Her power over them was about to be lifted for the summer, traded in for that wielded by Father, and that knowledge trumped Girl’s usual strong desire to behave properly. Girl didn’t have to listen to Stepmother anymore, and there wasn’t anything Stepmother could do about it. The wet sock problem had to be resolved without opening those cases, the closing of which was a family affair. Mother would pack
