MEMORIAL DRIVE
The bad boys roam free. We don’t know where they live; we’re not even curious. But then again, we’re not even curious about each other. We are the faculty brats. We live in a small neighborhood on the wrong side of town, an island of modest houses owned by the university. We share a yard, an expanse of grass that’s worn in spots. In the summer there’s a smattering of dandelions. Women come and gather the jagged leaves; they are edible to others.
The map of my world is small, bounded by the red brick houses that surround the yard. Our home faces away from Memorial Drive with its river of cars that cast shadows into our rooms at night. Beyond that is the real river, the Charles, where carp glitter and die, smothered by pollution, rotting in the weeds.
Across the lawn, the row of houses walls us off from the bad boys’ territory. A tumbled-down trellis marks the end of our domain. Beyond is the wreckage of a demolished factory. Smashed cement, rods of iron rusted and twisted, girders broken and dangerous. There is a driveway, upheavals of broken blacktop. Many interesting things can be found in the grass: bicycle chains and small, deflated balloons that swing when you pick them up. But we stay away. We do not cross the line. We know who they are.
****
It is summer, the first summer that my mother makes me wear a shirt. It is very unfair; I miss my skin. I am six. I have begun to read. I read with a flashlight under the sheets after lights-out. In the day I am supposed to play outside. Sometimes I do. I have a special place where I keep saltines, where I read and watch. It’s a hollow I’ve found in the lilacs, a purple perfumed cave. I am invisible in there.
My brother is four years older than me. I wear his too small jeans. We share a bathroom, but we live adjacent lives, except for the occasional violence or the forced intimacy of carpool. I read and eat blintzes. My brother collects switchblades and slender stilettos, stamps, and broken stones. He has a scimitar on the wall, brought to him by a foolish uncle.
There are other children in the other houses. The six Solamita kids live in the house across the way. Most of them are little; still, they are interesting. Theresa, the second oldest, bangs her head on the refrigerator, and there is always a baby crying. I like it there. I go to Saint Joseph’s with them for the smoky incense, the wonder of stained glass windows, and the chanting of Latin. I yearn to belong. I promise to take Communion when my grandparents die.
We are a disparate crew, the faculty brats. Our households are mysterious, we don’t play together much, and our parents don’t talk. But if we band together, we can fight the bad boys, push them back from their incursions into our territory. The bad boys don’t have names; they come in a pack. They want something we have, something we are. We are different tribes, and they will hurt us if they can.
****
It is June. I am outside mixing clay on my little metal table. It is white enamel and there’s a shepherdess decal in the corner. The shepherdess wears a long white dress with a red sash, and she holds a golden crook. The sheep are worn away; still, I know that she is Mary.
The clay is gooey. It oozes between my fingers and collects under my fingernails in dark crescents. Someone has taught me how to knead clay. I push it forward with the heels of my hands. It makes a ramshorn shape. Then I scoop it up and smack it back down.
When the clay is thick enough, I make a bird nest. I rub dry grass into the clay, and I punch out an indent with my fist. Next, I pinch up the sides and pat the surfaces with dirt. When the nest is dry, I wire it to a branch of the thorn tree that spreads in our yard and wait for the birds.
I investigate insects. Grasshoppers leave brown spittle on my fingers. Some things sting. Caterpillars have hairy spikes. Best of all I like the roly-poly bugs, the way the tiny feet disappear into a hard little ball. I hold it in the pit of my palm and examine it, the way the little plates, lapped together, shine.
There are hedges of butterfly bushes in back of our house. Hot in the sun, the white flowers flavor the air with an ashy fragrance. Butterflies with spotted white wings dot the bushes in surprising abundance. I am a hunter; I catch them in my green mesh butterfly net and store them in glass milk bottles. I give them leaves to eat, but usually they die. And it is there, behind the butterfly bushes, that the bad boys like to hide. If I see them, I run away.
****
I am in my cave eating saltines. My brother is elsewhere, perhaps upstairs with his collections, and the neighborhood kids with whom we share the yard, well, I don’t know. All is copacetic, peaceful in my bower of green. And then I see them, the bad boys, behind the hedge. There are five of them. They are here.
When the stones begin to fly, our neighborhood boys mysteriously appear. My brother is there. The girls—me and Nina Solamita and Andrea—race to gather rocks. We scrabble around, digging. The earth is hard. We use pointed sticks and our nails. We run to make piles of ammunition for our boys.
My brother is the oldest. He has a wicked throwing arm, and he aims to injure. But even he is surprised when, just minutes into the fight, one of the bad boys cries out. He staggers into the clearing of the common yard. His hand is pressed against his scalp above his forehead. One eye is clenched shut against the blood that spills down his face. He is crying. We stare. The bad boys emerge. They stare too. Then they scatter and run, kicking up clods of earth. They leave him, wounded.
Adults are summoned. Curiously, no one cares. My mother offers the boy a dish towel, but he turns and runs away, his hand still on his head. “Scalp wound,” she says. She suggests to my brother that he might apologize, and then she’s gone. Soon it will be time for dinner.
****
At the foot of the trellis, I squat. This is where I hunt roly-poly bugs. The structure is draped with honeysuckle vines. I pinch off the bottoms, white bruising to ivory, and suck out the nectar. I am drunk on the smell of the flowers. I don’t notice that I’m on the wrong side. I don’t see the bad boys, but they are here.
There’s a clump of them, five. The biggest one eyes me. He pushes out his pelvis. His thumbs are stuck through the belt loops of his jeans. Though he has the kind of haircut you get from a bowl over the head, there is nothing funny about him. I hunker down, trying to stay small.
The boy looks at me. He squints. He is thinking. The other boys are waiting. They are watching him, not me. He is the chief. Although he is not the biggest, I can tell he is in charge.
“Bring me something,” he says to me. It is a demand for fealty. “If you bring me something, you can stay.” Suddenly, I am desperate to be there. To watch. Something is going to happen; I can tell. I need to see what the bad boys do.
I run. Our house isn’t far, though with its dark interior and Danish Modern furniture it is a world away. I choose a dinosaur, a memento from the Museum of Natural History, cast metal with a scalloped spine. I run back, holding it out on my palm, proffering it. The boy takes it, rolling it in his hand, feeling the weight of it.
“OK,” he says, and he puts it in his pocket. The boys arrayed around him wait. One picks his nose, rubbing his hand on his shorts. They are a raggedy crew; they are actually dirty. But then so am I.
“What,” he says then, looking around. It is a statement. One of the boys crouches down. He has ashy blond hair, and he’s wearing a red Celtics T-shirt. The chief squats down too. He looks at the boy. It’s as if they are in a separate room. The other boys are peeking in, watching. I am watching too.
“I had pneumonia,” the red-shirt boy says. “Look.” He pulls up the leg of his jeans to the knee. “My skin is all in squares.” He points. I can’t see the squares. The chief nods. “And since then,” the boy adds, “my penis hurts.” He unzips his fly. He’s still squatting, but he gets it out. The chief looks at it. We all look at it. It’s hiding in a little hood.
“It hurts,” the boy repeats. He’s holding his limp penis in his hand. He closes his hand, wrapping it in his fingers. The chief gets up. He walks over to a tree. He pulls down a branch and plucks off a leaf. When he comes back the red-shirt boy hasn’t moved. Leaning down, the chief pulls the boy to his feet. Jutting out his chin, he indicates the boy’s penis swaddled in his fingers. The boy takes his hand away. The penis hangs over the tongue of the zipper. With care the chief wraps the leaf around it.
“Keep it on overnight.” He looks at the boy directly. “In the morning, it’ll be OK.”
That seems to be it. The boy pulls his zipper up, careful not to disturb the leaf. He wanders off. I watch as the other boys scatter, kicking at the rubble and pushing each other. It was a magic, I know that, but not a good magic. I feel a sudden pity for them, all those boys, as I do for my brother. And something I will later recognize as compassion. I touch my T-shirt; the fabric rasps my skin. I couldn’t be more pleased that I’m a girl.
Susan Eve Haar is a writer and playwright living in New York City. Her essays and short stories have been published in CRAFT, North Dakota Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, and other places. She is the winner of the 2021 Kallisto Press Chester B Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize, and twice nominated for a Pushcart prize. Her plays have been published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2020 and 2018, Monologues for Headspace Theatre: Radical Thinking Inside a Box 2019, and The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2018 all published by Smith & Kraus. Her work has been produced at a variety of venues including Primary Stages, Women’s Project Theater, and the Edinburgh Festival. She is the recipient of a Sloan Foundation commission. www.susanevehaar.com.