2005-06-06
playing with boys
I played with all the boys in kindergarten. They wanted me to come to their houses but Justin was the only one my dad trusted. We'd spend recess stacking block forts and pretending to be superheroes. The girls tried to get me to play house with them. It seemed like a big waste of time. I'd play if they let me be the family dog. Out of all the things you could make up, I couldn't believe they'd pretend to be boring grown-ups.
I asked Justin if he ever wanted a sister for company. He said, no, he got stuck with me instead. We spent a lot of time reading comics in his room. I stole some copies of Casper the Friendly Ghost. He was so friendly, he even played with a yellow-haired girl who wore a devil's tail. I wonder if the other ghost made fun of him. Justin scribbled out her face on every page. When I asked why, he said, "I hate her." I didn't like her much either. She was always getting in the way. Still, instead of Xing my out, he might've drawn useful things for her, like a sword.
Justin was really good at drawing weapons. He drew the Headless Horseman, copying the illustration from a book. The ghoul had a long, flappy cape that probably felt silky. His horse had a human expression: flaring nostrils, a flyaway mane. I drew Ichabod astride his plow mare, screwing up my face as I penciled each individual hoof. Justin said, "Your horse looks like he's walking and mine looks like he's running."
I won his approval at Grampy's funereal. Us kids were confined to the church basement. A real basement, like those in ghost stories. I wanted to draw a ransom note from an evil spirit. He looked like Bigfoot with paws the size of catcher's mitts. I scribbled red crayon over the whole thing and wrote his thoughts in a bubble caption, "I will kill, kill, kill!" with multiple exclamation marks. Dad saw the sketch and took it away.
Justin never told me I couldn't do something because I was a girl. I used to play at his house after school. He was always whipping his thing out and I thought that would come in handy, for the times you need to pee when you're outside. We'd pretend we were Star Wars people. I was Princess Leia, of course. We'd argue over who would play Luke. I'd smash my head against the bottom of his tree house, the sort with a flap for a trapdoor.
"Let me in or I'll bite you!" I'd yell.
Eventually, I'd bump him aside and break in.
We ate teensy marshmallows and apricots on paper towels, a snack his mom made for us. Justin had a room full of useless stuff, much more interesting and disorganized than a girl's. He was into the cowboy theme, or maybe that's what his parents thought he would like. He used to lasso me with a rope. I wanted a rubber tomahawk just like Justin's. He never gave me anything that cool for a birthday present, just another clump of smiling Barbies that I'd bury in the backyard.
I climbed up Justin's apricot tree. He told me to chop off a branch with the tomahawk. I hacked it for nearly a half hour. Finally, the thing collapsed. He turned to me and said, "That was my favorite branch." He hit me and I punched him back. Then we jumped down and ate some more marshmallows.
Justin ditched me in junior high. He didn't want to hang with a girl anymore. His new gang of all-male buddies made fun of him for it. We continued going to the same school, but we didn't really talk anymore. Layla's brother was friends with him. She said, "I didn't know you guys used to be friends." She told me that his mom mentioned it once, that I had "outgrown" Justin. It seemed so unfair, since he's the one who abandoned me. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of him in church at Christmas, holding hands with a ponytailed girl.
f-i-n at 11:29 a.m.