Red Light, Green Light
This past Christmas break, my mom found some old photo albums. I have virtually no memory of my childhood, just flashes of images, but somehow my brother remembers everything. Flipping through, I noticed the amount of pictures with me and my dad, me on his shoulders, him watching me bat at little-league, both of us with our tongues sticking out, showing the color the snowballs (snow cones everywhere but New Orleans) made them, mine was red and his was tongue-colored because he didn’t have a snowball. My mind sort of works like those photo albums, snapshots of things, just an image from an event, enough for me, if I think about it long enough, to remember what happened. Or, I’d remember parts of the event, mostly just the beginning, and make up the rest of it. Realistically, of course. For example, I remember the female security guard at LSU Dentistry School kicking me and my childhood “girlfriend” when she caught us “French-kissing” (she learned it from her mom’s soap operas) behind the main building. I assumed, of course, that the building there was a regular spot for us two to be alone, and that the first time she suggested “French-kissing.” I said ew, but did it anyway.
“You and your father were buddies” mom said, and I responded “really?” We’ve just never been very close, from as far as I can remember, that is. I mean, car rides are so uncomfortable with him. The radio too low to hear, the awkward silence building up until you want to hum or scat-sing under your breath.
Back then I had a huge alien head (still do, most normal people’s hats don’t fit it) and buck-teeth to match. I could fit my thumb and have almost enough space for a pinky between my front and back teeth, perfectly accentuated by strategically placing my lower lip under these massive set of teeth. It was a comfortable little nook where I could store it. Also a runny nose, can’t forget about that. However, all of these attributes combined somehow made me sorta cute. Maybe it’s because all little kids are cute, or maybe I was an ugly cute. Anyway, I had a less dramatic Oscar Wao experience in day care, St. Andrews, two “girlfriends,” one I don’t remember at all, the other named Madeline. Like the one in the row of twelve. She even had the redish-brown hair.
~~~~
I was antsy and borderline hyper in day care. While all the others were taking their afternoon nap at day care, I lay fidgeting, waiting for the hour break to be over. I tried getting up, playing with some LEGOs, but it appeared to be a break for the adults more than for the children. I was picked up and put right back on the crappy mattress every day until I gave up, and stayed put.
After a good thirty minutes of staring at the ceiling fan one day, I decided to get up and go to the bathroom to kill some time. Anything was more entertaining at that point. I sat straight up, and heard a muffled voice asking me what I was doing. Without looking up, I told the voice, going to pee. The voice giggled, and in turn, I giggled, which erupted into laughter, and a loud hush from all sides. I looked up to my partner-in-giggle, and there lay the pig-tailed Madeline. Since then we were inseparable.
~~~~
We had Terabithian imaginations. When we heard that at one point the Nutria population in New Orleans was such a problem, the city was offering $5 for a tail, we took things into our own hands. Armed with a tennis racket, a red plastic bat, and my Davey-Crockett had, we headed towards the pond by Madeline’s house. Of course, the pond was too small to have Nutrias, but it didn’t really matter to us. Invisible Nutrias became invisible knights, dragons, trolls, until we couldn’t swing our tiny arms any more.
Sometimes, during summer, my dad would take us to the gym. While he was inside, lifting weights, we would go to the pool. "Don't jump off the diving board," he would say to us, just before leaving. Of course, we still did. I would pretend I was Peter Pan, and she, Mary, and everyone else in the pool were pirates. If we jumped near anyone, we'd swim away as fast as we could, to the edge of the pool, where we would lift ourselves out, and jump in again.
When my dad came out, he caught me jumping off the diving board. He sat me down on a pool bench for ten minutes. When I said Madeline jumped off too, he said he didn't catch her, did he? He walked off, and I grumbled more about pirates.
~~~~
Redlight stop, Greenlight go. The stoplight turns around, and screams Greenlight! Make a break for it, run, go, but don’t get caught. Redlight, and the stoplight turns around. Don’t let it catch you. Greenlight! Gogogo. Redlight. Greenlight! Go! Redlight! Stop! Ah, caught you. Start over. Don’t be in such a rush, the stoplight will always be there. Trust me, as a seasoned veteran I know exactly when to go and when to stop. It’s all about timing. Ready? Runforit! Aw, too bad, you got caught. You gotta pay attention, do exactly what I say, okay? And- go! No, no, no. Too slow, that time. You’ll never be the streetlight if you move that slow! Greenlight! Redlight!
~~~~
When I can’t think of anything to write about, I take a long shower, and that’s where the image of Madeline came to me. Buzzed from cheap red wine, hot water soaked my head and the steam creeped up all around me. It brought me back to the picture I saw that Christmas break in the photo album was us two. I had on seersucker overall-shorts, a spider spread in the middle with eight shoes and a red cap; she was wearing a pink dress, poofing out, and red bows in her hair. Our hands held tightly as our moms push us against the wooden fence to take a picture and we squeeze out fake smiles. Her mom invited me over via my mom, and for the first time in my life, I went to someone’s house without the company of a family member.
~~~~
Let’s tell them we got jumped by Billy, he’s the neighborhood bully. He would do it. Come on! We’ll say on our way back from snowballs, he and his little brother stopped us and asked us for our change. We said no, of course, that it was our money and we were saving it for another snowball for later or something. He pushed me, and you stepped in. You could be like Prince Charming saving me, the princess. And then we’ll say he hit you, and you bled from your mouth. Stick out your tongue. Good, strawberry. Do you know what blood tastes like? Just say it tasted bitter. Tell them it tasted bitter, and we’re home free. This way, Billy will get in trouble, and we can keep the change. I’ll do the talking. Stick out your tongue when I say you bled.
~~~~
Years later, in a poetry workshop, we each draw three words out of a box. With these words, we write everything that comes to mind, and the teacher underlines what she thinks is interesting, and finally we write a poem including all of these lines. I picked diamond, spacewalk, and spiders. The first drafts involved my father and my childhood. Eventually, I end up writing about her, though I only partially realized it:
On the lake behind the levee,
bathes the girl in the sun,
the light reflecting on the waves
leaving blue spots when I close my eyes.
The floaties of oxygen and tube
around my waist remind me of
Diving Bell Spiders –
I break through both silver
silk bells into hers,
sharing breath.
She stalks— the black widow,
and shows her dark stomach
with the red hour glass –
she comes, puts my hand under
her shirt, the soft bump
still forming,
and asks “How does it feel?”
~~~~
A dragonfly catches my eye while I was watching the baby alligator in the swamp that surrounds Nature Camp. It’s our last day here, and summer is winding down. Keeping still for hours, the baby alligator’s patience finally pays off, and picks off the dragonfly, and loudly swallows. The wooden pathways and buildings are built above a swamp, a perfect area for bugs, and thus spiders. I pick up a Daddy Long Leg; Madeline tells me they have the most venomous bites in the world, but their mouths are too small to hurt us. I believe her, but swipe the spider off anyway. After we were taken inside, a special guest from the Audubon Zoo brings cases with preserved spiders and tells us about some. The others peer down at Black Widows and Brown Recluses, and the spiderman points out the red hourglass and the violin on the spiders, and how dangerous they are. But my attention is on a very shiny, smooth spider in one of the ignored boxes. I ask the spiderman why there is glue on this particular spider’s butt. “That’s a Diving Bell Spider, or, more commonly known as, the water spider,” his voice sounded fake and uninteresting as he tugged his graying goatee. “That glue, as you so cleverly pointed out, represents a water bubble that keeps them alive underwater. They spend most of their lives underwater.”
Most of the others have lost interest and gone to look at the live animals, the snakes or play in the Japanese Sand Garden, but I remain giving the spiders another look. They give me the pee-shivers, but excite me nonetheless. However, Madeline grabs my hand, and pulls me towards the stuffed bear.
“I found the bullet hole!” Six feet of grizzly bear greets everyone in the main building of the nature center, arms stretched out and mouth wide open, showing every one of its nasty yellow teeth. The older kids told us the bear is real, and there is a bullet hole hiding somewhere in the fur as proof, but none of us have found it yet. “I think it’s here,” she said, pulling back some fur and pointing.
“I don’t see anything.” I said. She grabbed my pointing finger and pressed against the skin. “Feel that?” she asked.
“No, not really. Well, I dunno, maybe. I might feel a bump, but I don’t see anything.” Now her eyes roll, dramatizing it with a shift of the head.
“Gosh, you’re such a pain. It’s right there!”
“Okay, okay, I believe you. I just don’t see it, is all.” There is a long lull in conversation, and I look away. She breaks the silence, “I don’t want to go to Hanes. I want to go the St. Anthony.” Her mom can’t afford a private school, so she’s headed to Hanes Elementary, one of the better public schools in New Orleans. I’m headed to St. Anthony of Padua, a Catholic school. Pretty bland one, but better than most public schools.
“We’ll still see each other enough, though. We have the weekends and maybe some weeknights, won’t we?”
“Yeah, we might. But we used to have every day.
“It won’t be that bad.” She rests her head on my shoulder, and it rests there until our next activity, tie-dying Nature Center t-shirts to bring home. We say our goodbyes, and I get one last look at the spiders before my mom picks me up late, almost when the center closes.
~~~~
It’d been a few months since we left for elementary school, and today was the last day I would see Madeline. I was back at her house, comparing our handwriting. We still didn’t know how to spell, but we knew our abc’s. I had big, childish writing, but hers was small and neat. When I show her the way I write that usually gets me in trouble, with my head resting on my left hand, like I’m asleep, she tells me one of her classmates writes practically upside-down, contorting her hand around the paper. I say that’s weird. The living room is cluttered with the usual Bud Light cans and empty Camel packs. We agree to go outside and chase the nutrias around the pond, but first get equipped with a plastic bat and a tennis racket. Nutrias are supposed to be really vicious, and have been known to kill small dogs, she tells me. Scared, I look out towards the pond and see little brown dots, some moving, and decide I don’t really want to go. But before I say anything, I’m saved by Madeline’s mom. She asked us to bring some soup to Jim, her boyfriend who lives down the street in a house boat.
“Why don’t you live with your dad?” I asked her. “Who, Jim? He’s not my dad. My dad died when I was one in a car wreck.” She said this nonchalantly, and I, having no experiences of death, asked what it was like. “I don’t want to talk about,” she said, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.
Finally, we got to the boathouse, the bowl soup and our nutria weapons in tow. Jim was curled up in a ball on the couch with a wool blanket over him. The entire place dark except for the glow of the TV, even though it’s still the afternoon, and he gives us a weak “hello”. We give him the soup, and Madeline says we’re going to tell jokes in bedroom. She whispers “greenlight” into my ear. I don’t know any jokes, but know what she means.
The boat rocks and we start to giggle. The door is locked behind us, this is the only place we can do anything. We giggle some more, and “French-kiss” like she taught me the year before. Basically, we touch the tiniest bit of our tongues together. I yell out, “haha, that was a good one,” obnoxiously loud. We had to be inconspicuous; the walls are thin, and we can hear the TV and the clinking of spoon to bowl in the next room. I said I had to pee, she asks if she can watch, but I say no, and she giggles, and doesn’t put up a fight about it. The walls are thin, and as soon as my stream hits the water, I hear giggles from the bedroom, and I start to giggle.
I don’t know who starts it, but we end up naked, giggling at each other on either side of the bed. Nothing new, we used to take baths together when we were younger, but now we’re just curious. We want to figure things out. I say something like, “that’s so weird,” and she points out a mole on my right testicle. “I don’t remember that being there!” I say, cracking up, and she calls me mole-y, and I’m starting to lose my breath I’m laughing so hard. But, a heavy knock on the door, and the laughter is cut silent. Even though we’ve taken baths together with our parents there, we knew we were doing something bad.
“Madeline, I have to get to the bathroom!” Jim couldn’t keep the soup down, and was beating at the door. “Hold on a minute!” "What's going on in there!" There was a fumble of keys, a dashing for clothes, but it was too late. The key made the loudest noise a key has ever made entering a keyhole.