This was where I remained. When I close my eyes, I can still feel this time, when there were no blue thoughts from morning to twilight, no unsettled visions about what the next moment would bring. A summer that drew a line, pure and untainted and never faltering, as it carried us and fulfilled its promise.
Each morning, we met in the field by the woods. A clearing full of big bluestems; they swayed to greet us on breezy days. The three of us, a peculiar meeting to determine the day’s scheming. A collection of quarters to buy a pizza from the gas station a half mile away, a flag for our growing fort made of branches in the woods, a jar of tiny frogs we would release into the stream, a prized broken watch we found abandoned at the edge of the tree line.
This was our field. This was where the mystique of each summer day began.
We didn’t go to the cabin that summer. Dad and Mom said nothing about it, as if the cabin didn’t exist. Anything before Marlow didn’t seem to exist. I didn’t ask about it. This was the first summer Dad had decided to teach a few courses, while Mom returned to working full time as a copywriter for an ad agency. She was gone most days, with Moni usually watching Marlow and me.
Moni had taken to Sawyer as easily as she had to Marlow. She would hug each of us, the soft skin sagging at the underarms of her summer house dress, clucking us in for lunch.
“Eat more, Sawyer. You are growing boy,” she would say.
His thin stature seemed to alarm her, instincts sweeping in to feed, feed, and then feed again, although she wasn’t aware of the pantry of junk food Ada kept at their house. Ada would let us have a free-for-all as she kicked her legs up in the recliner and watched All My Children.
The inside of her kitchen was covered in dream catchers, their colorful feathers floating above our heads. Ada claimed she was one-sixteenth Lakota on her mother’s side as she dusted her “healing crystals” and rocks that were strewn about the house. I would pick one up and ask what it was for.
“Sapphire. That one, little girlie, is for prosperity.”
“And this?” I held up a light-green one.
“Fuchsite. Relaxation.” She cackled so hard I could see her fillings. “But I got other tools for relaxation in that cabinet over there.” She cackled again as I looked at the glass liquor bottles.
The initial meeting between Moni and Ada had created a wary neutrality. Yet they were always cordial to each other, a wave or a nod from across the street as we would scamper from one house to the other.
It was one of those off-and-on rainy days. A nearby cul-de-sac was having a neighborhood garage sale. There were more cars than usual zooming up and down our street. Moni was planting some purple verbenas around our mailbox while the rain had stopped. A man with square glasses in a Honda Civic pulled up near her. Marlow, who had been circling around on her bike in the driveway, stopped, while Sawyer and I paused with chalk in our hands.
“Do you know where Hammersmith Drive is?”
She paused from digging with her garden spade and wiped her brow. “Oh . . . I not so sure.”
“Sorry?” the man asked loudly, his elbow hanging out of his window.
“I’m not sure,” Moni said, matching his volume.
“Well don’t you live here?”
The muffler on his car was shot, the engine sputtered.
“Yes.”
“Then where is Hammersmith Drive? I’m late picking something up, can you help me?”
“Sorry. I . . .” she stammered.
“You people . . . learn English or get out of here.”
I tightened my grip around the yellow piece of chalk. Each of his words seared in my ears, words that I hated. Not only because of what he said but because of the way they had such an effect on me. The clout this repulsive stranger had over me was too much to bear.
“No reason to talk like that.”
Ada stood at the end of her driveway, arms crossed, making them look even bulkier.
The man turned forward, both hands on his steering wheel, and ignored her.
“That’s right. Get the hell out of here. You get out of here,” Ada nearly shouted.
He drove off, the pain he left behind floating all around us in the exhaust fumes.
Moni looked down our street, making sure the man was gone. She stood up.
“You don’t need help me,” she said indignantly.
“What’s that?” Ada uncrossed her arms.
Moni said nothing and went inside the house, the verbenas left unplanted in their nursery containers.
A few weeks later, when Ada sprained her ankle going down the stairs, Moni cooked a whole grocery bag full of frozen food for her and Sawyer, containers of rice, bulgogi, and pajeon vegetable pancakes stacked inside. She left them on the doorstep as I watched from our front porch.
Moni sent me to retrieve the containers early one evening—good Tupperware was gold to her. I knocked but no one answered. The door was open; I could hear the television through the screen door.
I found Sawyer, sitting at the kitchen table, drawing on a Mead spiral notepad with a blue ballpoint pen. He put his fingers to his lips and then looked over to the recliner where Ada lay sleeping. Her mouth was a crooked gape, emitting a few light fluttered snores.
Sawyer pushed his chair back and carefully made his way over to her. I followed. We stood on each side of her, looking down at Ada’s mostly still form. Her cheeks had a few lines of wetness, tributaries of tears trickling in the dry folds of her skin. Her hand rested on a small silver frame, glass plate side down, chest heaving up and inward.
He slid the frame out of her hand and placed it on the side table next to her. I leaned forward and looked at the woman in the frame. The photo looked older, but she was young. I saw shiny hair and a light-green blouse.
Her eyes matched Sawyer’s, crinkled at the corners as she smiled. She had the same broad lip that stretched over the top half of her teeth. She looked upward in the picture, and I wondered who she was looking at. Who was she smiling for?
I didn’t ask Sawyer about the woman. Partly because his eyes went sad, an expression I wasn’t used to seeing from him. And partly because I didn’t get a chance to, as Moni called me home from outside.
