You gave a mile when I gave an inch
I wrote a story for my sister. :-D It's really fictionalized, except that it's about us. Some of the details are true. I dunno. Here you go Trina. For you. :)
Oh, I should mention that it's still rough. Written somewhere in between lots of bouts of not sleeping. Sorry.
Oh, and also, this doesn't contain any romance! None! Whee!!!
Toosh
There was a spot in our backyard where my parents almost never cut the grass. It wasn’t very large, maybe 4 feet by 4 feet if it had been squared, and it lay somewhere to the left of the white-washed shed, halfway between it and the fence line, and in front of the woodpile. Grass didn’t grow much over there, and the ground was dirty and rocky and bare all around our little patch, which is why my parents hardly ever looked in its direction. It was, for two little girls, the most magical place in a life filled with all the trappings of modern technology. Even our Atarii, with its stiff joystick and exploding spider-like pixilated aliens couldn’t rival the spot we’d come to think of as our Jungle.
One time, our father brought home these little glow in the dark rubber snakes for us to play with, and we hid them there, in the green grass, each of us shrieking in fear and calling out the others name whenever we might stumble on a slithery predator. They didn’t glow much though, and at night you never could see them through the roughage.
After a few months, we couldn’t find any in the daytime either. My sister was pretty sure that they’d slithered away one day, when we weren’t looking, but I was older and I knew the truth. They’d been chewed up and cut to ribbons by the lawn mower when it had mistakenly come through that June, spewing little snake guts all over, mixing them in with the grass clippings that stuck to the denim of my father’s black jeans. My sister cried, and stomped her foot, insisted we have a "phoonerl" for them, but, with all the conviction my five-year old body could muster, I intelligently informed her that "you can’t have a funeral without a body, stupid." She went off crying and snuffling to my mother who had to go to great pains to convince her that nothing had been killed. That night I had to help with the dinner dishes while my sister made endless careless mistakes in Candy Land, and snuck little bites of my chocolate cake when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Our Jungle was part of almost every afternoon, lazy summer and crisp beginnings of fall. I, always the writer, used to make up stories for us to play out, her as the wicked witch and me as the princess that needed rescuing. When we got older, she used to have to double as the prince as well, and I’d make her smack me one on the lips before swinging my leg over the back of her broomstick horse and galloping away with her into the sunset (which looked a lot like the red brick wall of the house).
One hot summer day, (I remember it was August, my favorite month), we carelessly tumbled from the air-conditioned sweetness of the house to the hazy sweat of the backyard, looking for adventure. Our fingers were popsicle-sticky, and our little lips stained permanently red and purple, but the grass was tall, and yellow sunflowers kept watch on us from the small garden plot a few yards away.
"Got a new story," I screamed enthusiastically as I ran full-tilt down the hill to the shed. My little sister was slower, more cautious, carefully picking her way over sticks and abandoned toys, nudging the larger pebbles out of the way with her foot as she came.
"What is’t?"she called to me, squinting in the bright sunlight.
"Get your toosh down here, and I’ll tell you!" She laughed at me when I said ‘toosh’, squashing her chubby pink pointer finger tight against her mouth, and looking around surreptitiously for my mother.
"Shh!! Bad words!"
"Toosh isn’t a bad word, silly. It’s what you say when you don’t wanna say the REALLY bad word." I’d learned the bad word at kindergarten. My friend Sophie had whispered it to me one day to make me giggle, when Johnny Mulligan was trying his best to make me cry.
By this time she had almost reached me where I swung slightly off the ground, my fingers clutching the thin smooth bark of the tree overhanging the woodpile.
"What’s the REALLY bad word?" She asked, eyes wide twinkling with 4 and a half year old mischief.
"Not telling! It’s a bad word. I can’t say it!"
"Have to!" she whined, "Have to have to have to have to!"
"Nope!" I dropped from the tree and ran, skidding to a halt just on the other side of the Jungle.
"Laurannnnnneeee!" she squealed, blurring my two names into one. I winced.
"My. Name. Is. Laura. Anne-uh."
"S’what I said. Lauranne," her pudgy face was the picture of innocent confusion as she slowly made her way towards me. I moved with her, keeping the patch of grass between us.
"NO!" I screeched. "Say it with me. L-aura. A-nnUH."
"L-aurann-UH."
"Aaaaaahhh ! I give up! That’s it. There’s no way I’m telling you now." We’d almost gone full circle. Either she hadn’t realized or hadn’t cared that she wasn’t getting any closer to me, stumbling around like she was.
"Tell me!" Her pink lower lip began to tremble, and her eyes squinched tight, little fingers balling into fists at her sides. I saw it building in her, the wail that would bring my mother’s wrath and earn me an earlier bedtime. I knew there wasn’t any hope that my mother would believe that I hadn’t done anything wrong. My sister was almost as good at making up stories as I was, and my mother always took hers as the truth.
"Ok, ok! I’ll tell you. Don’t cry about it. Baby." She sniffled, and wiped her grimy hand across her nose and face, smearing dirt from her cheekbone to her ear. "But you have to come here," I added hastily, trying to get regain some ground. "Fast." I pointed out as she began to move in my direction with slow, deliberate steps.
She nodded, and started forward much more quickly, not looking at where she was going. The grass was really high that summer. It must have come up to her waist at least. She couldn’t have seen her feet if she tried.
I think I might have known it before she did, the moment when she stepped on the glass. We were barefoot, of course. It was too hot to bother with shoes. I saw her stop, jerk to a standstill, saw her mouth open in this wet, pink "oh,"watched her eyes go wide with surprise. Then nothing in the world that I could tell her would have kept her from letting out a scream that the whole neighborhood could have heard, not even if I’d told her the really REALLY bad word for ‘toosh.’
I squeezed her hand with white knuckles while our mother cleaned up the blood and applied a band aid. She whimpered and sniffled, but when I told her to be brave, she set her jaw and didn’t cry.
When it was all over, and my mother had retreated to the bathroom to straighten the medicine cabinet, she looked at me, liquid brown eyes as big and solemn as twin moons in her face. "Will you tell me the word now?"
I cried when I hugged her. It hit me that day that I had the power of life and death over my little sister. I found out that her tiny fragile body that still seemed so different from mine relied on me to make its world spin.
That night, I fished the small sliver of glass out of the bathroom trashcan before I went to sleep. I stuck it under my pillow, wrapped carefully in layers of toilet paper. Lord knows how long it stayed there while I fingered it each time before I fell asleep.
Years later, as I packed to leave for college, I found it, tucked into the corner of my treasure box. When I got in the car to drive away, and my sister looked at me with those big solemn eyes, I hugged her fiercely, and promised that she could visit whenever she wanted. "And," I whispered as I clutched her arm, "I’ll tell you 3500 different words for ‘toosh."
Oh, I should mention that it's still rough. Written somewhere in between lots of bouts of not sleeping. Sorry.
Oh, and also, this doesn't contain any romance! None! Whee!!!
Toosh
There was a spot in our backyard where my parents almost never cut the grass. It wasn’t very large, maybe 4 feet by 4 feet if it had been squared, and it lay somewhere to the left of the white-washed shed, halfway between it and the fence line, and in front of the woodpile. Grass didn’t grow much over there, and the ground was dirty and rocky and bare all around our little patch, which is why my parents hardly ever looked in its direction. It was, for two little girls, the most magical place in a life filled with all the trappings of modern technology. Even our Atarii, with its stiff joystick and exploding spider-like pixilated aliens couldn’t rival the spot we’d come to think of as our Jungle.
One time, our father brought home these little glow in the dark rubber snakes for us to play with, and we hid them there, in the green grass, each of us shrieking in fear and calling out the others name whenever we might stumble on a slithery predator. They didn’t glow much though, and at night you never could see them through the roughage.
After a few months, we couldn’t find any in the daytime either. My sister was pretty sure that they’d slithered away one day, when we weren’t looking, but I was older and I knew the truth. They’d been chewed up and cut to ribbons by the lawn mower when it had mistakenly come through that June, spewing little snake guts all over, mixing them in with the grass clippings that stuck to the denim of my father’s black jeans. My sister cried, and stomped her foot, insisted we have a "phoonerl" for them, but, with all the conviction my five-year old body could muster, I intelligently informed her that "you can’t have a funeral without a body, stupid." She went off crying and snuffling to my mother who had to go to great pains to convince her that nothing had been killed. That night I had to help with the dinner dishes while my sister made endless careless mistakes in Candy Land, and snuck little bites of my chocolate cake when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Our Jungle was part of almost every afternoon, lazy summer and crisp beginnings of fall. I, always the writer, used to make up stories for us to play out, her as the wicked witch and me as the princess that needed rescuing. When we got older, she used to have to double as the prince as well, and I’d make her smack me one on the lips before swinging my leg over the back of her broomstick horse and galloping away with her into the sunset (which looked a lot like the red brick wall of the house).
One hot summer day, (I remember it was August, my favorite month), we carelessly tumbled from the air-conditioned sweetness of the house to the hazy sweat of the backyard, looking for adventure. Our fingers were popsicle-sticky, and our little lips stained permanently red and purple, but the grass was tall, and yellow sunflowers kept watch on us from the small garden plot a few yards away.
"Got a new story," I screamed enthusiastically as I ran full-tilt down the hill to the shed. My little sister was slower, more cautious, carefully picking her way over sticks and abandoned toys, nudging the larger pebbles out of the way with her foot as she came.
"What is’t?"she called to me, squinting in the bright sunlight.
"Get your toosh down here, and I’ll tell you!" She laughed at me when I said ‘toosh’, squashing her chubby pink pointer finger tight against her mouth, and looking around surreptitiously for my mother.
"Shh!! Bad words!"
"Toosh isn’t a bad word, silly. It’s what you say when you don’t wanna say the REALLY bad word." I’d learned the bad word at kindergarten. My friend Sophie had whispered it to me one day to make me giggle, when Johnny Mulligan was trying his best to make me cry.
By this time she had almost reached me where I swung slightly off the ground, my fingers clutching the thin smooth bark of the tree overhanging the woodpile.
"What’s the REALLY bad word?" She asked, eyes wide twinkling with 4 and a half year old mischief.
"Not telling! It’s a bad word. I can’t say it!"
"Have to!" she whined, "Have to have to have to have to!"
"Nope!" I dropped from the tree and ran, skidding to a halt just on the other side of the Jungle.
"Laurannnnnneeee!" she squealed, blurring my two names into one. I winced.
"My. Name. Is. Laura. Anne-uh."
"S’what I said. Lauranne," her pudgy face was the picture of innocent confusion as she slowly made her way towards me. I moved with her, keeping the patch of grass between us.
"NO!" I screeched. "Say it with me. L-aura. A-nnUH."
"L-aurann-UH."
"Aaaaaahhh ! I give up! That’s it. There’s no way I’m telling you now." We’d almost gone full circle. Either she hadn’t realized or hadn’t cared that she wasn’t getting any closer to me, stumbling around like she was.
"Tell me!" Her pink lower lip began to tremble, and her eyes squinched tight, little fingers balling into fists at her sides. I saw it building in her, the wail that would bring my mother’s wrath and earn me an earlier bedtime. I knew there wasn’t any hope that my mother would believe that I hadn’t done anything wrong. My sister was almost as good at making up stories as I was, and my mother always took hers as the truth.
"Ok, ok! I’ll tell you. Don’t cry about it. Baby." She sniffled, and wiped her grimy hand across her nose and face, smearing dirt from her cheekbone to her ear. "But you have to come here," I added hastily, trying to get regain some ground. "Fast." I pointed out as she began to move in my direction with slow, deliberate steps.
She nodded, and started forward much more quickly, not looking at where she was going. The grass was really high that summer. It must have come up to her waist at least. She couldn’t have seen her feet if she tried.
I think I might have known it before she did, the moment when she stepped on the glass. We were barefoot, of course. It was too hot to bother with shoes. I saw her stop, jerk to a standstill, saw her mouth open in this wet, pink "oh,"watched her eyes go wide with surprise. Then nothing in the world that I could tell her would have kept her from letting out a scream that the whole neighborhood could have heard, not even if I’d told her the really REALLY bad word for ‘toosh.’
I squeezed her hand with white knuckles while our mother cleaned up the blood and applied a band aid. She whimpered and sniffled, but when I told her to be brave, she set her jaw and didn’t cry.
When it was all over, and my mother had retreated to the bathroom to straighten the medicine cabinet, she looked at me, liquid brown eyes as big and solemn as twin moons in her face. "Will you tell me the word now?"
I cried when I hugged her. It hit me that day that I had the power of life and death over my little sister. I found out that her tiny fragile body that still seemed so different from mine relied on me to make its world spin.
That night, I fished the small sliver of glass out of the bathroom trashcan before I went to sleep. I stuck it under my pillow, wrapped carefully in layers of toilet paper. Lord knows how long it stayed there while I fingered it each time before I fell asleep.
Years later, as I packed to leave for college, I found it, tucked into the corner of my treasure box. When I got in the car to drive away, and my sister looked at me with those big solemn eyes, I hugged her fiercely, and promised that she could visit whenever she wanted. "And," I whispered as I clutched her arm, "I’ll tell you 3500 different words for ‘toosh."