This may be the longest afternoon in the history of afternoons. My dad is still drunk.
I peeked inside the screen door, and, sure enough, he was sprawled on the couch, one hand hanging over the cushion, the other across his forehead like he got bad news and froze.
It’s too far and too hot to walk to the library right now, so I’m stuck here in my own front yard with The Valiant Rake and melted M&M’S and nothing new to add to my knowledge of the world. I could already write a book on what I know of this stupid town. I filled a whole diary chapter about it in case I am famous and need to write my memoirs someday. Ha-ha!
We live in a neighborhood where all the streets are named after famous colleges. You’d think this signals we live in a fancy place, but no, we don’t. It is the opposite of fancy. I doubt most people here even went to college. Lisa’s mama says all people are part of Christ’s body, so some people have to be the armpits. She says Garland is the hardworking armpit of the Lone Star State. It’s a necessary body part, but it’s not pretty and can be smelly, especially if you are downwind from the wastewater treatment plant, which we are. Not counting overgrown trees with middles chopped out so power lines can run through them, there’s not a lot of nature here, if that’s what you like, but the people are nice and they’ll smile at you for no particular reason.
If my dad and I were the kind of family who stood out on our front lawns making friends with the paperboy or waving across the street as we watered our plants, we’d know plenty of interesting people. But we are not waterers. We don’t even get the paper. We know who our neighbors are, but that’s not the same as knowing them.
I have to spy on the neighborhood from my bedroom window or from the tree stump out in the yard. From there, I can see our neighbors and all their different colors. Our cul-de-sac has families from four different countries: Mexico, India, Iran, and Vietnam. And Dad said Mr. Stanley married a Russian woman last Christmas. I’d love to know how he gets that kind of information, since he doesn’t talk to anyone.
What I’ve noticed from my window is that people in our neighborhood work hard. Every morning I wake up to the coughing sounds of old trucks and vans headed into their worlds. It’s not hard to guess at what they do all day. For example, if you need some kind of service, you don’t need to call 411. Just look outside your window for the company you want and the number will be painted on the side of a truck or van in big block letters.
JENNINGS PLUMBING
NGUYEN’S PAINTERS
BOB’S POOL SERVICE
Once, when I was sick and stayed home from school, I watched the neighborhood from my window. What I saw was that after all the neighbors leave for work, it’s so quiet you could have the whole block to yourself for a few minutes before the school buses appear. Then you will see kids on bikes and on foot head in the same direction. They look like sleepy robots with backpacks.
If the wind picks up, you can hear church-bell chimes swinging from Mrs. Dupree’s oak trees. This sound is how I decide if I need to wear a jacket or not. On Mondays you will hear the trash trucks beepbeepbeep through the alleys. In the afternoon, if you are superquiet, you can pick up the stop-and-go sound of the postman’s truck, which comes to our cul-de-sac around three.
Then in the late afternoon, I noticed that the neighborhood reverses. The school buses come down the streets in the opposite direction, and the schoolkids are the same, maybe with heavier backpacks. The service trucks rumble in from wherever they’ve been and park back on the street in front of their houses, the men stopping to check the mail. And soon you can smell food cooking on the backyard grills or the stoves, exotic scents that make my mouth water just thinking about them.
While the suppers are cooking, the little kids ride bikes or play hopscotch until their moms call them in with the kinds of accents you’ve never heard in your life. When the sun fades, the noise of sprinklers and cicadas takes over.
So I guess there’s still something left to learn in Garland, after all. It’s the fourth Texas town I’ve called home. Dr. Madrigal would be happy to know this is information I have shared with Lisa.
If you want to know, I have a diary for each city. Four different ones, each a different color. I started out in Galveston (blue), then moved to Waco (yellow), then Tyler (red), and now here I am with a light brown diary in the Land of Gar, which is what Lisa calls this town.
For sheer prettiness, I liked living down in Galveston by the ocean the best. There was always sand on our kitchen floor, and the windows could stay open almost all year. After work, Dad and I would go for walks next to the gray-green ocean and collect shells. But too many people knew us there, so we had to move. Dad said it made him uncomfortable to even go to the store, which I completely understand.
Right before we left our last house in Tyler, a woman in a low-cut tank top with giant boobs recognized my dad at the Tom Thumb. (Dad later described her boobs as pendulous, which is a word I’d like to use more often.)
pendulous adj.: hanging down loosely; swinging freely
We’d been searching for ripe peaches, smelling them and finding the best ones, when this woman came up and stared at him like she’d never seen a man. Her eyes traveled all over him, up and down, side to side. There is an ugly way people look when they are judging you. Head turned slightly sideways and nose crinkled like a rotten-food smell just cruised under their nostrils. Giant Boob Lady had that look. If you look in the mirror when you are judging someone, you will never do it again. It is not a pretty sight.
“I’m still not sure if you should’ve gone to jail,” she said.
That was the end of our shopping trip. We just left our cart in the produce area and walked out. I tell you, I’ve been suspicious of women with pendulous boobs ever since.