6

Julia Says

Summer is hot, it is always hot. Sometimes the day is so hot that the sky turns white as if the sun has melted all the clouds. Bright. It hurts my eyes. Julia and I are in her bedroom where Julia is strumming on her guitar and I am beating out the beat on the bongos. I think summer is for having fun. Julia is sort of playing the guitar, her mother taught her some songs, and on her face is her look. I know that look, that I-don’t-want-to-have-to-do-anything look.

Lying in the sun, I think, would be okay if Julia wants to use her slip and slide to cool off on. I say, How about that slip and slide? Julia gets a big-eyed grin on her face, so that where at first she seemed so lazy, now she seems full of beans. She jumps off her bed, opens her bottom dresser drawer, pulls out one of her old, too small bathing suits to give to me, a navy blue one with big white buttons to hold the straps up. She takes out a new one for herself, pink and orange, that shows off her tan.

We quickly pull off our clothes even our shoes and socks and leave them in a pile at the foot of each bed in Julia’s room. Julia goes to the linen closet in the hallway and pulls out two towels. She hands me a big brown one that smells so fresh like the sun soaked it through and through and is so soft like the fur on Mama’s winter coat. We’re going to lie on them on Julia’s patio.

We run outside, yelling Yah, Yah, Yah, past Mrs. Arthur, who has red hair and freckles just like me. She asks, what’s going on? Julia tells her and she says, Scags, I’ll be right out with some lotion for you. Sit under the umbrella, she says.

We race out the back door, down the walk to the patio. The cement is so hot on the bottoms of my feet that I run fast on my toes like a ballet dancer getting quickly across the floor. I jump onto the nearest chair.

The patio is a square on the side of the Arthurs’ house. Around it are a couple of oak trees with a garden separating it from the grass. Its floor is covered with big rectangular slabs of green and pink stones. Grass grows between them, around them, through them like the hair in Mr. Arthur’s ears. Julia gets the hose and sprays her feet. Now that I am settled on the lawn chair, my feet barely remember the heat.

Get under the umbrella, Julia says, you don’t want to burn up and get sick. I think, yes I do, I’ll get so sick that Julia can’t go away, that she’ll have to sit in my room, holding my hand as I go closer and closer to death. I pull my chair under the umbrella. I’m too young to die.

The light is so white and it hasn’t rained in days. The snap dragons, roses, and geraniums wait for the rain, all drooping a bit with the weight of the heat, the curse of heat as Odessa says. This a-cursed heat, she says and wipes her face with her apron. The heat is with us because it’s summer time, I think, and if it wasn’t such a great time to be hot, to sweat and stink and need a bath every night before going to bed, if the grass wasn’t green and the sky blue and the earth black, what fun would it be?

Mrs. Arthur comes outside wearing her yellow halter top and green short shorts. She’s carrying a big pitcher of iced tea, a tube of suntan lotion and a magazine. Her skin looks as white as mine. She lies down under the umbrella too while Julia pulls out the slip and slide. I close my eyes and the colors are so bright and move so fast behind my eyelids that I open my eyes very fast and even with them open I see the pinpoints of red, orange, purple, yellow float in the air. Mrs. Arthur sits up, squeezes the lotion out of the tube onto my back and arms, legs, chest, face. It feels so nice to have her touch me, the lotion is cold, her fingers are strong and can wrap themselves around my arms. You are like a bird, she says, all fine and fragile. When she’s done, I lie back down. The smell of lotion mixes with the scent of the heat and flowers. It smells like I could eat it but I’m sure the smell is better than the taste.

Julia says, Come on Scags, do it, slip and slide yourself. The red plastic slide lays flat on the grass. Julia has the hose on it, turned on hard, and when you fall on it, you slide all the way to the end of it. I jump up out of the chair, dance over the floor, jump over the little garden and run and run, race my legs harder and harder until I fly over the ground until my legs can’t run any harder. Then out I go like a diver off a board, I sail up and then down on my belly, so hard, so hard that the wind is knocked out of me. I twist and shake all the way down the red plastic slide, the water in my eyes, mouth, even ears. I try hard to get my breath back but I’m giggling too hard to breathe right.

Julia is standing at the end. Her hair is all in little clumps. She’s got her hands over her mouth as she jumps from one leg to the other. You goose, she says, you have to bend over to land on your stomach, not jump up. She laughs and laughs and I sit on the grass, catching my breath. I say, Oh yeah, I forgot.

We run and slide, run and slide. The water goes up my nose sometimes and into my eyes. Mrs. Arthur finally gets up and goes inside. Now we have the patio all to ourselves. Julia turns off the water and we splash the puddles on the slide at each other. Let’s have some tea, I say, and give Julia one last splash with my feet and then run to the patio.

The sun has moved in the sky. The patio is almost all in shade from the trees around us. I pour Julia a glass of tea. She says something surprising to me, My mother is going to have a baby. A baby? I ask. Julia says, I’m going to get to babysit in a couple of years and to hold the baby’s bottle and have a brother or sister to play with. I say, Will you still be my friend? Julia looks up from her glass of iced tea, smiles. Julia says, Of course we’ll be friends, we’ll always be friends.

I don’t have a baby sister or brother. I don’t know what that will be like for Julia.

I have to pee, Julia says.

All of a sudden I feel like going home. I follow Julia into her house, watching her butt twist back and forth as she walks. I get my clothes out of her room and carry them all bunched up against my wet stomach. Mrs. Arthur watches me from the kitchen. Ready to go home, Scags? she asks and I tell her yes and thank her for the iced tea. I walk out their front door, around the corner and up the driveway of my house. A baby, I think. Mama could have a baby, too. Maybe she doesn’t want anyone else but Pops and me. But she could try.