Dirt in My Organs

I went back to the playground every day after that to look for the girl. When I got back to Gram’s cabin that night, I was soaked and my knee was still bleeding. Gram cleaned me up and put a big band aid on my scrape. She washed and patched my jeans, too, only the patch she used was pink and flowery. Nobody would take me for a boy now. They were my only pair of jeans left that fit. I grew out of the others and gave them to Sophie. Gram said she would take me shopping in Chicago but that I would just have to deal with what I had for that summer. When I went to the park, I tied a black bandanna around my leg to cover the pink patch. Sophie looked at me funny but seemed to understand when I told her I hated the patch. The girl never came back. A couple of other kids that came every day took over my attention.

Jamie lived three blocks from our cabin in Lodi. I noticed first his black, lumpish hair and brown skin. There weren’t any other brown kids in Lodi. I was playing catch with Sophie when he asked where I was from. When he said his family was moving to the very same neighborhood in Chicago in the coming autumn, we decided we were meant to be friends. His sister, Heather was Sophie’s age. She was on the playground too, swinging alone. Jamie called to her and she came over to say hi. Her mouth pulled far to the left when she spoke and rested in a softly curved slash when she was silent. One of the two of them must have been adopted because Heather was white.

“Which one of you was adopted?” I asked. Looking from one face to the next, I saw a resemblance and it occurred to me they simply had two different dads. Jamie smiled.

“I was,” he said. I felt the confusion on my face.

“But now that I’m looking, I see that you do look alike so how’s that possible?” Jamie laughed and looked at Heather who laughed in response. Her face pulled out of shape when she laughed too. The smallness of her face and the lack of symmetry contrasted with her big eyes to make them stunning.

“I was left in a basket on the front porch when I was a baby,” he said. Now Sophie and I laughed. I appreciated a good sense of humor. Only neither of them were laughing. In fact, he looked serious, hurt even.

“It’s true, actually. My parents took me in and kept me as their own. They had Heather when I was three,” he said. His parents took him in and cared for him. I shook my head a little because he was telling the truth. When the truth sounds more like a lie than a lie does, it’s usually the truth. I looked at Heather. Without her facial deformity, she really did look like him.

My friendship with Jamie softened the rougher spots of being. Every morning that summer in Lodi, I rode my bike over to Jamie’s house. We pretended our bikes were motorcycles, climbed trees, and built forts in branches.

Almost every night I slept on the wide, wooden slats of his bedroom floor. Most of our tree-forts, built with plywood and brush, seemed to architecturally surpass Jamie’s own home, if not in structural soundness then at least in quality and age. His house was older than the eldest members of the thick-trunked trees in the woods surrounding it, shrouding and secluding it. There was a slight slant to every room and a dissymmetry to the house overall. One half looked barely attached to the other, like the two halves were built separately then placed together. When I asked Jamie about it, he said the east half of the house was newer than the west half. There had once been a fire that required a rebuild but the previous occupants wanted to save money, so they tore down just half the house to rebuild. Water at Jamie’s house smelled like dirt. It came from the poorly maintained well in the side yard. Every time his mom gave me a glass, I looked at the sediment in the bottom when I took a drink and tried not to think about it. The smell in the house was always that well water dirt mixed with the aroma of recently cooked game, usually squirrel, and sometimes, at its most pleasant, the scent of freshly brewed coffee.

Jamie and I rode up to his house on our bikes one day to the sight of his father and another man aiming shotguns at the tree tops around the yard. I skidded to a stop. Jamie rode ahead as if he didn’t notice then stopped and turned back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“They have guns!”

“They’re hunting,” he laughed.

“Hunting what?”

“Squirrels and rabbits.”

“Why?”

“To eat, why else?”

“You kill squirrels and rabbits and then eat them?”

“Dad does. He goes up north to hunt deer, too. That’s my favorite. Especially the jerky he makes from the leftover meat.”

I just nodded, amazed.

The next day I woke up at Jamie’s early, shivering and sore from the hard floor and the cold draft. I waited for him to wake up, counting the spider-web cracks in the ceiling, starting over every time I blinked and lost my place. I heard his dad coming in from the night before. I actually smelled him coming before I heard anything, his one-hundred-proof sweat preceding him. He came through the door of Jamie’s room and peered at me with watery eyes. I feigned sleep with held breath and eyes too tightly shut, trying too hard not to open them. I felt him staring. I felt examined and disgraced. His stare left dirt under my clothes, under my skin, inside my organs. The grit made my bones ache. I heard him walk away and let go of my breath. It wasn’t until a few days later that I decided never to come back to his house again.

I was on the floor sleeping next to Jamie’s bed when I heard a loud whisper.

“Jane, are you awake?” I smelled whiskey and stale sweat. The room was oil-dark and I was lying on my side, my face half-buried in my pillow. I felt him close behind me, his breath hot against the back of my neck, then something wet. I jumped and turned over.

“Shhh, it’s OK.” He reached for my stomach.