We squared off...
…in front of his sister Lisa’s Celica on that slow, hot afternoon, I with the throb of a mosquito bite desperate to be scratched. Already July, the summer had settled into that eternal shuffle from bed to yard, from sofa to pool, and back again until days did not move forward or back but rather in figure-eights with the Sega console acting as crucifix. At that hour Lisa had turned us out of the house, so dire was her need for absolute silence during Days of Our Lives. Now we loitered, throwing rocks at the mailbox and dragging our Keds along the edge of the driveway where concrete collided with crabgrass. I was seven years old - more concerned with chasing sisters on my pink and yellow Huffy than chasing boys - and he, this boy, was not merely a boy but the babysitter’s kid brother. He was smarmy, and he left empty potato chip bags in the pantry, and when I dared to claim shotgun, he reaffirmed his omnipotence and the futility of my mortal dreams with tear-inducing Indian rug burns. Anthony was the bane of my summer’s existence.
“I dare you to say a bad word,” he said, leaned against the hood of the Celica, chin aloft.
I hesitated. I ran through my father’s laundry list of preferred outbursts, uttered, for the most part, in his Marlboro smoke-filled basement office or while chipping wiffle golf balls in the backyard or attempting to start the outboard motor, untangle the garden hose, replace the record player needle, reorganize his collection of 45s that I had carelessly strewn across the living room floor, scrape melted Crayola crayon off the car seat, spread fertilizer on the lawn, fix my bicycle chain, fix the screen door, beat the Dow, quit smoking, survive another church service, survive another hangover, pick up another bag of ice, unearth his cummerbund, hitch up the boat trailer, discipline my latest shenanigan. But where words should have been I only heard cicada drone. Finally I showed my cards. “Damn,” I said. I might as well have brandished a couple spades, a club, nothing adding up to 21.
“Damn?” Anthony sneered.
“Yeah, now it’s your turn.” No way he could beat my D word.
He crossed his arms and propped one foot on the fender, a nine-year-old James Dean. Somewhere down the street a lawn mower blade hit a pebble patch, and inside my house the refrigerator door opened and shut. Anthony didn’t miss a beat.
“Fucker,” he said.
“Fucker?” What kind of bullshit was that?! Oh, but now, after I’d had my turn, I could finally remember “bullshit”. A reticent rebel, this girl.
“Yeah, fucker. It’s the Worst Word.”
Lisa emerged from the living room. Days was over, and I had a coloring book to fill. “Fucker” was forgotten.
August came. My cousins clattered down the dock at Point Breeze, their fishing poles of no more use, the crab trap full, and the sun setting. There were oyster shells to dip in Day Glo colors (for necklace stringing), cookies to sneak from the pantry, string beans to snap off the vine. I had to run to keep up with my mother, who might have carried the bait box or maybe just carried my kid sister, and when I finally did catch up, I employed my preferred method of seizing her attention: I swatted her on the ass until she paid attention.
“What’s up, Noodle?” she asked.
What was up was my raging curiosity so without warning, without lowering my voice, without any regard for the significance that these few seconds and fewer syllables would have as a bookmark in my childhood and her loss of a first, an oldest, a baby, I said simply, “What does ‘fucker’ mean?”
And that, reader, is the first time I ever said the F word.
