a treat
One dusty summer, I played alone in the courtyard of Grandma’s five-story building. I was free as long as I stayed within its four walls.
There was a small playground with a metal spaceship. You could cling to its bars and imagine being in space or jail. I did both. Mostly, I ran up the slide and slid down over and over, my steps echoing off the walls of the building. This noise was allowed — no one scolded me.
One day, when I’d long stopped hoping for a playmate, a girl joined me. She was younger than I or maybe just smaller. We played together until she was called home for dinner. She told me to visit her any time and gave me the number of her flat, pointing to the door that led to her section of units.
Next day, when the heat made spaceship play difficult, I made my way to her flat and knocked. She answered the door naked.
Her father was frying sausages in the kitchen, loud male banter around him. Friends or relatives, I wasn’t sure. She announced my presence and they all looked at me, the father waved. Then back they went to their merriment.
I asked where her mother was. She shrugged, grabbed my hand and pulled me to her room.
I had never seen so many toys, mostly dolls. Some were naked, their legs spread apart. Some lay on top of one another.
My ‘doll’ at that age was a cloth monkey, overall-clad. I would undress him sometimes, puzzled by the smooth cloth between his legs.
I tried not to look at her as she danced around the room, calling out the dolls’ names to me and mine to them. But I did look.
With all her dancing, she was quite angular, awkward, her breasts not yet developed, hair cropped unusually short for the times, perhaps to relieve the summer heat or on a whim, and a smooth space between her legs with just a slit parting it in two. Mine, as I knew from hesitant exploration, was covered in dark fuzz. I forced my eyes to focus on Desdemona and Rosabella spooning at my feet.
Suddenly she was right in front of me, real close, mouth stained with chocolate, eyes bright and clear like the sky that day.
Want some? She pushed the box of my favorite chocolates into my chest.
I took one. I couldn’t eat it. It began to melt in my palm.
I have to go home, I said.
Her eyes dimmed.
I ran down the stairs out into the heat then into the cool of Grandma’s stairwell.
In the dark under the first flight of stairs, I consumed the treat, sucked my teeth to get the stuck nut pieces, licked my palm and fingers clean.
I never saw her again, except sometimes in a dream, always with that rhetorical question.