The chestnut tree stood at the edge of the field and Sonia and I spent long hours there, flirting and pressing to the toes of our shoes together. She wore penny loafers. I wore blue Keds. We were thirteen years old, long-legged as colts and Sonia and I were always together. Some called it “close” and left it at that, and some arched an eyebrow to put a point on it.
Sonia came from an old money family. Her last name was Grayson, and theirs was the house at the top of the hill. A magazine house, like the ones you see when sit in a waiting room, flipping the pages. Wondering who really lives that way.
Our house sat at the bottom of the hill, a brick house with shutters, just momma and me. Daddy was gone. Not dead gone, but gone. Good riddance, momma said. A rusted blue Pontiac sat in our side yard. Useless as he was. Momma shook her head to put a point on it.
Out in the sun, the grass in the field was all yellow and brown but up in the shade, it was bright yellow-green. I remember that day, Sonia said she wished it would rain. She looked up at me and we leaned in close. We tilted our heads and I swear there was thunder the whole world must have heard, and we saw it pit pat and we held out our hands, and I’ve never known anything as beautiful, ever, as that yellow-green grass and that girl in the rain.
Sonia and I spent long afternoons, nestled like kittens at that big chestnut tree. But I came home one day and momma was there in the kitchen, pacing back and forth, smoke from her cigarette blue as a shadow. Words flew out her mouth, like bible, according, sin and unnatural. Get your mind right, girl. She stubbed out her cigarette, then lit another. Eve cigarettes. They had flowers on them.
Edgewood Manor was what used to be called a rest home. It was just outside town, and some terrible things had once happened there. Re-purposed, re-wired, now up to code, with a fresh coat of paint, the site was re-christened The New Eden Center.
But with lipstick on, a pig’s still a pig. A pit’s still a pit when the snakes are all gone.
I used to daydream that Sonia would come. In a cape and a mask on a horse named Diablo. Pistol in hand, Diablo snorting and shaking his head. She would pull on the reins, fire a shot straight up in the sky and Sonia the Brave would cry, stand and deliver!
I couldn’t have known she was far, far away. Like across the sea, far. The Graysons sent Sonia to a posh boarding school. Some place far from me, with “shire” in its name.
A table. A chair. A switch and a box. Recision, it’s called at The New Eden Center.
I remember I thought it would never stop burning.
I remember they smiled to put a point on it.