Untitled, a creative nonfiction piece Options

[thanhmai]

It's just a few scraps of memory that I pulled together with some nostalgic motivation. I fashioned this piece after Three Fragments by Charles Simic - these four fragments are supposed to appear offsync and random, but are actually tied together with a theme.

No flaming commentary needed, this is for myself and for whoever wants to read and possibly relive good ol' childhood for a few minutes.



My sisters and I spent our childhood days in a blue and gray house. Yellow and pink gardenias grew next to the roses, which were infested by little black bugs. There was a cemented pathway laced with white flowers that lead up to the wooden front porch. The whitewashed floorboards squeaked whenever my sisters and I ran past and through the door, and our shrieks filled the little house with a sense of aliveness that my father often claims that he misses. In the front yard, a tall lush mulberry tree grew, and its giant branches and green leaves the size of my widened hands reached out toward the big blue sky. During the summer, my sisters and I sat on bright blue nylon beach chairs under the tree’s enveloping shade, and we played with each other’s hair and climbed the mulberry tree. We drank lemonade from plastic tumblers that had watermelons painted on them. I remember making the lemonade. We shook water and squeezed lemons and ice together, and my sisters would add more sugar when my mother wasn’t looking. When summer was over, my father put away the beach chairs, and the leaves on the mulberry tree fell in brown masses on the lawn.

Once, I spilled the apple juice on the kitchen floor. I felt my body freeze, and I was afraid that my mother would walk into the kitchen any moment to see the mess I’d made. I grabbed as many paper towels as my tiny hands could manage and began to mop up the juice. Then my mother walked in. When she saw the massive pile of soggy towels and the sticky puddle on the tile, I thought to myself, “She’s going to get the big wooden spoon.” I remember my hand afterwards, as red as a ripe strawberry.

My sisters and I were running in the house. My mother always told us never to run in the house, but we did it anyway because it was fun to chase each other and make a lot of noise. One afternoon, my sister Annie and I decided that it would be fun to pretend we were walking a dog. My sister tied a jump rope around my neck, and I began to run on all fours like a dog would. When my sister patted me on the head, I stuck my tongue out of my mouth, and barked and panted. We ran past the kitchen and into the family room. I tripped, and as I fell, my mouth slammed against the sharp edge of the table. The blood began to pour from the gaping hole where my left front tooth had been. My sister and I frantically stuffed Kleenex into my mouth as I tried not to wail too loudly from the pain. Later that night, we told our mother that my front tooth was loose and had fallen out while we were eating taffy.

I remember the day my mother decided that she and I would walk home from my elementary school instead of driving in our beige and brick-red minivan. Our house was only a couple blocks from the school, but back then, it seemed to me like a day’s journey to walk home. I was walking along behind my mother, and trying very hard not to step on any cracks so that I wouldn’t break her back. After what seemed like days of walking, I looked up to see my mother walking briskly, so far ahead in her white sweater that seemed to glow in the sunlight. I complained loudly, saying that my feet hurt and I was tired, hoping that she would stop and wait for me. I thought that my mother didn’t want to walk alongside me because she didn’t like me very much. I was afraid that my mother would turn around and yell at me for being so slow, but I hoped that she would stop and wait for me to catch up. She was not very patient with my sisters and me, and would often strike us when she lost her temper with a plastic rod that she kept behind the television set. When she heard my complaining, my mother turned around and stood there silently. I ran to catch up with her, not caring about stepping on cracks anymore. She squatted down and told me to jump on her back. We rounded the corner of our street, and my mother carried me home.