“We should open the freezer more,” she says. “That might work.”
Thunder moves across the sky, left to right. It is spatial. It uses the whole expanse of night as a soundstage.
“So why does it rain sometimes and it storms sometimes?”
She is full of questions tonight.
“Well, I guess sometimes there’s a lot of pressure in the clouds and sometimes there isn’t.”
“I get that way at school. Sometimes I feel like I want to storm on people and sometimes I’m okay and I just want to cry a little.”
This is interesting information. “Why do you want to cry at school?”
“People are dumb. They say dumb things and they do dumb things. Kids are mean.”
“Some kids don’t grow out of it, either. You’ll have to deal with people like that your whole life.”
She grunts in disgust. “Stupid.”
A blast of lightning illuminates the yard. You see the trees in a flash. The swing set. Some skates. A giant pink ball.
“You should pick up your toys,” I say, only slightly serious.
“That’s where I play with them,” she says. “That’s where they should stay. That’s like being mad if I eat in the kitchen. That’s where the food is.”
You have no argument for that.
The storm should have slacked off by now. It doesn’t. The rain comes down harder, sounding like nails on the roof of the porch.
“Why do you like to watch the storms?” she asks.
“Well, I think they’re cool,” you answer. “I like the lightning. I like the way the rain smells. I like to look at something real. I look at so many things all day that don’t seem real, you know? I look at stuff on computers, stuff on television, all this information I have to deal with. It all gets crammed into my head and I start feeling like I’m not real, either. Like I’m just another part of a data stream, and none of it matters, in the grand scheme, none of it matters because it’s just not real. This is real. The storm is real. It is happening and it can’t be controlled or manipulated. It just is.”
She is staring at you now. Your cheeks grow red.
“I’m sorry, honey,” you say. “Guess I got a little complicated there. That’s adult stuff you don’t need to know about yet.”
She tilts her head a little bit to one side. “No, I get it,” she says. “That’s how I feel when I have to do division.”
“Yeah?” you laugh. “Me, too. Still. Especially long division.”
“Ugh,” she says. “Long division sucks.”
Thunder cracks like a double bass. The rain is splashing up onto the porch now, freezing cold on your bare toes. She scoots back onto dry wood.
“I think you’re real,” she says.
“You do, huh?”
She smiles and hugs you around the waist, so hard your kidneys start to buckle. She looks up at you, and with a serious look on her little face, says, “I have to pee.”
She lets go of you and trots into the house.
She won’t be back. She’s nine. She’ll get distracted by something inside until it’s time to go to bed.
You stay outside, letting the rain seep under the soles of your feet. You scoot over a little, putting your body in the physical space where she was. You wonder if you can absorb a little of her, keep a little part of that moment, that one time, the person that she was at that exact point. You want to capture some of that innocence. You want to remember the way she smells (cotton candy shampoo and talcum), the timbre of her voice. This place. This singular moment. This perfect storm.
Jeffery X Martin lives in Knoxville, TN, with his wife, Hannah, and his children, Rhiannon and Bishop. He also writes about music for Popshifter.com and works as a free-lance social media consultant. He also hosts The Six and a Half Feet Under Podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Podomatic. He is also a frequent guest on other podcasts, including but not limited to The Not So Evil Episodes Sidecast, hosted by Mike Maryman. In X’s spare time, he wishes he had spare time. For more information, please visit http://about.me/JefferyXMartin/#.
For less information, please re-read half of the preceding paragraph.
Short Stories About You Page 10
