Authors: Jane Prescott
Kid summers are the best summers.
Kid summers are when they can fully appreciate the grass around them, when the outside is infinitely more alluring than any electronic they may have aglow in the house, and when the stickiness of the days makes them appreciate the tanned skin of their bodies all the more.
Maybe that’s what their parents were thinking when they first decided to take them upstate. The trio, before they were even a trio, didn’t really know. Looking back, they would all later agree that their parents were in the grip of some kind of nostalgia for their own days of fleeting youth. They wanted the grass, the fresh dew on the blades of it in the morning, the reminder that there is still a place somewhere on this Earth where the sun rises on a peaceful morning.
They thought they found that place at Sylvester’s.
Sylvester was the Americanized version of the name that Schmuel Yavitsky had adopted for himself after about thirty years of living in the states. Like many Soviet immigrants who had truly managed to carve out a life for themselves in a new place, Sylvester made a business out of nostalgia. He bought a few acres of land upstate, planted some bungalows, and invited the Russian community at large to reunite with him. For money.
And boy did they come.
But this is not Sylvester’s story. It is the story of how Sylvester brought them together.
Nate, Alex, and Christina. Three independent kids who didn’t know how to be brought together. Nate was the one with the American dad, the one who had gotten married to the Russian lady looking to stay in the country and somehow lucked out. His parents weren’t crazy, and they ended up caring about each other. Even if his dad was always saying vaguely racist things about his mom, and his mom thought his dad was just a little bit stupid. He was American, after all.
Alex was long, lanky, and had what the Russians would typically call “the face that’s asking for a brick.” With brown eyes, and a mischievous dimple, he was the kind of kid who had no idea he was full of burgeoning sex appeal, and when he got older, had no idea how to handle it. Girls would come easily to him—so would many boys, but he never thought it had anything to do with his personality. When you got close to him, it felt like he would live fast and die young—so you had to hop on early to be along for the ride.
Christina was the kind of girl boys write poems about but are way too afraid to ever approach. She had long, wavy brown hair cascading down her back in careless ebbs and flows, and sharp green eyes with little furrowed eyebrows that always made her look angry. And she often was angry, or at least seemed that way, mostly because her parents’ marriage was a broken thing, with her mom in constant fear of her dad. They were at Sylvester’s because it was the one time the whole summer that her dad went away for work and she got to see the mom she knew before life had beaten her down—sunshine, smiles, and a warm, gentle neglect that left her mostly to her own devices.
It started with Christina, really. If we peek inside the sky-blue bungalow at the very edge of the little—community, shall we call it?—we can see her putting on her bright-pink running sneakers and cutoff shorts. She’s ten, but she’s got that swell of young breasts starting to form, and more often than not, when she catches sight of the way her T-shirts bulge or feels the fabric scrape against her sensitive skin, she feels the hot flash of shame deep inside of her chest. Today, she straps the armor of an undershirt underneath her top, laces the sneakers, forgoes the hairbrush, and sneaks quietly out of the bungalow.
The rooms in Sylvester’s bungalow have no locks. As she makes her way out of the room, careful not to wake her mother—it’s only seven in the morning, after all—it occurs to her how much she loves the little veranda that graces the front of the building. It’s the kind of place where, in another life, she and her mother would have baked cookies and teacakes, poured great big samovars of boiling water and leaves, and drunk tea, inviting all their neighbors to partake. Her father does not like guests. And so, even though her heart is large and giving, and she possesses all the skills to entertain in her arsenal, it is never to be. And so, with a flash of hopeless rage, Christina looks for some other way to assert control over her day.
The swing set over in the main grassy area catches her eye. Flopping the sneakers against the wet ground, she marches over to the two wooden swings, admiring herself for noticing how the early morning sunlight hits the ground and seems to light it up; she imagines the plants are talking to her, the grass is greeting her, and the weeds are empathizing with her, because they are rebels just like she is. She plants her little ten-year-old butt in one of the swings and kicks high off the ground, feet slipping a little because the ground is slick. Her vestibular apparatus is working perfectly, so all she feels is like she’s flying, and the higher she sails up into the morning air, she more invincible she is. There is nobody to tell her no.
There is, however, the crackle of the early-morning radio announcement to the whole bungalow community. Sylvester himself is announcing a morning run and “aerobics routine,” which translates into the first gossip-mongering event of the day. Christina doesn’t mind. It’s mostly grandparents who have brought their grandkids to let them run buck wild for the summer, believing in the unceasing power of fresh air. They’re banded together in Nike sweatpants, shiny navy blue material, and Adidas sneakers, trusting in the everlasting fashion that they are imparting upon the world. They have gathered on the corner of the grassy knoll and are awaiting Sylvester to lead them on the morning jog; they watch Christina sail up into the air, and she shuts her eyes and she pushes herself higher and higher, wanting to escape their eyes, even as she imagines all the things they are saying about her.
That she’s a cute little girl.
That they admire her youth and energy.
Well, she’s not cute and she’s not young. She was born old and has a sense of heroic tragedy about her. It’s about to come into play in just a few hours.
Lunches at Sylvester’s are a sad affair, although they do not feel that way to his guests, many of who come from war times when they had to dig through trash for scraps just to survive. Christina loves it all. The sardines from a can, slightly soggy crackers and cheese. Great big vats of hot gruel and stale bread. She imagines this is what it’s like to live in a combat zone, and the sense of romanticism transforms this sunny summer existence into one where she is literally living in a different time. If she eats now, faster and faster, she will be able to run out and have a few hours before the “military drilling” begins, and she loves it. It’s like she’s living her own secret life.
After lunch, she patrols the wooded areas of the community. Sylvester’s houses a basketball court, a pool table under a gazebo, and lots of cherry trees where no cherries actually grow. There are a few berry bushes buried away somewhere, and Christina knows her mom will be amongst them in an hour or so, picking away. She smiles, imagining her slightly pudgy mother fingering the black roundness of the small fruits, enjoying the gentle sensation of their flesh against her hands.
The basketball court is deserted, and a dingy old ball that someone, one of Sylvester’s minions, no doubt, has pumped full of air is lounging near a puddle of water. She picks it up, dribbles it once, twice, and tries to make the shot. She is too small and her arms are not powerful enough, and she misses the basket-less hoop entirely. Infuriated by this and unwilling to admit defeat, she picks it up and tries, again and again, relishing the sound that only that basketball can make against cement, a deceptive ringing that makes her feel like a winner, like she could take on some older boys or something, and not fail. After a while, she abandons this, because her arms begin to burn, and while she loves that burn, she has grown bored. A rustle in the bushes and a glimpse of white skin and ratty shorts gains her attention and she sets out.
She pretends she is a hunter and that whoever is out there is a gazelle. She makes sure to travel quietly, not to rustle any bushes or snap any twigs. When she treads, she is feather-light, and she silently congratulates herself on not even breathing audibly, because this makes her harder to hear. She is pushing aside branches and the terrain is getting rougher, but soon, she breaks through the trees to find a small clearing in the center of which is a gigantic weeping willow. The long slopes of its peaceful branches are hiding something, someone, and she brushes them away to find a boy about her own age sitting there. He looks up and in that moment, they are both caught, and frozen for a single, everlasting minute.
To Nate, it is like a nymph has come out of the woods. When he was on his way here, as he has been for the past two days since he got to Sylvester’s, he did not hear her. And if it wasn’t for her bright pink sneakers and modern clothes, he would have believed she was a pixie or a ghost as he first thought she was when she found him, her long hair tumbling down her back and face. Except that magical creatures rarely look this angry, and she looks guilty. She probably didn’t expect to stumble across him; maybe this was her hiding place, too, and he just found it?
“Who’re you?” she blurts out, after a minute, and now he knows she’s real. She’s small, and his eyes snag on the two small rounds underneath her Cowgirl Princess T-shirt, and he forces himself to drag his eyes away; he doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. Before, he always used to look at girls’ hair, how soft it was, how pretty in braids and with all those bows, but recently, he’s found himself looking at their chests and between their thighs and it makes him feel dirty and excited all at the same time, as if he’s made a giant mess and he doesn’t know how to clean it up.
“I’m Nate. Is this your place?”
“No,” she says slowly, bravely making a step into the clearing underneath the trees. “But it’s not your place, either. This whole place is Sylvester’s, everybody knows that.”
Nate shakes his head, unsure of how to explain. There’s something commandeering about her that he responds to; it reminds him of his grandma. She’s the only one he feels all right with; his parents like to have their fights in rooms where the door is closed, but he hears them all the same. His grandma is the one who tells him it’s not his fault and that he can’t change years of upbringing no matter how much he wants to. When his parents make up, though, it’s particularly noisy, and it’s the falseness of their reunions that he cannot seem to stand.
“I just…it’s my parents. I don’t want to listen to them. They’re so loud. So I come here,” he tells her lamely.
She considers him for a moment, the sad dirty blond hair, so unsure of itself it can’t even decide on a true color, the way he looks so sad in his bright and clean plaid shirt and cargo shorts, like he cannot even imagine how he got into them in the first place. She thinks about what it would be like if it was her on the ground with someone standing over her, and so sits down on the ground with him.
“They’re fighting, huh?” she asks. “I know about that. My parents fight all the time. It’s the worst.”
“No, they’re not fighting,” he tells her, unable to look at her, even though he likes her green eyes. “They’re…doing something else, and I don’t want to hear it,” he trails off, a bloom he can’t control staining his cheeks.
Christina feels that feeling in her chest again, that tightness that’s associated with shame, her body, and all the strange things she’s begun to experience around men in general. She knows what this boy is talking about, and it makes her angry that grownups have once again behaved in the way that has made children want to run and hide. In a gesture that is way beyond her tender years, she takes her hand to Nate’s face and turns it towards her. It’s surreal to him, what she is doing, because he’s only seen this kind of thing in movies; when their eyes meet, he knows that she is as surprised by her action as she is, but if she is being bold, then he must go along with it.
“Fuck them,” Christina tells him, relishing the filthy sound of the forbidden word in the innocence of that clearing in the middle of nature. “Do you hear me? They don’t get to make all the rules. We can invent our own stories. When did you get here?”
“Two days ago.”
“So you don’t know anything yet. Come on, get up.” They both stand, but it is only Christina who dusts off her shorts. “I’m going to show you around and we are going to play together. Okay?”
Do not be fooled. As she says this, her heart is pounding. She has never trusted anyone before, and even though she is a child, she can feel that this is a pivotal moment. She’s seen the movies, and her young little heart lives by the Golden Rule. If she does right by this boy, then he will be her friend forever and nothing can change that. She doesn’t have the world figured out yet, but this is one thing she knows holds true. What she doesn’t know is whether or not Nate will play the game the way she wants to; she can only play it if it’s by her rules. Will he be content to follow?
Nate looks up at her—the few inches of height she has on him will soon be gone, although neither of them will notice it for a few years yet—and for the first time since they met, he smiles. From the way his blue eyes light up, Christina feels her whole steely resolve melt. She knows it when she sees it—he will go with her anywhere.