
As I said, there were some hard perks to being known at a new school by people you had not yet met. One of them was Olive. I'm not sure I'll get this exactly right because the memory is like one of those dreams where things are jumbled around and don't make sense. I met her in the last weeks of summer before I went to the seventh grade. I'd already met some new people I'd be going to school with. One of them was in the ninth grade. He said that we should go over to Olive's house, that she wanted to meet me. He had a learner's permit to drive and had driven, so he took the keys to his mother's car. This was bad. It was the first time I had ridden in a car with anyone other than my parents or relatives. I couldn't feel my feet, my legs. He swung the car into the street and laid a patch of rubber down the street. That was new to me, too. My parents always drove cautiously, carefully, respectfully. This boy was a demon. He took the turns like a race car driver. What was he, fifteen? But before we went to Olive's, he had to pick up his girl. I was caught up in some movie with a bad ending from which you were supposed to learn a moral lesson, a movie I didn't even want to watch let alone be in. Everything was twisted, unreal.
Olive was dark with dark hair and dark eyes and breasts like my mother's. She must have been taller than me, too, for what I remember about her is the size of her, and the smell which was deep and sweet and foreign. Thinking back on it, she must have been Greek or Turkish, but I didn't know what that was then, so I have to guess now. I remember her smiling with excitement when she answered the door. She had white teeth and wore a crisp, new dress and was very pretty, but I had never met a girl I didn't know before. I was in strange waters and didn't know the currents. We went inside her house which did not look like any of the houses I'd been in before. The colors and shapes were different, foreign, and I could not make sense of them. It was clear her parents were not home. We sat and talked for a while, and then the fellow I was with said, "Let's go for a ride." I didn't know which was worse.
Olive and I sat in the back seat. It was awul, really, though she was pretty and sweet, for I was not this mature. I thought of my baseball cards in their box on the dresser where I'd left them and of my football I thought might be laying in the back yard. When we kissed, I was terrified and excited at the same time, blood pulsing to conflicting parts of my body. She was nice about it, I thought, like a nurse who was about to give you some bitter pill or to clean your wound. But it was over soon. We had done it and it was done. Nothing, really, had happened. The boy had stolen his parents' car and we had driven illegally with pretty girls who were excited and liked us. We were something. We were heros.
But I didn't feel that way. All I wanted was to get away and go home. Olive. She was pretty and sweet, but the threat of those adult breasts was too much. I wouldn't be ready for anything like that for months.
Hello, Hemingway. I'm enjoying these tales of initiation. You were a cute kid. I can't wait to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteLove the juxtaposition of the photo --
ReplyDeletethe young, boy child to woman in the background.
The last stanza is sublime. And I don't use that word lightly -- it is absolutely what I seek when reading, in art, etc. to travel the fine seam that delicately joins pleasure and pain.
Shame you don't do two installments a day. ;)
I have been away too long and i come back to this story. Absolutely poignant. I love how caught between childhood and adulthood you express here..." I thought of my baseball cards in their box on the dresser where I'd left them and of my football I thought might be laying in the back yard. "
ReplyDeleteThank you. What a wonderful memory you have.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThank you for that. Everyone would like to think that at some moment in life they are that, but not often will people let go of such a comment. I come from a very non-verbal culture where people rarely give a compliment at all, so. . . just thanks.
Tammy,
ReplyDeleteThank you for noticing that line. I try to do something like that in each writing, but I always wonder if it is noticed.
I am going to follow these adolescent tales out a ways. Trouble is, I don't have the photos I need. Do you have any I could use? I'll give credit, of course.