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Show you slid open the door. There was enough, even, to appease the desires of three young girls. We sat on the floor of the spare room, a rug hanging like a tapestry on the wall depicting a hunting scene, two rifles not six feet above our heads resting in a wooden gun holder, and a black and white checked hide-a-bed that we would pull out at night and sleep in, and imagined our Barbies were pregnant, were dancing, were getting ready for a ball. The summer I was eight, I don't know if my cousins came to visit. The days were hot, the corn heavy and waiting, the air barely moving over the fields. One morning my grandpa asked me to mow the lawn with him, a chore he used to leave to my grandma, but one that she could no longer do because a stroke had left her paralyzed. By midsummer in central Nebraska, evenings fail to cool, and the early morning heat materializes in a thick haze that clutches and holds the land. I remember I looked forward to the moments when my grandpa steered us into the shade of trees, coolness rippling up my legs. Such moments were scarce, though, and most of the time we drove in the hot sun, a cloud of dust and grass following us with the flies. My grandparents' house sat astride two lakes, ovals of mossy green water that warmed in the summer like a bathtub and were populated by sunfish, perch, and blue gill. They called their place "Twin Lakes Villa," but the lakes were far from identical. The moss in one was so thick that swimming was impossible, while the second, the one in front of their house, was smaller and deeper and where we spent long summer days. By the age of eight, I was allowed to swim in the lake unsupervised. With my cousins, Shara and Heather, we would navigate the paddle boat to the middle of the lake and jump from 93 |
