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Show of picnic tables near the soda machines. The cake tasted wet and sweet, and as we ate it we argued over who would claim the frosting clown snatched while my mother was looking for the plastic forks. Near us, several military men stood at the soda machines getting drinks. They were older, maybe in their late teens or early twenties. We watched them-buzzed heads, tattoos, silver tags winking on bare chests-as they selected various flavors of soda and jostled for correct change or for a place in line. Being around military soldiers was in no way unusual but for some reason these soldiers captured our attention and our gaze. Perhaps we were bored. Perhaps they were especially loud. Perhaps we were seeing them as men rather than soldiers and secretly placing our bodies next to theirs. And I knew we stared-was made to know-only because one of them suddenly turned to us and asked, Catching any flies? It took me a few seconds to understand that he was talking to me and a second more to realize that I was sitting there, ice cream cake melting over a tiny birthday plate balanced on a knee, staring at them, mouth agape. With a start, snapping both mouth and legs closed, I sat straight up. He laughed and turned back to the machine, back to his buddies. For him, the moment was over. It probably did not even register as a moment. But I was horrified that I had been seen as I saw. I burned with the shame of having a body. Casually, as if turning over a rock on the reef to poke at the sleepy inhabitants living on the underside, he called me out of childhood. That year I waited for breasts. My friend Karen had long been wearing a bra by the time she moved into the house next door to mine the year before. What I did not realize then was that she probably hated her breasts as much as I coveted them. Since my mother refused to buy me a bra-clearly I had no use for one-I resorted to trading my 156 |
