Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

Give me some skin, and we slid our palms as kids.

I'm happiest when the ball whooshes through without touching the rim.

Just imagine fucking that way.

I can hear the neighbor girls go, Why did she say that.

But imagine a clean whoosh whoosh whoosh.

I often think to join their game. I'd stand on the court in a high school pose. Sunshined hair flipped to one side of my neck. Head slightly tilted, wind whipping my skirt. And I'd ask for a light. I'd ask for a ride.

But the car, the neighbor girls would go. If they were smart.

What about her car, Why would she need a ride, they'd go. There's her car parked in the flora.

Good questions.

Plus the car lighter. They'd be perplexed. Why would she need a light, they'd go.

I'd twirl my hair. I'd go, Okay, boys, The car's mine, You caught me. But the lighter's broken, I'd also go.

How my mother's car lighter pushed in, stayed in. I know it's possible to break a car lighter.

I know it's possible to break a whole car. Look at my mother's. Four flat tires. Doors stuck open. Broken windows. And inside are years of weather. Inside are rough torn seats and broken switches and the lighter that never popped out.

Though the horn still blares. She always yells when I blare it. I never really do it now except to test it.

My mother's always pounding head.

Her shut off car makes ticking sounds.

Her dark kitchen which I stay from.

A card on my car went, Happy sixteen.

Though I was seventeen, almost eighteen.

Should anyone ask: I'm doing a study on ball, Taking notes on boys, For a college paper for when I go to college.

They go, Motherfucker! And, Inside!

Their rib cages jut with each shot.

I see underwear when they raise their arms.

But I'm not going to college yet.

I just want away from the quiet house.

And the twilight reminds me of an old shirt.

Not of a certain shirt but a certain color.

The science teacher. He wore this color. He meant nothing to me. He's a blur.

My mother still keeps the house clean.

There are places to sit in the kitchen by windows.

When I leave the house I go, I'm going to study, and big deal when I walk in after dark. It's only my mother in her shut off kitchen. I'm sitting on the stoop, I lie and who cares.

Big deal when I walk in the next morning after sleeping the night alone in the car.

I was out with the girls.

My mother silent in her kitchen.

The keys were left inside the car.

I started the car and drove.

School was starting back up again.

The boys were playing five-on-five.

My mother found me in the dark in her car. She held my arms and dragged me.

This was high school. Broken windows. A drag through grass. A door slam. A door slam. Another.

A wonder I could keep my head up high.

But the radio came at the end of summer. The radio saved my brain.

The neighbor girls all went, She's crazy, Keep away.

The neighbor girls made plans for their lives back then. Engagements. Showers. Kids.

When we meet by mistake on the stoops nowadays: So what are you doing with yourself. So what are you doing. I asked you first.

And so on and so on.

A wonder I can keep my head on straight.

And should I go, I'm sitting in the car. Should I go, I'm watching five-on-five with songs in my car. Trust me, they'd think the same old thing.

That I stole rocks from science.

That I fucked the teacher.

That I never could mix.

Sometimes there are nine. They play half-court four-on-four and the odd one shoots alone.

I consider a game with the odd one. A game of one-on-one.

And so what if he beats me. I'm no teen and it's not about winning. It's about contact. It's about sitting in the car afterward.

You know how it happens.

One thing, another. I look at his mouth. He looks at my eyes looking at his mouth. I look at his eyes looking at my eyes.

And so on.

I sat in my mother's car with the rocks on the dash. Fool's gold. Mica. Quartz. Like pulled-up treasures from a capsized boat. I made wave shapes in the dust on the dash with my fingers. For a sense of sand, of wet.

I was captain of a boat. I had stopped on the shore to look at my treasures.

I knew I was not in a boat but a car.

This is metaphor. Poetry.

Because the science of this was too hard. I admit it.

Because the science of this was not of rocks. I understood rocks.

The science of this was of the brain.

I took the rocks from the classroom when the teacher was gone. I put them in my pockets.

I cannot describe how they looked on the dash with the sun coming through.

Then it got dark.

I blared the horn until dragged to the house.

The neighbors came out to their stoops.

The neighbor girls went, Did you hear what she did.

They went, She's crazy.

Well, there's no fighting in the house nowadays.

World War Three, the neighbor girls called it.

They went, World War Three down at her house.

They tried to trip me when I passed.

The cliché goes, You'll go blind.

And once I almost did. I was in the car and love songs played. So thoughts took over. My face pressed to a shirted one's shirt. The shirt is blue. My face pressed so tight it feels like drowning. Like drowning in the ocean. Or in the sky. Or some other poetic bullshit cliché. A clichéd drowning in my brain. A clichéd fucking and fucking and fucking.

I stopped when I could. I had blindness sorting back to vision.

I saw the ten again as ten on the court.

For weeks it was me and the radio.

I hid beneath my bed singing radio songs. I made pictures from thoughts.

Me, the suitcase. The boy in blue. And this time we run through the grass.

But the boy in the blue shirt was never a boy. And he was never going anywhere I was.

And I was singing too loud at night went my mother.

She went, Do you know what it is to feel a pounding from inside.

She went, Do you know what it is to hear a pounding like a drum.

She went, Inside your brain.

I sat in my mother's car with twilight coming blue through the quartz. They were fighting inside. Then it got dark. There was no more light coming through.

They thought I couldn't hear the fight. But I heard it clear. At three four three.

My father went, Crazy.

My mother went, Crazy.

They thought I couldn't see the fight. But I saw his hand flash through the air.

So I took the rocks to the car.

The neighbor girls could hear the war from their stoops.

I could still hear it clear.

I blared the horn to drown it out.

I was captain of my boat. I was thinking of my treasures.

Everyone heard the car horn blaring. Every dumb girl from every damn stoop.

My mother and father came running outside. My mother pressed her face to the window. I wouldn't get out of the car. I had locked the doors. The windows were up. I couldn't hear my mother screaming.

She smashed the windows to get me out. What did she use. A rock, I suppose. A rock from the drive. From the weeds.

No. It wasn't a rock. It was a clump of cement. Conglomerate, we called it in high school science. A mix of rocks.

She didn't have to smash all the windows in.

I was sinking it felt like before she smashed.

My mother dragged me into the house. There were cuts to clean.

My father took his suitcase. He took his car.

My car hides in the tall blue grass. My soft-seated car from my father.

There are no windows to my mother's car. All crashed-in holes. There's no use hiding in that car.

The neighbor girls went, What is she thinking.

Thoughts, I thought and left it at that.

I returned the rocks to the classroom. I finished high school. No hard feelings.