Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

The teacher let it slide.

He thought I was going to college.

The neighbor girls went, Keep away from her if you know what's good.

When I sang in class that day, I felt the spotlight. Everyone laughed.

When the radio came in the mail with a card I thought, If only sooner.

If only I had known the radio songs to sing in class.

What was it I sang in there.

Row Row Row Your Boat.

The girls all laughed.

My face got hot.

The neighbor girls go, Whisper whisper.

Their hands flash out.

Their kids duck on the stoops.

The radio card went, Congratulations.

I had graduated. And no hard feelings.

I played the radio until my mother took it away.

Later that night I went, Where is it.

My mother wouldn't let on. She just laughed into a cry.

I was screaming from the stoop, Where the fuck is it.

The neighbor girls went, Still crazy.

I found it smashed in the weeds by my mother's car. I stooped to the weeds and picked up the pieces. Some were very small and some were from the insides.

I'd never blare my horn. The ten would hear it blaring.

They'd turn to see me ducking to the floor.

They'd come up to the window. They'd ask what I was doing.

I'd step out of the car.

I'd go, Hey there sailors, I'm looking for my cigarette, It fell to the floor, Do you have a cigarette.

Or, Hey sweeties, Have you boys seen my boyfriend, He's this tall and he comes here to play one-on-one, He wears a blue shirt.

Or, Hey you sailor-boys, Do you go to this high school, I went to this high school, I'm doing a study on ball.

Or, Hey darlings, Do you know how to change a fuse, I think my fuse has blown.

I saw his hand flash through the air. I saw it reach her face.

I didn't care that his hand flashed through the air. I didn't care that she didn't duck.

I didn't care that he left and never came back.

I cared that he left me with her.

Once I was seventeen.

I stood in the grass before the sun rose.

The grass felt wet beneath my feet.

Then the sun began.

Then everything tried to grow.

If the ball bounces past I'll jump out to chase it. I'll pretend to take it. I'll go, Just kidding, boys, and toss the ball.

If it travels to the woods' edge I'll chase it and stop it and toss it at the speed of sound. Three four three. In air that is.

I'll toss it in a blink to the boys going how the girls once went on the stoops throwing rocks, Think quick!

And if they laugh going, What's think quick, like it's some kind of way we spoke way back but don't speak now, I'll laugh too. I mean I'm no teen striking a pose. I know these boys won't give me some skin. I've never been stupid despite what they think. I know these boys won't fuck me.

There was a time that they'd have fucked me.

But back then I never fucked.

Back then I only wanted one.

He had eyes like blue topaz.

I said I wouldn't say it. But it has to sound poetic. It's a harder science than light and waves.

He had a shirt the same color as his eyes.

I admit like twilight through quartz.

Soon the ten will all be shirted. They'll slap five and walk off the court.

I'll be tempted to shine my lights on them. To blare the horn. To go, through the window, Hey.

He went, Good job, when I spotted fool's gold in the rock pile on the table in the classroom.

The girls went, Crazy motherfucker, when they found the rocks in my locker. And they found what they called my poems.

But they weren't really poems. I wasn't some bullshit poet.

They were notes on rocks. On the teacher's shirt.

They called them poems.

They called them love notes.

But I called it science.

I went to my mother, I'm going to college.

My mother went, You're going nowhere.

My father went, I'm going now.

I mean to say my father went. And I went, Wait.

Soon the ten will walk to my car. They'll pass the ball back and forth.

I'll be tempted to turn the radio up. To step out from the car and go, Hey boys.

But they'll walk fast though the flora, and I'll lower the song and duck to the floor as they pass.

Once I was seventeen. I had thoughts of being eighteen.

Now I'm this. I have thoughts of seventeen.

Once the girls went, You're really crazy.

And I went, Better crazy than stupid.

Once the girls went, How's it going.

And I went, It's going, and left it at that.

Once the girls went, Give me some skin.

And we slid our palms like any kids.

knowing the good of sunstreaked hair, of toothpick legs, a sweet ass hula-shaking on the boardwalk, a soft sweet ass shaking into the boys, hair teased into waves, toothpick legs and pointed tits and big hands on those perfect tits, bear paws squeezing like they're squeezing peaches, like they're squeezing overripe tomatoes, how overripe anything squashes when squeezed, how his bleach-blonde girlfriend's squash when your father squeezes in the kitchen of the beach house when you're standing in the doorway, when you shouldn't be, watching,

knowing to push your tits into the boy you like, to press them into his chest where he stands by the House of Mirrors when you walk on the boardwalk with the local girls, your boy's hands in his pockets to shift his hard-on, all the girls going how hot he is, how hard his dick is, going you can tell by the way he's standing, slouched, that he's got a hard-on, going, I'd only throw him out of bed to fuck him on the floor, going, Look at his mouth when he looks at you, and, Mouth orange juice at him when he looks at you, because it looks sexy to mouth the words orange and juice , like you're going something else, like you're going, Aren't you sexy, the way your lips go around the words like that,

knowing to eat your cotton candy slow as you can, to tongue it slow off the paper cone, and to wear shades of blue so later he'll see the ocean and sky and the blue lights blinking on the Flying Bobs and he'll remember you wore no shoes,

feet deep in sand in the days, the air so hot you can't see the tip of your cigarette smolder, watching kites in the sky like birds through slit eyes, half dozing on a beach towel, half thinking how maybe tonight you'll let your boy press his mouth to yours and hard, you'll let him put his hands on your ass and squeeze if he wants, as you don't want to come off as some kind of cocktease like your father's trying-to-be-grown-up girlfriend who pushes your father when he tries to get her going in the beach house kitchen, her toothpick legs beginning to buckle, all that pawing and kissing when you shouldn't be watching, but there you are hoping to see something, fucking,

your ass a peach, a ripe tomato, your boy could reach out and squeeze, and you can bet he loves peaches, though not tomatoes, how your father hates how they squash and the seeds and the mess of all that juice when the girlfriend cuts tomatoes on the kitchen counter and the tomatoes squirt like what, Like a pussy, your fat uncle poking a fork into an uncut tomato on the kitchen counter, Like a virgin's pussy, when the tomato squirts red, your father going to your fat uncle, Shut your fat face, your fat uncle laughing, his face turning purple and splotched, uglier than a face should be,

knowing the good of sunstreaked hair teased into waves, eyes shadowed shimmery up to the brows, his hands all over your face, your tits, the two of you dug into a rut in the night-cold sand in the cave below the boardwalk well after the tourists leave for their hotels, well after the boardwalk shuts down for the night, and the seagulls picking at paper and bottle caps above your heads, and the waves far out and crashing in a way that makes you think of a million dishes crashing to a kitchen floor, and the trashpicker who pokes at trash with a stick and sings in the mornings when the beach is empty, and the sand on your boy, on his suntanned skin, and that coconut smell, that dirt sweat smell that makes you think, for a second, that your life is a life,