Rebecca Coleman - The Kingdom of Childhood

After a while I collected my trash and left. Something in side my chest felt pinched, bunched up and tied with a tight string. I think it was the place in my heart where the joy of youth had once been: a phantom pain.

Zach met me at the entrance to the workshop. His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of his jeans, and he was smiling. Before I had even fully crossed the parking lot, he called, “It’s done.”

“You finished it?”

He grinned and nodded. “I did. Finally.”

I held out the paper sack. “And here I thought you’d need sustenance to get through the last stretch.”

“Hey, I don’t mind.” He took out the cookie and ate a quarter of it in a single bite. “Black-and-white,” he said approvingly, spitting crumbs. “You came through after all.”

“So let’s see what you’ve got.”

I followed him through the door, past the tables scattered with tools and the hulking shapes of metal saws. The air smelled of clean, fresh wood, and motes of sawdust danced in beams of light near the windows. In the very back it sat, at the very midpoint of the back wall, Lilliputian but still so large it amazed me that Zach had built it on his own. Gingerbread trim scalloped the roof’s edges and the flowerbox below the front window. All around its base was fiberglass stone, rolling so naturally that it appeared stacked by hand. The artificial tree that he had attached to its back, arching above the acorn-covered roof to shade it with leafy branches, made it look even more impressive. I flipped open the topmost Dutch door and peeked inside at the tightly joined corners, the fairy-sized wooden box attached beneath a window to hold secret treasures.

“It looks perfect, Zach,” I told him. “You did a top-notch job.”

“Thanks.”

“The school should get a lot of money for it. You ought to be proud.” I walked around the sides, admiring his work. “It’s actually worth all the grief and misery I put up with.”

He shot me a cheesy, achingly innocent grin. In a singsong voice he said, “Thank you, Mrs. McFarland.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Aren’t you going to look inside?”

I regarded the small space with amusement. “I’m a little big for it, don’t you think?”

“Naw. You’re pretty little for an adult. And it’s bigger on the inside. You’ll see.” He crouched down and crawled inside. Squatting on one side, he stuck his head out the door and said, “See, I fit. And I’m about a foot taller than you.”

“Not even close, shorty.”

“Whatever. Come on in.”

I got onto my hands and knees and squeezed into the doorway. He was right—once inside, the height of the roof afforded a bit more room, and I could kneel comfortably. Still, it was sized for five-year-olds. I felt a bit claustrophobic.

“Fee fi fo fum,” said Zach.

“This must be what Snow White felt like among the dwarves,” I said.

“Are you calling me short?”

“Not in here. In here, you’re huge.”

“Why, thank you. My reputation precedes me.”

I giggled. He grinned at his own joke. I shifted my weight forward, accommodating my aching knees, and suddenly Zach’s hands were on my upper arms, and his face was moving very close to mine, his lips parted, eyes half-closed.

I did not resist. What I felt was not surprise, not repugnance, but a sense of déjà vu: conjured to life was the image of him in my dream, kissing my child-self as if I were a woman. Even the first touch of his lips felt familiar; but then the kiss deepened, and his tongue touched mine, and everything changed. The warmth in my hips was liquid and instant and I welcomed it like an old friend. I twisted my fingers in his belt loops and pulled him to me. His groan of approval set my mind afire with a singular thought: follow this through, as far as it takes you. What I had mistaken for idle attraction now revealed its face: I wanted all of him, and monstrously so.

His mouth moved down my neck, and as I tipped my face upward to allow him, he slid his hands under my shirt and lowered his face to my breasts. Sawdust speckled his black hair, dusting my hands as they meandered to his shoulders and arms. When he rose to meet my mouth again his eyes were hazy and unfocused. The taste of his mouth, the smoothness of his taut wiry body beneath my hands, the scent of his skin—all thrilled me with their unfamiliarity, their sudden intimacy. I circled my thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and cursed the playhouse for being too small to afford space to lie down.

And then the door rattled. A woman’s voice called, “Zach?”

He tore away from me and in an instant was standing beside the worktable, hands folded over his face, rubbing as if to force himself awake. I followed more slowly, my shaking hands and legs providing unsteady support. The high and open space around me seemed foggy at the corners, surreal. I asked, “Who’s that?”

“My mom.” Turning toward the door, he called, “Hold on a sec, I’ll be right there.” He sank onto a stool and, setting his elbows against the table, dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Picking me up. She’s right on time.” With a deep sigh, he rummaged in his backpack, pulled out his thermal shirt, and tied it around his waist. Then he clawed his hand back through his hair and uttered a grunt of disgust.

I stood a good distance away, out of sight from the door’s rectangular window. My arms, crossed tightly over my chest, shook steadily. I felt sick with gratitude that I had not bothered to unlock the door from the inside. Gratitude to whom, I had no idea.

For the first time since the noise at the door, Zach looked at me. Inwardly I winced at the frankness of his large eyes, his gaze still a little uneven. He gave a short laugh and said, “Seeya.”

“’Bye.”

He shouldered his backpack and hopped down off the stool, his posture a bit bent under the weight. He pulled open the door and, with a muttered greeting to his mother, was gone.

I forced my quivering knees to guide me over to the stool where he had been, and, teeth chattering, carefully sat in the imaginary haze of his warmth. I looked at the tools still strewn around, then at the playhouse, where the sawdust on the floor swirled into whorls where our knees had been.

With an awful darkness clouding my mind, I thought: What have I done?

1965

Mainbach, West Germany

The line of evergreens lay beneath a cold blue sky, cloudless despite the snow-covered earth below it. At the top of the hill Judy exhaled hard, her breath blurring the scene before her, the flocked fabric of her scarf moist with condensation.

“Go on,” said Rudi. “All by yourself. Exciting!”

She shook her head.

“Just one time.”

She shook it again. “Not without you.”

He sighed and laid down the toboggan. She climbed on and grabbed the string, and he nestled himself in behind her, his legs in his butternut canvas trousers firm along hers. He wrapped his gloved hands over her mittens and, chest thumping against her back, surged the sled forward. Cold wind shocked her face, and she screamed with pleasure.

Toward the bottom he hit an icy spot, banked right, and again they tumbled out into the snow. His weight against her was brief but reassuring as a thick wool blanket. As he staggered to his feet he laughed and reached for her hand, and despite all her obstructing layers of coats and wraps she felt weightless, no less so with his arm around her shoulders than when he pulled her up from the ground.

“Let’s go home,” he suggested. “Get warm.”

They trudged back to the farmhouse, through the cold silence of winter. Her legs felt numb where the snow had melted through her tights. With sidelong looks she studied Rudi’s face: the pink flush of his cheeks, the nubbled sheared wool that lined the earflaps of his cap, the way his hard steady breathing revealed his crooked canine teeth. When they passed beneath a tree beside the barn, a scurrying squirrel knocked a branch’s worth of snow onto their heads, and she laughed.