Nights, my sister and I lie out in the yard and listen for rotten oranges to thump to the ground. Mornings, we beat even the birdsong to the river’s edge to toss those oranges in. Their soft, spotted bodies plunk through the thick Florida river on their way to the bottom. The fruit makes ripples in the water that go out in circles too many to count.
My sister always throws one close to the bank so that later she can come back to look at it, stuck down in the gunk.
“That one is me,” she says today.
I raise my orange to toss it in next to hers and she slaps it from my hand.
“Yours can’t be with mine,” she says.
When I wail a “why not” she turns away from me so that she thinks I don’t see her start to cry. When I try to touch her hair she jerks away.
We set to heaving more rotting fruit into the water and then later when my sister decides enough oranges have gone in, we race the heat to the end of the boat dock where we sit in the wee shade of the lifted Mako Angler and wait for the fisherman to come around in their little boats with their red coolers in the back and their bright blue life jackets tossed to the front. I like to trace my finger over the raised red letters on the side of my father’s boat. Mako Angler.
My father has told me that a Mako is a shark and that an Angler is a fisherman. Sometimes I dream about my father in his Mako, hunting down sharks. Sometimes the sharks flip the little boat over and my father is gobbled up.
My sister and I wave at the summer people as they pass. Most of the time they wave back with the lift of a beer held firm in their hands. Sometimes the bikini people come by on their ski boats. They laugh over their loud music, yelling out to each other and to us when we wave.
We will sit there for hours, watching and waiting for something to happen. Nothing usually does. My sister likes to sun herself on the dock. She pushes up the legs of her shorts so that she doesn’t get a tan line she says. She rests back on her palms, one leg out straight and the other bent up so that she looks like a movie star to me, with her thick dark hair shining like the river blackened by the night sky.
* * *
Almost every day this summer my sister has worn the same pair of purple corduroy shorts. She stands by the washer and dryer in her underwear waiting when our mother makes her put them in. My sister is older than me by two whole years. She knows how to braid hair and paint her toenails. She almost needs a bra. She says she will get one like her friend Lindy has—white with a little pink bow on the front. She says she will not get one like the bras our mother has—black lace with straps that come on and off. Our uncle Zack says my sister is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Maybe even prettier than Momma. He’s right. My sister has a face like the pictures of angels that show up in big bibles like the ones at our church where we hardly ever go. She hates that about herself. When people tell her she looks like one, she tells them they are wrong. She tells them she’s a witch and then she tosses her black hair around and casts a spell on them.
My sister’s slick black hair is just like our Uncle Zack, which my mother says is a fluke. I have the same pasty pale hair that my father had when he had any and that our mother still has now .
Sometimes my sister lets me comb her hair and twist it into braids like our mother taught us. My sister’s hair is smooth like the side of Mr. Albert’s pony, like velvet. My sister loves her hair. Once, I put shoeshine in mine to see what it would be like to be her.
* * *
My Uncle Zack comes around on Thursdays to play cards with my father and two men from down the street. The men sit out on the back porch, the four of them huddled around the old card table that my sister and I sometimes toss a blanket over and pretend we’re in a fort–waiting for the enemy to retreat. On the underside of the table my sister writes the names of the boys she likes. When she doesn’t like a boy anymore she puts an X over his name. I like a boy at school named Bryce. My sister let me write his name in one of the corners. She says to be sure and X it out when I don’t like him anymore. Those are the rules she says.
When the men play cards I like to hide under the porch so that I can listen to them talking. There is one place where a board is busted open and you can peek up and see the men from underneath. I like to watch them scoot their chairs and shuffle their feet when they arrange themselves to play each hand. From down under the porch they look like they are all legs and feet. Their heads are way up above and sometimes out of view so that their voices come from no where.
Uncle Zack and my father are brothers.
“Just like me and Annie are sisters?” I once asked my mother.
“Almost, Kiwi,” she answers.
That is not my real name.
Uncle Zack and my father were also in the war together. Uncle Zack doesn’t like to tell war stories, but my father does.
“In Nam,” my father always starts off, “my big brother here shot every gook in his path.”
“Lawrence,” Uncle Zack will set down his cards and say, “you weren’t even in the same platoon. What do you know?”
My father will just push off the comment with a wave of his hand and keep going.
“My brother here,” he says, “he didn’t take no prisoners—man, woman, or child. You should have seen him, shooting up the jungle, tearing through the thicket.”
My father will make shooting noises and point his hand out like it’s a gun as he talks. Then after a while of this, Uncle Zack always ends up slamming his beer can down on the table so that some of the gold liquid sloshes out onto the floor.
“Dammit, Lawrence,” he will say, “I didn’t kill no babies.”
But my father just looks off into space like he’s thinking of something great, shaking his head and smiling at the same time.
* * *
Today is the 4th of July. My sister says she knows why this day is important but she won’t tell me. I ask Momma and she says it’s because they have fireworks up at the park, which we may go to this year since Daddy is supposed to be at work at the paper mill. My sister says “fat chance.” She always says “fat chance.” She’s usually right.
We sit outside in the yard and eat ice-cream push-ups—orange ice cream inside a tube that you push up with a plastic stick that’s stuck to the bottom. They are our favorite. Uncle Zack bought them for us at the grocery store. Daddy hates them because he says we always leave their little paper toppers all around and he says we drip orange cream all through the house. Both of these things are true.
* * *
My sister says she is going off to the war and that when she gets there she will not take any prisoners either. I say that I want to go with her. She says that I am too little. She is almost a teenager she says. Twenty-seven more days and she will be thirteen. I try to act like I don’t care. Sometimes we pretend to attack the boat people. We lay down flat on the riverbank and wait.
“Quiet,” my sister says to me, “they’ll hear you.”
I have not made a sound.
“Attack,” she will say and jump up and yell at a passing boat, “attack!”
And we riffle out oranges like missiles and the people on the boats wave and pass on by. But sometimes when we play war we just hide in our fort and wait.
“When are we going to attack?” I will ask.
“Shh,” my sister will say and cover my mouth with her hand, “we’re hiding,” she’ll whisper, “the enemy will hear you.”
She will peek out from time to time to see if the coast is clear.
“Not yet,” she’ll say softly.
If I try to peek out too she pushes me away.
“Ok,” my sister will finally say, “the enemy is gone.”
Around in the front I will hear my father’s car start up and speed away.
* * *
Uncle Zack comes by on Saturdays when Daddy is at his second job at the paper mill. Uncle Zack rides to the grocery store with Momma and then helps her put things away. Me and my sister have to play outside while they unload all the food. It takes a long time some days. Once I snuck back in the house and heard my mother crying.
“Jolene, now baby,” Uncle Zack said to her, “there just ain’t nothing we can do.”
My mother sucked in a deep breath and from my spot around the corner I could see their hands on the table—Uncle Zack’s big fingers stroking over my mother’s little ones.
Sometimes Uncle Zack will come outside to smoke when they are finished with the grocery, and he always asks my sister to run inside and get him a cold beer. She acts like it’s something special that he only asks her and I don’t let on that I’m jealous. I hang around his chair and wait for her to come out with his drink. He always tells her something nice, like he likes her pigtails or how smart she is, or asks her about her plans for the summer. Sometimes I answer with my plans and he smiles at me and listens but I’m not so little that I don’t know he’s waiting for me to be quite so she will talk to him. And that’s ok. I know he likes her best.
* * *
Today Daddy doesn’t go to his other job at the paper mill and he and Momma have gotten in a fight about it. I hear her yelling at him.
“Lawrence,” she says, “you know we need the extra money.”
“That ain’t all I know, Jolene.”
My mother doesn’t say anything more and my father comes out into the yard. I’m hiding in an orange tree but my sister is just standing out in the open, her purple shorts and red halter-top like a beacon. My father eyes her and makes a beeline straight to her. She picks up an orange off the ground and tosses it at him. It barely misses and he starts to chase her. My sister runs right to the river’s edge and splashes in up to her knees. My mother comes screaming from the house and I hug the branches of my orange tree until I can’t tell its limbs from my own.
My father runs down the dock and hoists himself into the raised boat. He unties the anchor and it drops to the boards below. My mother is out there with him now and she reaches for the anchor, but daddy is down on his feet and fast. He heaves the anchor into the water, aiming at my sister. Momma screams but my sister doesn’t move out of the way. The heavy anchor lands in front of but she doesn’t flinch at all.
She reaches down into the water and frees one of her oranges. On the boat dock my mother is flailing her fist at my father and in the St. James River my sister is peeling that rotten orange and shoving slices into her mouth.
Rotten Oranges
Potomac Review
