The old woman sat in her seat in the open turret, gazing down at the children playing in the street below. Here I am, the old witch, thinking evil thoughts about innocent babes. They were some of the only children in the neighborhood; almost everyone left was her age or older.
That morning she found her mother dead in her bed. She wasn't sure what to do about it, so she decided to sit. Sit and watch the children play.
How did this happen...how did I do nothing? How have I become nothing?
She wondered about the children on the playground in her old neighborhood. She walked down to that legendary field of her childhood, the one where she struck out during baseball games and went on to watch the t-ball games of her younger siblings.
It was empty. Barren. She had played baseball with her, the one who started the ball rolling or, rather, the one who brought her carefree rolling stone to a grinding halt.
Yes, I blame you. I've earned it.
She walked up the hill where she used to go sledding as a child. Typically, in the winter, the snowstorms would be followed by stinging rains that froze atop the snow, creating spectacular ice slicks on the sides of hills she and her friends most frequented. It's a wonder we didn't all break our teeth.
She was her first friend. They met as children, both the firstborn of guilt-ridden boomer thirtysomething women, doing what, for their mothers, was unthinkable: working in the man's sphere and abandoning the children to a daycare. To a stranger.
For the children it was much less dramatic.
Magical, even.
Their sitter was old with poor eyesight; she doesn't remember being watched very much. No, she and the lost girl, they were alone in the sandbox. Wasn't that what it seemed like?
She was her only friend. And now where have you gone? You, with your Gwen Stefani belly and cheap vanilla perfume? Your aquiline nose and your green braces. You were so beautiful.
She was not alone. Dark figures on the horizon, black children on the swings, Hispanic teenagers on the basketball court. The ones she was taught to fear as a child and still feared as an old hag. Hated for destroying her void of despair.
I loved you. It startles me so. Yes, I loved you. She dropped to her knees and looked up at the sky. The sun was high and cold.
Why did you betray me. Why did you choose the others over me?
They were twelve years old. The pool party. She remembers sitting with the other girls in the basement, still shivering from submersion in the chlorinated water. She was embarrassed that the others might see her chubby, pubescent body in the so suddenly too-small bathing suit. She had a towel awkwardly covering her, tucked under her armpits. I look like Mom coming out of the shower.
They were playing truth or dare with him, the boy, the dream of every girl in their sixth grade class. He sat uncomfortably, the only boy at the party, in the middle of the room like a cauldron between witches. And they churned their bitches brew.
How strange it must be for a boy that age to be so desired?
I shouldn't think about things like this anymore. I am supposed to have forgot about this long ago. Or I should laugh about it if I must think of it. I am such a silly old woman. But oh why did you point him out to me?
She bit her pillow at night thinking of him. The morning of the pool party she awoke to find that she had bit inward, through her body, through her desire, and come out through the unspeakable seat of it all: the drops of blood in the toilet, a liquid sigh.
