A flash of light behind my eyelids makes me lift them. I’m facing the back yard and the house behind Grandma Q’s. I see what’s caught my attention. A light in a second floor window.
A feminine shape moves behind thin curtains, and I remember the yoga lesson. And the girl next door.
She’d been staring right at me. I’d felt eyes on me all day from everyone, but sidelong glances. Furtive looks. My family trying to size me up — without acting like they were sizing me up. It had felt like ants crawling all over my skin.
But this was different.
I was talking to Grandma in the side yard right by the stairs of the apartment — right under where I’m sitting now — when I felt like I was being watched. I glanced behind Grandma Quincy to see her neighbor across the yard, eyes on me searching and curious.
It lasted only a second, but her stare seemed to lay me open. Like she was seeing everything I was trying to keep locked down. When she looked away, I felt released. Like a fish suddenly freed from a hook and dropped back into safe water.
Until she started the yoga practice.
And then my head might as well have been on a swivel. I’d find myself watching and yank my eyes away, but they’d just travel back to her again. And again.
Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen a woman who wasn’t family or prison guard in eight years, but I don’t think I’d ever watched anything so beautiful. Her body as a moving masterpiece. Her limbs were firm and toned. They flexed and lifted and stretched like she moved through water.
The shape flickers behind the curtain again, pulling me back to the now, and I’m certain it’s her. I catch myself staring hard, trying to see through the gauzy fabric before I shake my head in disgust. One day out of prison, and I’m already committing a misdemeanor. Revised Statute 14:284. Peeping Tom.
Swinging my legs to the left, I shift myself ninety degrees, so I’m now facing a ligustrum hedge and the roof of Grandma Quincy’s next door neighbor. Last I knew, Mr. Hardesty lived there, and he was at least seventy back then. Even if someone new has the place, there’s not an unshuttered window in sight, and no lights burning either.
I cross my arms again over the railing and breathe in the night. The air is humid and still, but compared to the unnatural chill of the window unit, I welcome it. Nothing feels familiar but this. I recognized my aunts and uncles, and, of course, Annie and Grandma Q. But today I kept seeing Anthony in the faces of my cousins, and it was torture.
I used to see Anthony at Angola. In the west yard. In the mess hall. In fields harvesting soybeans. He’d flicker past the corner of my eye, and I’d do a double-take. I’d spot him a hundred yards away, and I’d take off in his direction, slowing as soon as I saw the truth, but unable to turn back until I proved to myself it wasn’t him.
I knew it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. But I would have been happy then to talk to his ghost.
I still would.
So seeing his face on my cousin — here at Grandma Quincy’s where everything is both familiar and strange —might be enough to drive me crazy. Chip’s grown up to look so much like him — except for the hair. Anthony’s was curly. Unruly. And Chip’s, though thick, is stiff and straight. And Chip’s eyes are brown.
Anthony’s were gray. Like mine. Like Annie’s. Like Ma’s.
But it doesn’t matter. I sigh against the hot September night. If I go work for Chip, I won’t be able to look him in the eye anyway.
My driver’s license expired in 2012. I want to work on cars, but, at the moment, I can’t even drive one. Not that I have one to drive. So unless I want my grandmother or my baby sister chauffering me all over town, I’m taking the bus.
I only rode it a handful of times when I was a kid, but I don’t think the experience has improved much over the last eight years. It’s running about ten minutes behind schedule, and by the time I climb aboard, after standing on the corner of St. Mary, my shirt is soaked through.
But if I’m telling the truth, it’s not all because of the heat.
I don’t know Chip anymore. He’s three years older than me, and, yeah, we used to play as kids, but once he was in high school, he didn’t need anything to do with me. Other than the occasional Sunday dinner and holidays, we never really saw each other.
If we’d been tight, this would be different. It wouldn’t feel so much like asking for charity.
But charity — or maybe mercy — is what I get. Because when I arrive at C & C’s Auto, it’s not Chip I have to face, but his business partner Cody.
I recognize him from the old days. He was always hanging around with Chip. And he was always smiling.
The guy is smiling now.
Wearing blue coveralls and a wide grin, he gets up from a desk littered with papers and clipboards and walks toward me with his hand out.
“Drew! Great to see you, man!”
I blink, a little shocked at his welcome, and take his hand. The creases of his knuckles are lined with grease. That and the smell of tire rubber and WD-40 reminds me of the auto shop at Angola. Cody pumps my hand, meeting my gaze in a way most people in my own family didn’t yesterday. And I’ll admit, it’s disorienting.
“Good to see you, too,” I mumble. I hear the sound of a ratchet drill over my shoulder, and I resist the urge to turn toward it.
