After several short breaks and a bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade, I figured it had to have been at least noon when I knocked on Darwin Mother’s backdoor.
No answer.
I wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt and decided to go in and make sure the woman was not trapped under the fridge like what happened to old Mrs. Beaman some two years before that time.
Darwin Mother’s kitchen was like most other kitchens. Except for a bowl of lemons on the counter and a fresh pitcher of lemonade, the kitchen was quite bare, overly inert but clean.
I poured myself a glass of lemonade Darwin Mother must have forgotten to bring me, and stepped into the den as if it were my own. I had done my job of mowing and trimming the yard and I felt I had some right to the house to cool down and relax a bit before getting paid.
At the back of the den on a wall positioned between two heavily curtained windows was where I first discovered Thalia’s portrait, about four feet high and two wide. Thalia, I had guessed she was at least the age of seven, was pictured in a white gown where she was backdropped by a garden in full bloom and a pond where three swans sat idle on the surface of the water. Her brown hair was in curls and ribbons, and her eyes followed me as I moved from one side of the room to the other. I watched for some time the shadows drift over that smiling child locked in her portrait.
Of all the boys in the neighborhood I had never heard one of them say anything about a daughter, and I personally had never seen a girl playing at Darwin Mother’s.
One might have mistaken Thalia for Darwin Mother as a young child if one were not familiar enough with the older woman’s smile. Thalia had dimples and Darwin Mother did not.
A woman’s sadness is unlike anything that I, as a man, can know. I saw my mother cry many times. I even saw my sister cry once. And so very like my mother and sister, Darwin Mother lay on her bed. Her pillow absorbed the tears and failed to drown the sounds coming from the anguish, even as a teenager, I was alien to.
Through the folds in Darwin Mother’s dress the shape of her buttocks and panties were visible and allured me out of my momentary shock and closer to her. I dropped to my knees beside the bed and kept my hand over her back, considering whether or not I should break the spell and touch her.
When I did touch her, she did not jerk or scream as I had thought she might. Instead she turned her tearful face toward me on the pillow and we stayed like that for several minutes, just looking at one another without speaking.
When I left Darwin Mother’s that afternoon, she waved me away with laughter and joy in her eyes, and promised that she’d have no other boy but me to cut her lawn. With such gratitude at having a full-time job for the summer, I suggested she pay me the next time I saw her.
I walked the two blocks home believing that I had finally been accepted into the adult world that is so often hidden and out of reach of the children and their curious ears.
My mother was waiting for me as I entered the backdoor to the kitchen. She was sitting at the table and she told me to go shower. We were going to go visit Dawn.
I had not seen my sister in almost a week and I dressed thinking I’d tell her about Darwin Mother, and how our neighbor was not crazy as a loon-bat as many had said, and how I had entered into my manhood and that I no longer needed to be treated like a sister’s plaything or pet.
