Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral

Hide and Seek

32 Hide and Seek Every day he wanted to play it, wanted me for his partner. The other kids hid alone in the hall closet, behind the couch. This was after Dad died but before I fell out of the tree fort with Ken and Barbie, their van falling too, her dresses and her plastic high-heeled shoes. She was nothing without her clothes, her breasts didn’t have nipples like the ones I saw in the locker room at the Salvation Army, red ones that protrude, pink ones small as earrings. And Barbie had no hair—no stubble under her arms, no triangle. I’d seen that too, a “V” like the way I drew birds flying between mountains. When I fell, the wind knocked everything loose, so for a moment there was nothing—no grass, no doll, no boy. I wished I had Days of the Week panties like Theresa at the Salvation Army, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday embroidered on them, so you always know where you are in time. Theresa could do the Butterfly 33 better than anyone. She had Barbie breasts. When she got out of the water, our coach wrapped her in his towel. ...