In Praise of Falling

The Amnesiac, Seventh Grade

The Amnesiac, Seventh Grade She knows she wore her older sister’s clothes to class: Dexter western boots, the sheepskin jacket, a royal purple jumpsuit with the collar starched up. She chose a corner locker in gym, crouched near the bottom row of doors when she undressed. Metal vents cold against her back, the chlorine stench, raked concrete floor beneath her feet. In shop, she watched Jeffrey Catcher brand a circle in his chin with a tube of blown glass. It was the year she stopped eating eggs. In science, Mr. Grimes told the class that an orange is actually the pulpy ovary of a plant. She can list facts: she slept on the nurse’s cot twice. Tina Case got her period during art class. Three days later the kiln door broke. At lunch, the custodian ate her leftover baked apples, red peel stuck between his teeth. Her finger can still trace the stain  Dumesnil PGS:Layout 1 4/28/09 12:32 PM Page 26 on the math room blackboard, or her dad’s silhouette behind smoked glass, in his brown Chevy Blazer parked outside the school grounds. She remembers their ride home, passing kids who stood on curbs, shouting to friends, or ran to Hungry Hound,Aladdin’s Arcade, to football practice, all the places she wanted to go. She sees the boys standing outside Britton’s Bikes, gawking at the latest Diamond Back rims. She hears the moan of tires rolling over gravel roads, knows the truck’s shadow stretching across the lawn. She remembers the driveway, the brick path leading to the porch, the dog’s claw scratches at the base of the door.What stays locked inside that house is the echo of her body thrown into a wall, the hollow thunk of her bones as they hit the floor, thumbprint bruises worked into her arms. All she knows is the sound of her dad’s key sliding into the lock, the slap of the bolt as he turned his wrist, then colors bleed, sounds change, all pictures fade to gray.  Dumesnil PGS:Layout 1 4/28/09 12:32 PM Page 27 ...