Poison ivy, and my sister.
Plant life and animals began taking hold roughly 500 million years ago. So: useful knowledge has been passed on for a reasonable amount of time, messages for communion and survival. But Anders Parly hears about as well as a small-eared weasel, and he’s just as predatory.
Monica is a year younger than me. And Anders. All my life I’ve heard people react when they meet my sister. Nobody says cute or sweet—every single person sighs, saying isn’t she beautiful? Now that I’m in ninth grade, most everybody I’ve grown up with has learned not to tell me my sister is hot, because my family don’t play. I throw straight, and I can skip a rock off your hair part or put a goose egg on your forehead with my fastball. My father even got to thinking of cutting an ugly scar on her cheek or around Monica’s eye socket to dial down her attraction. My mother took away his knives and razors, told him to be strong, grow a beard. Mama banned guns from the house; she doesn’t want to see delivery boys buckshot all over our sidewalk. She admits: she doesn’t fully trust herself when it comes to defending my baby sister.
Lots of kids live up Piper Mountain Road. A year ago, Anders, out riding his bike, found my sister walking alone to the trailhead—it was a Saturday in July, and lowbush blueberries were popping up on the eastern side of the mountain. She said he invited her to sit on his handlebars, go for a ride. When she refused, he grabbed her wrist, saying come on, girl, you and me, it’ll be fun.
She broke away, backed up into the green brush and bracken—which set Anders off. He got to screaming. “Leaf of three, let it be! You’re standing in a bad patch, missy—to hell with beautiful, I want no part of your behind on my handlebars.” Anders pedaled like a fat loon taking off of a lake, pushing hard for gravitational escape.
I guess Anders had good-enough sense about one thing. But he doesn’t know: my family is of that twenty percent of the population who don’t allergically react to poison ivy or poison oak or sumac. Most people break out in nasty blisters and rash for a week or two, but Monica was safe from that boy, considering where she was standing. When she came home and told me, I grabbed a pail, and we went after those blueberries. It was a fine, pleasant day of mountain harvest and talk. Our family has a deep appreciation for natural things. I asked her not to tell Daddy or Mama.
Back when I was ten, attending our kinfolk’s annual July 4th potluck reunion, a cousin thought he was funny, dosing me with homemade itching powder. Don’t know what’s in real itching powder, but that fiberglass insulation sure did the dirty trick. He dropped a pinch down the back of my shirt: glass shards and fibers embedded in my skin, made me itchy-wild. I dotted his eye at the time, but now I’m grateful, inspired. Because sun-drying poison ivy leaves and crushing ‘em up makes hilarious itching powder. Plus, it’s more earth-friendly.
I caught Anders the next Monday at Vacation Bible School during crafts. We were making popsicle stick frames around non-crucifixion pictures of Jesus. I behaved all morning, acting turkey-dumb and content to stare at the multi-room’s plastered ceiling swirls. Anders sly-checked me a few times; I studied him aslant when he looked at my sister’s empty seat. Finally, he asked to be excused, needed the bathroom. I got up, wandered around inspecting everybody’s wall-decoration of Christ Almighty.
Anders brushed away the odd covering of dust at his workplace when he returned. Bible school’s craft space is semi-hot, uses weak fans for cooling; Anders wiped at tiny drops of perspiration on his upper lip, over his eyebrows.
Monica came back to VBS after missing only the one day—with no worries, enjoying our little secret. She watched me repeat the light sprinkle process when Anders returned a week later—finally past the worst of it, he was game again, with pink flowers of calamine lotion still dotting him in spots.
Somehow Anders hit another bad patch, and that poor boy ended missing out on the whole Jesus-Loves-Me summer.
All of that was about as funny as my cousin and his makeshift itching powder. But it helped my sister feel a shade more secure, and both of my parents made it through a few blueberry pies without thoughts of homicide ruining the taste of summer.
I don’t know how hard this ninth-grade school year is gonna be, but Willie Crenshaw, who also hates Anders, leaned over in English class yesterday, informing me, like a proper friend. Anders had been getting laughs and applause while locker-room broadcasting: he thinks of my sister whenever he’s choking his chicken. It was raining yesterday. I walked out of class, stormed outside, tilted my head back, letting water drill straight down into my heated face, my open mouth.
