A Phantom Aftertaste

July, 2033

I raked my eyes monotonously over the newspaper next to the coffee shop’s counter, trying my best to avoid eye contact with the barista. It was a part of my routine, to seem interested in the news while the old Mexican man messed up my order. As my attention begged to move on to a quick scroll through my phone, the blank, staring face on the front page distracted me. The black and yellowed-white of the print made his blackheads stand out, pinpoints to connect, each one a dot from my past calling out to me.

July, 2009

Sweat. Sweat on my lip. Sweat soaking the armpits of my purple hand-me-down T-shirt. Sweat darkening the back of my gray cotton shorts in an impolite line. Sweat gathering on the bridge of Celeste’s nose as her pink five-dollar reading glasses slowly slipped, wanting nothing more than to jump from her face and break themselves on her garage-sale Sketchers.

On particularly hot days like those, hotter than acceptable, we’d sit on the makeshift stoop of my trailer. Momma kept one fan inside the kitchen to stir around stale air and another propped lazily against the screen door to try and push some of the hot air out. The air, balmy and stifling, was so hard with heat that breathing hurt your chest.

That day, I’d resigned myself to sitting by Celeste as she breathed heavily in and out, the weak fan threatening to blow her away. She was a collection of smoothly pressed dust, piled up next to me on my doorstep, waiting for a breeze to form in the thick air of southern Missouri and spread her into nothing.

“It’s hot,” Celeste said quietly. She twiddled a thin, greasy piece of blond hair, pressed together with sweat and dirt. From the corner of my eye, I saw her glasses slide down her nose.

“Are there any pears ready yet, you think?” she offered.

“No. Too early.” I responded.

“Yeah,” she sighed after a pause. We lapsed back into the humid silence.

The lawn directly across from us was decorated with spare car parts, as if the owner hoped that one day enough parts would pile up and arrange themselves into a functional rust bucket. Cats darted out from under the loose trailer skirt. Tufts of yellow brush sprouted from tipped over, cracked pots by the step ladder that was used as stairs.

As trashy as my neighbor’s trailer was, its yard had one redeeming quality; amidst the sea of swaying, seedy grass stood a lone pear tree. In the late summer and early fall, we’d sneak over and pull down the small, roundish fruits from low-hanging branches and stick them in our hoodies before scampering away. The trick was to pick them young, before their skin got too bloated and bruised and stained our pockets.

Celeste and I made a game of stepping over the tree’s fallen soldiers to pick the pears still worth eating. If we happened to step on a rotten one on our dash over, we’d scream in a childish release of disgust and mirth. We’d learned quickly from that mistake, as the owner didn’t take kindly to the noise or to little girls stealing his pears (whether he ate them or not).

The door to the trailer in question creaked open as if it knew I was contemplating stealing from the forbidden tree. Out popped a large, swollen foot. Not the owner’s foot, it wasn’t hairy enough to be his, but the smooth, dirty foot of his son.

As he stepped out, the door banged shut with a piercing echo over the empty plain, bouncing from one metal husk to the next. That day in early July, he was wearing too-tight jeans and a sweat-stained wife beater that cased him like a hot summer sausage. The skin beneath his eyes puffed out with boredom, fatigue, and a faint yellowing bruise. Even then, he had startlingly dark blackheads just beginning to bud over his cheeks and nose, sprawling out across his sallow face like sporadic periods on a page.

The first thing that came to my mind was, Where is his eye patch?

He descended the other two steps, and we heard the grass crunch between his filthy toes as he stood facing us, not saying a word. His eyes drifted up to the fan blowing steadily behind us, then seemed to catch the slight rustle of Celeste’s hair.

He’d had an eye patch for as long as I’d known him; it was the only reason he didn’t get the shit beaten out of him in elementary school. No matter how annoying a kid was, you can’t hit a cripple. But that was in elementary school. This year, we were starting middle school.

And his eye patch was gone.

“His eye patch is gone,” Celeste whispered, echoing my thoughts. He took a step closer, and I felt her hunch shyly next to me. She pushed up her glasses, and as I glanced at her, I saw his hulking body reflected in the scratched lenses.

She had said “His eye patch is gone.” But through the heat and the frantic, spreading boredom in my chest, all I heard her say was fair game. A smile pulled at the edges of my chapped lips, and words rolled from my dry tongue with an uncommonly fluid drip.

“If your clothes get any tighter, you’re gonna pop your casing, Beefstick.”

May, 2012

The sweat between my fingers made gripping my pencil difficult. My hand slid up and down as I drew trees and dogs and smiley faces in the margins of my math test. I’d just finished my last exam of eighth grade, but I wasn’t ready to go home yet. No, not yet. Once I got there, I’d have to keep packing my things into boxes for our move across town.

The corner of my eye caught Beefstick shifting, the bulging seat of his jeans squeaking roughly against the sweaty plastic desk chair beneath him as he readjusted his crotch. His gaping butt crack was glaring enough to pull my interest away from my doodles.

But there’s only so long that a crime scene as gory as Beefstick’s ass cavern could keep my attention without turning my stomach. Before my eyes wandered away, I took time to note the smattering degrees of healing bruises on his arms.

I’d called him “Beefstick” for the first time a couple of years ago around Celeste, but it’d found its way into school. I’d started the nickname, but even without the nickname, he’d have gotten beaten up anyway. He’d sealed his fate when he’d decided to get fatter and lose the eye patch. Besides, not all of the bruises came from the boys at school if the shouting from the trailer next door meant anything at all.

“Five more minutes,” our teacher announced. I liked the color of that dress she always wore, a crisp pink. She didn’t have to take her own final exam, it was true, but she was not exempt from the heat it seemed. Two dark semi circles curved beneath her breasts, smiling out at all of us as we waited for the final bell to ring.

Tommy, a sun-darkened boy sitting next to me, careened to the side, dipping into a wide, after-test stretch. He kept leaning until his face hung directly over Beefstick’s open backpack. A trail of dark spit and a clump of chewed meat ran from between Tommy’s lips, bouncing up and down for a moment before plunking softly on Beefstick’s tattered English book.

Tommy glanced at me over his shoulder quickly and raised his eyebrows. A glow built inside of me, so I slipped him a smile back before he turned away. Tommy crinkled a yellow Slim Jim wrapper into his pocket.

I came up with that nickname. Beefstick. Three years ago on a day hotter than this one. You would have loved it, Tommy. It was so funny.

Beefstick left when the bell rang without finishing his test. Before he’d made his way out of the room, a trail of juice had seeped through the book bag and started to run into his clothes. It tinged his pale amber polo shirt a murky brown, and when I saw him wear the shirt again, a clear stain remained.

April, 2016

It was so hot. I wished I’d just stayed home.

Mary’s cold fingers locked around my forearm. Her nails, lacquered with a purple so acidic that it was nearly pungent, dug into my skin to point me away from the dance floor and toward the bleachers. I limped next to her, the straps on my heels squeezing my ankles. As we settled, the metal benches bit my rear through the thin dress I’d forced myself into: a muted, pear yellow accented by the white flowers poked into my curls to make a halo.

Mary was chattering away about someone getting a b-jay in the hallway, but I found myself uninterested in what she had to say. I’d been distracted by the strange couple that had drifted through the gym doors, taking their seats across the dance floor of our “Under the Sea” themed prom.

When did Celeste and Beefstick get together?

They sat a foot away from each other, not touching. But from my place across the room, I felt his presence wrap around her, guarding her like a dog circling its territory.

Celeste shook in the stiff winds of the two giant fans in the corners of the room, her trembles disturbing the fabric of her light blue, second-hand prom dress. She was as tiny as she’d always been, but a bit more put together than usual that night. It seemed as if she’d attempted to pull a comb through her thin tangles of blond hair.

There was a swell in her tummy, the beginning of a rolling wave that was sure to break her thin body before it passed. I sucked in my own gut, willing away the paranoia of a pregnancy scare. The lump looked strange on her; I hadn’t talked to her in forever, not since we’d moved across town four years ago.

The backs of my eyes were hot, though I wasn’t sure why exactly. She was a mermaid, wrapped in the blue of the sea, belly pregnant with the waves, her arms rippling with the dainty blue and deep purple of mottled bruises.

July, 2033

Beefstick’s face paired with the newspaper headline made me want to tremble, but I couldn’t summon a shiver even if I’d wanted to; my body was filled with the memory of stale, hot air. When I leaned down to read the print more clearly, my Ray Bans slipped down my nose, threatening to jump from my face and break on my department store flats.

He’d always been awful.

Hadn’t he?

My eyes traced the blackheads peppering his face like hundreds of tiny, accusing eyes.

The three were found dead in their residence Monday night…

I didn’t want to imagine Celeste like that, nor her two daughters, their school photos squeezed into a tight space between the article’s words.

Tessie, 17 (left) Carrie, 9 (right)

Instead, I pictured Celeste on prom night all those years ago, her belly full with the budding Tessie. The dark bruises on her arms blended her into the gym’s dancing lights and decorations, diluting her like a watercolor, letting her edges run and her future disappear. I tried to remember what it was like to be just children, to know no consequences, contributing to a young boy’s hateful spite by smiling and doing nothing at all. To sit in front of a weak fan on a trailer stoop just to feel the breeze on our sweat. Little girls with dirty hair and the phantom taste of pear on their tongues.