The Vacant Lot

Our house is the thinnest on Teeple street. I know this because I’ve walked up and down both sides of the street, inspecting the width of the other houses, and I can safely say, ours is by far the thinnest. To the left of our skinny terrace is a squat, old weatherboard house, rumoured among the neighbourhood kids to be occupied by a witch. Some of them call her witchy-poo, but I don’t because I don’t like name calling. She has silver wind chimes hanging on her front porch and it is said that whenever they chime, she is waking up from a nap.

On the other side of us is a vacant lot. It’s gone unsold for years and has become overgrown with weeds and grass. Mum told me that one day, the original owner walked out of it and never returned. He left everything as it was, even a plate of bacon and eggs on the breakfast table, untouched. I never understood how anyone could leave their home on an empty stomach. Eventually, the home was bulldozed.

Our neighbourhood has a perfectly decent park, one with play equipment and freshly mowed grass but my younger brother Joe and I prefer to play in the vacant lot. Mum hates this idea because we seldom wear shoes and she frets over needles and shards of glass. But whenever she is distracted, which is most of the time, we crawl through the broken slats in our backyard fence and into our playground.

The vacant lot is full of nut grass that has grown to our waists and causes red bumps all over our legs. So Joe and I are going to pull up as many weeds as we can.

We arrive with bin liners and gloves, roll our shirts up to our elbows and begin digging our fists into the dirt, grabbing the weeds by the roots.

After an hour, we’re both drenched in sweat and covered in dirt and grass stains, but we’ve made significant progress. Then I see it: a single marigold flower that has grown against the odds. It’s gold like honey with curled petals that coil around like a corkscrew. When Joe leans forward to pull it out, I stop him. Mum had warned me that weeds were fine but we should never pluck a flower.

After pulling another decent amount of weeds and long grass, we lie down and stare up at the sky allowing the sun to toast our bodies, front and back. I inspect the fine blonde hairs on my arms and count every freckle and bruise on my body. I watch insects crawl up sticks of grass and blow dandelion heads along the breeze. Time stands still in the vacant lot.

I stand and brush the dirt from the backs of my knees. We still have work to do. I instruct Joe to attend to the weeds again while I head back home to get provisions. I go into the kitchen to get icy pops from the freezer. Mum is standing at the sink furiously scrubbing last night’s lasagna tin. She doesn’t seem to notice me coming in. She has black marks under her eyes from where her make-up has smeared. She seems so tired.

“You’re welcome to lie in the vacant lot for a bit. Joe and I can make ourselves scarce,” I offer generously, removing the wrapper from my icy pole.

Mum shakes her head. “I’m far too busy. Once you become a grown up, you don’t get time to do things like that.”

I shrug and leave her to finish the dishes. Joe and I lie down on the grass and eat our icy-poles. We spot a tiny mouse dart from one side of the vacant lot to the other, but it vanishes before we can catch it. The icy-poles turn our teeth and tongues bright blue.

We find an old discarded tennis ball and begin a game of handball against the side of our house. Soon, a group of neighbourhood kids come over from the park.

“We own this vacant lot,” I announce. “You can come here but don’t forget it’s ours.”

“Did you buy it?” Steven, who lives in the house at the end of the street, asks, pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger.

“No, it's finders keepers.”

He frowns and I sense he feels it unfair, but he doesn’t argue. To ensure my message is clear, I run inside and get some blue chalk then write on the pavement in front of the vacant lot.

“This vacant lot belongs to Kerry and Joe. KEEP OUT TRESPASSERS.” I add an arrow sign pointing to the vacant lot to avoid confusion.

Outwardly, I feign irritation that the neighbourhood kids have turned up but secretly I’m pleased. It opens up many opportunities for games and naturally, being the oldest, I’ll be in charge.

We begin a game of cops and robbers but I pause it so I can run inside for a bathroom break. I find Mum slumped on the bathroom tiles, sobbing. Snot streams from her nose and dribbles down her lips and strands of hair get caught in the crossfire, but she doesn’t seem to care.

When I ask her what’s wrong, she tells me one of her close friends has died from something called suicide. I don’t know what suicide is but mum tells me she was sick for some time.

“What made her sick?” I ask.

“Adult problems. You wouldn’t understand,” Mum says and dismisses me.

I return to the game but can’t enjoy it as much as I did before. I’m the oldest in the group by two years. Next year, I will be in high school. Soon, an adult myself.

The following day I arrive home from school and discover a group of men wearing bright yellow vests standing on our vacant lot. They have thick boots on and dig their heels into the ground, flattening the grass. They throw buckets of water across the chalk on the pavement. I watch as my name runs down the concrete and into the gutter.

I race inside and ask mum who they are. She tells me the vacant lot has finally sold.

My eyes burn as I blink back tears.

“But it’s ours. It belongs to us. They didn’t even ask,” I say.

“You’ll be in high school next year and will have lots of homework to do. You can’t have thought you’d stay playing in the vacant lot forever?” my mum responds.

Why not, I think. I like how things are. I don’t want them to ever change. And most of all, I don’t want to change.

When I go to bed, I can’t sleep. I lie awake ruminating over how unfair it is that they can steal my vacant lot from me. I get out of bed and creep outside to crawl through the slats in the back fence.

The builders haven’t done anything so far, other than leave their rubbish all over the place. I search in the darkness for the marigold flower. Even in the dim light, it glows. I pull it gently from the dirt and squeeze back through the hole in the fence. Back in my bedroom, I slide the marigold between one of my books. Somewhere nobody will ever find it, and it will always be safe.

A week goes by and the vacant lot turns into a building site. The grass is covered by building supplies and detritus. Our once clean vacant lot has been turned into a dumping ground. Joe and Mum can’t understand why it is affecting me so much.

My eleventh birthday rolls by and Mum makes us my favourite breakfast, blueberry pancakes with cream cheese. We do presents in the backyard and I notice that Mum has fixed the broken slats in the back fence. Joe gets me a deck of cards and Mum gets me a backpack that fits my textbooks for high school. Then, she gives me another present. Inside is a box of sanitary pads. She says I need to be “prepared for when my body changes”, and smiles, as if it’s something special …. something to look forward to.

I let the box fall from my hands and run up to my bedroom. She doesn’t understand why I can’t stop crying. How could she? She’s an adult. She’ll never understand. And soon, I’ll be one too.