jelly beans and gummy bears

Kylie loves jellybeans, the red and orange ones. Says they’re the sweetest. I prefer gummy bears, the green ones. I like the taste of green. Yesterday after school we spread out a tablecloth on the large table in the back porch and made houses with our goodies. For the first time, she borrowed some of my green gummies to finish her chimney and front door. She was really inspired and made the biggest house ever. “One day I’m gonna have a house like this one. I’m gonna call it The Rainbow Mansion!” And then she looked at my house and said, “You’re always makin’ green houses. Who wants to live in a green house? That is sooo ugly!” And she squeezed her eyes and wrinkled her nose so that she ended up making a face that was much uglier than the ugly she said my house was. I looked into her shriveled blue eyes. “My bears will eat your beans,” I whispered in my serious voice. And I must have had a scary face because that’s when she looked at me like she had just peed her pants.

Broken Shells

Dad bought a house near the ocean so we could try to live happily without mom. She died when I was five. Since then, sand and seashells became my toys. When I was seven, I got tired of building sandcastles and started collecting seashells -- but only the perfect, flawless ones. I hated broken seashells. Somehow they reminded me of mom: The part of my life that was missing.  Every day I collected shells of so many beautiful shapes and colors. Soon, my bedroom turned into a shrine. Seashells poured over my drawer, night tables, and windowsill. Sometimes, on the rug, I would draw pictures with the smaller ones. On rainy days, I use to imagine my bedroom in the bottom of the ocean, a place where only perfect shells were kept; the ones that were never washed to shore, broken on its rocks and corals, or smashed against its cliffs; The ones that never risked their lives to feel the sunshine dry their soul. My shells were protected. They would never face such torture. One day I dreamt of mom. She was showing me a broken shell. “Take this,” she said. “It’s broken,” I told her. Then she smiled, “No it isn’t, the rest is with me.” The next day I gathered all my shells and scattered them on the shore and into the ocean.  After that day I only collected broken ones. I knew mom was above the ocean breaking shells for me to pick up. 

The space between

Summer mosquitoes always found succulent skin to poke under papa's porch. Even with the lights turned off, and Jimmy's cigarette smoke hole-punching the air, they would dance around lazy eyes like distracting shadows and slumberous finger puppets. Sometimes a slap would pierce the silence, and under the misty moonlight, a shade of smeared blood exposed the victorious murderer, who smiled self-satisfied at his impeccable aim.

Now and then, Grandpa would try to catch one with his parachute hands, thinking he had squashed it into his sweaty palms. Triumphantly, he would open his fingers, only to see the bloodsucker fly dizzily into the free air.

Grandma couldn't see well, but we knew when she felt them, "Moosekitos,  moosekitos," she would whisper, shaking one off her knee, another off her chin. But she would never kill them, or curse their unwelcomed presence, for bad luck would torment the family.

            Betty liked to sing to them. “The music soothes their desire to attack”, she would say. I felt the more she sang the more mosquitos seemed to be hovering around us with a greater craving for our blood.

            Night after night, during those scorching summers, we would summon ourselves to their torture; the price we paid for sitting outside gazing at the enchanted northern lights that stretched above us like woven carpets of stars.

In the morning, under the first rays of daylight, the red moles emerged; unmasked, and unashamed. A nuisance we never invited, invaded our bodies transforming our fingernails into weapons.