The Girl Next Door

The girl next door was a good 6 years older than me. In childhood years that’s an entire school building. Completely different worlds. Rarely crossing paths. Except in the summer. When our parents gather us all into the shared yard for a cookout. If there’s an occasion, I don’t recall it. Maybe it was 4th of July. Or a Friday. Or over 90 degrees too many days in a row. Who can say?

We’d swim all day. Our skin taut from the sun, nobody wore sunscreen in the 90’s. We welcomed the cooler evenings. Especially the ones with the rusty coffee can filled with water for burnt out sprinklers. We’d burn the fireworks down to our fingertips, squealing as the sparks got closer and closer to catching us.

Samantha was a budding teenager and too cool for sparklers. But the boys (and most of the men) took notice when she cooled herself with a popsicle or emerged from the pool after a quick dip. She never lingered like the rest of us. We swam until our fingers and toes pruned; the adults threatening to jump in after us if we didn’t GET OUT. Samantha never seemed to take notice of them staring after her, in hindsight maybe that’s why she’d quickly cover herself. Her t-shirt clinging to her melon sized breasts. Stretching across her hips and barely covering her bottoms.

         She’d flip her head upside down and tie her long hair into a messy bun. She was ahead of her time, in that way. Her blue eyes pierced right through me. She wasn’t unkind, but I didn’t dare speak a word to her unless I was certain she wanted to hear it. For a teenager she seemed exceptionally busy, always something to do, somewhere to be, a chore to be completed. When she did speak, it was passionately. I don’t think I ever heard her speak about anything with a lukewarm expression. She was an all or nothing kinda girl. She volunteered for the school television station. Now, I’m not mincing words when I say she was drop-dead gorgeous. She easily could have been a ringer for Gia or a younger Brooke Shields. So, I found it odd that she worked behind the camera. She had zero interest in being the face on the screen. She didn’t want to be the center of attention.

         I know now, that was the result of having been on the receiving end of unwanted attention. She’d told her mother that her stepfather was a little too hands on. She’d begged her to leave him. I’m not sure of the exact timing. What I do know is that whatever action her mother took, it had been too little too late.

         I have a gnawing feeling that he died before they moved next door. But no evidence to back that up. Except to say, if she had killed him, I wouldn’t blame her. Her eyes are ice blue, matched only by the cold shoulder she gives to the neighborhood boys. She gets very used to turning everyone away. I watch her dismiss them all. Even still I hear the rumors. They use words like loose and easy. I hear her mother at night sometimes, when the beer has been flowing all day, yelling over the country station to be heard. Her mother’s words are worse. Whore. Tramp. Asking for it.

I’m eight or nine or ten. I don’t really know what these words mean. But I understand the tone behind them. I know they are not good words. They are not meant to convey love or respect or safety. I know that I don’t want to be called these words. I wonder if every girl who grows up pretty must be subjected to this type of scrutiny. I wonder if my own mother will use these words against me. Will use my figure as a weapon to do harm to my sense of self. Who needs knives and guns when one can simply be made to feel bad for existing.

Samantha does the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry. She does well enough in school, far as I can tell. I’m smart for my age. That’s what the adults all say. I’m smarter than most of them, that is. But I can carry on a conversation with Samantha without getting bored. So, she must be smart enough anyway. I don’t know when she’d have the time to do the things she’s accused of.

I’m an only child. But my neighbors are as close to siblings and cousins as I have. Theres a camaraderie that comes with overhearing the most intimate parts of someone else’s life. When you’ve heard their parents screaming about divorce or come outside to escape the sounds of them “making up”. There are memories and experiences that you share with a handful of people. Like that time someone got drunk and shot off a gun for fun. Or the night someone’s uncle set fire to their own car for the insurance money.

I watched Samantha grow into her own. She taught me how to apply my makeup. And I saw her turn down an NHL hockey player, only to end up pregnant to some deadbeat 3 months later. Pregnant at 16. Long before MTV made it cool. Life is funny that way. If you keep at it long enough, you can convince a person they’re everything they never wanted to be.