Bitter in the Mouth Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kelly heard about my new family, she asked me who would be Boo Radley. I shrugged and said he wasn’t kin. That was true, but it didn’t answer her question. Kelly never asked me who would be Dill because we told each other that we didn’t think about boys. Kelly knew that I liked saying this character’s name aloud, though. “Dill” was one of the rare words that was faithful to itself. “Dill” tasted of fresh dill, a bright grassy entryway leading into a room where something faintly medicinal had recently been stored. This happy coincidence of meaning and flavor, however, didn’t leave the word neutralized and without power. The word could still disrupt, dismay, or delight. In this instance, “Dill” was a promise ring. Inside its one syllable was a summer that would bring, along with the fireflies and the scuppernongs, a boy who would kiss me when my brother, Jem, wasn’t looking.
    As with the other milestones in our lives, Kelly was the first to know that we had reached one in the summer of ’79. In letter #394, written during this summer before the sixth grade, when we were both freshly eleven, Kelly told me that I had a crush on Dill, which was OK by her, because she had a crush on Wade Harris, whom she pointed out was a “real” boy. This letter was significant for reasons related and unrelated to the idea of physical attraction. It was the first time that Kelly would use the attack-retreat-attack instinct against me. That instinct (as well as the recognition of it) lay dormant in a girl’s body until hormones gave it a good, permanent kick in the ass.
attack: weaken opponent
by identifying an
embarassing truth;
retreat: profess in a casual
way that the truth
wasn’t really an issue
after all; and
attack: deliver in the fewest
possible words the
real reason for putting
the sentence on paper.
    Kelly, in other words, had called dibs on Wade Harris.
    The real boy lived in the house one over from mine, identical except for the color, his a faded-T-shirt red. The real boy chipped a front tooth in my backyard, going headfirst down the slide. The real boy held my hands from second to fourth grade during the weekly square dances (held during gym class and considered by Boiling Springs Elementary to be both physical education and music appreciation). Before the caller’s voice on the scratchy, banjo-laden record could tell us to do-si-do, shoot the star, and daisy chain, there was Coach Dewey’s voice taking attendance.
    “Hammerick DrPepper , Linda mint .”
    “Here hardboiledegg .”
    “Harris pecan , Wade orangesherbet .”
    “Here hardboiledegg.”
    Alphabetical order was the same as fate at Boiling Springs Elementary. Within its static student body, Harris always followed Hammerick, and Harris always danced with Hammerick (at least until fifth grade, when the principal no longer thought it was a good idea to provide boys and girls with weekly opportunities to touch one another).
    Wade, the orange sherbet boy, was now off limits to me.
    This too was a function of hormones. This understanding between two best friends who had allowed boys into their lives and into their letters. Wade was now Kelly’s, a part of her sentimental property, a W to add to her K . I was left with Dill, a boy whose full fictional name was Charles Baker Harris. According to his creator, he was from the Mississippi branch of the Harris family. Kelly suggested that we think of Dill and Wade as cousins.
    “No,” I wrote back in letter #395. “They’re twins.”
    If writing the letter now, I would add that all eleven-year-old boys are imagined. Or at least their souls are. Eleven-year-old girls construct them out of grinning school photos, Popsicle sticks, and a couple of fallen eyelashes (longer than our own lashes because the males of every species are showoffs).
    But back then “they’re twins” only meant that I wanted Kelly to share. One set of fraternal twins for two best friends. Kelly wrote back and agreed. Why