If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

bangs that our mothers’ curl under with a round brush and then feather like a plume, dousing our whole heads with aerosol hairspray until our bangs are stiff as peacocks. The boys have it worse. In the winter, they get their hair cut with bowls over their heads. In the summer, the mothers shave them clean. The rattails, though, are year-round.
    “Ain’t nobody touching my rattail,” I heard Little Bennysay to Eric one day, a camouflage hunter’s cap pulled down over his eyes.
    “You have a rat ?” Eric said.
    “Rat tail , not rat’s tail , dummy,” he told him, yanking on my brother’s hair so hard his head snapped back and he started to cry.
    Little Benny is a bully, but Eric is a wuss. For years, he will befriend boys that make him cry. He is skinny and wimpy and bighearted and everything makes him cry. Dead squirrels make him cry. Yelling makes him cry. Sick people make him cry. I make him cry.
    He is the only person I can control, which is one reason I love him best.
    He turned to look at me in that second before the tears fell while Little Benny took off for the safety of his own backyard. His wrinkly little face broke my heart. I wanted to hug him and wipe away his tears, like our mother would.
    “Suck it up,” I said instead. I was practicing my pop-a-wheelie. “I can’t do everything, for christsake and goddamnit.”
    Mom’s working tonight, so Dad will make our favorite chicken pot pie from the box and we’ll sit out back and count lightning bugs while he smokes. He won’t have change for the ice cream truck so we don’t bother asking. Eric doesn’t like peas, so he flicks them into the grass one at a time. The neighbor’s cat slinks out from under the porch and swipes at them with her paws until one lands on her neck and she goes crazy and takes off.
    “I like peas,” Eric insists, swinging his legs. “I just don’t like to eat them.”
    Dad laughs so hard that I’m confused. He takes a long sip and wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, just like he’s not supposed to.
    “That’s funny,” I say.
    “What is?” says Eric, stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork.
    Dad is still laughing. His eyes are pink and watery. He slips off his work boots and stretches his long toes.
    “That crazy cat,” I say, shaking my head. “What a looney tune.”
    The backyard is getting dark. I eye a fat robin pecking the ground suspiciously and take note of the flying stars, the ones that earned their wings. I watch Dad go drowsy and I feel myself shrinking, small as an ant.
    “Cowabunga!” Eric calls, launching another pea onto the grass.
    “Let’s say you forgot to wear underwear but I don’t have any to lend you,” Charlene says.
    Her breath smells like candy and her hair smells like a swimming pool. My toes tingle and I start to squirm again, afraid that one of our brothers will look in the window and spot us here, skin to skin. This is Charlene’s favorite game, and I like it because it makes her happy. I can’t say why, but I think we’d be in trouble if our moms found us here, like when they found the boys looking at Playboys down by the creek. Getting introuble makes me feel like a squashed bug. I cry out for Mom to forgive me, please forgive me , even though all that crying only makes her madder, and don’t I know that by now?
    “Do you want me to kiss it?” Charlene asks.
    I nod and she pulls down my pants and dryly kisses the round place between my legs. A single kiss. I go dizzy. I want to cry and ride my bike as fast as I can down a big hill at the same time. “There,” she says, “now your turn.” I kiss her in the same way in the same place, feeling frozen as a Popsicle, feeling the curtains fall over my back.
    Years later, years during which we will move many towns apart and grow big and graduate from separate high schools and leave home, I will see Little Benny’s picture on the news and learn how he killed a girl while driving drunk in the wrong lane, going in