Our Neighborhood: A Triptych
Candace Hartsuyker

Our Fathers

Our fathers with their creased pants and outspread legs, the stiff, starched collars of their dress shirts, the musky scent of cologne, hair gel and spent cigarettes emanating from their bodies. Their delicate eyelashes. The way their faces were always shadowed in stubble. The fine bones of their wrists in contrast to the veins bulging from their upturned forearms. The weary way they’d pass a hand across their faces after a long day at work. How as soon as they got home, they’d carelessly unbuckle their belts and leave them like shed snakeskin on the carpeted floor. The way their bodies always gave off heat and took up space. How even when they whispered, the echo of their voices was a symphony that was low and rich and lasting. 

Our Mothers

Our mothers with their delicate hands and tapering fingers. Their fine-boned faces and silky clouds of hair. The way they took up less space than they should, like cats scrunching themselves into boxes, accordion style, then springing out again. Their girlish high-pitched laughter in contrast to their soft, uncertain voices. The sultry way they’d lie on the couch in the living room, one leg bent at the knee, the other foot trailing the floor. Their swaying hips and small, uneven footsteps. Their pouty, blood-bitten lips. How their necks would flush when they didn’t get their way. How sometimes, even when they were smiling and exposing rows of pearly teeth, their eyes said something else. One heel tapping the floor, they’d wait for you to guess what they were mad about and then cry when you’d say you didn’t know. Figuring out what they wanted was like being given a deck of shuffled cards and then being asked to guess what order they should go in.

Us

We were wild and careless then, all lined up in swim trunks and swimsuits in the sticky summer heat. We jumped onto the floating duck raft, some of us trailing a finger in the pool, which was cold as the opened door of a refrigerator, others dipping their toes in the water. We were pressed close together, flesh against flesh: friend, enemy, brother, sister and crush, when someone screamed because something soft brushed against their leg. 
Just skin, one of us said, and then we were talking about how babies were made, and someone said babies came out of your belly button, but only if you were a girl, and others said that wasn’t true, and another said no, there’s a hole, and the one who was always quiet thought about digging holes and caves and wombs, and then someone overturned the raft, and we all shoved against each other, gasping for breath, and that was the summer we were all seven years old, still called little man and little miss by our parents, and maybe if we’d known this would be the last summer we were all together, before one of us was kidnapped, and the other dead, and the other gone to live a million miles away, instead of lying on our towels in the sun, sucking Cherry, Orange and Lime popsicles, we would have splashed each other in that pool and held onto the feeling of what it was like the summer we thought we owned the world.

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Candace Hartsuyker has an M.F.A in Creative Writing from McNeese State University and reads for PANK. She has been published in No Contact, Maudlin House, Milk Candy Review, Cheap Pop, Okay Donkey and elsewhere.

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