Tara Baldridge
How I Love My Neighbor
This is how well I know you.
It is in my nature to search for you. And I find you – on the internet – two blocks down, three blocks east. You live with your grandmother. I know because I talk to the gray-haired lady in the cape cod five doors down and to the right of where you live.
Your neighbor smirks when she tells me how your grandmother clutches the rosary hanging from her neck and drags her eyes to the cracked concrete when she comes across brightly colored paper copies of your image. Sometimes you are stapled to the sturdy maple tree on the corner or framed by a border of black tape on a faded green light post, sometimes stuffed face down underneath a windshield wiper.
I look at the wrinkled flyer your neighbor passes me, grip it in both hands so the paper stays taut against the wind. I recognize your face, can recreate each crevice from clay, mud, air. One word stands out – emblazoned above the grainy shot. Redeemed, it says. But not a statement. A question mark makes an umbrella over the ink.
Yes, I know my own handwriting.
There are ways in which I think I can shut the door on your existence. I do not choose those. I am the snake, charmed by the melody of your admitted wrongs when all I have known is silence. Your tune calls to me and I follow you, I study you, I trail you with the studied patience I learned from my father.
One day you will see me. You will ache to caress my slippery skin. I prepare myself.
Ma’am, a six-foot fence is normal, explains the teenager in the hardware store. He shakes his head when he talks to me, sandy blond bangs waving from the air he blows though his lips while he awaits my decision. I insist on eight feet of smooth vinyl with a triangular edged top. I add the inches to hold the merriment of my children from strangers, confine giggles and horseplay to an unrealized vision. A train that never comes around the mountain. It does not stop you.
I lean against the red dusted brick of my home and watch your fingers, nails bitten and ragged, curve over the top of a pointed tip, they grip, pull and finally, the tight brown curls, sun creased forehead and your eyes (wide eyed without innocence) consider the possibilities held in my lawn. Is it the short breath of air that inadvertently leaks out as I move to attention, or the wave of distaste gurgling my stomach that makes you turn to see me?
Across the distance, I watch your eyes grow into glass globes – dilated pupils in the shape of some city’s bronze cast tourist landmark – if I shake you, water will fall and collect in little pools of unwanted glitter upon your face, and, if I were more maudlin, I would see the memory of my own tears reflected there.
I taught myself not to cry at the age of nine. Turned off the tap in my head of wetness behind my lashes. By then I knew tears were reserved for those who are tricked by heart shaped birthday cakes and baskets from the Easter Bunny. Those who survive don’t have time for crying.
When you come into my house, I show you my collection of pictures: me on a blanket, me on a sandy beach, me on my father’s lap. This image speaks to you through its protective layer of crinkled plastic. In the picture, my father’s hand is soft against the plaid fabric at my back, his other hand cups the ball of my knee. This one, this photo, entwines our memories. You are the only one to notice how small I can become.
We sit shoulder to shoulder on the worn sofa of my childhood. I hear the echo of your heart beating against your chest. It reminds me of my father’s. You remind me of my father, in all the ways I wish I could forget, all the ways I need to remember. I watch your fingers trace the contours of my past within the pages of my family album. You think we are soul mates, lean in to smell the citrus in my hair, and I remember how to make my self disappear.
I offer you brownies of finely ground glass and white chocolate chips, tea laced with eye drops and clover honey. You devour them, licking the chocolate from the depths of your nails, the same way in which your presence consumes my reason. I place a red leather-bound book next to your cup, the album I found in the bottom drawer of my father’s desk.
This is how well I know you.
Tara Baldridge
Tara Baldridge is a co-founder of Varia, a literary services company devoted to amplifying minority voices in literature. Her scope of work includes editing, book development, and ghostwriting, along with traditional retail sales. A graduate of the MFA program at Roosevelt University, Tara’s work has been presented at the Humanities: Power and the Public Conference and published in Sugar Mule Literary Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, and The Heartland Review. She is also a Kimbilio Fellow. Tara lives and writes in Chicago, but her southern roots are easily identifiable