Unspooling the Light

L.A Robbins

Description

This engaging and highly original collection brings bright strands of meaning to the puzzles of contemporary life. In these stories L.A. Robbins addresses themes of transience, identity, gender and belonging. Set in the UK, US, Europe and the Far East, these tales reflect insights gleaned from the author's experiences in those places.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839784644
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unspooling the Light
stories
L.A. Robbins


Unspooling the Light
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com [e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-839784-64-4
Copyright © L. A. Robbins, 2022
The moral right of L. A. Robbins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
http://www.robbinsskyward.com
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


With love to
Callan F Saffell
Betsy R Saffell
Harvey F Robbins


1. Being good
‘I am going to kiss you so hard you’ll never forget it,’ Rod announces as I leave his yard to go home for dinner. I smile uncertainly because I want to be polite and because Melanie and a few other kids have heard this pronouncement and because I don’t know if I want to be kissed.
Rod Sanders is oldest and tallest of the three boys and two giraffe-high parents in his family. His hair curls at the back and a few golden corkscrews dangle over deep-set blue eyes. When he smiles his braces glint above a strong jaw. With his wide shoulders and narrow hips he could be a male model or a young Charlton Heston. At dinnertime Mrs. Sanders always stands at the back door, arms akimbo on her broomstick body, her hair, a spray-gold helmet above an aquiline nose: Charlton Heston in a wig.
It’s fat John from up the road who introduces the idea of a kiss. He joins us some days, though I am happier when he doesn’t. John always finds a way of making mischief. He waves his arms and shouts ‘boo!’ when we walk across the makeshift balance beam and then derides whoever who falls off. John himself doesn’t attempt this feat. Or he screams that Melanie and I have cooties ‘like all gir-els’… he morphs the word into two sneered syllables. Nix on playing tag with us because if we touch a boy, cooties could jump on him and infest his hair and make him itch. John doesn’t run so tag isn’t his sport anyway. Dad says there’s no such thing as cooties but I lean close to the bathroom mirror every once in a while, parting my hair to look for creepy crawlies.
On this day John has come chugging down the hill from his house. He stands, chest heaving, cheeks, red apples, pudgy fingers wiggling on his blob arms. We are cross-legged on the grass, holding dog-eared cards; Rod is teaching us to play Hearts. John stands over us, demonstrating a real movie kiss… he saw it, live, when he was waiting for the school bus. I already know what a kiss is, of course, but the idea of mouth mushing makes me squirm. I climb trees and paralyse frogs by stroking their stomachs and I don’t flinch when Peter’s pet tarantula places its hairy appendages on my palm, one after the other. The Maidenform trainer bra that Mom bought lies in my dresser drawer, bristling with price tags.
‘It was like this,’ John says. We look up from our cards and he has crossed his arms. Then he whirls around with his back to us, and his stubby hands slide up and down on his swaying, blimp torso. His sneakers take turns lifting off the grass and ‘mmmmmmm’ is the sound as his head rocks slowly back and forth on his thick neck.
Yuck. I look back at my hand - I have the Queen of Spades so need to collect all the hearts as surreptitiously as possible - but something makes me look up again. Rod is staring at me and I know he is thinking about movie kisses and for a moment my heart is bigger than the ones I need to collect… ba bump ba bump ba bump… and then I swallow and put down a ten of hearts to see what I can rein in.
In a few minutes Mrs Sanders unlatches the screen door; she pokes her head out and her long fingers tap on the door frame like the forelegs of a hungry praying mantis. I straighten up. Her flat Midwestern voice calls to the beanpole son that’s nearest: ‘Peter, tell your brothers to come wash up for supper.’ She retracts her head and fingers before the door thwacks shut. We throw our cards in a pile and I get up, dusting my shorts. Melanie and I start to head out of the yard. That’s when Rod says it and it comes out all in a rush, his eyes, hard and narrow, and his voice, the same: ‘I’m going to kiss you so hard… ’
In bed that night, I worry what this ‘kiss so hard’ is all about. The words don’t fit with my night time romantic ritual. I lay in my bed, wafting the see-through curtains this way and that. I am a singer in a gossamer robe that flutter-flows as I glide across the stage, one bejewelled wrist holding the microphone near my sumptuous lips. A tall, elegant black woman with enormous eyelashes and long, silky hair… and a deep, honey voice that spellbinds listeners. Never mind that really I am a pale, freckled, pigeon-toed adolescent with pointy breast buds and a second toe longer than the first. Which looks fine on Dad but not on me.
The next afternoon in the Sander’s yard, it’s as if nothing has been said. We are jumping rope and John is not there. ‘Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean; the waves rose higher, higher, higher and OVER!’ The rope arcs up and then scythes the grass. The little fingers that were fidgeting in my stomach have vanished. I practice my back walkover, which I can do on a hill but not on the flat. Then we start a game of tag. Rod has forgotten about the kiss and I am relieved and maybe a little disappointed but alas, too soon. As the sun filters pink through the chicken-wire fence Rod’s big man voice barks ‘OK’; we all look up and the fingers in my stomach start fidgeting again because he’s looking straight at me with that hard, narrow look.
‘C’mere,’ his pointer finger is hooking and flexing. My eyebrows meet and he jerks his head to indicate that I am to follow him around the back of the house. ‘And you,’ Rod uses the same finger to jab at our small group, some bent, hands on knees, some keeled over, chests rising and falling. ‘Stay put. We’ll be back in a tick.’ Ba bump Ba bump ba bump, I follow him, tripping over my feet and then, speeding up when he has rounded the corner and I can’t see his broad back. Part of me would rather be on the grass with the others and part of me feels that I have to follow him because I need to be polite and of course, I’m curious and anyway, it won’t last long, so let’s see.
I round the corner and Rod clamps my arm in the vice of his fingers and pulls me close and then, eyes blinking rapidly, he stands breathing. After a minute he shoves me so that I am against the rough brick wall of their house. In the movies they close their eyes, so I do. Nothing happens. I slit my eyes open and see the large bump in Rod’s throat going up and down, a turkey neck gobbling food. His musty sweat smell is near and now his braces are pressing into my lips. In the movies they open their mouths but his pressure is too strong; my sealed lips are caught between the metal cross-hatchings in his mouth and my own teeth. I squeeze my eyes closed harder and listen to the snorts of his long nose. Grinding into me with his mouth, the rest of his body, somewhere else. I don’t breathe at all, rather feel the stony wall behind me and wait for it to be over.
On the way home Melanie gives me a quizzical look and I say, ‘yeah, he did. It hurt and it took too long - like the dentist.’ I roll my bruised lips together gingerly, then let them roll out. Up between my ribs the air siphons out in a slow whoosh, like it did when I left Rod’s house. In the kitchen I do my chores and even some of Melanie’s. Not like in the movies or in the books. No soft, subtle undulations of warm lips on lips. No arms enfolding or body to body. No ‘mmmmmm’. More like the 15-page report I slaved over for Social Studies. I stayed up until midnight to finish the table of contents and paste in the pictures. I always complete homework on time, in neat, cursive handwriting. I have to do my homework before I am allowed to go out and play and that means sometimes I’m late for playing. I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t get mostly ‘A’s on my report card because I always do. John says I’m a ‘spring butt’ because my hand shoots up to answer when the teacher asks questions. But I don’t know any other way to be and I don’t like John, anyway.
When I am 16, I get a part-time job in a department store. We have moved to a new neighbourhood and I’m way more interested in singing than kissing. I sell handbags and gloves to permed, blue-rinsed ladies mostly, but once a Frenchman bows over my outstretched hand and says ‘ enchanté ' and I am, briefly, enchanted. Every night I count the money in the till and write in my neat handwriting on the brown envelopes of pennies and nickels, dimes and quarters. I show up early, take short lunches and skip breaks if they need me. I follow store protocols. I also look forward to the end of each shift, when I can go home or to singing lessons with Peggy. She has a voice with a capital ‘V’.
During this time I meet a first boyfriend. Steve’s long, brown fringe sweeps sideways across his face, a scalloped shade pulled halfway down over long-lashed green eyes. A lot of girls say he is a ‘looker’ and they have boyfriends so, when he asks me, I say ‘yes’ and I get one, too. Steve’s romantic evening doesn’t cost a cent. We descend to his rec room where he turns on the gas fire and The Moody Blues and snaps off the lights. He lies on top of me on the orange shag rug and kisses me. He is good at this, maybe because he plays the sax. His warm, ardent lips stir a funny pulling in me. His feverish hands move from my neck to my shoulder, then roam over my clothes and inside them, and he climbs me and mashes me until he sighs. Sometimes he asks me to take his hot penis in my mouth, which I don’t like to do. Yuck. Swallow a snake that might spit? Sometimes it does, and the