Leah

This was an exercise in Place for Sheila's class. It is only an exercise! But in some form, down the road, it may end up in my thesis. Or not.

We spend cool spring evenings in the sandy yard behind Leah’s house, smelling of dirt and strawberry gum. The cream stucco of her house serves as shelter from the ocean breeze, while tall eucalyptus trees swayed back and forth above us like a canopy. Behind us, a winding asphalt path disappears behind the neighbor’s back shed, where a long-abandoned Vespa stands ashamed on its rusty stand. We rarely wander down this path, preferring instead the comforting confines of the tiny rectangular yard, bordered by Myrtle shrubs on one side and a sandbox on the other. We never use the sandbox because the neighborhood cats often do. Besides, we tell each other, we are eight; we are too old for sandbox games.

In our sleeveless light cotton shirts that we stubbornly wear against the damp evening, we sit on the limestone wall that segregates patio from dirt yard, weaving colorful rubber bands through our fingers. Behind Leah’s house sits a two-story apartment building that blends perfectly with the other homes with its cream façade and clay-tiled roof. On the stairs leading to an upstairs apartment, a black and white cat peers at our twilight activities from its shadowy perch. I think of Leah’s mother in the kitchen. I can hear the clinking of cookie sheets; smell the warm scent of vanilla and raspberry.

As the sun sinks into the ocean two blocks away, I can barely see Leah’s freckled face just a few inches from mine. The bronze metal of her glasses catches the light from the street lamp, where bugs swirl in a frenzied dance, their dead comrades dotting the glass globe.

“I should go in,” Leah says, as the eucalyptus swoosh over our heads. “I’m cold.”
I look up at the silvery sage leaves, buying time. I wish for the longer days and warmer nights of summer as my feet swing back and forth beneath me. I kick each foot with the other, sending grains of sand trickling down to the patio sandstone floor. Leah’s teeth have been chattering for a half an hour as she bravely refused to concede defeat against the setting sun. I wish for those warmer nights so that Leah would stay out here with me a little longer. Her hair is the color of burnt honey and her skin is so pale you can see her blue blood rushing beneath it. She is quick to tire of the cold, while I could stay out in the yard all night; wait for the stars to poke through the eucalyptus leaves one by one. I sigh and jump off the ledge.

“I don’t want to catch a cold,” she apologizes. “My mom would kill me.”
Even in my eight-year-old mind I know, I sense, that these frequent colds are more problematic than her parents let on. Their eyes shine with fear every time she coughs.

As she lets the screen door gently close behind her I hear a muffled sneeze. I imagine her mother in her warm kitchen, swiveling on her heels, a gasp catching in her throat. The sound of waves lapping against rocks fills up the silence in the yard. I wrap my arms around my chest, cold skin against damp cotton. The gum has gone stale in my mouth. I spit it out in the sandbox and close the metal gate behind me.