One Summer (The Discovery)

It was in the month of June when my family moved to the suburbs. It was very hot. The houses on our street were finished and we were the last family to move in. There was not any landscaping yet, so it was like a desert during the day. The asphalt absorbed the kickstands of our bikes, leaving little holes all over the driveway.

Across the street, however, only the wood frames stood quietly, waiting patiently for the next set of workers to begin.

I watched them from the comfort of my air-conditioned home as they worked. You could hear the hammers pound and the zing of the circular saws as the workers started early in the morning.

As the afternoons cooled off, and out of boredom, I would wander through these framed beginnings to see what I could find. Sometimes, my sister Terry would go with me. We would each start at one end of the house and work towards the other end, methodically.

Shiny, metal discs, about the same size as coins, caught our watchful eye. There were miniature saws with a curved handle and sometimes I found red, blue and yellow caps, used for twisting wires together, my dad told me. We spent half the day going through these houses, each filling up a quart-sized milk carton with stuff we found.

The weeks flew by that summer, and the houses across the street were almost finished. I would go inside to see what other treasures I could find there.

Terry made some new friends and did not go with me anymore. That was fine with me, as I was more of a tomboy. There were not any boys my age in the neighborhood, so I kept to myself most of the time.

One day, as I approached one of these 'finished' homes, I heard a scraping noise coming from inside. The sound got louder as I came nearer to the window opening. I assumed that a cleanup crew was working to make the house ready for the next occupant.

Mind you, I was only eight years old.

I grabbed the bottom ledge of the windowsill and quietly hoisted myself up so I could look for what was making the noise. The scraping sounds seemed to be coming from this room. Straining to get a better view, I could see a man on his hands and knees, as though he were searching for something.

He wore only a pair of denim jeans and worker’s boots, no shirt. The floor, littered, with cardboard, sand and other bits and pieces that remained after a day's work, made for a rough cushion. The man moved in a back-and-forth rhythm and that made the shuffling sound I had heard. As my eyes adjusted to the shadows inside the room, I saw that he was not alone. Soft moans were coming from the woman that lay beneath him.

I am not sure how long I watched them before I realized what they were doing. A few minutes later, the woman peered over his bare shoulder in the direction of where I was, and we locked stares for a few long seconds.

Her dark eyes, burned into my memory.

She looked mad; maybe because it was a child had watched and maybe because it was only a child that watched.

I didn't care. I dropped down and ran off.

I looked back and saw nobody chasing me so I stopped and leaned against the outside wall of a house half a block away. As I stood there catching my breath, I replayed the events I witnessed. I had heard about it, but had never seen two people actually do it.

When I got home, my mom was pissed.

"Where the hell have you been? It's almost dark and dinner's ready. Next time, tell one of your sisters where you're going."

"Ok, mom. Sorry".

"Go wash up for dinner and change your shirt, it's filthy. Damn it, Tracy, where the hell you been?"

"I was playing hide and seek and it got late, that's all," I fibbed. I was not hiding or seeking.

___________________

After dinner, as I got ready for bed, my older sister came into the room we shared and asked me where I really had been.

"You're not going to believe it, even if I told you." Remembering what I had seen, I gave her a brief version. We sat on her bed, leaning up against the wall.

"You know how we go through the houses picking up stuff, well, this time I went over to where the finished houses were. I heard noises and I investigated." I told her about climbing up the window and seeing the man on his knees.

“You saw them doing it. Did they know you were watching?” Terry asked.

“Not at first, I watched for a while until the woman looked at me. Then I panicked and jumped down and took off running.”

“No way!"

“Way.” I answered. “I thought for sure that they would chase me, or something. I took a different way home so they wouldn’t know where I lived. That’s why I’m late. Why is mom so mad.”

“She was mad at dad. He called and said he had to work late. Mom had fixed a nice dinner for him because he had been working hard, so when he called and said he was going to be late, again, she hung up the phone. Slammed it down, hard, too.” Terry explained that she thought dad was having an affair.

“So he really is working hard at the office, huh.” My deducing skills were amazing.

“He’s such an asshole,” she said, “I wish mom would just divorce him.”

For being three years older than I am, she seemed to amaze me with her awareness about such things. I guess I would know the stuff that goes on around here, too, had it not be that I always hid away in my bedroom, reading.

“Turn that light off and get to bed,” mom yelled from the hallway.

“All right,” we both answered in unison, “good night mom.” I went over to my bed and climbed into cool clean sheets. Sleep raced my head to the pillow. ___________________

It was after Labor Day and school was starting in a couple days. My dad decided that they could afford some live-in help. Through a friend's recommendation, he hired a young Mexican woman to help around the house.

When my dad introduced Lupe to the family, I felt some sort of recognition, although fleeting. It was something about her dark brown eyes. I did not think too much about it then.

___________________

A few months later, I met a neighborhood boy. He was a couple years older than I was and seemed more experienced at kissing and the like.

One day, we locked the bathroom door at my house, so we could get a little privacy. He was a nice looking boy. Robert wore his dark sandy hair short, and his green eyes twinkled. I was sitting on the bathroom floor, in a t-shirt and shorts; he wore cut-off jeans and a tank top.

We just sitting there, staring into each other’s eyes, when somebody started banging on the bathroom door.

“Hey, what’s going on in there? Are you with that boy, again?” Lupe asked. Her English was improving.

“Go away. It’s none of your business,” I yelled back.

As soon as it started, the banging stopped and we were alone, again. We were talking when Robert leaned over and started tickling me. He caught me off guard and I started to laugh. I decided to find his tickle spot and soon he was laughing, too.

I was laying on my back, laughing, when Robert sat on me so I couldn't move. He continued to run his fingers up and down my ribs, tickling my sides. That was when Lupe came through the back door.

I remembered to lock the hallway door, but I forgot to lock that one. There she was, standing over us.

Again, she and I locked eyes.

A sense of déjà vu came over me and I knew from where I had seen her before. An evil smile appeared on her face and I knew that she was going to lie to my folks about what she had seen.