Summer Memories

When I was very little, just starting school, I lived for a time with my grandmother. This was before That Year; children in Trinidad start school earlier, and I was perhaps four, and a relatively happy, normal little girl still. I remember waking in the morning to red-gold sunlight on my face.

My grandmother's house was built of pine slats, and was old enough that the wood had begun to turn to fat lighter, that yellow, sticky, crystallized sap translucent enough to let the light right through. I loved to put my fingers into the cracks and pull away tiny bits, roll them into balls, and marvel at how warm they were. They held heat much longer than did the wood, and the pine scent was strong, comforting. Sometimes, on the other side of the bedroom wall, I would find lizard eggs, set to hatch with the warmth of the sap. I can't count how many times I got to hold a small clutch in my hands and watch as the tiny things broke free in my palm. It was one of the things I most looked forward to with every stay at my grandmother's.

The other thing was Melissa. She was my best friend until I was eight, when I was struggling to keep my secrets, and had little energy left over for dolls or even best friends who'd known all my secrets until the one I couldn't tell.

Even then, with that day still inconceivable, Melissa had things, was things, that I envied. She had curls where I had plaits that never seemed to stay put; she was her father's only daughter and youngest child, where I had a little brother already and not a big one who adored me like Nicky, in his twenties, adored Melissa. She was sunshine, and I was shadow: I knew even then how strange it was that she'd pick me for a friend, even if her father and my grandmother were neighbours. But then, Melissa was strange... I think now that it was just her father's legacy. What little girl wouldn't have been strange, who lived in the Farrell house?

The Farrell house was two stories, in a place where one-story board houses were the norm. It had the first sunken den I had ever seen, and the only fireplace I ever saw in the islands. The bedrooms were all upstairs, where I was afraid to go... though Melissa dragged me up there once or twice, I hated looking down over the edge into the living area below... the bedrooms were placed around the main walls of the house, with the center open... and there were no railings, no bannisters, just a terrifying fall for a child afraid of heights. Melissa loved it; it made me ill.

There were two decks on the second floor, accessible through the bedrooms. Mr. Farrell had apparently intended that all six bedrooms have them, because they all had doors that opened outside. But only the two had landings... the other doors opened onto the roof, or onto empty space.

All in all, I might never have gone a second time into the Farrell home. To me, it was a house of horrors, except for a couple of very important things. One, it was a home... there was a great deal of love there, enough even for the strange girl who never talked, tagging along in Melissa's wake.

The other thing?

The Farrells had an outdoor pond, filled with tropical fish. That was not unusual, though it was especially beautiful. But there was also a stone bridge leading from the outoor pond to an indoor one, right in the middle of the living room. Under the bridge ran an artificial stream, allowing the fish access to both ponds. I spent many, many hours flat on my stomach on that bridge, watching in fascination. And as many lizard eggs hatched on the warm stones of the bridge under Melissa's and my watchful eyes as I watched alone. All those days melt into each other in my mind, now, but the house, the bridge, the ponds, and Melissa will always mean summer to me, carrying all the warmth of those pine scented mornings when I couldn't wait for the day to start.

Sometimes, I wish them back again.