It was Summertime and the black and boysenberry bushes in the back yard were a rich dark pickable color. My daughter Pearl had just turned two, and Lucas had just turned five. It was in the afternoon, and there was wind in the air and sun and no fog. I was watching them both, and two others, Sage, who was also two, and Caya, with her long thin blond hair, who was six.
Actually, most of my attention was devoted to the young ones. It was naptime and I put them to sleep upstairs, first telling them stories and making sure they stayed in their beds and fell asleep. In the meantime, Lucas and Caya were playing in the house and then out. They would read books, draw, and then go outside, down the back stairs and into the yard. Friends would call on the phone, I would call them, the schizophrenic life of a parent, trying to keep in touch with adults, as well as the world of children, realizing most of the time, at least in the city, the two worlds have little to do with each other, though the two do seem to constantly parody each other’s behavior.
For example, when I get off the phone, I notice Lucas is running upstairs. He’s clearly on a special mission. He’s wearing blue jeans that fit him rather tightly. Caya, I can see through the window, is waiting for him on the back deck. “Don’t wake up the kids,” I tell him in a loud whisper. A couple of minutes later, he’s running down the stairs, wearing a loose fitting pair of red cords. “Why did you change your pants,” I ask him.
“Because they come down faster.”
I watch both of them disappear down the back stairs below the deck. I go up and check on Sage and Pearl. Both are sound asleep, their chins tucked over the books at which they had been looking. I put the books back on a shelf, and go downstairs to check on the other two.
There is a square area cut out in the middle of the deck, presumably for a bush to grow up through from the ground level, but the Fuchsia that’s down there never seems to want to climb up through the deck. I look down the hole at an angle, and I see my son pulling up his pants. He sees me and gets a small grin on his face. And Caya is out of my range of vision.
“Lucas,” I say, “come up here. I want to talk to you.”
Reluctantly he comes up the stairs, as if I am taking him away from much more exciting business than talking to his father. I am not sure exactly what to say. I do not want to damage his world of desire. On the other hand, I do not want to assume that Caya’s parents might totally approve of their daughter and my son celebrating their world of curiosity. I go for some kind of middle ground.
“Lucas,” I say, “you can be proud of your penis, but keep it in your pants.”
“No,” he tells me, impatiently pushing against the stair rail. “She likes it, and I like it, and that means we’re going to do it!”
He takes off down the stairs, before I can get another word in. In reality I do not have another word or any conceivable response. I go back in the house to get a drink of juice. In another minute, he’s back in the house, going to a kitchen cabinet, where he pulls out a big paper bag.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask, trying not to imagine anything.
“We’re going to pick berries.” And off he goes.
I sit out on the deck. They are over by the Eastern fence, the one that is flooded with ripe black boysenberries. There is too much wind for me to hear them. But, with the bag between their legs, I watch them nimbly reach their fingers between the thorny vines. In the slant of the afternoon light, they seem to be carrying on a dream-like conversation, their heads tilting back and forth between words, and the pluck of berries that either land in their mouths or in the light brown bag that flops back and forth in the breeze.
They must be out there for an hour. I am back on the phone, trying to make a date with a new friend, and not having much luck. When I hang up, Caya and Lucas come into the kitchen. There are not a whole lot of berries in the bag. “These are for you, Dad,” Lucas says. Both of their mouths, all around their lips and chin, and their tongues, when they talk, are colored a sweet boysenberry black and red.
© Copyright 1984 by Stephen Vincent.
© Copyright Yellow Silk and reprinted with permission.
