Windows

Outside the bedroom window of my youth was pure Suburban Americana. Manicured lawns, juniper bushes, and geraniums that flowered around the year. My bedroom was the corner room of our house, and our house was on the corner lot of Rosario Drive and a little cul-de-sac where neighbor boys played in the street. Homemade bicycle ramps. Touch football games. My window was open all summer long and I listened to them play and longed to be one of them.

Sometimes I could get in on a football game if they were a guy short. Sometimes I went over to Carl’s - he lived on the opposite corner of the cul-de-sac, and had an elaborate racetrack for Matchbox cars set up in his parents’ garage. One time, we sat on the floor, bored with the cars, and propped the garage door open just a foot. Carl had BB guns. We lay on our stomachs like soldiers in a trench and took aim at imaginary enemies. I liked Carl because he wouldn’t shoot cats or squirrels the way some boys did, only inanimate objects, neighbors’ shrubbery.

Sixth grade was rough. A boy who sat behind me in Algebra class bugged me all year long. Our moms were friends. When I complained about Joaquin, my mother just smiled and said, “He probably likes you.” Shudder, shudder.

I started wearing a bra that year for no other reason than I was in middle school. Joaquin noticed everything. “What do you need a bra for?” It was 1978, we carried combs in our back pockets then, big, colorful, plastic things with long handles. Joaquin was always swiping mine and pretending to comb his wavy black hair with it. He had round, bright blue, demonic eyes.

The summer between 6th grade and 7th, there were no more invites to fill in at touch football. Carl stopped asking me over. I sat in my bedroom by the open window and read the longest novels I could find. I struggled through Shogun. I read David Copperfield (the Reader's Digest condensed version, but still, I was only 12). My Barbies, who had never seen much action, were now packed and ready for the next trip to Goodwill. I felt empty and confused and lonely and bored and agitated. Nothing sounded good. I doubt I would’ve played football had I been asked, but it bugged me not to be asked.

One day, I heard familiar voices in the cul-de-sac: my next door neighbor, Kevin, Carl, and somebody else. “Throw it here, Joaquin! Throw it this way!”

Joaquin?

What was he doing in my neighborhood?

Though he’d stalked me relentlessly through the school year, I’d felt safe from him on my own turf, so certain was I that he lived on another planet entirely.

I crawled on my belly like a soldier under the big window and out of my bedroom to avoid detection. I got in my bathtub, under the high, small window open above, and listened. Eventually, certain of camouflage by the big bougainvillea that grew up the side of our house, I stood on the edge of the tub and peered out the window.

Yes. It was Joaquin, playing with my neighbor boys. They tossed a football and chased each other. I noticed what he wore: shorts, a faded t-shirt, a pair of worn Nikes and white socks. He stopped at one point to catch his breath and ran his fingers through his shiny hair. He was bent over, hands on his knees, facing my house. I got a good, long look at him. His blue eyes didn’t look demonic anymore. I felt something stirring inside me, something I’d never felt before. A cliché, as I see it now, this tightening of my chest, this thrumming in my neck. But then, this thing, whatever it was? It made it very hard to draw breath.