Winter Count, 1964
When
Sherri Luna rammed Jerry’s Kruger’s crew cut head into the handball court wall
at Kester Avenue Elementary school February 15, 1964 ,
I knew she loved him, a swirling butch, embarrassed sort of love that denied
itself even as it was expressed. She loved him the way a 9-year old beefy-ankled,
white socked, scuffed-up saddle shoed, valley girl Chicana loves a drawly red
necked, red haired, red freckled, cracker son of a Pentecostal preacher from
Oklahoma who wouldn’t let his kid slow dance in Miss Arlington’s A4 class, not
because Miss Arlington was a wafer thin woman with a 2-foot high beehive hairdo
that made her look like an alien from some planet of white porcelain doll
people with blood red lips and finger nails long and sharp as steak knives, but
because Jerry’s preacher pa didn’t believe 9-year olds much less anybody should
be cradling another’s body in their arms and breathing softly on their necks as
they swayed to music. Nosiree, Sherri Luna didn’t love Jerry that way, the slow
dance, fandango way, where holding someone close is as sweet and natural as
lying on your back in the back yard watching the clouds and letting the
sunlight kiss your cheek, but she loved him just the same. I knew it when I
first saw her rub her body up against Jerry’s blue jeans as she slugged him in
the arm by the water fountain the first day he came to class that winter. Plus,
she didn’t want to slow dance, not because she didn’t believe in it, but
because she was constitutionally against any request that curled out of Miss
Arlington’s pouty lips.
“Just do it, honey.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No, I said!”
So, “Ka-Chunk,” went Jerry’s head, cradled in Sherri’s gentle headlock when Miss
Arlington was putting on a scratchy waltz on the mono record player that Ricky
LaConte had lugged out onto the playground after lunch. Ricky, a fat kid who
liked to have us punch his stomach in the boy’s room until his bubbly flesh was
filled with blotches like lesions, liked to do such favors, his arm shooting up
like a rocket ship out of its socket every time Miss Arlington asked with those
pouty lips just who would like to do this or that for her. And that’s a sort of
love, too, don’t get me wrong, only it wasn’t Sherri Luna’s sort of love. She
needed to touch the someone she loved, even if she didn’t understand what the
yearning in her heart was asking her nine-year old body to do.
So,
“Ka-Chunk.”
I was breathing my
face into Melinda Coates’ blond ringlets, getting hairs twisted in my glasses’
hinges and imagining myself in heaven and then feeling embarrassed for even
thinking such a slack-brained thing as that when I heard it.
“Ka-Chunk,” echoing into
the mauve plastic handball court wall that rose out of the blacktop playground
surrounded by bungalows, chain-link fence, and honeysuckle rustling in the
winter breeze like our breaths on one another’s necks as we danced.
“Ka-Chunk.”
“That
was fun,” Jerry laughed. “Do it again,” with “again” drawled out so long, so
slow, that it slobbered and dribbled out of his mouth into a dopey-grinned,
three-syllabled, shrieky “a-gaaa-in.”
“Do
it a-gaa-in.”
Poor
Ricky. He was right next to me, swaying sort of sad-like, out of time and out
of step with Louise Dolan. He wanted to be in that headlock, too, I guess.
Maybe he thought that the bumps on his forehead would go with the blotches on
his stomach. I don’t know, but I know this. Sheri would have none of him. Ricky
wasn’t Jerry in any way, shape, or form and Sherri Luna loved Jerry. That was
that, end of the story. We were dancing that Strauss waltz you see in 2001 when the ship docks with the space
station, and I swear I saw her gently bend over as pretty as you please and
nibble out a tongue-licked hickey on that sun-burnt, freckly red neck of his
when she thought no one was looking. We stared and stared. Not even the creamy
touch of Melinda Coates could keep me from it. No one in Miss Arlington’s A4
class in 1964 had ever seen such a thing.
And then she
counted to three. And then she did it again.
And then she did
it again. And I swear she didn’t miss a beat, not a one, not a single one.
2. Why does Ricky let people punch him in the stomach? What about the 'blotches' left by the punches parallels the hickey Sherri leaves on Jerry's neck?
3. A "winter count" is a story or oral history used by certain Native American tribes to mark individual years in tribal history by retelling an event from that year that is memorable or significant. Why do you think the incident retold in this essay is significant enough to mark its year?
"Winter Counts, 1964" is in large part about the inarticulate need kids have of expressing physical intimacy towards one another, and these "For Analysis" questions get at that, as does the first of the two "Writing Topics" prompts that follow them:
In what other way do people (of all ages) manifest the combination of desire for and fear of physical intimacy. Reflect on ways in which you and people you have observed or read about deal (or don't deal) with this tension.
By now I'm thinking these editors are really smart! One often writes, as Frank O'Hara wrote, on one's "nerve," and, while we might intuit these larger ideas in our poems and stories, we often don't fully articulate them as we're writing. At least, I don't. And so I'm happy, and also a bit humbled, that Messrs. Abcarian, Klotz, and Cohen have made these connections in my work.
In between the "For Analysis" questions and the "Writing Topics" prompts are two "Making Connections" questions, in which they ask students to compare my story to a poem by one of my favorite contemporary poets, Galway Kinnell (I wrote my senior thesis on his work when I was at Reed College many moons ago), and one of my favorite fiction writers, Toni Cade Bambara. I thought that was pretty cool, too, as was their final "Writing Topics" prompt:
"'Ka-chunk,' went Jerry's head" (para. 6). Write a short essay in which you relate an incident or a moment, using the vivid transcription of sound."
It all makes me wonder, how would I answer these smart prompts and questions? How would you?
I hope your writing is going well this week.
All best,
S.D. Lishan
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