Waiting for Knowing

Sometimes you find meaning as your senses absorb the world around you. Your brain clicks, tags, and files everything, pulling up distant memories and associating them with new sensations. Other times, things just float around, spots in the vitreous jelly. You notice it, chase it, but it’s always a bit ahead of you. Every once in a while, I hear a song from my childhood and start singing along, proud for keeping a memory for thirty years. Then I discover the words in my head are nothing like the actual lyrics of the song. I’ve filed away a faulty memory for thirty years, kept it pristine and then recovered it in all its uselessness.

Maybe that’s the case with my memories of those mornings on the island. Did Betty really come to school in second grade and tell everyone her mom discovered a dead body in the trees behind their house? Did we really shrug it off because the man was just a drunk old homeless guy? I was afraid of those trees after that, and afraid of the playroom in her attic. The adults told us not to be scared, he died because he drank too much. They did not explain why his face was all swollen and bruised, and why she discovered him because of the awful smell.

We speculated. Why should we trust the adults? These were the same people we overheard talking about Kevin’s mom running off with Lisa’s dad. Kevin’s dad let his mom come back, like nothing had happened. Happily ever after. And what were those morning parties all about? I remember the women showing up in their curlers and nightgowns. My mother told me to stay upstairs, it was a, “come-as-you-are,” party. I thought, if there was a party, there must have been invitations, and if they had invitations, didn’t they know when to arrive? Why wouldn’t they have gotten dressed?

The island was a picture. Brilliant colors, light and shadow and silence. Even the waves were still and hushed when the adults gathered. We pulled down the staircase to the attic, and dressed in their abandoned negligees and high-heeled shoes. Our chubby fingers smeared on lipstick samples. Sheer pinks glistened and spread, while reds clumped up to mimic the lumps in my clumsy red crayon drawings. We tried to listen through the attic floor, but only heard the clinks of glasses and muffled voices. The tiny window framed a magical picture, at once the forbidden trees, and then the benign ocean waves. We waited for knowing. Knowing would happen when we were older. Knowing is now. But now, I wonder if those were really the words I heard.