Now Step on It

I am six years old, and I am sitting on the long, concrete slab of my grandparents’ driveway with my knees tucked into my chest. It is summertime in Fruitland Park, Florida, and the pavement is hot. My skin absorbs its fever, so I shimmy over to a patch of grass to break it.

The grass here is very different from the kind we grow at home—the lean, abundant variety that rarely grows in patchy. Here the blades are thick as construction paper, and sand fills the space dirt should.

Grandma and Grandpa’s yard was once an orange grove, but now its only inhabitants are ants. Lots of them. I lean onto my left elbow and poke at one of their hills with a stick. Sand spills down the mound, but that is as far as I take it. I don’t want to kill the ants, nor do I want to destroy their home. I just want to watch them scatter.

I sit outside, prodding ant hills because I am waiting. With mom and dad swimsuit shopping at the Lake Square Mall and Grandma’s insistence that her grandchildren go and play, my cousin, Johnathan, has promised to teach me how to skateboard. This will be my first time skateboarding as I am from Chicago, west of. In suburban Chicago, we play soccer, basketball, capture the flag, hopscotch, tag, kickball, hide and seek, jump-rope, red rover red rover, but we never skateboard. At least not like they do here. Here they build concrete arenas for people to skate on. Here kids wear knee pads, helmets, cut-off tanks, and make it a lifestyle. Johnathan is from Florida (just a few miles out from Grandma and Grandpa), and skateboarding is something he does often. Only four years older than me, he has just learned to kickflip.

But right now, he is fifteen minutes late to our lesson. It’s not like we scheduled this or anything; it has simply been fifteen minutes since he offered to teach me how to skateboard. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me, staring at his skateboard.

Johnathan: I can teach you, if you want.

But that was fifteen minutes ago. In this moment, I am scanning the entryway, on standby for movement as the door remains shut. Maybe he is struggling to find a second helmet for me or—more likely—he forgot.

I peak inside to check on him. In the living room, Grandpa is slumped in his La-Z-Boy recliner, reading the Orlando Sentinel with his feet crossed at the ankle. Beside him lies a dictionary along with books one through five from his Britannica encyclopedia collection, each tan, thumbed, and tattered from use. Mom says Grandpa was too poor to go to college—joined the Marines instead—but he is the smartest man I know, rarely seen without a book in his lap and a pen in his hand.

In the adjoining kitchen, Grandma is swatting at smoke over an open oven, something she does often. Grandma is always doting on things. Right now, it’s the chicken Kiev she threw in for lunch. At lunch, it will be us. We’ll take our first bite and she’ll ask, anybody hungry for more? My Grandpa will implore Jean, let them finish, damn it! My Grandmother’s name is Mary, but Grandpa will call her Jean because her mother Jean used to dote too.

…

The completed version of this piece will be made available upon request.