Through a Child's Eyes: Chelsea

Chelsea
assimilation in eight paragraphs

The swing always creaks and groans very steady, like its speaking its own secret language. Creak. Groan. Creak. Groan. It reminds me of a bird who always repeats that same word that is in my head too, over and over again. Like hello hello hello. Or mountains eat dirt mountains eat dirt. Sometimes the whole set jumps and bounces and shivers. We like to feel as though we are flying, me and Liz. Creak. We like to touch the sky with our feet. Groan. I wiggle my toes and feel the wind tickle them back. I lean forward waiting for the right moment. Backward. Forward. Backward. Forward. I pull my arms out until the plastic around the chains is squeezing me tight. Backward. I get ready. Forward. A little farther. I wait until my feet are touching the sky again and then I jump. The ground smacks into me but I stand up quickly as though we were good friends. As though I’m a circus acrobat. This? This is nothing. Anyone can jump out of a swing. The dust billows like an audience surrounding me. Applauding.

We all stand around like we’re not sure what to say and nobody wants to say anything so nobody does. Chelsea. I let the name roll around inside of my head. It makes me think of rich people. The kind that have big houses as hushed as Sunday afternoons with fluffy white carpet in every room. Chelsea. Maybe a little gold, too. Yes, definitely gold in that name. She has short hair that’s dark and her skin is tanned, like she spends all of her time at the beach. My father’s Iranian she says proudly. Baba. That’s what she calls him. I decide I like her already. She’s sweet, and she knows loads more than me or Liz. Liz isn’t sure what to think. She twirls her finger through her dirty-looking brown hair and rubs a clump under her nose like it’s satin on a blanket. She’s always doing that. Rubbing satin under her nose.

The space between our yards is speckled. There are dry clumps of brown and yellow grass mixed all up with the soft blue-green from Chelsea’s yard. We stand in the little speckled island in the middle, the place where our mom threw the snake when she yanked it out of the post where it was trying to sleep on the front porch. You won’t have any babies on my porch she said. The snake twirled in circles as she swung it around above her head like Indiana Jones. To make it dizzy so it won’t come back. The snake disappeared in that little speckled island where we stand. I invite Chelsea into the backyard.

Chelsea doesn’t swing high like me and Liz do. Instead she sits with her hands all wrapped around the blue plastic on the chains and kicks the dirt with her shiny black shoes. Liz kicks off her sandals and climbs up the side where she can hang upside down by her knees. She doesn’t say anything. Do you believe in God? I’m not sure why I say that. It scares me that I did. Chelsea looks up at me, her eyes are brown, not the muddy mix of colors me and Liz have. Just brown. Is this a joke? Chelsea is used to jokes, she hears them all the time at school. I wonder what kind of wild kids she knows at school who make jokes about believing in God. She sticks her chin into the air. My parents let us chose our own religion, she says. I don’t know what to say. I believe in God, Chelsea says. I smile and push off in the swing. Chelsea swings too.

Chelsea gets colder than we do sometimes. We all stand in her bathroom, crowded around the sink, taking turns holding our arms under the cold water. You can see the blue lines of blood under mine and Liz’s skin because we’re so light. Clear almost. But Chelsea’s arms are covered in goose bumps and the little hairs are all sticking up like she’s rubbed a balloon over them. I must be cold-blooded she says. It’s because I’m from California. She knows more things than we do because she goes to a public school. And she’s from California.

Chelsea writes in cursive, and when she prints everything is upright and straight and tall. Her letters never hunch their shoulders or bite their nails. They’re beautiful letter-writing letters, all looping and grown-up. California letters. I know how to write in cursive, but my letters look like they’ve been eaten by the dog. Home-school letters. That what Chelsea thinks, I’m sure of it. She’s going to teach Liz to write in cursive so that she won’t feel left out. Liz dances around our dining room and tells our mother who looks up from her sewing machine with a mouth full of pins. I hate it when my mother frowns. It makes me feel all jumpy inside like I’m doing something wrong and I should know better. I should know better. But I don’t. Why can’t she teach Liz cursive? Liz is really quiet, the way she gets when she’s thinking. She’s always thinking she should be able to do everything I do. She shouldn’t. Not for three more years. No. A word we know not to argue.

Later in the week Chelsea’s mom comes over in her high heels and perfume. The bushes are all dented from us crashing into them with our bikes but she doesn’t seem to notice. She never comes over, but I think Chelsea made her and it makes me feel all wrong. She explains that Chelsea knows proper cursive. Proper, not regular. She can teach Liz. She won’t teach her wrong. My mom gets mad but she waits for Chelsea’s mom to leave before she does. The waiting makes the house stormier and the kitchen bangs with pots and pans. Every time we pass the dining room window I feel terrible, like I’ve eaten a huge plate of watermelon that wasn’t ripe or lied about cleaning my room. Every time we see her in there sewing. All summer long. Always inside.

Chelsea waits on the porch while me and Liz sneak into the house and take down the flour canister and the sugar and the vanilla. Salt. Measuring spoons. Baking powder. Spatula. Cocoa. We’re careful like burglars. I smile to myself. Liz, who’s smaller than all of us, knows how to do things Chelsea can’t do. I tuck the big stained cookbook under my arm and we tiptoe back out the front door. Liz lets it slam behind us and I get mad. But she just laughs and runs. We dump everything down on the counter in Chelsea’s kitchen and I sit back to watch my sister. The master at work. Chelsea tastes the cocoa and spits it out and we all laugh. I feel proud of my sister. Of our family. Even Liz knows how to cook without a box.