Summertime

The barber strop hung from a nail on the kitchen wall, right beside the door. It stood out, black leather on white paint, a reminder of what would happen. It happened whether we were good or not. Sometimes when he missed the mark, and red welts showed, we stayed home on those days.

Afterwards, we were always sent to bed. My mother would come with a sandwich to eat or cookies and milk if it was bedtime. But she never held us while we cried, just said, “Your father loves you.” We knew it was a lie.

Your father loves you. It wasn’t what he said. He never wanted us, that our being born robbed him of so much he would’ve had, he could’ve had, he might have been if it just hadn’t been for us.

When he came home from work, we’d hide. And when he left us high and dry, it was no surprise. While our mother cried, we huddled around her, two at her sides, one at her feet. She cried so we cried. I saw it in my mind. It was my first family portrait. And suddenly we were homeless.

My mother packed us into the ’47 Ford and drove us from Brooklyn to her brother’s farm in Athens, Georgia. It was summertime. The streams run warm in Georgia in the summertime.

For the first time in my life, I was free to play. All I ever did in Georgia that summer was play. From sun up to sun down, barefoot, in our underwear, we had the free run of the farm. We slept in tepees. We lived outside, gathered wild eggs for breakfast, rode bareback and swam in the irrigation canals.

Nobody entertained us, but we were entertained. None of the grown ups yelled at us, but we yelled and hollered all the day through. Nobody hit us, that was the main thing, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid. It was a revelation.

I wanted that summer to go on forever. Time was suspended. There was only the water flowing slowly by in the canal, the snort of a horse, the leaping of children in the yard, the sunshine, the sweat and the easy roll of one day into the next. I’d never had a summer like that before.

But seasons come and go and that summer sure enough ended, as all summers do. One day, my mother got a letter, and then she cried again and then we went home. The barber strop was still there, hanging from a nail on the kitchen wall.