Cul-de-sac

Right after my tenth birthday, Diana Leavitt moved on to our street. There were only six houses in our cul-de-sac on Nottingham court and after a year and a half, the NFL player and his wife decided to move out of theirs. I think he went to the Dolphins or something like that so the house was up for grabs. I know Dad always thought it was cool when the he lived there even though he never talked to him much.
After the couple moved out Diana and her family moved in right away. I don’t remember meeting her for the first time or what I thought when I first saw her.
She had blonde hair and extra tan skin, and she was my age. That meant we’d be going to fifth grade together, riding the bus and seeing each other in the cafeteria. I think we both hoped we would get along. And I’m sure our parents did too. It’d just be easier that way because after all, how much trouble can two ten year old girls get themselves in anyway?
And we did. Get along that is. We’d go to the park together after school or play Ghost in the Graveyard with the younger kids in the cul-de-sac. Before fifth grade began, Diana and I played together a lot, but normally all outdoors stuff. Diana wasn’t really a Barbie kind of girl, though we did try and make up our own dance moves to a Spice Girls song once.
Next to Diana, I didn’t feel ugly, but I never felt very pretty either. I had pale skin and plain brown hair. I was shy and she wasn’t. She had an older brother so she knew how to hang out with the guys and get their attention. I didn’t.
Around Diana, I was self-conscious, and it was all her fault.
Fifth grade was a weird time for me because fifth grade meant puberty. They say going through puberty for a boy is a nightmare with their random erections in class and cracking voices and stuff. But I don’t want to hear it. Going through puberty as a girl sucks, especially being one of the first to go through it. I had to deal with it all on my own. Growing hair on your legs and “down” there wasn’t something us little elementary school girls talked about yet. Periods? Heck no. That stuff was gross. We were still giggling when Mr. Ingram said penis that one day they had sex ed. God forbid you weren’t there that day in school to learn about the birds and the bees! I could tell you I learned nothing because all I could do was giggle with the rest of them. I didn’t realize it was something I would actually want to pay attention to. I didn’t realize my time was coming so soon.
It really didn’t seem fair, starting puberty so early on. At least I didn’t have acne like the Elvin twins which was real gross because even their zits matched up.
I was able to hide my legs for the most part; jeans became my new best friend and you couldn’t really tell my leg hairs were turning darker unless you stared real hard, but some other things weren’t so easy to hide.
This became evident one day after school when Diana and I were talking in the middle of the court and suddenly she burst out laughing, pointing at my armpit. I hated the way she said it, like she was talking about a worm on the ground, “Is that – are those – do you have armpit hair?” Quickly I put my hands down, covering my exposed pits. I knew my face had heated up, and all I could do was look away. “Ha! Ha!” she kept pointing, laughing so hard she was slapping her knees. I hated her at that moment. I hated puberty more though.
Later that night I cried to my mom and told her it was time I learned how to shave. “I don’t care if yesterday I said I didn’t want to and was scared. Today I do.” We bought a razor the next night and she showed me what to do. It’s funny how second nature it’s now become, I don’t even think twice about it anymore. Fifth grade was something different altogether.
One day when the weather was still warm and we didn’t have school Diana and I had worn out all the games we normally play. We were getting bored and trying to think of something exciting to do when suddenly Diana jumped up from her spot on the grass and held out her hand, “Come with me! I want to show you something.”
Diana was the adventurous type. Since she had an older brother she took on a lot of traits from him and knew how to manage on her own. She wasn’t a girly girl by far, but she was automatically cooler than me because she was loud and fun and you didn’t want to be on her bad side. She trashed talked the other girls in fifth grade a lot. So it didn’t surprise me to find out Diana wandered around in the woods behind our street and the woods behind the townhouses across from us often enough to know her way around. The woods up the hill always seemed so far away to me and I never went up there. I heard a child molester lived in the townhomes. The only times we ever went up was Halloween so we could grab all the candy our buckets could hold.
Even though she knew her way around up there, I didn’t really want to go. It made me nervous. And I would have to lie to my parents because they would never let me go.
But I didn’t want Diana to start telling the kids at school I was a wimp or a loser so like a dog I followed. We didn’t tell anyone we were going so I hoped we would be back before they noticed. Running past my house, across the street and up the hill to the townhomes was intimidating. Walking in the courts up there I suddenly felt like we were far away from home. I felt dirty and unsafe. I preferred the comfort of our big two story homes, with the deck and roomy back yard.
Diana didn’t seem to notice though and she raced past the homes and disappeared in a break between a cluster of townhomes. The grass was overgrown, tickling my shins as we ran alongside the fences that separated the minuscule backyards. Diana knew where she was going and so I quietly obeyed her footsteps leading us there. We ran up to the top of the hill behind one real unsightly home and I wondered if that was the home the molester lived in, and if he was watching us now. A chill ran down my sweaty back.
We were at the edge of the woods and I knew there was no point trying to turn back now after how far we’ve gotten. I figured she just wanted to show me the woods and just wander around in them a bit, but not too far I hoped. However, nothing could have prepared my ten year old self for what was to come.
After ten or so minutes of climbing over fallen trees and dead leaves, empty beer cans and cigarette butts, we finally came to a tiny clearing where you could tell teenagers snuck out there a lot. Beer bottles were everywhere, and an old tire was set up in the middle of the camp, a sitting place maybe? Or a storage spot?
Soon enough I found out. It was the latter. Diana walked over to the tire and waved her hand in a come-here-motion, “This is what I wanted to show you!” Her eyes went big, “Come on Rachel, seriously!” I rolled my eyes and shrugged my shoulders as I slowly shuffled over to her.
“What.”
She picked up what looked like pieces of paper and held them out for me to see. They were tear outs from a magazine. They were pictures of naked people. And from what I was taught that day in sex-ed – they were pictures of intercourse. I was looking at porn.
I put my hand over my mouth and giggled in shock, “wha-?”
“I know!” she exclaimed.
“But how did you – where did you – how did you know these were here?” By this point I had a page in my hand and I was staring wide eyed unable to look away. I knew it was wrong to be looking at - but it was kind of exciting. And secretly, I wanted to see more.
She was sitting on the tire at this point, her feet in the midst of the weathered pages. “You know I like to go exploring, and one time I just happened upon it up here. Luckily no one was around!”
I glanced around me real quick, spinning in place. I forgot we were alone up here. And this was a place people definitely visited. The sun was beginning to go down and sprinkles were beginning to fall – Mom told me there was supposed to be a thunderstorm that night. I had forgotten till then. “Uh, we should probably go.”
She held her hand out and watched a water droplet catch. She looked up and squinted her eyes, “Yeah, you’re probably right. Let’s get out of here.”
Hastily we threw the magazine clippings back towards the tire, not worrying about putting them back exactly how we found them. Suddenly we felt like we were going to get caught so we raced out of the woods and ran back home as fast as we could. As we stood in the middle of the court ready to head home for dinner we both looked at each other and giggled, then turned home without saying anything else.
That night as the thunder came down crack after crack, rattling my bay windows, I thought of how those pictures would be ruined for the next person who went up there.
***
At some point down the road, Diana and I drifted apart. Fifth grade was a long year for me. This was the year girls formed cliques and fought for boy’s attention. Diana and I stopped hanging out as much, and soon, she didn’t even like me anymore. She was Miss Popular, and I was holding her back. I made a choice one day to stick up for the Indian girls in class who were being picked on and I guess I soiled my name forever.
Diana and I never talked again, unless of course our parents were together and we happened to be there with them.
Then one day towards the end of fifth grade Diana was suddenly moving, on to another state, another life. It just kind of happened – I remember the kids in school talking about it nonstop for a couple weeks. But those couple weeks were over quick, and just like that, their house was packed up and the moving vans were gone. I don’t even think she was there long enough to collect her year book. I wonder if school shipped it out to her. I imagine she probably made something for people to sign anyway like a shirt because that’s the type of person she was.
After Diana and her family left the house sat empty for a while again, long enough for the spiders to mate in the corners of the walls and the neighbors to ask daily if they had word yet of if the house had been bought or not. Finally, right before sixth grade began and the terrors of middle school were starting, a new family moved in. A mom, dad and an 11 year old girl named Jennifer. She was my age and she had pale skin and plain brown hair. She was taller than me but she was nice and we stuck to playing Ghost in the Graveyard in the cul-de-sac.