Free Cherry by Mary Karr Page A

for she seldom saw much reason not to do anything you thought up.
    That’s how right before sixth grade I came to peel off my T-shirt,mount my pink-striped Schwinn, and set off down the oyster shell of Taylor Avenue wearing only red shorts.
    By the time I reached the first porch where a line of ladies in their rockers were sipping iced tea, it was clear I’d made a terrible mistake. Their eyes widened, and their heads turned rigidly to one another and back at me as if on poles. After I rounded the corner, I felt their stares slide off my back. A different kid would have gone hauling butt back to her garage. She would have stayed inside till some car wreck or church supper had drawn the local talk from her escapade. But I was not bred to reversals. I only had to make it one loop around the block to finish.
    On the second block, Mr. Hebert was elbow deep in his truck engine, his son Gerald Lee holding the caged mechanic’s light. The heavy man’s body unbent quick from the truck’s bowels. He shouted toward the house. A screen door popped open, and there was Mrs. Hebert, a startled jack-in-the-box-type figure in sponge curlers, her mouth a tight o. Gerald laid down the light he’d been holding and ran the same direction I was pedaling to alert other kids, slanting off across the Ferrells’ backyard to try to head me off. He vaulted over the far fence, dodging their chained-up mutt before he vanished from view.
    The Clearys’ house stood as the final gauntlet. It was also the vortex from which the most intense judgment could emanate. Sure enough, under the pin oak, all the neighbor women sat in low-slung green folding chairs doing some kind of lap work that involved huge silver pots. It was only a short streak past them to my yard.
    I felt the shining whiteness of my chest, wholly untouched by sun since I was three or four—so different from the sleek, tanned chests of the boys. It blared out my mistake in pale flesh.
    Mrs. Sharp reached a thin arm out to touch Mrs. Cleary’s elbow. Mrs. Cleary’s hand flew to her mouth just as I sailed past. Behind the hurricane fence, Gerald Lee’s witnesses were galloping, sharp-faced boys who had no fear of pointing and hollering at my near naked self. I surged into my yard. Somebody called my name. The bike dropped in the grass and took something of me with it as I hurdled the five porch steps in just two leaps.

Chapter Three
    M OTHER WAS MISSING, AND I STARED out the back screen after her absence. Vapor ghosted up the patio bricks and made skeletons of the rusted furniture we never sat out on. Her figure-drawing class at the local college had let out hours ago. Now I tried to divine her presence on those roads that webbed out from our crackerbox house.
    Maybe her disappearing had to do with the fight my parents woke me up having last weekend. They hadn’t gone at it full bore like that in so long, I almost didn’t believe the voices were theirs. I eased out of bed all smoky-headed and tiptoed into the dining room, clinging to the shadow of the bookcase.
    Mother had said, “It doesn’t have to be like grandpa did it for it to be worth investigating. Now the
I Ching
—” She cut off her sentence as if she’d thought better of it. “Fuck you,” she finally said. For extra measure, she shot Daddy the finger with both hands from down low, about hip level.
    Daddy leveled his stare at her. “You know in the state of Texas, ‘fuck you’ is interchangeable with ‘Please hit me.’”
    She jutted her jaw out. “Go ahead! Go ahead and hit me, you ignorant sonofabitch.” But Daddy was picking up his truck keys, saying she wasn’t worth it.
    When I slid under the covers next to my sister, you could hear his truck tires roll out on gravel. “You awake this whole time?” I asked her.
    “Who could sleep. Jesus. World War Three,” she said. Mother slammed the bedroom door. The air conditioner’s compressor kicked on, so the porch light surged like a beacon signaling some