Free Small Beneath the Sky by Lorna Crozier Page A

bottle, watched the bubbles slide down the neck, float on the bright liquid surface before they dissolved, and no one would drink it then, no one but me.
    spit , v. To eject saliva from the mouth by the special effect involved in expelling saliva. (1568, Ascham, Scholem. ii : Their whole knowledge... was tied onely to their tong & lips... and therefore was sone spitte out of the mouth againe.)
    Five grade 1 girls played in the corner of the school grounds by the fence near the girls’ entrance, just past the wide granite steps. Away from the big kids, all in a row, we grasped the wire mesh with our mittened hands, spit on the snow and then slid our feet back and forth as fast as we could to make a patch of ice. If the teacher would let us in, we’d dash through the doors down the marble floor to the fountain and fill our mouths, then dart to the fence again and splat the water at our feet. Every recess with my friends I rode the ice, frenetic as a gerbil on a wheel, my caged body running nowhere on its own spit and me too young to know what that might mean.
    spit , 1633 P. Fletcher. See how with streams of spit th’ art drencht.
    â€œCome on,” she said, “do it!” I gathered the saliva above my tongue, pushed it to the front of my mouth, pursed my lips and forced it out. It fell in a long translucent string, dribbled down the cheek of the girl my friend held on the ground, though the girl squirmed and started to cry.
    â€œDon’t be a baby,” my friend said to her. “Now you’re in the club, you’re one of us.”
    spitter : One who spits. (1615, Crooke, Body of Man. Melan choly men are all of them... great spitters.)
    My brother hawked on the ground when I walked with him—a shocking thing—that liquid, guttural sound, then a phhutt to the side, right where anyone could step in bare feet or fancy shoes. He was so proud to miss his chin and jacket, to leave his mark on the cement, a circle thin and shiny as a coin, and he wasn’t the only one. A chain of spit linked the squares of the sidewalk showing where the men had walked. My father and grandfather did it too, my grandfather’s saliva red from snoose. Mom told my brother it was disgusting, he had to stop. “What am I supposed to do?” he said. “Swallow it?”
    spit , 1700, Floyer, Cold Baths. Temperate bathing... ripens the Spit and helps it up.
    The kids on the block called him Drool Face. He was the older boy who lived in the house two doors down and who never went to school. We saw him only in the summer, when he sat by the back steps on a chrome kitchen chair, his mouth open, a thin stream from the corner of his lower lip running down his chin like it did in the dentist’s office until the assistant told you to spit into the bowl. Our mothers warned us to stay away from him, but one day, cutting across his yard, I came too close and he grabbed me, held me on his lap. I wasn’t scared, though I knew something wasn’t right. He didn’t try to rub me between the legs like the old man at the paddling pool who always brought his own towel and asked to dry us. He just held me on his lap, my back against his chest, my head tucked under his chin, my legs dangling. His pants were the thick green cotton grown men wore, and his shirt had metal snap buttons down the front. I could feel them press into my back. I was glad I was turned away, because his face was hard to look at—the slack mouth and wet chin, his eyes a soft hurt brown as if he knew what people said about him. I let myself go limp in his arms and listened to his breathing. It sounded like the panting of a sick cat who had crawled under the bed and wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t tell anyone. “Wally,” I said, “you should let me go now,” then squirmed out of his hug and ran through his yard to my friends, the top of my head damp with drool.
    spit : The act of spitting; an instance of this.