Chinaberry Sidewalks by Rodney Crowell

Author:Rodney Crowell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780307595218
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

LaQuita Freeman and the Kotex Kid

On a crisp November morning, the year Hurricane Carla reconfigured most of the southeast Texas coastline, I rode my bicycle to school, dreaming of what it would feel like to kiss LaQuita Freeman on the mouth. With the air bristling cool for the first time in six months, the world seemed freshly awakened from a long night’s sleep. Mother Nature’s lifting the lid on oppressive humidity came with a boost of optimism missing since Grandma Katie had died the previous April. A hint of autumn gave Norvic Street the feel of having made a turn for the better. Mental acuity was sharp, spirits were high, and flights of fancy, particularly those of falling in love, were making a comeback around the neighborhood.

LaQuita Freeman was out of my league and I knew it, not because she was rich—her father’s absence left her mother as short of cash as a construction worker during the rainy season—but because she was beautiful and I was a moron. The sight of LaQuita strolling self-possessed down the hallway, sixth-grade notebook cradled in the crook of her arm, impervious to the hormonal hubbub stirred by her presence, made spellbound dunces of every would-be Prince Charming within spit-wad distance, yours truly most noticeably. Anglo-Spanish bloodlines rendered LaQuita Freeman the most compelling creature the Jacinto City Elementary School’s student body had ever gawked at. The chances of my exchanging intimacies with such stunning beauty—being all frog and no prince—stood less than one in a hundred zillion.

The cool weather made the six-block ride to school on my bicycle a heightened-awareness meditation. Bike riding suited the natural fluidity of my eleven-year-old coordination, and few rode with more flair. I made it my habit to ride on the left side of the street, facing the oncoming traffic, more to maximize my ability to dodge what I saw coming than to minimize the odds of being run down from behind. Still, I couldn’t have predicted seeing LaQuita.

Alternating between riding with no hands and steering with the blue and white streamers spewing from my handlebar grips, I was singing J. Frank Wilson’s “Last Kiss” when Mrs. Freeman pulled up on the right in her lime-green Dodge Dart, catching me in the act of singing a stupid song and fantasizing about her daughter. The panic rising in my chest quickly subsided when something caught my eye. Sitting next to her mother, less than ten feet away from me, was the object of my obsession, pretty as a picture in a brand-new school dress.

Whether I can lay claim to what might be called a normal boyhood in the years leading up to 1961 is subject to debate. But in matters pertaining to LaQuita Freeman, apart from a brief stint spying on her from the tall weeds across the street from her house, I’d declare myself as normal as running water. Like any eleven-year-old boy, I’d sooner have danced naked in public than gaze into the dark olive eyes of Aphrodite’s younger sister.

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