A Love Like the Sun

What I Remember

WHAT I REMEMBER

Twelve years ago. Pink Starburst. Yellow overalls.

With baggy bottoms and deep pockets, brighter than a banana, Dennis and Vanessa Thompson were at the mercy of a teenager who just had to have them. My parents were on a strict budget, but two weeks of begging later and I woke up to the yellow overalls folded at the bottom of the bed. As soon as I slipped them on, I vowed my mom would have to pry them off of my dead body to get me to stop wearing them.

Both of the Thompson adults were at work, but I had to show them off to somebody.

Issac Jordan lived across the street, and we were still finding our friendship, still fighting over silly things when he’d come over on school days for my mother to do his hair, but I knocked on his door, fully aware that he might tease me about how bright the yellow was.

It was a fruitless act anyway. Issac wasn’t home and no one knew where he’d gone early that morning. But I didn’t give up searching. Eventually I’d find him at Uni park, where my mother would sometimes take the both of us to do our hair in warm weather. He was on the bleachers in a bone-colored crewneck sweater, knees up, arms around them, face buried between. It was clear we were coming out of summer, the wind was rustling the trees, and the air was cool-crisp, but I wondered if he was shivering. Napping? Possibly praying?

He startled at the sound of the bleachers squeaking under my feet, head snapping up.

Issac was crying.

Something twisted in my stomach at the sight. When I asked him what was wrong, he turned away from me, embarrassed. I’m fine, you can leave, please leave. But there were tears in his throat, and my body moved quicker than my mind. Reaching and wrapping my arms around him, the way my parents would do with me.

“It’s okay to cry. Crying is brave,” I said to Issac. They were words my dad often said to me, a kid whose emotions would grow roots on the inside and get stuck there. It’ll take courage, but you must unroot the big feelings, Dennis Thompson would say.

Not long after, Issac whispered, “I miss my mother so much,” and the backs of my eyes burned.

I missed my mother when she was at the hotel, preferred her working in the kitchen. I couldn’t imagine missing her because she was gone for good. So I hugged him a little harder and let him cry as long as he had to.

On the way home, I bought a pack of Starburst from the corner store. They were a recent addiction, and I really wanted to eat the pink ones, but Issac looked like he needed them more.

“I like your overalls,” he said, and when he smiled, with those big brown tired eyes, something warm glowed in my chest, but I didn’t have a name for the feeling.

I didn’t know it was love just yet.