The growl of faint thunder, the tickle of humidity on the tiny hairs on my neck. Dad isn’t finished with putting up the fence in the back yet, so I know what we’re going to do. I get in my bright pink swimsuit. My toenails are painted red, but chipped and scuffed in some spots—Mom did it for me weeks ago. I pull the straps up over my sunburned shoulders and run downstairs. Koby just got into his trunks. We dash out the back door, barefoot, running and puffing as fast as our little legs can carry us. My brother tosses one arm into the air, squealing with delight, his soft white tummy sticking out a little as he runs. His smile is missing some teeth, and his hair is getting darker as the rain soaks his cowlick.
Past the swingset, the garden, and the boundary of our backyard, down the hill and into some of the trees, it levels out. The ground gapes with a long and wide trench, where the shallow river is. It’s quickly being filled with rainwater. The smell is fresh and moist. We skitter in from the side and begin to paddle and kick, the way our swimming teachers in the summer teach us to do. Thousands of drops hitting our canal sound like distant applause. Floating on my back, staring into the everlasting gray of the sky, I see how the raindrops begin from nowhere and suddenly land on my face. I’m giddy. The neighbor kids bring toy boats and tubes and jump in. Our makeshift pool at this new house is all ours, doesn’t need to be cleaned, and doesn’t take long to fill.
Tomorrow, when it’s nearly dry, we’ll look for crawdads that washed into the river bed from the lake. There’s that sour and muddy smell the day after. But the thrill of poking at dead crawdads is too much to pass up.
To read some of Kendra’s fiction, go to http://karielle.wordpress.com/.
To read some of Kendra’s academic writing, go to http://kendrarel.wordpress.com/academic/.
beautiful