A Family Portrait

1988: He found his mother on the porch and sat with a grunt. She turned and smiled absently in response. “How’s it going, honey?”

“Okay.”

Donna laughed. “No it’s not. Why not be honest with old Mom?”

He laughed back, creases in his face deepening. She sat back, away from him just a little so she could take him in, all of him. When had her son become an adult? When she wasn’t looking. “So you’re bored, huh?”

“Yeah.” He folded long legs onto the second step and placed spindly elbows on starched blue jeans. “How much longer?”

She laughed again and reached over to ruffle his amber hair, the way she used to when he was twelve. He hated it back then, and now he snorted as he tried to fix it. “Mom, why do you have to do that?”

She shrugged, giggled again just a little. He decided the hair thing was okay after that. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d giggled. He sighed and decided he could handle this crap another hour or so for her sake. “Sorry, son.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be inside trying to find something to do.” He actually reached over and gave his mother a quick peck on the cheek before vanishing through a slamming screen door.

Now that’s a cool kid, she thought before she turned back around and heaved a great sigh, sucking in nature’s smell of evening. The muffled sound of interaction wafted to her from inside the rambling dwelling that used to be her grandmother’s, and then her brother’s and his wife’s. She knew she shouldn’t be here. They didn’t want her here, but she didn’t care. She needed this, needed to feel like a part of something, anything that was normal and REAL. She twined long fingers into each other and breathed deeply again. She closed her eyes and sat back on the elderly porch where she’d received her first kiss, probably twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years...

She shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what to expect and whether he’d try. She flipped back her long, straight brown hair and gazed up at the boy with her big, dark eyes, the wonder spilling out and into him. He shifted, too, and stared down at Converse tennis shoes while he worked up the nerve, brushing his own long, brown hair away from a thin, angular face. Suddenly, without any hint at all, he practically lunged forward, grabbed her lips with his, and her pounding heart threatened to explode; his lips were surprisingly soft and full. She loved it and her heart kept thundering until he tried the tongue thing. She’d thought it was kind of gross, but she liked him enough to let it happen. Thank goodness it didn’t last long. He pulled the tongue out and kept the sweetness intact.

When they broke away, her eyes shining with new love and new experience, the porch light flickered on and off. Grandma, how exasperating, she thought impatiently. The boy backed away slowly, smiling tremulously at her, and with a wave he was gone.

“Donna?” She startled and turned to see her cousin standing in the doorway, her grandmother’s doorway. She didn’t know what to think.

“Hi, Kelly. I didn’t know you were here.” She didn’t mention that she didn’t think Kelly would speak to her anymore than the other family members.

“Sure. I never miss it.” Kelly moved forward and sat beside Donna. The two sitting next to each other...they looked more like twin sisters than cousins; they were the offspring of twin sisters. Thin, gangly length ran in the family, as did those ridiculously long noses, reflected one cousin as she took in the other. “How are things?”

Donna sat up, brushing dust and old, yellowed grass from her elbows. “How do you think.” It wasn’t a question.

“I know.” Kelly said it softly, almost embarrassed. Donna wondered, looking sidelong at her, if she was embarrassed by the family or her cousin. She didn’t have the nerve to ask. Then she did something she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. Water squeezed from squinted eyelids before she could stop it, and she turned her head so that Kelly wouldn’t notice. If they were going to accept her and care, it wasn’t going to be from tears and pity. No way.

They sat for awhile as the sun set further into the sky and both remembered. They remembered days and nights spent on this very porch, the one rotting and aged, when it was not so old or aged. Small children playing jacks, sharing little-girl secrets, exchanging boy stories. Donna remembered telling Kelly all about the boy.

Dark heads bent at an identical angle, they giggled and put their hands over their mouths, not wanting Grandma to come out and ask questions they didn’t want to answer.

“So he really kissed you?” Fourteen-year-old Kelly’s hazel eyes were as wide as Donna’s and full of curiosity. “What was it like? Was it gross?”

Donna’s own dark eyes turned misty as she shook her head. “No way. It was kind of gross when he stuck his tongue in my mouth-“

“Yuck! I can’t believe he did that!”

“Sshhh!” Donna shushed her cousin and darted a glance to the screen door. “Yeah, and it was kind of nasty. But not the other. The other was–it was nice. It was really nice.” Donna sighed and closed her eyes briefly, remembering.

“Man. I can’t believe you got kissed first.” Kelly shook her head and long hair swished with her. “Well, you wait and see. I’ll get someone just as good as Benny.” She jumped a little as she sat on the porch. “You lucky dog!”

Lucky dog. Yup, that’s me, Donna thought with a tearful smirk. She hadn’t noticed that Kelly left.

She sat outside just a bit longer before she stood and brushed at the back of her jeans. Time to go. “Benjamin,” she called inside the screen, and muffled buzz momentarily stopped. It started up again slowly, and Donna’s son pushed out of the screen.

“Ready to go?”

She smiled wryly at his hopeful, freckled, teenaged face. “Yes, I’m ready to go. Just give me a minute while you grab the car.” She tossed keys from her pocket and he grinned. He was still new enough at driving that he considered the task a privalege. She watched him bound off the ancient porch and then she looked into the dark recesses of the house. “I’m leaving,” she called. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t stay for the picture.” She took a deep breath again, hoping the sting of her nose didn’t make those traitorous tears fall. “But I want you all to know that Grandma would be ashamed of you. I’m not dirty, I’m not bad. I’m still the Donna you always knew.” Her voice softened. “But I also want you to know I forgive you. All of you.”

With those words she felt lighter, freer, and she pivoted to go down those porch steps for probably the last time. She was halted by a hand on her arm. “Donna.” It was Kelly. “I’m sorry for-“

“Don’t apologize for anyone, Kelly, except yourself.” Her gaze bored into the cousin she grew up beside. “I’m who I always was. The only difference is that I’m sick, and the sad thing is that I’m not going to be here that much longer.” She looked around at the large yard-the cottonwood tree she broke her leg falling out of, the porch where she’d received that first kiss, the grass where she spent time dreaming with Kelly. “Don’t even apologize for yourself because I don’t have the time. I wish we’d caught it sooner, this AIDS thing, but we didn’t. And now I just don’t have time for all this.” She gestured towards the inside and once again started down the porch steps. Then she turned and looked up at Kelly. “But I’ll want a picture of the reunion. We all know what really happened here, today. We’ll all have to live with it. The whole family.” A beeper went off on Donna’s jeans. She smiled a bit sadly. “AZT fix time.” She waved and smiled wider. “I hope you’ll come to see me. You know it’s what Grandma would want.”

And with that, Donna bounded down those porch steps and walked with a jaunt that had been missing for a long time before today. She breathed in one last deep, cleansing breath of her childhood, and then she crawled into the waiting Buick.

Kelly watched her hug the son, and they were gone. She stood on the porch, in the dark, for a long time before she went back inside.