On Being 11 in the Summer
A knock on the door.
“Can Bethany come out to play?” Back then, the kids would ask the parents directly — a script we’d all grown accustomed to, even if we felt pangs of anxiety each time an adult from a family not our own opened the door.
“Betty, Charlotte, there’s someone here for you!” My mom instinctively looped me into the neighborhood’s social scene. I knew at a cellular level that I wasn’t the Hill sister people wanted to play with. I was, at best, a decent backup if Bethany was at dance practice or… actually, where did she ever go without me? Where she went, I followed, a reliable, annoying shadow.
An invitation to play. That wasn’t itself unusual — but now? It was late — 8pm at least, maybe 9. The midsummer sky was quickly falling dark. It was July in San Jose, California. The heat radiated off the asphalt. When you looked down the freshly re-paved, still-tarry black road, you could see it shimmer, everything right above its surface wavering like a mirage.
Old flip flops, hand-me-down shorts too short to wear at our Christian school, a spaghetti-strap cotton cami, a trainer bra very much unnecessary for my 11-year-old chest. That’s probably not a real memory — I don’t think I wore a bra until I was 12 or 13. But it fits the character: a girl who always wanted to be a couple years older. To be invited by name to play — not tolerated as an obligatory accessory.
We raced outside, bellies still full of dinner, and saw 8 or so neighborhood kids already crowded in the street. The boys and girls were in two lines, facing each other. The game: Red Rover.
I’m 35 now and still feel nervous thinking about it. The game had all the hallmarks of a Charlotte Least Favorite. Individuals were singled out — to complete a slightly painful feat of athleticism — by members of the opposite sex. If your name was called, you had to rush toward the opposing side — all the boys linking their still-spindly teenage arms — and try to break through the line. I don’t remember what happened if you succeeded. Maybe you brought someone over to your side? Was the goal to grow the largest line of linked-arm humans? The details escape me.
What I do remember is the summer breeze, the air so dark I had to focus to see the faces of the boys standing lock-armed and bemused-faced in front of me. I remember feeling acutely aware that my chest was really, really flat.
I remember seeing my sister laugh with her same-aged peers and sinking into jealousy. Or, not quite jealousy. A deep longing — to be as magnetic as she was, as my dad was. Their magnetism was spoken about! Publicly! Teachers, relatives, sometimes people we hardly knew at all — they remarked on the particular charisma exuded by these two superhumans who lived in my house.
And then there was me, the kid with the racing thoughts and quiet face.
