Making Friends with Chocolate Milk

Creative Writing

My first friend in life was a girl my age who lived in the big white house behind my big beige house. When we were both playing in our back yard, I would plow through the garden to see her through the fence. My grandfather cleared a spot so we could mumble gibberish in our diapers. 

She moved. The spot grew over. 
 
My next two friends were my neighbors Christopher and Ryan. Ryan had tall skinny legs, short curly blonde hair, thick glasses, and emblemized cartoon characters. He was older than me, which is a big deal when you’re five, but he was mentally disabled, so we were the same age. He loved to play hide-and-seek in my back yard and drink Yoo-Hoo. “Yoo hoo!” he would shout, tapping on the sliding-glass door, “Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!” 
 
I don’t remember the first time I met him, but I didn’t think twice of his disability. I thought he was goofy, and he was always smiling. He was never sad or mean or rude and was always up for anything. Every idea I had was fantastic to him. We had fun watching cartoons, playing games, and eating lunch together. 

The only problem was as I grew older, he stayed the same. 

My mom was working as a waitress at the Sheraton and her boyfriend’s mom, later my step-grandmother, would watch me at her town home, which later became my house. Both homes were separated by my elementary school, and this is where I spent the first twelve years of my life. 
 
Her house always smelled like macaroni and cheese, and we watched cartoons like Little Bear and Gnomes as she read all the words off the screen to me. One day she put in a VHS tape called, Gone with the Wind and said it was her most favorite movie of all.  

We picked blackberries out back and I ate lots of tapioca pudding and Super Mario fruit snacks while she braided my long red hair. 
 
It was a cool summer morning, and I was in the front lawn when and she brought my tricycle out of the garage. I peddled down the sidewalk, waiting for her to holler at me if I went too far, which I did, because there was a little blonde girl at the end of the sidewalk also riding her tricycle. 

“Sarah!” she hollered. 

I turned around and peddled back, telling her about the girl. She walked me her house and we met her mom and that’s when I made my first real girlfriend. Her name was Kiri, and her mom was a nurse named Teal, like the color of their siding. 
 
They had an end-unit, which was one-story, and Kiri and I would play Pretty Pretty Princess in her bedroom or hang out in the play shed her grandfather built in their over-sized backyard. 

Tyler climbed the tree in Kirk’s side-yard; it was the tallest tree in the neighborhood, and he was destined to climb it. We climbed every tree in that neighborhood, but no one climbed as high as he did that day even though he fell out of it. 

He’s unconscious. 

Trevor runs in to the house. Teal runs out of the house in her scrubs and white keds, “Is he breathing!” she screams. We were always climbing trees, even pine trees, but this one spit him out. 

Kiri’s parents divorced and they moved in with her grandparents babysat me from time to time. 

We sat in her new split-level living room playing the Little Mermaid on the Nintendo and built forts in the basement, which always smelled like fresh laundry. It was spectacular like an old, confusing, cluttered maze of pipes, alcoves, boxes, records, an over-sized green chalkboard and a ballet floor with a railing and mirrors. 

We danced to Michael Jackson on the television, played ballet to the music on the radio, and ate lunch in a make-believe restaurant. 

When her family took me camping in the summer, we backed down the driveway in their station wagon chewing Zebra gum as I waved goodbye to my mom who never let me sleep over anyone’s house. We pulled-up to a motor home by a lake full of tad poles, walked to the carnival and went on all the rides. 

When Kiri’s dad died, the world got a little darker. 

Life went on and we invented and played a lot of games: bike games, tennis games, hide-and-seek games, knock-knock zoom-zoom games that took us peeling off through the alleyways for shelter: running past houses, turning corners, dipping under tree branches. 

We stop behind a white fenceless house and the blinds on the windows abruptly flew open. We froze and held the breaths we were trying to catch, staring. Nothing interesting happened and they slowly closed. Trevor and I looked at each other perplexed and stood up. We took a few steps forward to look and the blinds flew open again as we jumped in surprise. Then they slowly closed again. We took a few steps closer, and the blinds flew open, but we expected it and didn’t jump out of our shoes as they slowly closed one more time. 

For an hour, we moved closer and backed away as the blinds flew open and slowly closed until we walked away with our heads turned staring until the house was out of sight. The following week, we took a trip down the alley again, but this time nothing unusual happened. It was just a plain white house with the blinds closed. 

I experienced my first language barrier when Jessica, her little sister, and her family moved onto our street, “How do you say ‘moon’ in Spanish?” I asked, pointing at the moon. “Luna. La Luna brilla,” Jessica said. Never mind that my step great grandparents had a thick Gaelic accent because it came out to me clear as plain English. 

Her parents invited me inside once for ice cream on a cold day, but it took too long to thaw, so we played in her sand box in winter jackets. She was very quiet, but beautiful with long, shiny black hair and round, dark brown eyes. Her mom let her play with red lipstick and wear pretty shoes. Her little sister constantly rode circles in the driveway on her tricycle with colorful plastic strings dangling from the handlebars while she bit her pretty nails to the bone. 

My second language barrier was when two young Indian girls moved in next door to Erika and Heather with their parents. We had to remove out shoes when we came into their house through the garage. They didn’t have much furniture and slept in the family room. 

Then there was the quiet girl, who never spoke at all; she power-walked home from the bus stop in sixth grade. We didn’t know she existed until our first day of school while we watched her bolt past us, books-in-hand, down the hill into her house, shutting the door, and looking out the window at us; staring. No one knew her name and when we knocked on the door for her to come out, her dad said she was studying.  

She was always studying. 

My first day of middle school was horrifying; walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, an hour earlier than normal, toward my bus stop. I had never been on a bus in my entire life: my elementary school was directly behind our neighborhood. 

Walking down the sidewalk in my best clothes dragging an empty book bag, Heather slides open her bedroom window and waves; she’s getting ready for her first day of fifth grade. I met up with Erika and Heather out front of their house so Erika could show me where to stand. I wished Heather was here – little Heather, we called her – big Heather was mean to me. Earlier that year, she threatened to kill my cat, so we weren’t the best of friends. I spent more time with her older sister, Erika. 

Erika and Heather’s dad lived In Pittsburgh, so they were gone every other weekend, and when they were gone, it was quiet. They lived on our block with their mom, stepdad and younger half-sister, Ashley, who once drank rubbing alcohol. Their house always smelled like food, but Heather said it’s because, “my mom burns everything.” 

We played cab driver in their abandoned Sebring. Her mom drove a rusted van and was occasionally religious. “I can’t be your friend anymore,” Heather said to me one day while riding bikes around the block. “What?” I asked. “My mom said your parents listen to devil worshipping music,” she said, referring to alternative rock; and this was before she threatened to kill my cat. 

Erika didn’t know who the Spice Girls were, so we put the cassette in my boom box and danced around my bedroom. We collapsed from exhaustion, “Show me more.” She said, breathing heavy, “That was fun.” 

Erika accused Heather of eating her deodorant. “Look, teeth marks,” she says, tilting the baby-powder fresh tube at me. “Why would I eat your deodorant?” asks Heather. She told me your period comes out of your butt. I told her she was, “Full of it.” Her stepdad walks past her open bedroom door, and she asks for him. He steps in the room and asks what we’re up to. “Does your period come out of your butt?” She asks. He’s stunned, “Sure.” He says, walking away. 

They both shaved their legs, I didn’t. They talked about sex with their mom, I was afraid to. 

They had the craziest stories. 

Their house was haunted by a colonial soldier who ate breakfast with them, and his body was buried in the woods across the street. During a sleepover, we were lying on our bellies on the carpet, and they told me a ghost story about Heather’s daybed. Claiming a young girl was murdered in it and that their mom bought it cheap at a yard sale. Heather starts screaming and is halfway under the bed with her hands grasping the feet, pretending to get sucked under. It scared the shit out of me. 

We pinned sheets to the ceiling around her bed and jumped up and down to devil-free music and filled water balloons, tossing them out of the window at the teenagers passing by. 

The teenagers were a group of older kids in high school who smoked, cursed and caused a lot of trouble. If we were playing outside and they walked by, we ran indoors. Unless you were with Trevor – he instigated them. 

Standing at the foot of his driveway discussing video games, a drunk girl stumbles down the street in a jean jacket. Trevor asks if she had a rough night. She’s waving her hand around, “You little shit!” walking up the drive-up at us. 

We dart for the front door. “Lock it!” I yell. She pulls a whole cabbage out of the rock garden, roots and everything, and chucks it at the glass door as dirt explodes all over the front porch. 

I’m stunned. 

Trevor is doubled over in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Your mom is going to kill you,” I said. 

They broke into my neighbor’s house while they were away on vacation and threw a party. I woke up to red and blue lights flashing in my window. My stepdad called the cops every time they broke bottles in the playground behind our house. I sat and watched through the window as a police cruiser crept over the hill through the field with his lights off as they scattered, running past our house down the alley. They almost shot me with a pellet gun one afternoon. I didn’t see anyone at first but herd, “Shoot her. Shoot her,” as I look around. I see two boys standing behind a chain linked fence a few yards away pointing a gun at me. 

I took off down the street. 

These were all white, middle-class suburban kids; mind you. The Valley was a very strange place. Tyler was escorted home by the police one night for starting fire to the dumpster behind the 7-11 and I walked in one three people fucking in the woods. 

Erika and Heather’s mom called the police. We sat on the curb eating cherries, waiting to see what would happen. The police pull up and go into the far end of the woods where the trail is, and two half naked people come darting out of the front of the woods and run down the street. I’m not sure what happened to the third person, but the police took off, on foot, after the others. 

Earlier that day, two people came to Erika and Heather’s house asking their mom if they could have to sofa at the curb, claiming their grandmother wanted it. She said sure, and they carried it off. The police found it, unfolded in the woods on cinder blocks. 

One summer week, we had so much rain it flooded our streets. I’m leaning against the windowsill, watching the water and my stepdad wander out of the house, trudging through the water in scuba gear, opening all the manholes with a crowbar. Lawn ornaments and chairs were swept away. 

In the winter, we held team snowball fights, blindly tossing them over Ben’s wooden fence hoping to nail someone in the face. When my stepdad plowed the street, Heather and I dug a snow fort in the biggest pile of snow we could find. Just as it was getting dark, we sat inside it giggling. I hear chains coming down the street and Trevor plows his bike into the side of our fort as it caves in on us. Screaming, we dig our way out and walk home. I was not pleased. 

We went sledding in the valley and I nearly slammed into the brick wall of my elementary school. I loved trekking through the thick snow in my snow pants, winter jacket, hat and gloves frozen to the core as the streetlights come on, coated a thin layer of powdered snow. I would come inside, get undressed on the linoleum as my fingers tingled with my cheeks red and warm.  

I drank hot chocolate and watched movies with my mom. 

No matter the season, I had to be the house when the streetlights came on: nine o’clock in the summer; five o’clock in the winter.