Finished with my snack of warm, homemade bread with butter and honey, I glanced at my two-year-old brother, Kenny, a year younger than me. “Mom,” I shouted, “Kenny’s hands and face are all sticky.” Mom brought me a wet cloth to wipe my hands, used another to wipe Kenny's hands and face, and sat with us, snacking on green olives. She poured powdered milk, put ice cubes in our glasses, and said, “Now, both of you, drink your milk and don’t spill.”
“I like ice cube milk,” Kenny says.
“Me too.”
We drank our milk, and I stared at the ice cubes, smaller now, and sighed as I wiped my hands and face and pondered staying in Fort Riley, Kansas. It was nicer than our army trailer in El Paso. Maybe we could remain even after Daddy returned from maneuvers. Mom left the table to remove more bread loaves from the oven, and I noticed she was wearing red lipstick.
“Mom, are we going somewhere?” I asked. “We’re wearing our good shoes and new clothes, and you’re wearing lipstick.”
“Just wait and see,” Mom said, smiling.
“But, but…I hate waiting.” Mom ignored me and fiddled with the tabletop radio and its tall antenna.
We followed her to the living room, where the radio broadcasted Turandot from the Texaco Saturday Opera Hour. The tenor sang Nessun Dorma boldly and repeated the Italian phrase softly as the music rushed into the room, spilling over Mom’s dark, thick hair as she sat paging through a magazine, sucking on her olive pit.
“Mom, what is he singing about?” I asked.
“Shh…” she replied, her finger to her lips. “Just listen.”
I listened. “It’s a story,” I stated, as the Italian words swarm in my head. I practiced twirls to the soft chorus, sending my red plaid skirt flaring out around me. A story, I reasoned, about a nessun doorknob or nessun door? The music intensified, my eyes widened, and I leaned over and whispered to Kenny, “The singer says there’s a secret door.”
Kenny replied, “And lions!”
I gasped, shouted, “LIONS,” and ran across the linoleum floor. Kenny followed, our hard-soled shoes accenting the music, the danger.
We ran to the sofa, collapsing, laughing at escaping the lions. My eyes watered as my chest rose and fell repeatedly with the exertion. Kenny and I were beaming, our eyes locked on each other, ready for more action. The aroma of the freshly baked bread swirled in the air and mixed with the intense notes of the aria. We were listening, our feet tingling and our eyes wide as the tenor sang of the danger, his piercing high notes accelerating our heart rate.
Again, we burst into running. Our hard-soled shoes beat out shoe music and accentuated our imagined threat of sharp teeth and claws. Our shoes hit the floor and drummed out a Run a-way Run a-way beat across the linoleum, crescendoing in laughter as we THUMPED into the wall across the room, safe from the marauding lions. Laughing, I ran back to the sofa with Kenny behind me. Even better! We both laughed as the syncopated shoe music followed us. This was the best floor ever for running.
We climbed onto the sofa with its art deco design of palm trees, lions, and grass, now our designated mountain sanctuary. The textured material rubbed our legs as we maneuvered up to the top of the mountain. As we listened to the intense proclamations of the tenor in Italian (vincero, vincero), the clash of cymbals lifted our legs in unison, and we slid onto the seat. We began rocking back and forth, our timing and thumping adding deep bass tones to the aria. We rocked, thumping, and bending, faster and faster, building up a momentum that catapulted us onto the floor with a loud SLAP beat and the syncopation of two pairs of hard-soled shoes. We were shoe drummers, beating out our message to RUN.
As we reached the other side of the room, our knees buckled, and we slid to the floor. Laughter bubbled up, and we began jumping up and down again, locking eyes. We simultaneously shouted, “Jump, the lions are gone!” Laughter fueled us across the room to repeat the game, with stamping and jumping added mid-floor. A soft stanza streamed from the radio, signaling safety, and we drummed a final slower stanza across the floor and arrived at our sanctuary.
My hair curled in damp ringlets from this exertion, and Kenny’s heartbeat lightly lifted his shirt as we sat on the sofa, drawing deep breaths. We began to rock slowly, our damp heads cooled by this movement as the blood pounded in our ears and colored our cheeks. There was a knock at the door. Kenny and I bolted upright; our heads lifted like horses catching something new in the wind.
“Who do you think that could be?” Mom asks.
We held our breath, then blinked rapidly. “Daddy. It’s Daddy!” We flew to the door shouting, “Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home.” With both hands, I opened the door and peeked out. Daddy filled the doorframe in army green. His army duffels leaned on the doorsill.
Kenny rushed through the opening, and Dad tossed him in the air. His giggles joined my tiptoe jumping. Daddy hugged me, and I winced as his chin stubble rubbed my cheek. We paraded into the room, where Mom smiled and deposited that olive pit in an ashtray near the radio. We all embraced, Kenny and I in Dad’s arms; his wool army jacket scratched my arms and legs as Mom’s sweater and hair softly nuzzled us. Ah, I think we were waiting for Daddy! I melted into calmness.
Then the atmosphere changed.
Mom and Dad smiled, whispered to each other, and brought Kenny and me our new wool coats. As Mom helped me with my coat, I caught her eyes, happy eyes. She smiled, and asked, “Where do you think we are going, Diane?”
I looked up, puzzled. I’d thought the waiting was over. She answered my puzzled expression with a question. “Where’s your favorite walk?”
I blinked, struggling with a feeling that was a memory or a thought, and responded, “The bridge? We’re going to walk over the bridge?” I gasped as a tickling sensation met my knees, and another gasp reawakened my anticipation.
We walked together; Dad held Kenny in his arm as he and Mom swung me between them until we reached the first step onto the bridge. Gravity loosened its hold on me as I stepped from the sidewalk to the open steel grillwork of the bridge’s crosswalk. My body filled with the breeze and the sounds of the rushing Kau River below, and I felt lighter, lifted. I was a balloon girl, flying over the river! My parents' arms were like strings, tethering me to them as we traversed the crosswalk to the other side.
My foot landed on the solid sidewalk across the river, and my shoes, like giant magnets, pulled me into gravity's reality. The air rushed out of me in a gush, but the magic feeling of floating remained and sustained within me the existence of two worlds: the shoe magnets pulled me and grounded me on the sidewalk while the experience suspended me in airy freedom.
I sensed my parents' discussion at dinner; their words drifted to me through a layer of swirling images and light sensations, a muffled reality. I ate, too tired to care what it was, and leaned on my Dad’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m glad you’re home, Daddy.” Dad tousled my hair, sighed, and replied, “Me too.”
Author: Diane Baumgart
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