First Home
Farm Town
Bethany Kaylor
Before we were old enough for school, my brother and I went over to our neighbor Mary’s house everyday. She let us watch whatever channel we wanted, which was practically heaven since we didn’t have cable at home. I sat on a grainy couch; my brother took the broken recliner. We spent afternoons watching old Nickelodeon shows while eating Cheeto’s and other snacks that were forbidden at home. Out of all our neighbors, Mary was by far our favorite. The lesbians across the street were crotchety and the man next door stayed inside most of the day. But Mary loved us. We were her babies since all of her other babies had left her for college and marriage. I loved the television room. I loved the darkly paneled walls and the stained coffee table. Sometimes Mary would come in and sit with us; she read while we watched our shows. She called her books “trash” but read them anyway. (I liked sitting next to her. Her perfumed powder masked the stench of cigarettes.) If the weather were nice and nothing good on TV, my brother and I would play in her backyard. But we’d always return to her living room, our sanctuary. Even when Mary’s real babies had babies, we were still her babies, and those newborn babies became our babies, too. We thought we were a huge family until we grew old enough to realize we weren’t; we were just the kids from next door. Eventually we would move from that street, away from Mary’s house and television, away from snacks and hugs and belonging to something that was not (would never be) ours.
Nicholas Maurer
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