The Pale Blue First Kiss

**This story briefly mentions suicide and physical abuse. Reader discretion is advised.**

The first kiss wasn’t anything special. Just a peck. 

The next day, he left her—changed schools. 

They find themselves on Sunday mornings thinking about each other. What happened that afternoon. What they could’ve done. What they could’ve been. 

She finds herself pacing and thinking about the way he spreads Skippy peanut butter on his favorite sandwich, or the way his eyes glitter when the sun sets, or the way his nose twitches when he’s nervous. She finds herself on Sunday mornings thinking about getting ready for church, but just winds up thinking about him. 

She thinks about the way he sits cross-legged, the way his dark curls sweep across his forehead, the way his skin glows like freshly harvested honey, the way his arms bend like a path to her heart, the way they wrapped around her, the way they became her way back home. 

Cold. She sits cold now on Sunday mornings alone in her room with the walls thin and hair thinning. She pulls at the ends of it, wondering when she’ll go bald. Probably at age 30. She wonders if he’ll still love her anyway. 

Her heart aches, drips like wax from a dying candle. The Sunday before-church-cold shoots up her arms. Straight and sure like an arrow. Her eyes run with evaporated tears. Her thighs ache on the days she runs on Sunday mornings before church. 

Thud-thud-thud. Her sneakers fall like boulders against the pavement. A cadence like a desperate, dying, grateful heart thud-thud-thundering in her ungrateful chest. 

Cold fog chills her lungs when she rounds the cul-de-sac on Amber Lane. Her eyes water as she looks up—clouds roll like the punches did every third Sunday of the week, when Dad came home from the bar after church. 

She wears nothing but tragically thin slacks she stole from her brother. A cheap shirt from the neighbor’s trash bin. Sometimes a bra. She doesn’t know why she wouldn’t wear one. She doesn’t like her body anyway. 

But sometimes bras feel like they constrict her like the old smelly aunt’s death-grip-hugs, constrict her like the foul woman’s biting words—the “You girl,” sometimes. The “who would ever marry you?” others. The “c’mere girl and live a little” most of all—the drunk episodes where she would dredge her niece to her table and make the girl inhale alcohol until she vomited into the bushes. The never ending laughing that followed. 

And the boy. Bras remind her of him and the way the him held her that afternoon—they remind her of the him that keeps her up until the stars fall from the sky. The him that makes chills go up her spine every night when she looks through to the house next door to hers to see if he’s home before she gets out of the new ‘55 Bel-Air and steps back into her two-story family-style house in the middle of southern sunny suburban nowhere where the family eats family-style dinners and beats on her family-style. 

“It wa’ da first kiss dat afternoon,” she whispers to herself as she stares at her Sunday morning dress, pale-blue like the color of her mind, “dat—dat changed me.”

She strips, and stands for a moment, door closed, in her room, only underwear. No bra. Cold eats at her limbs as usual as she contemplates wearing her dress. She wonders if the change from that afternoon was for the best as she changes into her Sunday best, sliding the dress over her thin torso with the ribs all pointed and jutting out like keys on a piano. As a consolation, she doesn’t wear a bra. Doesn’t constrict her chest. Doesn’t constrict her thoughts as usual either. She lets them run—run back to him. 

It church time and I love him so bad it hurts. 

It church time and I want God to love me. 

It church time and the old smelly aunt is standing next to me and still smells li’ pickles and art-i-chokes and the time she tried to choke me. 

It church time and the pastor lookie at me sympathetic-like. But he don’t say nofink about my bruises. I li’ to think he prays fer me though. 

It church time and he’s sith-ing in the row behind me and I want him so bad not to see me fer me. 

Soon, it my time. While my momma and papa and baby sis and brover Joe and Lucy is havin’ lunch wiff the Terrence’s, I standing by the kitchen window. Alone at las’. The door is open and-and the windows are open so I can smell some-tin nice. 

It family time for the rest of dem that don’t want the girl that slurs her words and dat needs to run all da time and dat can’ sit still and dat don’ do well in school and dat can’ hold a conversation and dat the teachers want to be in dose in-sti-tu-shuns. It family time now where they can be a family without me.

It 1959 and my momma won’t hear me when I say sis spends her Sa’urday drinkin’. 

It 1959 and I s-staring out a window with a knife to my chest prayin’ God lo’ me. 

It 3:15 PM when I hear the creak o’ the fron’ door I lef’ all open. 

It 3:16 PM when I hear the squelch of His boots on My floor. 

It 3:17 PM when—

He looked at her, eyes shaking, fingers unsure what to do. Papa was a doctor but didn’t tell him anything about this. 

Cold. His fingers were cold and his eyes were pale blue like the color of her mind and the color of her dress. 

He stepped closer, eyes trained on hers, mind trained on the knife. And heart trained on helping her. No. Something more than helping her—

His heart trained on the way her blond bangs swept across her forehead when she shook her head. The way the tiny freckles went away when she got sunburned. The way his heart leapt when he looked into her eyes because he knew—he knew—there was something about her face that would glow like the color of honey when she smiled. If she ever did. 

It’s Sunday morning today and he’s still thinking about her. Still thinking about the first and perhaps last word he ever said to her: “Stop.” Still thinking about everything he would’ve changed, about the way his heart turned in his chest when he saw her, even now, after it all. Still thinking about how she smelled like a Skippy peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, the almost-last-meal she made for herself. Thinking about the chemical taste of the hairspray on her head when his lips grazed it on their way down to her mouth. Thinking about the way his first kiss felt—the light, quick, abrupt thing that went away as soon as it came. It didn’t go away from him though. 

He’s deciding what dress shirt to wear and deciding where to put his heart when he goes to church. 

It’s been six weeks and he’s still deciding if he’s ever going to talk to her again. If his dad would approve of talking to the girl all the neighbors called “the Deaf-Dumb Dawson.” If he would care. 

He’s deciding if he’s going to transfer back to Her school before he graduates. Just to sit in the same Physics class as her and wonder how the laws of attraction worked. 

He’s deciding whether or not to forget the way her breath smelled like his favorite peanut butter, the way a cold breeze swooped in from the open window that day, the way he locked eyes with a four-year-old boy that saw the whole thing from his tricycle in the middle of the cul-de-sac, the way the boy left and never told anyone what he saw. 

He sensed her changing, metamorphosing that afternoon. Becoming someone who wouldn’t pick up the knife again. Her breathing stilled—a grateful huuuh slipped out from between her lips. Her eyes glittered like wet rocks on the beach at sunset. Her hands didn’t move much though. The whole time, she kept them pressed up against his chest, at first in defense, but then as if she wanted to feel his warmth against her cold fingertips.

He feels those cold fingertips on his sternum even now as the dress shirt slides over his bare, hairless chest. It’s like a reverse burn—his chest shows no sign of injury, but he’s not sure if he’ll ever recover from the chill. 

The pale-blue silence from that afternoon envelops him like a mantra he knows better than the Oscar Mayer jingle that’s always playing on the TV when he comes home. It throbs in his eardrums, makes him feel dizzy. No. She makes him feel dizzy. 

He doesn’t know how he can go to church and he doesn’t know how he can last three more months before college. He wonders what will happen to her. He wonders if her parents really will put her in an institution like everyone says. He wonders if he should fight them. He wonders if he should give her family bruises to match the ones they give her. 

He goes to church with his family and the four other no-name kids and his mom. His dad prays though. Sometimes. His mom tells her son that it’s okay that his dad goes to work instead of church if he prays.

He sits on the aisle across from hers. She sits, head down in that pale blue dress, eyes wide open on the floor, trying not to look left to him. 

The pastor recites Psalm 26 and the chapel thunders with his voice and with empty space and with unsaid prayers and with a pale blue silence that rests between two seniors that sit on each side of the aisle. 

Head down, he eyes her from the tops of his eyes until his head is swimming with an insatiable ache. His chest seizes with the memory. He can taste her hairspray in his mouth. The knife clanks on the counter and the world is cold and pale-blue again. Her cold fingertips are against his sternum—his soul is freezing over. He doubles over in the pew, shaking with memory. 

Even though he doesn’t notice, a little four-year old boy behind him wants to say something as the soft shadow slinks closer. As the pastor stops on the word “restoreth.” As congregants creak in their pews.

“S-stop,” a voice commands him.  

He looks up, pale-blue eyes wide open. He sees lips curved upwards. Rosy cheeks that make the freckles disappear. Blond hair buoyant and full and inflated like a life vest. Teeth white-ish like the foam of the waves. She bends down to his head and pecks his forehead. Gently. 

A smile. And a second kiss.