The Summer Has Just Begun

The Summer Has Just Begun

We stopped the car – Dad said there was something he had to look at through the binoculars. He looked at something that I couldn’t see without binoculars, and said: “Nah, we can’t swim there.” Then he restarted the engine – I was thrown back a little bit – and Mom said: “Hold on!” We drove further.

This was a field of rye (Mom said it was a rye), dry-yellow on the edges, cocoa-milk in the middle, and simple green in the background. After the rye field we passed a sunflower field, and then Mom said:

“We’ll stop here one day, and we will see the green peas.”

“The green peas?”

“They grow just beneath the sunflowers, I don’t know why, but they always do.”

I opened the window and stuck my head out. The air smelled of lemon and wetness. The sky was all curly and bumpy, as if someone had drawn it with a dull gray pencil. Through the small white dots in the cloudy foam the sun peeked out at us. The wind filled up my mouth, plugged my ears. Well-shaped trees with athletic trunks and thick crowns were the guardians of the road, unlike those that were excessively tall and thin, and were hanging over the ground, one wind gust from falling down. I could see the mountain with a white statue on top. There were cows, then horses, then a large bird flew overhead – it must have been an eagle, or maybe a stork.

The road wouldn’t end, after each bump and turn it just kept going.

“Is this the same day?” I asked. “The same that was in the morning?”

“Yes, it is.”

“This is a long day.”

Then my cheeks got puffed out by the wind.

Dad said: “Make sure the door is locked.”

Mom held my seatbelt.

“We’re stopping near that wood,” Dad said.

“Stopping again?” Mom sighed. “I stink. I want to go home.”

“You don’t stink,” I said.

I didn’t like it, when she said that she stunk, or that she had stupid hair, or that she was old.

“I stepped in the mud,” she explained. “And the rain will start soon.”

“When it starts, it starts,” Dad responded. “We’ve got a roof, we won’t get wet.”

Before you go into the woods, you have to put on rubber boots instead of sandals. You have to cover your head, and wear long sleeves.

“When you are in the woods without us,” Dad said, “remember to cover your head and ankles.”

I was not allowed to cross the street on my own. Why would I be in the woods alone?

“I’d rather stay in the car,” Mom said. “I’ve been in the woods before.”

Dad gave her an unappreciative glance.

“We came together,” he noted.

“Can you at least explain what’s so special about this wood?”

“Frogs,” he said.

“Frogs?”

“Yes, frogs.”

It was a frog wood, indeed. In fact, more of a mountain than a wood. I had to climb hard enough to enter it, and then had to climb even higher to reach the lawn with fallen trees, anthill, thorn bushes and colorless, dried-out leaves that covered the ground and crumbled to dust under my feet. The wood felt like a sponge under my feet – it was dry on the surface, but if I squeezed it with my boot, it’d immediately give out water.

I took a good deep step, and a bunch of frogs jumped out from under my boot. Each of them was no bigger than my thumbnail. I caught one and held it between my fingers. I wanted to rush to my parents and show them – they were talking about something in low voices.

I heard Mom saying:

“I don’t feel well.”

And Dad was responding with something like:

“We just need more walks and fresh air.”

Anyway, I couldn’t run with the frog in my hand. I shouted out for help.

“That’s what I was talking about,” Dad said when he appeared – very quickly – next to me.

He helped me out with a magnifying glass – one great magnifying glass he had been very proud to buy at a second-hand special equipment store.

“Aren’t they sweet and tiny?” I asked.

The answer was so obvious that even my Dad, who knew all the answers in the world, didn’t bother to vocalize it.

There were hundreds of them, the frogs. As if they kept being born under my boots. I caught them, explored their tininess and then set them free. It turned out they had faces and very small limbs.

“Dad, here!” I shouted out, and he was always right there – admiring the same creatures I was admiring.

Only once did he dare to actually touch one of the frogs – he covered it with his palm like some protective giant.

Lightning flashed in the skies.

“Storm is on its way,” Mom said.

She was sitting on the mossy stone, legs crossed, a cup of thermos tea in her hands.

“Probably we should get going,” Dad finally agreed.

I ran to Mom. She stood up and dusted off her back. I was chest-high to her. I hugged Mom.

“I love you, too,” she said.

“How come Dad knew about the frogs?”

Mom shrugged. The blink of the sun slid across her face, highlighted an earring and vanished.

“He must have looked up frogs on the Internet,” she said. “He didn’t sleep well last night. Weird things come to mind, when you don’t sleep well.”

Several times I inhaled and exhaled into Mom’s stomach. It was warm.

While Dad was driving, I looked through the fogged window. We went up and down the hill. When we went downhill, something hooted inside of me, and it was fun. I wiped the window with my hand just like the wipers did for the front window. We passed a tractor. A couple of people were hiding inside a bus stop. A hut in the middle of the field – one wall had a hole in it, but the roof was solid, dark-red and with a chimney on it. Rows of low, identically shaped houses sailed by down the road. There was an old man standing on the porch of one of them. Doors were tightly closed, as were the curtains – as if people didn’t even want to know there was a storm out in nature. As if the storm was gonna be there for quite a while. Some chimneys released smoke that, as if in delight, rushed up to the clouds, its bigger brothers.

There were small paths between the trees, which now were bubbling with rain water, and I was wondering who would be the first to come here when the storm was over. I drew a face on the window – it didn’t come out too well, it just dripped down and disappeared in a single breath of mine.

My parents were two silent silhouettes. They weren’t talking or moving. Dad’s hand was on Mom’s lap. I leaned towards Dad and poked his shoulder with a finger.

“Is there a mosquito in the car?” he said.

You never could tell whether Dad was kidding or not.

Just in case he was not joking, I said, loud enough, that it was me, his son.

“And then we went to that pond and caught fish.”

“Mom, the story you’re telling didn’t happen.”

“It did.”

“I didn’t go fishing.”

“That’s true, you didn’t.”

“Then why are you telling me this story?”

“Because it happened to me.”

“It happened to you? When?”

Somehow we were back at the house. I was in my pajamas, lying in bed; the pillow was too big and too soft for my average-sized head, and the blanket covered me in two layers. The whole place was as though in a haze. I tried to resist – I didn’t want this haze take me away from Mom and from here yet.

“When I was like you.”

“You were never a boy.”

“No, I was a girl.”

Mom was sitting on my bed. She was leaning against the wall, and her face was hidden in the dark.

“And you went fishing? With whom?”

“With your grandpa.”

“Will we see him soon?”

“Sure.”

“Did you catch any fish though?”

“Just small ones.”

“Did you eat them?”

“Probably not.”

“You ate poor little fish babies!”

“I didn’t… Close your eyes, sweetie, it’s late. Time to sleep.”

I closed my eyes and in the next second opened them again.

“Turn on the lamp,” I said to Mom.

She obeyed.

A spider was making its way up the wall. I looked at the window. Gigantic claws were banging and scraping on the window through the faded-yellow curtains. They were curtains with brown water lilies and purple sunflowers, embroidered bees with bows on their heads and necklaces on their necks, and butterflies with dragon wings. Butterflies, and ants, and bees, and even frogs stay with us for such a short time.

I looked at Mom – the lamp lit from the right, so the right side of her face was white and glowing, while the left side remained in the dark. I grabbed the corner of the blanket.

“Mom?”

“Yes.”

“Are those frogs that we saw dead by now?”

“What frogs?… Of course, not! They’re only babies. They’ll live a long and happy life.”

“How long?”

“Long enough,” she replied after a pause.

My head was humming: birds were coo-cooing in it, woods crunching, swings squeaking, rain hitting the roof and the road. Mom and Dad were talking when they thought I couldn’t hear them. Leaves were rustling loudly, greeting the sunset storm in the fields.

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

Her voice sounded distant.

“Are you still here?”

“Of course, love, I am here. You better sleep.”

“Who lived in this house before we came here?”

“Some people. They wanted to sell the house, they moved away.”

“And we bought it?”

“Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“But why did we buy the house?”

“We figured it’d be nice to get outside the city once in a while.”

“Until I grow up?”

She didn’t respond. Did she fall asleep herself?

The curtains were twitching. The curtains had been left by the previous owners, and Mom said she’d absolutely replace them, because they were hideous. She never did, and I grew up watching the anthropomorphic butterflies that wouldn’t take off even for the one day they were granted by nature.

“Mom?”

She was snoring softly and was holding my hand – and I’d keep it like that for a while longer.

I thought about the ball that I left in the yard and about the frogs. Frogs must have hidden in the ground, and the ball must be wet to the bone. The ball, though, didn’t have bones. Then I thought of the bones that I’d recently found near the old barn. According to Dad, they were some small animal’s bones. We buried them straightaway and planted a small raspberry bush on that spot. Dad said, we’d enjoy nice garden raspberries in time.

“You’ll eat them fresh or make a jam,” he said. “Just make sure you’ve got enough jars.”