creative nonfiction by k.c. smith

When the Lights Come On

Adults made dark summer nights seem like the 2nd level of Dante’s hell. They’d paint pictures of shadowed figures dressed in long black cloaks with blades for fingernails. They were more elaborately drawn than their muses who sat at 7-Eleven corners holding paper-bagged beer licking whiskered lips as we scurried by. We were threatened with demon filled nightmares of ripped skirts and disappearing acts. Our coffee-smooth legs were a treat for those who lurked in the shadows. We could see the fear in our grandmother’s eyes each time we tiptoed out of the house hoping to avoid the lecture our taut skin attracted. We saw our own lives flash before their eyes as they burned holes in our Vaseline shined legs that “go up to here.” They glared until their eyes rolled around in their heads as they warned us not to do lest they get stuck there. A brief wave of shame was a fallen weight on our chests that lifted at the sight of an open door, freedom our spotter.

*

We gaze upon the emotionless faces of our little girls. Their eyes flutter like tiny butterflies pressed beneath thin skin tangled in veins of blue and red. We stare into expectant eyes, hopeful eyes, needy, hungry eyes. We can’t help but wonder what stories we will bend into truths to keep them safe. 

*

Some of us were pulled from the illusionary safety of a small-town to the too far developed streets of Sin City. Some grew up in this city. Born at the hospitals down the street. Few moved here by choice. Many left on the first wind strong enough to carry them. We thought we would live in hotels only to find out we were being crammed into apartments too small for the families our mothers chose to grow; our fathers left behind. Mama said she’s happy she don’t have to listen to no man. Some of us wished we were from small towns where we hoped to feel relevant. The big city offered truths yelled out of car windows and posted on street corners in the form of women wearing rhinestone pasties and ripped denim shorts. The brutality of the streets was a comfort to our mothers who hated liars and thieves. At least the streets told them who to keep out and who to lock in. 

We were smothered by the bosoms of our mothers so as not to fall like clay in rough hands. The streets were capable of shaping girls into tools for unimaginable things. We were pulled close enough to recognize the smell of our mother’s bar soap. We imagined the way it smoothed and lathered their over-loved skin, nipples stretched and tugged from years of nourishing babies and men. We imagined the way they would scrub the truths of each day. They’d wash away their anxieties that ran down their legs dirty brown; mud in the rain swirling and spiraling down the gutter.  

We faced whistle calls from slime balls and developed premature appetites for sweet, liquored drinks that we tasted for the first time on couches of 35-year-old men. Had we been in the wrong place at the right time, sipping on spiked versions of the sweet, bottled rum we could have become the crime drama tales our mother’s watched late at night. Some of us did. Girls were lost, taken, pushed, broken. Girls whose mother’s grip loosened allowing them to slip through the cracks in their embrace. Mothers with faces of a Picasso’s Scream left waiting up through late nights for girls that came home smelling of blue Axe cologne and wet dreams.

We slept in our grandmother’s closets after the eviction notices showed up on our doors. We slept on pull out couches to the glow of late-night television shows. We slept in rooms decorated with ballet slippered feet that we’d never truly know because classes cost more than the electric bill. We slept in bunkbeds newly built that we would force to fall to the floor from swinging on bars built for the weight of dust and nothing more. We’d fall asleep in between our mothers and grandmothers aware of our bodies so close to theirs wondering how and when we would take on their shape. When the curve on the stressed part of our backs would be pressed into place. Our bedtime stories were the voices on TV telling of the bodies that lay in the gutters, torn skirts, lost daughters. We slept next to our mothers while our brothers slept alone because the space wasn’t big enough for all of our bodies. We grew up with brothers that caused trouble leaving us hunting for safe places to call home. We had brothers who were greater than fathers. We had brother lost to the streets. We had brother we had to protect and couldn’t. We lost our brothers. We created brothers out of the boys from school. 

They warned us about those summer nights though they were nothing close to the ones we knew. The dark, clammy feeling of someone stalking us rarely came. Though that feeling of freedom, riding-a-breeze, rushed through our freshly braided scalps greeting us quicker than the boys who hid around the corners. 

The warm desert sun had no hourglass running sand in our eyes. The hot summer days were endless until they weren’t. Until we were forced inside by the calls of our mothers and grandmothers. Not for dinner, but for something unrelated. They could care less if we ate when we arrived. They wanted to know we were inside, untouched, unscathed, hymen intact…unwanted by the shadows that lingered beyond the front door. 

That feeling we had when we got home was a devastating blow leaving us empty and yearning for more. The adrenaline rush we got from pushing away from the group of kids whose parents weren’t breathing down their necks would drain from us, water from a drying tap. Tearing from the grasps of too-eager boys and the smell of summer nights left wounds on our hearts in hopes that we would not be forgotten until we were free the next day. We sat hoping the girls of screaming lost mothers would not take our place in the middle of the night cuddle up with the sons of mothers who didn’t have to worry about shadowed, cloaked figures ripping at their boys clothes. You see, these sons had the power to capture innocence, though their mothers were sure they would never. Not their beautiful boys who they raised to respect the women in their lives (perhaps not young girls in short denim skirts and Vaseline covered thighs the color of dark honey. Sticky to the touch).

We feared the sunset, not because of the creatures that lurked in our mother’s minds, but because it meant we had to return to our cages before the lights came on while our brothers roamed the streets, slipping on their long black cloaks, or maybe they were just wearing hoodies. Who knows? We were kept inside our mother’s nests, safe from the darkness that lay at the desert’s edge. We pretended to embrace our air-conditioned captivity because we had no choice. Either we were passive or popped in the mouth for talking back. Born a girl meant being born with the possibilities of hurt. Even if what we experienced on those warm nights didn’t. When we disobeyed the call let out by the lights on the streets, we looked over our shoulders repeatedly, half expecting claws or our mother’s stampede. Sometimes the touch of those boys felt familiar, no pain. There were no claws or sharp teeth. No blade ripping at our seams.  Other times they were like the rough touch of our fathers, had they been around, more aggressive, greedy with no boundaries. A touch that didn’t come from love, but from starvation for the only thing that could satiate the beast. They were mostly warm, and when they weren’t they were teasing, leading to giggles behind bushes and against yellow playground tunnels. In those moments the skirts didn’t always rip unwillingly. 

Most of us were good girls. We flirted but not too much. We touched but not deeply. We teased and held back. Our jeans remained intact out of fear of what could happen. We never had “the talk” with our parents but the unrest was embedded in our bones. Stacked with fear of rejection for those of us whose fathers left the nest too early. We were taught to fly by women whose wings grew too large. An evolutionary adaptation overcompensating for the missing piece to the family puzzle. They intentionally fed us their anxieties and unknowingly, their desire to be free, to let go of the soul-crushing responsibility.  We drank a glass of that fear every morning as it poured endlessly from our mother’s and grandmother’s eyes. A honey hint of freedom in every drop. We drank it up, bitter, fresh, and stinging the canker sores we bit into our tongues out of anxiety.  We were mostly girls who “knew better” because that's what our mothers said when they were “mhming” and “Oo uh-uhing” on the phone with their friends.

“Shit, my girl knows better.” 

“She bet not!”

“Mmmm. Oo uh-uh. Child.”

We lived on the edge of rocky mountain cliffs. We peered over from time to time, but never dove off dreaming of taking flight. We knew our fate if we took the leap. Gravity is unforgivable to a woman’s body. We saw the sharp stones, paths of cacti and animal bones. We imagined the sons of mothers who trusted their boys and the lost, sad daughters. They lay at the bottom of the cliffs unscathed, playing drums on coyote skulls. The boys called up to us using names we loved to hear. From their pink, kissable lips we heard the “beautiful,” the “sexy,” the “stop playing with my feelings” get louder as our curiosities peeked. We felt the tug at the nape of our necks like a hot comb brushing through the kinks. Our mothers and grandmothers' warnings snapped like a fine-toothed comb in our kitchens. We were so close. Could almost taste their lips, chip salty. Smell the Arizona tea on their breath and that was enough for the moment, until it wasn’t. Until we could barely hold back, desperate for more. 

We’d sneak out past curfew to the streets illuminated by bright moon and flickering lights. We’d feel bone deep shivers then shake them away because it’s too late. Anxiety tunneled its way under our skin, a snake in a desert prepared to strike. We buried it deeper than our desire to go. We’d expand our adolescent wings and catch a breeze. Looking back occasionally, we’d start to sing. Our song would go on all night as we’d get caught up in the melody. It would be loud enough to alert our ancestors that lay dormant in our mother’s and grandmother’s dreams. We’d imagine their ghostly whispers in the ears of our mother’s, or the tap tap tap on our grandmother’s shoulders sending anxious waves through their bodies that wake them at a start. We could imagine their panting breath and palpitating hearts. We’d see the curlers that lay beneath their bonnets and the glisten of their tear-stricken eyes in the dim streetlights. Their ferociously worried glare and bared teeth. Before we knew it we were being yanked by the ears and judged in their eyes. Pulled back into our cages this time with padlocks on the outside. We sat anxiously by our bedroom windows waiting for another chance to fly. 

*

We look into the eyes of our little girls and smile. We wonder what stories we will bend into truths. A shadow is cast in front of the sun that warms our backs. The white feathers begin to overgrow twice as large as our mother’s. We wrap them around our little girls and carry them home.