Amen, Amen, Amen

Amen Amen Amen



the night that kinny’s gone

Rebecca’s backyard always smelled like it had just rained. The grass sank in under our feet and the air felt swampy, especially in the summer. We were up on her screened-in porch watching the gnats swarm like tornadoes. Rebecca was my best friend and it was usually fun to go to her house after school and melt crayons on her radiator or put on talent shows, but we’d already run out of things to do. It was still the first week of fifth grade; we didn’t have homework yet and we’d even finished covering our books with brown paper bags and decorating them with stickers. We’d eaten our grilled cheese sandwiches hours ago and when we asked for a snack Rebecca’s mom said it was too close to dinner.

My mother was always late to pick me up. Even when it was her turn to drive for dance car pool, she swung into the parking lot ten minutes after everyone else, her feathered hair flying in all directions like she’d been shot out of a cannon. Most days something had tied her up at work or she’d started cutting carrots and forgotten about the time. Tonight she was particularly late. The clock in Rebecca’s den said ten after seven. I started thinking about how to draw my mother’s profile for the police if she’d gone missing.

“Mom! I’m hungry!” yelled Danny, Rebecca’s big brother. He was three years older than us and never came out of his room during the daytime except when he wanted to tackle Rebecca or fart at us.

“When are we going to eat?!!!!”

I heard Mrs. Mills answer him in a half-whisper, something about waiting for Mrs. Sher and maybe traffic, but that’s not the point. Why did adults have to whisper so much, especially when it wasn’t about something magical or fantastic like hidden candy or a water slide? It made my mother’s absence even more embarrassing.

By the time Mom did tap on the Millses’ screen door, it was pitch black out - or as close as it got to pitch black in the summer. More like an inky purple. It was still too sweltering to feel like the sun had completely vanished. Mom and Mrs. Mills whispered some more while I packed up my knapsack, and Rebecca told me, “I wish you didn’t have to go home.”

“Me too,” I said, though it wasn’t true. I was starving and annoyed at my mother for forgetting about me and not even apologizing. On the drive home, Mom and I didn’t say much, but there was no space to hear anyway because the cicadas were clinging to the trees, screaming in waves. My older brother, Jon, had read all of our World Book encyclopedias and he said that only male cicada could make noise and they did it with a special membrane near their stomach. They were supposed to visit our part of the country once every thirteen or seventeen years, but they must’ve loved my town because they seemed to descend upon us every summer.

They nested in clumps, crouched under beach chairs, and scuttled beneath ice cream trucks. At night they were so close I could feel them pulse in my skin.