Page 1 of The Summer Show

one

The summer Mom burned my books I was twelve years old. A human whirlwind, she whipped through my room with a list in hand, the gleaming silver-plated cross around her neck swaying as she hunted down contraband like at least one of our ancestors was a bloodhound.

The list was new, the cross was new, and this version of my mother was new, too. Although she’d been evolving into her final form for years, bouncing from cause to cause, searching for a purpose. My mother had habit of seizing shiny, new emotional trinkets, and flinging them to the wind when they failed to fill the cavern inside her where other people kept their love.

Being a bossbabe wasn’t profitable enough; and the lake of cosmetics in our living room soon dried up, only to be replaced by plastics for every purpose. When Mom wore out the goodwill of our friends, family, neighbors, and delivery people, she seized on essential oils. Everyone wanted—nay, needed—essential oils. It was right there in the name: essential.

People avoided eye contact with our family after that, their gazes sliding away when they saw my mother approaching with her latest spiel coiled in her mouth, ready to be unleashed.

After Multilevel Marketing, my mother flirted with the more devoted fandoms. One afternoon I came home from school to find that she had taken our family photos off the walls and replaced them with faces from the new Star Wars movie. Jar Jar Binks was the new Kathleen Claire Hart, aka me.

Jar Jar Binks, I tell you.

The most irritating character in Star Wars history.

Even as a kid I was aware that everyone hated Jar Jar. I took it as a sign that my mother hated me, too. She never did anything to prove me wrong.

My mother’s time as a dance mom was the shortest lived of all, because neither my sister Britney or I were blessed with any talent or desire to dance. That didn’t stop Mom from strapping tap shoes to our feet and barking at us to “suck it up and dance” for one humiliating summer.

Then there was her Flat Earth period, which was at odds with everything I’d learned in school. (“The Earth isn’t flat, Mom.” “You say that now, but wait until you fall off.”)

During all this, Dad endured, and so did we. The man was a modern day Saint Monica.

And then Mom discovered a flavor of religion compatible with her addictive personality. Up until then she’d rarely stepped foot in a church, and afterward she didn’t either because all their meetings took place online, in a forum with about five hundred members that falsely inflated their numbers in the press. They were known for publicly clutching their pearls and pretending to be devoted mothers, while behind their scenes their husbands were left to buy sanitary products and heating pads for their daughters’ first periods because no one else would.

And then, well, the books.

These devout mothers hated books that weren’t their version of the Bible. Mind you, no published edition was suitable for their cause. King James? Never. New American Standard? Not extreme enough. The group produced their own and circulated The Mothers’ Testament via PDF for $39.99.

The day of the culling, I came home from Tiffany Beckard’s house in time to catch my mother spinning around my bedroom, tearing books off the shelves. Clutching my comfort reads to her chest, she gripped my arm and dragged me outside. Stacked high on two Adirondack chairs, dozens of my books waited in stoic silence for their turn to burn.

Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret was the first casualty. Ignoring my tears and pleading, Mom fed my favorite book—the book I needed—into the flames of our fire pit.

My asthma was born that day. With my lungs forming angry fists, refusing to let more air in or out, black spots filled my vision. I wheezed for my mother to help me.

She marked me with her handprint instead.

Dad saved our family and my life that afternoon.

Alerted to my shrieks by a neighbor, who called my grandparents, who called Dad at work, he bundled my sister and me into the family SUV, and drove us to the ER, where they filled my lungs with Albuterol and sent me away with an inhaler that would be with me from that day forward. From the hospital, Dad drove us to the sanctuary of my grandparents’ house, where Brit and I lived out the rest of our childhoods.

Mom never tried to win us back.

When Dad filed for divorce she opened her palm and let us fall through her fingers, like we were nothing more substantial than dirt.

two

Penis.

It was big. Chonky, the internet would say if it was a cat. Oh lawd he comin’ size. And it was splayed across the pages of the most recent Dog Man book, a new acquisition for my modest library at Bush Lake Elementary.

The phantom penis artist had struck again.

Five minutes later, the book and I were standing in the principal’s office. The book was spread wide open and I jabbed a fingernail at the perky member.

“I need to know who did this,” I told Marti Shaw, Bush Lake Elementary’s principal and one of my two best friends in this world.

Our other best friend, the third of our Bush Lake trio, had fallen madly in love with the man she’d hated since she was a small girl. The typical enemies-to-lovers trope. As an added bonus, being forced to work in the same classroom (forced proximity) for the summer had led to their altered feelings, and then they’d had to hide their love (forbidden love) so they wouldn’t be shunned by their families. Now it was just me and Marti left at Bush Lake, and the new teacher who now occupied Ana’s old seat at Applebee’s on Friday evenings. He would never be Ana, but I have to admit, he tried.

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