revelation can end discovery
or be the end of innocence
The doctor was a nurse. Becky. One of the Porter girls across the street. A household of 5 girls, 2 boys, a dumpling mother, and father in retreat against the horde.
Mr P would sit in his truck after work. (I always imagined him a miner.) Sit in his truck in their driveway, newspaper held high, escaping to a world of other people’s problems.
John, the eldest son, put up a canvas tent in their side-yard for canning fruit and veg. We used it after school for putting on plays. There was a curtain inside, although its connection to canning was lost on me.
It tickled more than titillated as Bec explored. Two ten-year-olds behind the curtain in a hot tent of nurse Becky’s exam room. Her hand was cool, but unproductive in the magic of making the flaccid firm.
Out of nowhere came Jo. Two sisters shouldered in solemn exam. Do this … like this. And Becky did. And the storm light on the tent pole hissed.
Jo. Josephine. Two years older than us. Much older by dour. Sometimes I wonder whether Mr P sat in his truck to check who’s in there. Newspaper in hand, he’d enter their tent.
