Tar in the Afternoon

How like last summer it is. June's sun unfolds down between the tree branches onto my skin. I sit on my stoop and pour a bottle of water onto the sidewalk where tar is re-liquifying. The water, who has more freedom than I will ever know, almost immediately begins to evaporate into the stale air. Across the street a large black dog watches me waste my drink through eyes of mild arrogance. He shifts his gaze, not wishing to arouse any territorial rage on my side of the street. I rise and stretch my limbs into the toxic dust clouds of summer-stricken suburbia. I stare at the fire hydrant down the road, its cap hacked off my crude young boys who now play half-nakedly in the spray of frigid ground water. An old Cuban man sits in a discarded lawn chair by the street, watching the boys. His wrinkled scowl grows more furrowed every time he is splashed with the water.

A memory slithers into my mind: it is my grandmother washing my mouth out with soap. She had hoped to burn the offending words from my tongue without having to form an actual lecture out of standard child-rearing rhetoric. I sat there, gangly legs dangling, understanding that my grandmother thought she was acting toward the collective relief of the entire community by keeping me from spitting these curse words out of my cocky little head. What she didn't know was that it was that very neighborhood who had taught me to spit those words on serpentine tongue to any that were younger than me. It's a beautiful hierarchy. It has existed for years.