wildscape. literary journal

Lemon Daze
by Christine Robertson

                Today I need to be with Sammy. 

                I watch the girls ride, injecting myself with a kaleidoscope of shapes and sounds. They only trot in circles, but the magic in their movement quiets the stories in my mind. I steady in the steady drum of horse hooves, the smell of pine needles and sea salt, the musky tang of manure under the August sun. 

                When the bench grips me, I twist and turn. Balance an iced tea on my thigh. Circle the lemon wedge with a straw. 

                Sammy licks lemons like a racehorse licks salt. She digs in the monkey dish for the thickest wedge and bites her teeth into its soft flesh, squinting as the juice trickles in her mouth—relaxing her lips around the rind. 

                Sam’s go-to joke is to look at us with that waxy yellow smile and bulge her eyes like a tree frog, bobbing her head back-and-forth, flailing her arms, charging us like some sort of Claymation creation. 

                Right as she’s about to collide into us—right as I’m about to say okay Sammy, that’s enough, settle down—she explodes with that contagious guffaw, dropping the shiny wedge onto the floor. The whole bit is so incredibly funny to her, I can’t help but wonder if she’s egging us on, goading giggles out of her sister. How can anything be that funny to anybody? 

                But it is.

                Across the corral, a woman next to the stables glances in my direction. She closes in, crunching pinecones with her feet. I pull the corners of my lips toward my ears and redirect my focus to the girls, but she plops beside me chasing her breath. 

                “Woo-wee!” she says with a toothy grin. “Sure is hot! You got the best spot out here—your girl ride?”

                After we showed Sammy the 1944 Elizabeth Taylor film National Velvet—my childhood favorite—she couldn’t think about anything but horses. Riding horses. Talking to horses. Horses. Horses. Horses. 

                I nod once, willing her to leave. 

                “Nice! That’s mine over there,” she says, oblivious, pinky pointing toward a girl on a white horse. “God, she loves horses… There’s nothing but horses these days.” 

                The girl springs in her saddle, clip clopping in circles. 

                “Man, they grow up fast, don’t they?” she says, shaking her head.

                My jaw locks. 

                “Mine just turned eight,” the woman adds, bouncing her leg.

                Please go, I beg. 

                But the silence holds us. 

                “How old’s yours?” she tacks on with that grin. 

                The question cracks me open and as hard as I fight, I can’t stop the thoughts. 

                She would be nine… 

                They bore into me with a cacophony of shapes and sounds that flood my insides with their acidic burn.

                She should be nine.

                “Same,” I finally mouth, squinting—unable to relax my lips around the rind. 

about the author // Christine Robertson