Agnieszka Stachura is working towards a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree at Duke University. Her work has appeared in both Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative and in The Funny Times, and is forthcoming in both Swink and in Passages North.

Mrs. Turchin

When I was a little girl, I used to spy on a family that lived down the street, four or five identical houses away, at the end of a long stretch of unfenced backyards all running together like the blurred memory of childhood. They had one child, a daughter, somewhat older than me, and they’d augment their small family on long Sunday afternoons, from a pool of local cousins whom they’d invite over for backyard picnics. Too shy, too awkward to try and join them, too—I don’t know—the opposite of proud—to simply stay away, I’d creep as close as I dared, close as a feral cat, slinking past the mulberry tree shading the next door neighbor’s patio, to the hedges that he’d planted for privacy. There I’d crouch, breathing air heady with the sweet smell of berries crushed on concrete, curled like a question mark behind a screening juniper bush, exposed just enough to be seen.

From there I could stare down the long expanse of lawn at the busy scene, adults and children milling together around a round wooden table with a bright striped umbrella, and a tablecloth anchored by heaping platters. Some children held plates; others ran in a pack in the grass; a man bent over a grill. I remember the smells and the sounds coming to me, the bursts of laughter, the whiff of grilled meat, making my mouth water, leaving me aching with hunger, filled with an unnamable longing

Eventually, inevitably, after an eternity of waiting punctuated by brief, strategic forays onto the grass, an emissary, usually the daughter, Carol or Linda, I forget her name, would break from the group and come jogging slowly towards me, all legs and ponytail, arms swinging. She’d stop in front of me, fidgeting, toeing the grass with one sneakered foot, delivering her scripted lines in one obedient breath; “My mom wants to know do you want to come over?” And suddenly desperately nonchalant, shrugging, demure, I would reply that I didn’t know, that I’d have to check, as though I were considering other options, as though I were in high demand, as though I were the one granting the favor.

Then I would turn and start for home, sauntering at first, while I could still be seen, gathering speed round the corner of my next door neighbor’s house, scrambling over the low concrete embankment that separated my back yard from the endless plain of backyards, straightening up and running now, flat out, across my own lawn and my own tiled patio, bursting through the screen door and into the cool quiet of my living room to stop and shout into the emptiness, urgent, panting –“can I go to the Turchins’ house?”

From the kitchen, from the hall, one or other of my parents would appear, frowning, reasonable; trying, I suppose, to shield me from hurt, asking, “Where? Agush, you are sure they want you?”

“They /asked/ me,” I would reply, my exasperation tempered only by irrefutable logic.

Then, permission at least implicitly granted, it was back out the door and across a blur of patio and grass, a scrape of palms on the concrete embankment, past the screening bushes and the mulberry tree, through the lengthening shadows of trees that darkened like a backdrop to the brightly lit stage of a concrete patio with a striped umbrella and a round redwood table and curved redwood benches, to the frowns of my neighbor Carol or Linda, and the warm smiles of her gentle mother.

She would welcome me to the group, instruct the children to let me play, and, for the next few hours, until the shadows merged and my father came down the long lawn to collect me, I belonged. I’d play freeze tag, and statues, and hide-and-go-seek; I would be It, I’d hide, I would be found. I’d stand near the Turchins’ daughter and watch her throw a tennis ball, hard, against the side of the house. From her mother I’d accept a plate laden and sagging under the weight of small thick hamburgers, and chunks of potato salad, and lumpy chocolate chip cookies, accept refills of Coke in a brightly colored plastic tumbler. Always, I was aware of her presence; when I wasn’t with the other children I was staying close, following her like a puppy, or an acolyte.

I didn’t even know that I adored her, only that she was kind to me, spoke softly to me, invited me to join these family gatherings, even though her own daughter was years older than me and didn’t like me, even though I was fragile and shy.* *I wonder if it was hard for her, a choice she made, to be kind to the lonely neighbor girl, the one with no siblings and few playmates, the one so fiercely determined to belong.

Years later, long after we had moved to another state, I learned that Mrs. Turchin had died. She was still young; she’d gotten breast cancer in the days before breast cancer was something that could be detected early, treated, cured. I regret that I never told her of my gratitude. I regret that I never wrote to her widowed husband. I regret that her kindness didn’t change me, that I’m not a living legacy, carrying compassion and understanding with me like a blanket, to wrap around myself, to wrap around others. That I’m still more or less the same person, a little less shy perhaps, but still slinking around the periphery, reluctant but unable to stop insinuating myself where I may or may not belong, waiting for an invitation to join.