A Memoir by Diane Payne

In the summer, all of the neighbor kids gathered outside at night to play kick-the-can, until one by one the more concerned parents started calling their kids to come inside, while the rest of us kept kicking the can long past when it was light enough to see the can, knowing it was more fun being outside, free of whatever shit and grief was going on inside the house, stalling until the police arrived to remind us that it was too late  for kids to be outside.

When the neighbor girls and I moved on from kick-the-can to walking downtown on the nights the stores stayed open until nine, the evening air whirled with the smell of freedom, our sense of power strengthening as boys slowed down  in their crummy cars to offer us rides, and we’d get up close to the curb first giving their car a good look over, then their faces, and we’d pass, saying that we had more shopping to do. We’d laugh at our bravado and strut down the street as if we owned it, at least until the stores closed and we slowly trotted back home.

One downtown friend got tired of being penniless and told me to wait in front of the store while she took off to the parking lot out back, for what seemed like a long time, and then she returned with cash in her hands, laughing about how she just  made easy money giving someone a hand job, and I had no idea what a hand job involved,  until she mimicked rubbing her hand up and down,  boasting how boys were losers and would pay a girl to do anything as lame as a hand job. 

A couple other neighbor friends, who were sisters, and I walked to town. The older sister flirted with all the boys while we watched in awe.  Then we’d ride the elevator at the priciest store and try on clothes, clothes I’d never be able to buy. Walking home, the older sister pulled out the expensive sweater she stole while we were trying on clothes in front of the mirror, laughing as we wiggled our asses and shoved our puny breasts upward to make them look larger,  until the clerk came to tell us to move on if we weren’t going to buy anything, while  the older sister was piling new clothes beneath her own clothes, rolling her eyes at the clerk, muttering that she was stuck taking her younger sister and  her friend to the store, and this is how we behave.

Eventually downtown shopping was replaced with drinking Boone’s Farm cheap ass wine, teasing boys, dancing to records all night long, then collapsing in bed when the sun started emerging, parents never questioning our whereabouts, as we pushed our fifteen-year-old freedoms to the limit, the limits we didn’t even know were possibilities, the limits we could no longer remember the next day.

Eventually everything seemed to be spiraling in all the wrong directions, and I started going on long solo runs in the middle of the night, dated boys who were serious about school and not getting drunk, and their mothers were horrified when they asked me what time did I need to be home in the evening, their way of using me to remind their sons they had to be home by ten on a school night, and I said, “Don’t worry, I don’t have a curfew,” while the mothers shook their heads with remorse and their sons looked gravely embarrassed. Boy after boy. Mother after mother. I knew these boys would not be allowed to date me again. 

During my middle of the night runs, I ran farther away from boys who had curfews and past all- night coffee shops, dark laundrymats, entered unknown neighborhoods, endless running into a world free of curfews and unexplored possibilities. 

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Some of Diane’s most recent publications include:  Cutleaf Journal, Mukoli, Miracle Monacle, Hairstreak Butterfly, Invisible City,  Best of Microfiction 2022, Another Chicago Magazine, Whale Road Review, Fourth River, Tiny Spoon, Bending Genres, Your Impossible Voice,  Book of Matches , Watershed Review, Superstition Review, Windmill Review, Qyarterly West,,Table Feast Literary Magazine Lunch Ticket, Miramichi Flash, Spry Split Lip Review, The Offing, Elk, and McNeese Review. Her chapbook Things That Happen in the Rain is available at Bottlecap Press.   More can be found here: dianepayne.wordpress.com