Untitled Work in Progress

At the very head of the line, there is a canopy which provides shade from the blast furnace heat of this late July afternoon. Under the canopy, it is perhaps twenty degrees cooler than anywhere else, which means that under the canopy it’s just Regular Hot instead of Unbelievably Hot. About ten people can stand in a straight line under the canopy at a time. We are at the back of the line. Ahead of us are approximately seventy-five other people, all of them seemingly as close to the border of heat stroke as we are – except the lucky few at the very front, enjoying the luxuriously decadent five square feet of shaded concrete. There is a sound ahead of us, and the line lurches forward a few feet – not enough to get us out of this scorching heat, but enough to fill us with grim hope.

The others in this line are morose-looking teenagers like me; or women and men with chubby, beet-faced children whose shorts (invariably either neon pink or yellow) are wadded firmly between their legs, forming that funny inverted shorts-v that some people get if they’re not paying attention. Most of the boys have buzz cuts. The girls mostly have pony tails, some perched at an odd angle on the parietal side of their skulls. Their sweaty mitts lay like stillborn puppies in their parents’ hands, or else clenched around an electric blue Sno-Cone. Next to me stands my sister. We’ve been in line for forty-five minutes. At first we were excited and talked of the fun time ahead. We stopped speaking about fifteen minutes ago owing to the exhaustion we both are experiencing. I am fifteen and she is ten, and we have been here for what seems like the whole of our young lives. We are being slow-roasted. Our brains are bubbling. We are waiting to get on the ValleyFair Raging Rapids ride.

The fun of the Raging Rapids ride is essentially predicated on the idea that you will enjoy being violently whiplashed from side to side while having water sprayed on you from a variety of high-pressure hoses concealed behind fake rocks. This simulates “white water rapids.” As a fifteen year old, I took this to be a reasonable claim. Normally, I wouldn’t have placed myself in the position to have my hair – meticulously Aqua Netted that morning before we left our motel – thoroughly drenched and thus utterly ruined, but the insane heat of the day has changed things. After I got in line, my sister Molly joined me, and here we have been, shuffling slowly forward, for all this time.

This is the kind of place that is 90% concrete and 10% grassy area which you’re not allowed to walk on, and which in fact is roped off from the public; the occasional tree is planted smack in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere near one of these bizarrely placed trees is our mother, aunt Colleen, and grandmother, probably drinking Cokes and bitching about who-can-guess. With them is also our youngest sister Suzie. Suzie is seven, and one of those kids with a strangely rich vocabulary and full of the kind of moxie that some little girls have – the kind where, when they storm into a room, you expect to hear musical cues a la some old Ann-Margaret movie. Like bum-bum-BA-DA! BAP! Suzie is not fond of the word “no” or of being told she’s too young to do things.

The head of the line comes into view. Finally, hope springs up inside me again; I can even see the “you must be THIS TALL” – fifty-four inches – “to ride RAGING RAPIDS” sign. I look at my sister; she’s about five feet tall, even at age ten. We smile feebly to each other, our usual sister-versus-sister death match temporarily suspended; sweaty-faced, miserable but determined. Then I see Suzie.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her marching up to where we stand in line, hands balled in little fists, ginger bobbed hair bouncing indignantly with each step. I can hear the zerrp-zerrp-zerrp of her plastic jelly shoes as they stomp across the hot concrete toward us. She comes to an entirely officious-looking halt next to us, and slams her fists on to her hips.

“You guys,” she says. She is panting. Her cheeks are bright red, whether from the heat or from the righteous indignation. “Mom says you have to let me go on the ride, too.”

In the distance, I can see my mother, sitting and smoking on a bench under a lone, preposterously placed tree, watching. She has that face on, the one that is intended to warn me in advance that she is in no mood. I look at Suzie, standing before me like a furious gnome. She’s way too short for this ride, maybe four feet tall, total. The sign clearly states fifty-four inches and up. If there is one thing I love at this age, it is getting to rebuke my sisters thanks to rules that my mother can’t change. I look at the sign, then at my mother. I think she reads it on my face, because her eyes narrow a little and she takes a long drag on her cigarette.

“You can’t,” I tell Suzie, packing as much triumph in my voice as I can reasonably fit. “You’re too little.” Her little face crinkles like Christmas paper. She wails, loudly. She runs back to our mother, jelly shoes zerrp-zerrping out the song of her sorrow. My mother, seeing this, looks at me angrily and mouths what is going on? I point to the sign and hold my hand horizontally next to me, first at about my eye level, then at my ribcage. She’s too short. I shrug. Maybe it was the shrug that got to her.

I turn back to Molly. We agree that Suzie is way too short for the Raging Rapids ride; moreover, she is known for demanding to participate in things like this, then getting scared halfway through and having to be rescued. Plus we always have to take her along, and she tells on us if we swear. Later this year, Suzie will find the carefully hidden cigarettes in my bedroom and will gleefully present them to my mother, who will dramatically destroy them and will ground me for weeks. And will light a cigarette while lecturing me.

We’ve made it to the blessed canopy. We’re almost the next ones to get on the ride, which is sort of like a giant tire with seats. Our excitement has reignited, and we’re grinning, anticipating the fun that surely awaits us. The guy working at the head of the line is visibly bored and hot and tired, his red ValleyFair FUN! t-shirt sticking wetly to his back as he waits for the ride to return.

That’s when I see my mother climb over the chain with Suzie in tow and begin storming toward us across the forbidden grass.