Monsoon Season by Iris Rosewater

After circling the block three times, Brenna finally pulled over and sat in her rental car, staring at the eyesore of a house across the street. It had been ten years since she’d last seen it, and she was shocked by the level of neglect the poor home had endured. The red brick face clashed sadly with old lime-painted trim and shutters. The rose bushes under the front window drooped in a row, wild heads flopping from long thorny tendrils in all directions. They plead to be put out of their misery.

Her eyes wandered to the front sidewalk, lumpy from old roots, and saw that the elm trees that once lined the street were cut down, leaving gaudy stump corpses behind. She pictured herself on the thick limb of the tree nearest the driveway (her favorite one) reading books, and plucking the deep green leaves in the summertime, bending them in half to make whistles. In the spring, the lawn had been carpeted by their offspring, which looked like caterpillars and swirled in the April wind. On the curb, she could see herself dancing (as much like Gene Kelley as possible) with a large, pink umbrella in a desert cloudburst. She clung to the broken handle and swung it around her as she twirled in the gutter and sloshed in its current. Lost in memory, she found herself opening the door and getting out of the economy car. The asphalt baked in the hot sun, cracked open like dry skin. The crevasses were packed with tar, gooey in the July heat. She laughed and found a stick in a neighboring yard, picturing Scott Booth pressing sharp sticks into the yielding black and leaving them upright in the road to irritate passing drivers. It was just as satisfying as she had remembered to churn the thick substance. Brenna sighed and stood, still carrying the stick, returning her attention to the old house.

As it was the corner lot, she walked up the sidewalk and peeped over the cinderblock wall into the back yard. The wood shed her father had made into a playhouse for her was gone. Only the concrete slab was left, like a tombstone, in its place. Where the pecan tree once stood sat a rusted-out truck. The grass had been parched to the point of extinction, and the desert seemed to have slowly reclaimed the space over the years. Brenna could remember the feel of fresh-cut lawn. She used to sprawl out in it with a cat beside her, feeling the sun pull the freckles out of the white skin on her nose and cheeks. And then, there was the day she discovered aphids. She had been searching for lady bugs and noticed the grass twitching. Straining her eyes, she caught them – tiny bugs, the same color as the house’s current trim, she now noted, bounding from blade to blade. The remainder of that day she had spent capturing them in a Mason jar. Her minuscule prizes jumped and clung to the glinting edges of their glass prison. Squinting in the sun, Brenna shielded her eyes with her hand as she glimpsed the old plumb tree in the far corner of the yard. She tried to recall how many hamsters were buried beneath its burgundy leaves.

The sun had begun to set, painting the dust in the sky with orange and pink. She realized the reunion would be starting soon and pulled herself from the reaches of her distant memories. A fervent desire to see inside the old house throbbed in her chest… The piano room with heavy curtains that matched the red sofa… the wood stove that warmed her after a bath and was used to toast pumpkin seeds in the fall, the laundry room where she watched her sister carefully apply make-up every morning…her tiny bedroom… ‘Why not?’ she asked herself, ‘When will I ever be here again?’

Despite her own reassurance, she felt nervous and embarrassed as she walked to the front door and knocked on the carved wood. Muffled music penetrated the walls and the windows and hit her almost as hard as the potent cloud of smoke when a college-age boy/man answered. He looked trendily ill-kempt with floppy ‘One Tree Hill’ hair and a rough beard.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Um… I used to live here when I was little. I’m in town for a high school reunion and I wondered if I could look around… for sentimental reasons.” Her voice lilted.

“Yeah, right. You’re probably going to case our house and then come back to steal our Xbox when we’re in class. Forget it, Lady.” She heard him laugh behind the door as he shut it.

Deflated, Brenna walked back to her car. The wind picked up and she breathed in the clean scent of rain on its heels. Thick indigo clouds sprawled out across the sky, and she watched the glow of the sidewalk dim as the sun disappeared behind them. Fat drops of water plunged to the ground in an instant. Typical adults with any experience in the New Mexico monsoon season would have ducked into the dry safety of their cars and homes. An old man, shielding himself with a newspaper, went outside to turn off his sprinklers and then shuffled back indoors. Disgruntled and whiny, a tabby-cat took shelter on someone’s front porch, yowling and clawing at the mesh of the screen door. Brenna smiled, turning her face to the heavenly onslaught. Her curled hair whipped her cheeks, melting into lank, heavy tendrils in the desert storm. Water soaked the shoulders and bust of her black blouse (which was dry-clean only). She kicked off her leather shoes and bounded toward the flash-flood in the gutter, kicking and splashing and dancing muddled excerpts from her old “singing in the rain” routine. She laughed until her stomach hurt and she could hardly catch her breath… grateful that no one could ever deny her access to the joy that shivered through her rain-soaked body, courtesy of the desert and her memories.