Exposure

When I visit Christine, she shows me her braid. French, nouveau for the time, her mother’s work. We talk for a while. She calls her father Ken; I still call mine Dad. We run down our futures: wedding colors, escape routes. She claims eggshell and Alaska. I choose blush and somewhere south in France. We take pictures with a purple camera. The kind that needs black film, developing. The plastic kind with a small wheel for reloading and a flash you can discharge with the butt of your palm for high exposure. Photos of bulging cheeks, wide eyes, fish faces. Photos of the brown braided rope down Christine’s spine, my chopped blonde hair, my eyes hidden, eyes always hidden. Five left on the roll, we snag a pomegranate and knife. In the woods behind her house we bisect it, clawing out ruby-red teardrops and popping them into our mouths. Her parents are always out of town, so she comes home with me. We sit at the foot of my bed, sipping spiced rum from a flask Christine found in her father’s cabinet. We share almost everything with each other: tiny peach cigars, boys, men, fireworks in the city. Once my father’s footsteps fall silent for the night, I take her to the attic to see granddaddy’s trunk full of war treasures. Anyone over forty here has some, except her family. She giggles at the tall rubber boots, the gas mask with its elephant-trunk tube. She marvels at the brass insignias and brightly colored ribbons, but she shrinks away from the bayonet that I tell her, look, still has some blood left on the blade.