I smell you in a stick of cherry chapstick.
“Does anyone have chapstick?” I ask as we all cram into the car. I’ve lost mine, probably for the fifth time this week, and my lips burn raw against the blistering cold. Dad has his thick blue hat on, which lays like a box on top of his head with two round ear muffs draping down. I doubt he can even hear me. Mom shuffles towards the car, three bags in one hand, cream of wheat in the other. Is this all for one day of work?? She struggles up the snow covered driveway as dad slowly inches closer and closer down the road. He thinks that waiting for her in the street is more efficient, but it takes an hour for mom, who is already late, to unhook each heel from the ice. As she sits in the car, we drown in a sea of perfume, so potent I’m tempted to crack a window.
“I really need some chapstick,” I whine, because I’m their kid, and that’s my job. Mom searches through her coat, then her purse, with its endless pockets that are stuffed to the brim. Some days she finds it stuffed between her wallet, some days in a pile of Maria cookie crumbs at the bottom of her lunch bag. “Toma,” she says, pushing her hand back without turning. I grab it and coat my lips over and over again, as if each time the chapstick passes over me it will sink deeper into my skin for extra moisture. “Diablo, te lo va comer,” my dad comments. “I’ll show you how to use it,” he states, then takes out his black, unscented chapstick, one hand on the steering wheel. He touches it once to his top lip and once to his bottom lip. “See, this chapstick will last me a whole year,” he adds. I laugh as he barely touches it. “Wait, you had chapstick this whole time?” I ask rhetorically. “Yea, I can’t lend it to you, you’ll lose it before we leave the driveway.” How rude, I think, rolling my eyes, though it’s probably true.
We ride to Haverhill High long before homeroom starts, the sky is dark and the city is bare of life. Like rides to Melinda’s, so early I never remembered getting there, or trips to the YMCA before Williamsport opened its eyes, I sit staring out the window half asleep. As the day starts, my dad threatening to leave my mom behind, or Albert with one shoe on and no backpack, I am off to a new start, my lips smothering me in a scent of cherry chapstick.
