On The Roof

Darlene liked to climb out onto the roof. She could see the Western Branch Elizabeth River of the Chesapeake between the houses at the end of the block, but their house wasn’t tall enough for her to see the river over them unless she climbed to the very rooftop, the place where it was steepest. When she sat on the flatter section of roof just outside their living room windows, she could sometimes see tornados brewing. So she’d sit there, even with all the humidity on days like that, just to see a funnel. The roof shingles were rough in places and some were broken or missing. Darlene climbed to the top of the roof, where it is steepest, and sat facing the river.

The smell of rain lifted her away from her concern about a job. Earlier on that day, she put little colored diodes on a flat green piece of plastic with markings like a street map. She didn’t know that the little bead-like cylinders with wires sticking out of each end were called diodes until that day. She didn’t know what the inside of a transistor radio looked like, but now she did.

She took a plump nectarine out of her jacket pocket and held it in both hands, turning it to inspect the crease that runs from the stump of the stem to the other end. The skin was smooth and soft to the touch, ready to bite into. She was craving nectarines all week and finally bought a few from the little market down on Sussex Drive. She rode her bicycle back from the factory that morning, watched the shadow of the wheels revolve on gray asphalt as she peddled back home. It was hot and humid like nothing she’d ever experienced. 96% at 7 am and already 98 degrees Fahrenheit. All her candles were melting in the little apartment on the second floor of the house on Shenandoah, where she lived with the man she loved. Once, during a hard rain, their dog Brandy brought one shoe from each pair out onto the roof. Darlene wondered how he knew.

Later, she turned the rosy nectarine in her hands, rotating it like a planet, craving its taste, tart and sweet, sniffing for the smell of rain. The little tattoo of the ladybug on the inside of her left wrist began to itch. There at the base of her thumb it was making a racket with itching, right near a bulging vein. She bit into the juicy nectarine, letting it drip onto her chin. The clouds were gathering in a gray sheet like a building wave, like time-lapse photography. The wind was beginning to whip in the branches of trees, shaking them like rattles, scattering the leaves.

Darlene chewed each bite of the fruit slowly, swallowing the pieces while thinking of filling what was so empty. She waited there on the roof for over 700 years. She just sat there, many years past the invention of the transistor radio. Until on one moonless night, the tattoo finally took flight. The ladybug, all red and shiny spread its wings like a black lace shawl. Darlene heard flamenco music rising from the river. And, then suddenly, she knew that the man she had loved, whose lung collapsed after the head-on collision, was blowing her kisses, and would always remember her. She also finally knew, that from that place, high on the roof, where she waited, she had, at last, learned what it meant to live in a house on a street that meant "beautiful daughter of the stars," and that she would always listen for the sounds of that dark river, perpetually flowing.