Snowboobs

SNOWBOOBS

“I said I have a snow woman in Big Mama’s freezer,” said Allen.

“You lie,” I said, not entirely sure I was right, but I narrowed my eyes and lifted my chin, aware of the rest of my brothers and sisters watching to see what I’d do. You just couldn’t let Allen see doubt. At least if he really did have an anatomically correct frozen female in the freezer, I would one day hear the end of it. But if I caved, said I believed him and he really didn’t, I’d never get any respect again. Backbone was the prime value in our house. As the youngest, and as a girl, I had to learn early how to scrap for my status on the family ladder.

It fluctuated from week to week, usually depending on whether John-Rodgers had done well at baseball practice. At eight, John-Rogers vied with me, the six year old, for the next-to-the-last rung. We never had any hopes of making it past Maddy, who generally punched two boys a week for making eyes at her prematurely blooming figure. We had no illusions of climbing anywhere near Frank, the track star, or Cassey, who sang every time the church doors opened. Usually, I was on the bottom rung because I had no apparent talent for anything. This meant I took out the trash, cleaned the kids’ bathroom – yes, we all shared one – and fed and walked the dog. Sometimes, if I’d had a lot of tests that week at school, the dog would actually be ahead of me on the ladder and got my cookie at supper.

So when my oldest brother told me that here, in the middle of the hottest summer in fifteen years, he had smuggled a snow babe into our grandmother’s freezer - which I knew for a fact was chock full of deer meat - I stood my ground. I was sick of that dadgum boy pee all around the toilet. That pee had Allen’s name written all over it. He was going down, and I had siblings as my witnesses.

We all marched across the dirt road to her house and onto the back porch. The behemoth freezer hummed like a billion mad killer bees. It always scared me how the thick gray cord buzzed and the plug vibrated along with it, like a combination icy coffin and snake. It bites, and then it throws you in the deep freeze.

We gathered around it, with Cassey and Frank lifting up John-Rogers and me so we could see. Allen unceremoniously flung it open. There lying on top of several large dead deer parts was a white, crystalline body form with one of Cassey’s old skirts around its middle and boobs worthy of Dolly Parton. Allen had scraped all the frost from the inside (This was before frost-free freezers.) to make her. He must have had to work a few seconds, close the lid,work a few more, and close the lid again. No telling how many days he worked on it. It’s a wonder Big Mama didn’t catch him, but Big Daddy didn’t like venison in the summer. He said it was too dense and “fall-ish” for August.

Now, this snow chick had no eyes, nose, mouth, or ears. Basically, she had no face, just a semi-rounded mass of ice that vaguely suggested a head. But her chest said Botecelli. The breasts fit the body better than any implant from the hand of a plastic surgeon. Allen had even gone so far as to steal maraschino cherries from Big Mama’s refrigerator and place one in the center of each boob.

Never having actually seen anyone’s nipples but my own (My sisters were incredibly modest.), I was shocked but mildly fascinated. First of all, what was the point of a girl with boobs but no face? And why the incredible detail? Suddenly, I hated Allen and his faceless booby ice woman. I wriggled out of Frank’s arms and stepped on Allen’s bare left foot with my right jelly sandal (They were incredibly comfortable to the wearer but had wonderfully waffle-y bottoms for a cookie-cutter weapon.). All the months of rage schlepping those trash cans up the driveway, all the Saturday mornings spent in the company of Mr. Clean, and all the early morning nausea from cheap dog food on my hands exploded from my insides to turn my right leg into a pile driver.

Allen yelled so loud I thought I felt my pigtails stick straight out, but I yelled back, “Give her a face! Give her a face now!” As he bent over his bruised foot, I lifted mine again in readiness, should he not begin sculpting immediately. He looked at me, squinting through his measly perceived pain, as if I would give him a minute to recover.

Cassey bent down to Allen. “She’s right, Allen. You know she’s right.”

Allen stood up. “Ya’ll are mental,” he said, and turned to walk away. He was stopped by Maddy.

“Ally said to give the girl a face.”

Allen raised one eyebrow. “Or what?”

Maddy crossed her arms. She looked at Cassey, who also crossed her arms. Then John-Rogers crossed his, and then Frank, and finally, I crossed mine.

Allen looked around and picked up two small rocks. He placed them where the eyes should be. Then he closed the freezer to let it “cool up” again. We all scoured the yard for stuff to fashion the face and hair. In between scavenging, sculpting, and waiting for the freezer to “cool up,” we busied ourselves for the better part of an August afternoon. When we finished right before supper, we had named her Artemis after the smartest girl in Frank’s ninth grade math class. Maddy ran back home and found an old blouse she hated and then put it on Artemis. We closed the freezer for the thirteenth time and were planning Artemis’s imminent demise, when Mama yelled across the road, “Snow Cones!” Mama only brought snow cones home from work once a month. In this weather, they wouldn’t last five minutes. We all high-tailed it home and forgot about Artemis until later that night around eight, when we heard a whooping sound coming from our grandparents’ house. Big Daddy had decided he had a taste for a deer steak in August, so Big Mama had gone out to the freezer to put a couple of them out to thaw.

Big Mama met Artemis, and every single one of us met Big Mama’s switch bush, even Allen. Especially Allen.

So for one week in August of 1968, I was one rung ahead of my seventeen-year-old brother Allen. He fed the dog. He took up the trash. And he spent quality time with Mr. Clean, cleaning pee off the floor of a bathroom shared by six kids, half of whom were boys.