Rachel gave my hand a firm, slippery shake, and winked at me. “This is my son, Robert,” my mother said. Rachel narrowed her identical eyes at my mom, grinned, and relaxed, her breasts rising as she drew in a sigh. He wrapped his sunburned arms around Rachel’s twig legs and smiled at me, eyes twinkling. Isaac was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen. The distinctive scent of oil and sweat filled my nostrils. Like my mother often did, she’d applied baby oil to her already browned skin. “I’m so sorry about last night, ya’ll,” the woman said. The woman saw us coming, tossed her hose into the grass and strode in our direction, ponytail bouncing. She closed her book and I followed her to the house. “Let’s go meet our new neighbor,” Mom said, startling me.

I watched from the porch, transfixed, hoping the mimosa tree separating our houses camouflaged me. The boy and the woman shared identical surfer-blond hair. A small boy in a bathing suit danced in the spray, laughing with piercing joy. I stood rigid, gasping, not from fear, but from the sight of a slim, tanned woman in cutoffs and a green bikini top, washing her car with a garden hose. I headed back to the porch, instantly awake, terrified of what I might see in that driveway. The next day, I awoke to high-pitched squealing coming from next door. “What was that all about?” I asked, my heart racing. My brother, mother, and I stood speechless for a few moments as the night sounds drifted back in and the lights next door flicked out, one by one, leaving the house shrunken against the darkness. Mike kicked the door several times, grunting on impact, limped to his Corvette, yelled more profanity at my mom, flipped her off, and peeled out. “I’m gonna call the police if you don’t get the hell outta here!” “Get outta here!” Mom shot back, her voice loud and shaky. “Shut the fuck up, lady!” Mike screamed at my mother.

“No,” whimpered the woman’s voice, on the verge of a scream. “Want me to call the police?” Mom yelled. “Stop it, Mike,” came a female voice inside the house. A moving van had been there earlier that day.

“Fuck you, bitch!” a mustachioed man in a three-piece suit shouted from the driveway next door. “You sonofabitch!” Mom yelled into the darkness. IN THE EARLY SUMMER OF 1977, my brother Britt and I awoke to our mother shouting from the screened-in porch.

Hasten down the wind live