During the first wave of thunderstorms Mom promised we could touch her boobs–if
we wanted–but first we had to prove our maturity by snorting a pyramid of fire ants during
lightning strikes. She licked the coconut Popsicle and nestled the frosty rectangle into the
slats between the rotting wood of our porch. It was white and icy crystals glistened in the
dusk. The tips of our noses were sunburned with darkened freckles. Fireflies searched for
places to hide. Termites scurried as Mom shut the screen door to quarantine the mosquitoes.

“Boy this is your lucky day,” Mom said.

Her face was scrunched into a fungus. She sipped her cabernet sauvignon, bottle
between scabbed kneecaps. Mom’s teeth were bloody and reeking of strawberries. I swatted
a gnat and aimed for those naked repressed memories that clouded the darkest corners of an
adolescent son’s brain during a boomer. We waited till branches crashed against chalked
asphalt and a transformer exploded at the end of the cul-de-sac. Staccato lightning painted
her eyeballs cobalt. Mom had been playing tennis and was wearing her white skirt and
those panties that hid the ball. A thousand times I gazed through the sunshade of the chain-
link fence as she bounced the fluorescent fuzz against red clay. She stuck it inside her
second serve. Her silhouette floated across the court like a dragonfly trapped in a lawn
sprinkler.

“Remember when you caught your penis in your zipper–when you wore those
pajamas?” Mom asked.

It was dark and the raindrops pelted the Rhododendrons. Mom didn’t have time to
shower–or maybe she didn’t want to. Either way the sweat fusion mixed with echoes of
thunder and fledgling whiffs of petrichor. The air was cleaner than it had been in years.
When the lightning returned her boob was hanging out. This was the first time my friends
had seen a real one and Mom stretched her arms back as we lit candles. We swaggered up-
close as she shut her eyelids.

“Want me to put my palm in your pocket?” Mom asked Johnny Kearny.

Two lines of fire ants merged from the porch where they were borne by the damp
wood and melting coconut. Mom licked Carl Milner’s earlobe. She stuck her tongue inside
his canal, deep enough to mix the wax, a witch stirring her cauldron.

“Remember the smell of this porch,” she said. “Never forget this storm.”

Her nipples were sweating into the wax. The flames flickered with each drop. We
were already touching them–but we knew the fire ants were where the magic came from.
The wand to glory was waving, cresting upon us. I’ll never forget anything Mom said that
night. How the world was mine and ours and it had been years since she sat naked on her
loveseat painting those toenails while sitcoms rippled through cigarette smoke and filled the
curtains with giggles, claps, and convivial expurgation-inducing coughs. How she wanted
to hold me in her arms and clean the gunk from my offices with a Q-Tip. Stick a
thermometer up my ass.

“It might burn at first,” Mom said.

The air never smelled so clean. I am certain of that. The ants were carved into
pyramids and sepulchers, some of them mangled and decapitated by the fluorescent
cigarette lighter as Mom bent over the planks. There was a can of tennis balls illuminated
by candlelight. She opened the plastic with a pop and stuck her middle finger into the hole–
we could hear it tear–engulfed in perfect fur. Mom rolled a twenty dollar bill and held it
toward Johnny. His penis brushed against the wood. He gagged and cupped his nostrils as
antennae and thoraxes and strawberry heads poked from fresh blood.

“You’re next,” Mom said.

I fingered the edges of the bill and aimed toward the tallest pyramid.

“Ride the lightning,” Mom said.

She was headbanging as Carl caressed her boobs. Mom had been raised on
Metallica and Megadeth and Iron Maiden. The fire ants surrendered their coconut. I railed
it. Carl followed suit. Mom maneuvered the stick with her toes, placed it to her lips. She
asked Johnny if he could sit on her face. We watched the ball lighting. We could taste the
electricity on our tongues.

“Daddy’s coming to take you away tomorrow,” Mom said.

We shed skins and coiled into our sleeping bags, groggy on the soggy porch as
serpents expanding with the earth. When I woke my mouth was full of fur from tennis balls.

There were caterpillars and centipedes crawling on the loveseat. Mom was missing. Daddy
long-legs were watching from the top of the empty can of balls. That was the last we saw of
Mom. Her head was severed in the tail rotor of a skydiving plane.

“Thanks for that night,” Johnny told me.

Carl is afraid to speak about the incident, or the morning thereafter when we
clogged our orifices with green furry legs. I see Mom smile in every microburst. Her
yellow enamel rides the red spectrum of double rainbows. You can taste her tears falling
from the sky.