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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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Wendy Fontaine

Badge


          When my mother finally gives me permission to go to the neighbor’s house to sell Girl Scout cookies, I grab the illustrated order form and throw on my sash. The fabric loops heavy around my torso, weighted by the pins and badges I’ve earned so far this year. My troopmates and I meet once a week in the basement of the Methodist church. We learn to draw maps and sew. We make first aid kits. At one meeting, when the troop leader isn’t listening, an older Scout uses the word “pussy.” For too long, I think she’s talking about her cat.
          Order form in hand, I march across the front yard and through our small trailer park, past discarded toys and soggy sod. Springtime mud sucks at my shoes, but I don’t mind. It’s the dry weather I don’t like. That’s when the garden spiders come out - black and yellow, as big as Easter eggs. They gather in the tall grass by the driveway. They spread their legs wide between the reeds. They spin their webs, white and wispy, like a dead man’s hair.
          Sometimes at night, the spiders venture all the way to the door of our trailer. They make their nets and wait for prey. I dream about them, about what they will do if they get inside. I imagine them on the carpet, on the curtains. I feel them crawling on my skin.
          One hot summer day, my father slipped on his fishing waders and started the lawn mower. He pushed the mower into the grass and made the spiders disappear. Their webs, destroyed. Their bodies, mulched. I watched from the living room window, horrified and delighted all at once.
          I knock on the neighbor’s door. He invites me inside, then asks about each type of cookie. Trefoils are shortbread, I answer. Tagalongs have peanut butter. As he looks over the order form, I peek at his kitchen, at his couch, at his trailer that looks a lot like mine. Aluminum siding, wood-paneled walls, brown carpet. In a trailer park, everything is brown. The houses. The dirt. The dirt we track into the house and sweep under the rugs. Even the cookies are brown.
          He says he’ll take two boxes of each, plus some Thin Mints. He buys a lot of cookies, probably because he’s stoned, although I don’t know that yet. I don’t know a lot of things. Like how many beers my dad drinks on his drive home from work, or how many more he has after we all go to bed. Or that he drinks because he is anxious, because he is overwhelmed, because he is sad and misses his mother, who died on Valentine’s Day. I don’t know yet what addiction means. Or depression. These are things I will learn in time, and there will be no badges for any of it.
          A few weeks after my father mowed the spiders, more came back. Black and yellow, bigger than ever. They stretched their legs. They built their webs. They came to me in dreams, crawling and crawling.
          Cookies are two dollars a box. Let me get my wallet, the neighbor says. Then he disappears down a long, dark hallway. My trailer has a hallway too, with the light switch at the far end. You have to walk all the way down, fumbling through blackness, before you can turn it on, before you can see what’s in front of you, or what’s behind.
          I wonder if the neighbor has the same light. I wonder if he’s really getting his wallet. He’s a big man, with dark hair and eyes, and for a moment, I think maybe I should leave. Take my order form and go, back over the soggy yard, to my mother who is waiting at home. To the spiders and the darkness. To my father, asleep in his chair in front of the TV. Instead I stay. I stay because my troop is counting on me. Because there’s a cookie badge on the line. Because there’s nothing here at my neighbor’s house any scarier than the things at my own.
          He comes back, a wad of bills in hand. I put tiny pen marks next to his name, next to the things he’s ordered. I take the money and say goodbye, promise to return when the cookies are in. I cross his yard and then my own, straightening my sash, which is about to get a little heavier. 






--
Wendy Fontaine is a multi-genre writer whose work has appeared in Full Grown People, Hippocampus Magazine, Mud Season Review, River Teeth and elsewhere. She’s been nominated for a Pushcart, awarded the Tiferet Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and featured as a speaker at literary conferences around the country. A New England native, she currently resides in southern California, where she is at work on a novel, a memoir and a collection of flash essays.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022