The Boy Across the Fence

There was a fence between our yards, and for a few summers of my childhood, that fence was the most interesting place in the whole world.

I grew up in Oracabessa, in St. Mary, and in the summertime I was a home child. My big sister was minding me while the grown people worked, and the rule was simple and it was iron: you do not leave the yard. Not to the road, not to the shop, not next door. The yard was the whole country and the gate was the border.

Next door, there was a boy. He wasn't from Oracabessa, not really. He came from America every summer, sent home to his grandparents the same way plenty of us were sent to the country, and every summer he turned up again, a little taller, on the other side of the fence.

And that is where we lived. At the fence. He couldn't come into my yard and I couldn't go into his, so we met at the line between them and we talked. All day. Every day. Morning until the light started to go. Two children standing at a fence like it was a job somebody had given us.

Here is how much I loved that fence. One day I ran inside to grab something to eat, only so I could hurry right back out and keep talking, and in my rush a plate came down and caught me hard on the leg. Big gash. That is how the conversation ended that day, not because we ran out of things to say, we never ran out, but because I had to go and get my leg stitched up. And I promise you, the whole time, I was vexed that I was missing fence time. I still have the mark. Consider it the only receipt I have of any of it.

Because here is the part I have to be honest about. I cannot remember one single thing we talked about. Not one subject, not one story, not one joke. I have gone back in my mind plenty of times to catch even one sentence, and there is nothing there but the fence, the heat, and the feeling. And the feeling was this: those were the most interesting conversations of my entire childhood.

Isn't that a strange thing? Hours and hours of talk, gone like water, and only a scar on my leg to prove it happened. But I remember exactly how it felt to run outside in the morning and check if he was there yet. I remember that nothing else all summer was ever as good as that fence.

Now and then the rule would loosen, and a few of us neighborhood children were allowed into his grandparents' yard to take a turn on the swing they had. Those were good days. But they were the exception. Most days it was the fence, him on his side, me on mine, and a whole afternoon to fill.

I didn't understand then what I was looking at. Two pickney, each one shut inside their own little yard, finding a whole world in each other through a wire. We didn't need to go anywhere. We had already found the most interesting person on the street, and he was standing right where the two yards met.

And I think about this now. He was the America boy, the one who flew in for the summer and flew back out. I was the little Jamaican girl who stayed. Neither of us knew that one day I would be the one living in America, looking back across a much bigger fence at the island where I did my best talking.

He is still around, that boy. Grown now, like me. And I keep wondering if I should send him this, just to ask him one question: do you remember what we used to talk about? Because I don't, and it has bothered me my whole life in the sweetest way. Maybe he kept the words and I kept the feeling. Maybe between the two of us, we still have the whole thing.

Mi dear, if you grew up on this island, you had a fence like mine somewhere. A spot where the yard ended and the world began, where you stood and talked to somebody until the mosquitoes came out. We didn't have much. We had each other, across the line, and it was everything.