Sarah O'Connor

“Do you swallow or spit?”

I’m seven the first time I’m asked this by a boy around my age at a park where I would one day play soccer. My dad brings my twin sister and I to the park during the summer to play with the Supie since the friendships we make during the school year rarely survive the summer, if we make any at all, and disappear by the time Fall comes around again. So we go to the park and play with the Supie, the Supervisor hired by the city to keep us and the other neighbourhood kids entertained during the day. At seven the Supie seems like someone wise and responsible but over ten years later I recognize her as a teenager, a young girl who is probably working her first job over the summer before school resumes in the Fall.

“Swallow or spit what?” I ask because I don’t understand the question, don’t understand what it is I would be swallowing or spitting. My own question is hilarious to the boy and his friends who sit in the circle with me and the other kids. I remember that day was hotter than the others that week, that the Supie had already exhausted us playing Grounders on the playground equipment and making gimp bracelets under the hut where my dad sits in his foldout chair reading his newspaper. She’s lead us down the small hill to the copse of trees between the hut and the play equipment where we’ve tried to play Wink Murder but have given up with the heat. I know my sister is in the circle, playing the games we all were but I know the question hasn’t been directed at her. I don’t know if it’s because I’m sitting closer to the boy and his friends that he decides to ask me.

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