About getting into Jenny's room

  Jenny’s my best friend,

            We met in school on a green bench.

            She had a big smile and two front teeth missing,

            Short weirdly cut hair and clammy hands.

            She liked me and I liked her.

            She was my friend and I was hers.

            We liked to play with Playmobils figures,

            She had a lot of them stored in her bedroom.

            We spent weekends playing together, just us both,

            Native American tribes fighting against the Settlers,

            Egyptians building the pyramids while treasure hunters lurk nearby,

            A lonesome rancher girl escaping her big family’s corn farm.

            Stories and stories and stories, kids’ imagination.

            Sometimes, we had to stop playing though,

            Because we couldn’t hear ourselves talking over her parents’ yelling.

            When it happened we’d go hiding behind her yellow curtains,

            Sometimes she’d cry and sometimes not.

            She’d tell me something or nothing at all.

            She whispered a few words, once : it had been an hour and they weren’t calming down.

            She had a habit of locking herself in her room at night,

            Because she kept dreaming someone was trying to get in.

            A very tall man, so tall he had to crouch to fit in the hallway.

            « He looks like my uncle Sam. »

            I asked her how she knew, for she had never opened the door.

            « The very first time, the door wasn’t locked. »

            And then she started crying, the ugly kind.

            We eventually stopped seeing each other ‘cause she moved with her mom in Atlanta.