The River--Chapter One

   So let me first say that I am Maddy. When I was sixteen coming up on seventeen, I felt that something was missing in my life. I really wanted a boyfriend--in fact I needed one. I knew that when I was seventeen I would get one, but I started to worry about who it might be. I mean, no one seemed to want me. I lacked confidence. I was pretty enough, you see--coal-black hair, pale skin like the inside of a seashell, and blue, blue eyes--but I carried that same weight around my hips and thighs as my mama. At first I saw that fat as the wall that would hold men back, but then, come sixteen-and-a-half I knew I had birthin' hips.

At sixteen-and-a-half I started looking in earnest for that boyfriend. I may not have been that confident, but I knew what it was I had to do. I had to pay homage to those birthin' hips. Bruce told me my destiny.

Now my requirements for that boyfriend were pretty much set in stone.  He had to be upstanding in the citizenship sort-of-way. He had to honor his father, preferably through working in the family business (if they owned one, all the better; if not, learning his daddy's trade would be good enough). He also had to be a year or two older than me and like the river.

Now, my family never spent much time on the river. In fact, I didn't even know where the river was, but I went looking for it. I knew it couldn't be a creek or a lake or a pond. Only a river would do. I wanted to go to a river that had a swift current that would come and take you by surprise, knock you down and beat you up. I wanted the water to be shockingly cold so as to chill you to the bone when you dip that first toe. I wanted a river with water that was as harsh and cold as my life  was meant to be. No, really. I wanted it that way; it was the way things were supposed to be. It played in my head over and over.

I figured that a river like this could be no minor tributary; it couldn't be a stream posing as a river. The Susquehanna was close, and I supposed that was as good and harsh a river as any. I heard the water was rough and cold, frozen in spots during winter. I even knew a boy who died there. Yep, Susquehanna it would be.

Then, just after my seventeenth birthday, things started falling in place. I started to ask the older boys at school if they liked going to the river. Most didn't care. I didn't just ask the jocks or the heads or the geeks; I asked any boy who worked for his daddy. 

JJ was a new boy from upstate New York, from a town I can't pronounce much less spell. By most accounts of people I knew who had visited that town, it was a place just like this one. JJ played Dungeons and Dragons, and that kind of scared me, but he sold steak sandwiches at little league games from a trailer his daddy owned. He said his daddy made him work and that he didn't like it, but he did it "'cause I'm still just a kid and gotta do what the old man tells me too. I'll probably always do it, though. It'd hurt his feelings, otherwise." I started liking JJ most. 

All the other boys disrespected their daddys, telling me there's no way they'd work for their daddy their whole life. Oh big dreams, boys; big dreams. Where'd you all get so golden? Not JJ. He did it because of respect and guilt--two admirable reasons in my book. But did he like the river? 

The first Monday after I decided JJ was my most likely boyfriend, the one to be the first to navigate the birthing hips, I saw him drinking Turkey Hill iced tea on the school's front steps, leaning on the middle rail, pale as me and looking like he's waiting for someone. I unbuttoned one of the buttons on my cardigan (I wasn't wearing a shirt underneath). I  walked over and stood a couple of steps below him; I wanted him to see a little boob and lace.

"Do you want to go to the river sometime?" I came right out and asked. I was seventeen, now. I couldn't wait any longer.

"What river?' JJ asked.

"Susquehanna. It's really dangerous," I blurted, then looked at him with narrowed eyes that I picture looked real seductive, "I like dangerous."

"Yeah, sure. I'll go with you. I like dangerous, too. Meet me here after school tomorrow, then." That was all JJ said before he turned to walk up the stairs.