Remembering VBS Cookies

[This is the first in a series of Vacation Bible School reflections. -D.S.]

It happened with a glimpse of them in a supermarket parking lot today. A heedless view from the periphery really. But of course, I knew them. Instantly. Cheryl and Jane Skoker, and their mother Mrs. Skoker. Middle aged women and their slow-moving mother, together as always. A triumvirate of yeasty womanhood. How many years had it been?

Hmmmm...

It was 1980. Hot - oppressively hot. I can still smell the grass and the sweat and taste the metal of my trombone. Marching band. Summer drills.

Amazing the way the sensation of memory reinvents itself in the nostrils of my present.
She marched in front of me, Cheryl did. Sweet, untalented, walleyed and mammoth, chewing the whiny black clarinet that wheezed her into third chair. Jane too. A year older, a size smaller, a chair ahead, but sisters interchangeable, practically modular.

But it was Cheryl who mesmerized me, the flesh on her back burgeoning out of the triple hooker that failed to contain much of anything, let alone lift or separate. Orbs. Flesh orbs. Orbs of softness and desperation and isolation. Back fat. Ample back boobs that winked coyly at the row behind as she marked time. Left, right, left, right.

I knew her. Not just from band, but from VBS of years before. Mrs. Skoker had a small bakery in her home behind the Nazirene Church. From the peeling, aqua walls of the Vacation Bible School classroom, I watched her heave dozens of just-baked cookies to the lawn of the church and position them in tidy rows on the yellow melamine trays like stalwart soldiers in the Lord’s army. Beautiful. Sweet. Soft. God, is it snack time yet? If I squinted, I could just make out the varieties – and yes – they were there. My favorite: brown sugar butterscotch, baked in russet ovals of deliciousness. Their ambrosial goodness made Bible School tolerable.

And band.

Sometimes Mrs. Skoker would bake those same butterscotch cookies for the long band trip bus rides. She always went along, the strings of her apron a metaphor for the umbilical hovering over her daughters. But bake she did. And Cheryl ate. I ate.

As the cadence gathered us and the drills began, I wondered what would happen if I cupped her yielding mounds that teased me from a row ahead. Would she scream? Or perhaps just collapse into my reckless strokes, her loneliness split like a reedy squeak from her clarinet. Warmth and softness. Nudging and unrelenting, like the importunate mew of her enormous tabby.

Today in the parking lot I think I stared out the window of my car for an eternity. It was my turn to feel warmth. And weight. The pit in my stomach migrated, stirring a swelling southward heat that capitulated to my back fat fantasy. I knew what it meant. I knew what it always means.

I’d still go to second base with Cheryl Skoker for a dozen of those mother fucking cookies.