“Like ropes.”
“They’re called braids, for your information.”
“Look like ropes to me.”
“The better to strangle runts with.”
She picked up a paperback book. The Case of the China Doll. Into the wagon.
“Does it hurt your mother to walk with those rings on her toes?” he said.
“Never asked her.”
“How come you had the egg in your mouth that day?”
“I don’t know. No reason. I just do goofy things sometimes.”
A car roared by, radio booming, voice yelling, “Scavengers!”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Us,” she said.
A golf club went into the wagon.
“Why were you sleeping in the library with all those little kids?” he said.
“I was sleepy.”
“Why, really?”
“I felt like it.”
“Come on.”
“You’re too little to understand.”
“I’m not little. Stop calling me little.”
“Little.”
He couldn’t help it — he giggled.
She kicked a TV set. “Never take electrical stuff to sell. It never works and people bring it back and get mad at you.”
“My mother wore a ring on her finger,” he said, “but not her toes. And she wasn’t goofy.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. Her name was Carolyn Sue Limpert.”
“I know. She got hit on the head.”
“She slipped and fell on the wet spot because a guy was mopping and didn’t put the sign up.”
“Right.”
“We were going to get up early the next morning and see the sun rise. On April thirtieth.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I don’t let grown-ups touch me, except my dad. And I don’t break rules.”
She shone the flashlight in his face. “Why not?”
He pushed the light aside. “Can’t tell.”
She grinned. “You will. Someday.”
She poked around with the flashlight beam till it found a lamp shade. Into the wagon. “Fifty cents, if I’m lucky.”
“I don’t like you,” he said.
She chuckled. “Grumpy little runt. You probably don’t like anybody.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“My dad.”
“Congratulations. Who else?”
Silence.
She snickered. “So many, you don’t know who to name first, huh?”
“I used to like lots of people in Minnesota.”
“What about your grandmother?”
“She thinks she’s my mother. Nobody’s my mother.”
The wagon wheels hummed softly over the street. “Same here,” she said.
Primrose began kicking trash cans and shining the flashlight into front windows. “Stinky stuff tonight. What’s the matter with you people? How am I supposed to make a living on this junk?”
Up ahead a light went on. Across the street a door opened. “Hey!” someone called. “Outta there! Git!”
“Git yourself,” Primrose growled.
“They’re gonna call the cops,” said David.
“Let ’em,” said Primrose.
David whined, “I’m tired of pulling.”
“Oh great.” Primrose yanked the handle from him. “Big help you are. It’s what I get for bringing a baby along.”
“I’m not a baby.”
Two blocks later he became so sleepy he couldn’t think of anything to do but climb into the wagon. He knew Primrose would pitch a fit but he didn’t care. He curled himself around the junk and closed his eyes.
Sure enough, the wagon came to a halt and Primrose screeched: “Out! Out!”
He pretended not to hear.
“Sen-sational,” she snarled. “See if you ever come out with me again.” He felt her hot, bitter breath in his ear. “Infant turd.”
The rest of the night was a drowsy clatter. He was aware of her piling stuff all around and on top of him, but it might as well have been blankets for all he cared. Then there was a man’s voice, and laughter, and the junk was leaving the wagon, and sometime later he too was leaving the wagon (lifted out of it and draped over his windowsill), and then there was the plump softness of his pillow beneath his head.
13
That was the first of many nights sneaking out, many nights with Primrose.
David got better at staying awake. Partly because Primrose made fun of him if he didn’t, and partly because he slept later in the mornings. Primrose had a watch, and every night as she boosted him to the windowsill to return to his room, he would say, “What time is it?” It thrilled him to hear the answers: “Twelve-thirty.” “One-seventeen.” “One-forty-two.”
One unforgettable night she said, “Three-twenty-two,” and he yelped out loud before she clamped her hand over his mouth. That was the night they had gone to the all-night Dunkin’ Donuts. Primrose, as usual, had coffee with her donuts. But this time, when David asked if he could have a cup too, she said okay. Even after adding three teaspoons of sugar and lots of cream, he still didn’t like it much. But when he thought of the look on his grandmother’s face if she knew he was out so late drinking coffee, it tasted better.
When he finally got to bed that night he could not sleep. The clock was inching toward four. A horrifying thought occurred to him. What if he stayed awake all night long, until the first glimmer of morning? Again and again he heard his mother’s voice: “We’ll see the sun rise tomorrow.” He had promised himself he would never see the sun rise without her. Along with obeying rules, he believed that this promise would help bring her back.
And so, while sugar and caffeine partied in his veins, David pulled the pillow over his head and squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for sleep. When he awoke, the sun was coming through the top of his window.
14
Of course, his grandmother took notice. “David, you used to wake up before me,” she said. “Why do you get up so late these days?”
He could see in her wincing smile that she thought it had something to do with The Sadness. He shrugged and let her believe it.
From then on, whenever he sneaked out, a paper-filled pillowcase took his place under the sheet. Primrose smirked when she heard about it. “Great decoy. Brilliant.”
The way it usually worked, David would pretend to go to bed a little after nightfall, still wearing his clothes. Then he would wait for the signal from Primrose. The signal was “Baloney!” Primrose thought Baloney! was much funnier that the birdcall-type signal usually heard in the movies. Plus, she was sure no one had ever used Baloney! as a secret signal before, and she liked being the first person in history to do something.
One night the Baloney! sounded especially close. It really was. She was at the window, grinning. “Open the screen,” she whispered.
David spent the first five minutes giggling as she pantomimed silent havoc: stomping on the floor, slamming drawers, opening the door, yelling down the hall. She spent another minute mocking his Jiminy Cricket night-light.
They watched his TV. The Late News. Late Sports. The Late Movie. Seeing the word “late” made David feel both giddy and proud. He was willing to bet that the geek up the street with the snot-green yo-yo never saw late anything on TV.
He put on his yo-yo belt and holster, poised himself like a gunfighter, told her to count to three, and showed her how fast he could whip out his many-colored Spitfire and skin the cat.
He showed her his all-time favorite Beetle Bailey strips, laminated by his father and hanging on the wall. She turned on the light and read every one. She kept laughing louder and louder, forcing David to clamp his hand over her mouth.
It was during a pillow fight that they heard footsteps coming down the hall. David jumped into bed; Primrose darted behind the door. The door opened. David’s grandmother, in bathrobe and slippers, said, “David, my goodness. St
ill awake? Light on? TV? Is that the noise I hear?”
David said, “Yeah,” and he tried to stop there; but behind the door, inches from his grandmother, Primrose had jammed her forefingers into the corners of her mouth and stretched her face into such a preposterous shape that David could absolutely not help himself: a laugh grenade exploded from his mouth and nose.
His grandmother looked baffled. David quickly croaked, “Something funny on TV.” His grandmother beamed, and David knew why. It was the first time since moving here that he had laughed in her presence — and Primrose had tricked him into it.
“Well —,” his grandmother said, oozing happy surprise, “shall I turn out the light?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay.” The way she looked at him, the way she tilted, David knew she wanted to dash across the room and hug him. He made his face say, Don’t try it. She didn’t. But she did say, “ ’Night, Davey,” and closed the door before he could say, “My name is David.” At times like this it struck him how slick a grandmother could be.
They watched the Late Late Show. They sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall. Then Primrose sat in front of David, cross-legged, and David unwound the rubber band from the end of one of her braids, and then he unwound the braid itself and let the brown hair spill down her back. And then, after she showed him how, he tried it, parting a stream of hair into thirds and layering it left over, right over, left over, right over, the whole thing, finishing with the rubber band. She pulled it around front and examined it. “I’ve seen worse,” she said.
He fell asleep then and did not know when she left. He did not see her turn off the TV and turn out the light. He did not hear her crying as she climbed out the window.
15
When they weren’t “shopping” or dining at Dunkin’ Donuts, they were roaming the aisles of the all-night Super Fresh supermarket or checking out the all-night 7-Eleven or hanging around Primrose’s four-wheeled room or cruising the dark streets and alleys of town, she on her skates, he on his bike, sipping Mango Madness all the while. There was one place they were almost sure to go every night, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours: Refrigerator John’s.
Refrigerator John did not measure up to his name. He was neither as tall nor as wide as a refrigerator. In fact, he was not a hair taller than Primrose, who backed up to him every night for measurement. “Any minute now,” she would say, “I’m going to pass you.” “Have a cigar,” he would say in a kidding effort to stunt her growth.
John knew something about stunted growth. His own right leg had been withered since birth. When he walked, the leg flapped out sideways, as though he were shaking a dog loose. “Hey, Shake-A-Leg!” teenage drivers would yell over thumping subwoofers and crackling mufflers as they hauled eggs down to Primrose’s van.
“Yo, Johnny Junk!”
Sometimes Primrose was there, and she would scream back at them: “Hey, why don’t you get out of the car and say that! Come on over here and say that!” They wouldn’t, of course, so Primrose would turn to John, who would be grinning, and growl, “You don’t care if they say that stuff? You’re not even mad.” And he would grin some more and say, “Why should I get mad? You’re mad enough for everybody.” And Primrose would get madder.
“You’re not like your mother,” John would say.
“Thank God,” Primrose would say and roll her eyes.
“She’s always in a good mood.”
“That’s her problem.”
Refrigerator John would laugh. He had liked Primrose and her mother before he even met them, just from knowing they were moving into the old machine shop down the way and he would no longer be the only human inhabitant on April Street. He liked Primrose even more when he met her. She didn’t seem to notice how short or gimpy he was. She looked him in the eye and talked to him. Sometimes she would plop herself down and watch TV and ignore him for hours until she said, “So what’s for dinner?” She almost always wore a sourpuss, and for some reason he liked that too.
And now she was coming around with this kid David. The kid was only nine and about half Primrose’s size, and it looked out of whack, the two of them together. But they seemed to get along. Maybe because he had a sourpuss to match hers.
John liked them both. Actually, he liked all kids. Of the two kinds of people — kids and grown-ups — he liked kids better. But kids didn’t like him back. Little kids feared his floppy foot. Big kids mocked him.
From the outside, Refrigerator John’s place looked like it was patched together from the junkyard that surrounded it. Cinder block here, plywood there, tar paper there — he had done it with his own hands. He called it “the abode.” The furnishings, from kitchen table to easy chairs, had come from appliance customers who had other stuff they wanted to get rid of.
No one had ever given John a TV, so for years he was quite content with a radio — until the two kids began coming around almost every night. Knowing he could not command them to stay off the streets, he decided to entice them to stay at his place as much as possible. He filled his freezer with frozen pizza, and stacked cartons of Mango Madness halfway to the ceiling. He hung a dartboard on the bathroom door and set a Monopoly game in the middle of the dining room table.
And he bought a TV. A 28-incher.
But it didn’t work out quite the way he had expected.
16
They ate the pizza, drank the Mango Madness, and ignored the Monopoly. After a week of dart games, the bathroom door was full of holes. He took down the board. They fought over what TV shows to watch. When she got her way, David wouldn’t watch. And vice versa.
At least once a night David said, “I don’t like you.”
And she said, “Ditto.”
On those rare occasions when they agreed to a program, they hardly ever saw it through to the end. Primrose could not let a show go by without a parade of comments.
Quiz shows: “Who let you in? That’s the stupidest answer I ever heard.”
Murder mysteries: “You deserve to get killed for wearing such stupid clothes, you idiot.”
Situation comedies: “Oh, that was really funny. I can hardly control myself. Look how hard I’m laughing. I’m wetting myself. Ha-ha.”
Talk shows: “You what? . . . You what?”
Half the time, with a final “This is too stupid,” she would snatch the remote and punch off the POWER button.
“Hey!” David would shriek.
“It’s my show,” Primrose would retort. “I can turn it off if I want.”
“Then put on something I want to see.”
“It’s my half hour. I can do anything I want with it.”
If the boy reached for the remote, she would smack his wrist and he would bellow: “Refrigerator!”
But Refrigerator would be too busy laughing.
Sometimes the TV would lead to brief dialogues between the two. Much of what John knew about them came at times like these.
Once, as they watched a movie about two kids, Primrose said, “Best friends are stupid.”
“I had a best friend in Minnesota,” said the boy.
“Whoop-dee-doo.”
“His name was Raymond. He came to my birthday party. We collected stuff together.” He was braiding Primrose’s hair. Sometimes he did it for hours on end. Braiding, undoing, rebraiding.
“Do you keep in touch with him?” said John.
“I’m allowed to call him long distance in Minnesota once a week if I want to.”
“Do you?” said the girl, calling his bluff.
“I did the first couple weeks. But I didn’t since a pretty long time ago.”
“I knew it,” she said. “And does he ever call you?”
“Not yet,” said David.
She pulled the braid from his hand. “Hah. ’Course not. Why should he? He doesn’t like you.”
John said, “Maybe you’ll find a new best friend around here.”
David recaptured the braid and resumed weaving. He s
hrugged. “Maybe.”
Whenever a grandmother appeared on screen, Primrose was sure to say, “Hey, Fridge, what do you think about a kid who hates his own grandmother?”
John of course would not reply. He knew about the boy’s mother dying, and the grandmother from whom he fled when the father wasn’t home, which was a lot of nights. He wished the boy would flatly deny Primrose’s claim, but all he ever did was offer a tepid revision: “I never said I hated her.”
“Yeah, right,” sneered Primrose. “And tell me you don’t hate carrots.”
One night the boy abruptly fired back: “And what do you think about a girl who hates her own mother?”
“Mother?” said Primrose blithely as she changed a channel. “What mother?”
A gusher of game show laughter spilled into the silence of the room.
The girl’s father was another story. Long ago Primrose had proudly shown John his framed picture, said his name was Bob. Recently she had had a small copy made. She carried it in her pocket. While she said little of her mother except to complain, she was full of good words for her father. She constantly speculated on how he looked now, where he was living, what he was doing. Her mother, she said, had told her that her father had left when she was a baby. Primrose swore that she remembered his face, first smiling and then sad, hovering above her crib and saying, “Bye-bye, Primsy. I love you.”
The boy would scoff. “You don’t remember that. Babies can’t remember.”
Primrose would scoff back. “Not all babies are as dumb as you. I said I remember — I remember.”
The boy wouldn’t back down. “And anyway, even if you did remember seeing him, you couldn’t remember what he said —” here his face would redden and jut into hers — “because babies can’t understand talk!”
Primrose would grin smugly down her nose and calmly say, “I could,” and turn away.
What was it with these two? The thirteen-year-old girl, the nine-year-old boy. What brought them together? Sometimes they acted their own ages, sometimes they switched. Sometimes both seemed to be nine, other times thirteen. Both were touchy, ready to squawk over nothing. They constantly crabbed at each other — yet at the same time he might be braiding her hair, or she might be making him lunch. Half the time they left John’s place snarling, yet the next day there they were, together, knocking on his door.
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