by M. E. Kerr
“How did you know I was The Roach?”
“I finally figured it out. I’ve seen your commercial. ‘You’ll be the death of me.’ … Does being a roach get to you?”
“It gets to my bank account,” I said, and we both laughed, and then I said, “I like it, besides,” I made up my mind then and there to get that tooth capped.
“What’s there to like about being a roach, besides the money?” she said.
Her father called her again and she shouted back that she was coming, so I began to talk fast. “I’m my own invention. I invented myself. All I know about myself is that I woke up one day over at Twin Oaks and they said my name was Sydney Cinnamon, which could or couldn’t be my real name, and that’s all I know. When I found out I was out of the ordinary, a ball in a world of blocks, I decided even if they don’t roll, I do. I decided to roll away, be whatever I wanted to be.”
“But a roach!” and she made a face.
“Well, I decided to be something people don’t like instinctively and make them like it. Something bizarre, like me.” I stole a look over my shoulder at her father to gauge how long I could hold her attention. “If I’d have been something besides a roach, I’d have been an alligator or a snake. Something people look at and go ‘Yeck!’ just because of how it looks and not for any other reasons. If I’d been a vegetable, I’d have been a piece of slimy okra.”
She laughed and said, “Hey!”
“I’d have been crabgrass if I’d been a plant, or a dandelion. If I’d been a piece of mail, I’d have been a circular addressed to Occupant.”
She said, “If you were a musical instrument, you’d be that tuba,” as a tuba tuned up across the field from us.
“Not me, I’d be bagpipes. Bagpipes tuning up are the worst noise I know.”
I was trying to think of other things to be, to keep it going, but half a dozen people were now standing near us, watching.
I gave a self-conscious pull to my sweater in back, and felt my tooth with my tongue.
“If you were a member of the weasel family, you’d be a skunk,” she said.
One of the women watching us said something that ended in “just darling together,” and Little Little’s father called her more insistently, and much louder. It sounded like LIT-TOE! LIT-TOE!
“I have to go,” she said.
My mind raced with a plethora of answers to that one: naw, hang in here; were you planning to go over to Stardustburger after? Can we talk more later?—and when I couldn’t seem to get any of them out, my mouth opened and out came, “Are you sure skunks are weasels?” … My face went red because that had issued forth, like a few soft raindrops squeezed out of a black thundering sky, when hard pellets of hail were called for.
She only laughed and lifted her hand to wave good-bye, while I felt a sharp sock of disappointment, watching her go.
When I went back to the locker room, I met Laura Gwen on her way out.
“Hey, Sydney?” she called over at me. “I went over your entire shell with Endust!”
10: Little Little La Belle
THE DAY AFTER I met Knox Lionel, at one of my mother’s summer parties for the TADpoles, he called me at seven in the morning from the Howard Johnson’s motel.
“Little Little,” he said, “I have to see you right away!”
“It’s dawn,” I said. “It’s too early.”
“In Genesis it’s written that Abraham rose early to stand before the Lord,” he began, “and it is written there that Jacob rose early to worship the Lord. In Exodus it is written that Moses rose early to give God’s message to Pharaoh, and—”
“I’m not awake, Little Lion!” I complained.
But there was no stopping him. “… Judges it is written that Gideon rose early to examine the fleece. Now in First Samuel it is written that Hannah and Elkanah rose early to worship God, and in Mark it is written that the Son of God rose early to …” On and on.
I finally agreed to meet him.
It is also written somewhere that many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.
I picked him up in front of the motel, seated in my Kiddyride behind the wheel, while Little Lion stood beside me, close enough to get his arm across my shoulders as I drove.
I was dressed in one of my crisp white cotton numbers, made to order for me by our housekeeper, Mrs. Hootman, who washed and ironed them faithfully, clucking over them as though they were alive. “Now you’re a dear little dress all pretty for our Missy.”
Little Lion wore a white cotton jacket, a white shirt, and a red-and-white-striped tie, white pants, and white shoes and socks.
I wanted to drive down to the prison, because it was nearly nine and they let out convicts who had finished serving their sentences in time to catch the 9:10 bus to Syracuse. I sometimes parked across the street to watch them come through the gates, some carrying birdcages, all dressed in cheap navy blue suits and shiny new black shoes the state provided them with.
They fascinated me, and when I was younger they were the faces in my nightmares, descending on our house to kill us all in cold blood.
But Little Lion insisted he wanted to walk by the lake, so I headed for Stardust Park.
As we walked along, he held my hand tightly, and I told him about the summer Gnomeland was in the park. “My father wouldn’t let me see it,” I said. “My father said those places attracted the worst kind of sleazy show-business types.”
“Amen! Amen!” said Little Lion. “Very early in my ministry I came upon a similar place called Leprechaun Village. Most of the employees were dwarfs, sleazy showbiz types, your father is right!”
Later, by the lake, he removed a gold signet ring from his finger. “This ring,” he said, “is a family heirloom, given to me when I was sixteen years old by my sainted mother, God rest her soul.” He took my hand and placed the ring in my palm.
At that very moment, behind us, the roller coaster descended with people screaming, so Little Lion had to shout: “Little Little, there are only two things a man can’t do alone, be a Christian and …” The cars passed around the curve, and he said softly, “… marry, Little Little.”
Then Little Lion kissed me.
Cowboy told me once she’d let Wylie Case kiss her just to see what it was like. He groomed the horses at the stable where she rode. He kissed her with his mouth open and tried to use his tongue, so Cowboy socked him near his fly the way our father’d taught us in case a boy tried anything. Cowboy said all boys tried with their tongues, she’d heard other girls say that, but Little Lion’s lips never opened until two seconds later when he stepped back. “Hallelujah!” he whispered at me. “Praise God, baby! Wow!”
The roller coaster cars came screaming out of the tunnel.
I looked at the ring and saw that it said Amoretta.
“Who was that you were talking to, honey?” my father said.
“That was The Roach.”
“That’s who I thought that was,” my father said.
We walked along the cinder path to the La Belle side of the stadium, past the Bomber cheerleaders, who were warming up with jumps. I was trying to think of some way to tell my father I’d just as soon not walk along holding hands, without hurting his feelings.
“I bet I’m the only seventeen-year-old girl here whose father’s holding her hand,” I said.
“I don’t think I should ever let go of your hand, if you’re going to strike up conversations with characters like that,” he said, but he let go at the same time.
“He’s really nice,” I said.
“Nice? He’s probably anything but nice. Those lower-rung show-business types are usually rather callous.”
“He’s not.”
“He’s not a high school boy, you know. He doesn’t go to Wilton High.”
“I know. He was in Twin Oaks, though.”
“Well, I’m sorry for that,” said my father, “but I thought we both felt the same about those types. They’re the types who join sideshows.”
“I never talked to anyone like that before,” I said. “I didn’t grow warts or anything because I did.”
“You give a poor fellow like that the wrong idea, stepping up and being familiar with him that way,” said my father.
Then I saw the whole family smack in the front row on the La Belle side, and I got myself prepared for Grandfather La Belle.
Cowboy and Mock Hiroyuki were arriving at the same time.
“Kon-nici-wa,” Cowboy said.
Mock said, “Hi!”
I am not a demonstrative person. I do not reach up to hug and kiss, and I draw back when others reach down for me.
Cowboy is the same way. Cowboy never fails to wipe her mouth off with the back of her hand after a member of the family has kissed her. When she is caught in anyone’s embrace, Cowboy’s eyes panic like those of a small animal that suddenly has a cage lowered over its body.
But no one tries to pick up Cowboy anymore. She doesn’t have to put up with the compulsion some have to sweep someone little off her feet and swing her around like a doll.
My Grandfather La Belle is the worst offender.
“Well well well well, how’s my little lady?” he barked out, and there I was again, in midair, along with the flags and practice balls and balloons.
Then he set me down on the wooden bench while he turned to Cowboy and said, “Hello there.” She ducked his kiss and ran with Mock to sit beside our mother.
Grandfather La Belle has trouble dealing with Cowboy. He seldom says her name when he talks to her. She is too androgynous for him. She has overstayed her time in the tomboy stage. When he visits our house he no longer goes out to the backyard with her for a game of catch, as he used to. He treats the fact she likes to discuss the plays and scores of most ball games as though that interest was like a red baby rash that should have disappeared from view long ago.
But I remain his darling.
He was ready to pick me up again when I jumped down from the bench, out of reach. He moved over and petted my coat instead, crooning, “What a treat that you came to the game with us, Little Little!”
“Who read my poem in today’s Examiner?” my mother called out.
My grandmother turned to her and said it was lovely, just lovely, that autumn was exactly like God had a paintbrush in his hand.
“I wrote it in a day,” my mother said.
My father said to my grandfather, “Guess who walked right up to that Roach fellow and started a conversation?”
“Riddre Riddre,” Mock Hiroyuki answered my father’s question without being asked it.
My father continued talking to my grandfather. “I turn my back and she’s off talking to that Roach character.”
“I like him,” I said. “I like him a lot.”
“Who read my poem in today’s Examiner?” my mother called out.
Cowboy gave me a look and I gave her one. As Cowboy would put it, things were “a little minty.”
My grandmother, who is willing to go along with anything, even when it means going back over the same thing, said sweetly, “It was a lovely poem, Ava, just a lovely analogy…. God’s paintbrush and the autumn leaves.”
“I wrote it in a day,” my mother said.
“Congratulations!” my grandfather thundered, but he turned and frowned hard at my father.
Cowboy says I hear things out of the corner of my ears the same way people see things out of the corner of their eyes, while they’re watching other things.
What I heard, while I was making small talk with Cowboy and Mock, was a mention of Little Lion between my father and grandfather.
I tuned in to this:
“… fine young man, from a very fine family,” said my grandfather.
“I think he has a case on himself,” said my father.
“You don’t even know him, Larry.”
“You don’t either.”
“I know about him. There’s not a finer young man in all of TADpole.”
“Why does he wear white all the time?”
“You wore white when you were a young man.”
“Not all the time.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with wearing white. What kind of an objection is that? You might say he drinks, or he smokes marijuana, or he steals, or he has a filthy mouth, and someone might listen to you, but who’s going to listen to someone complain a young man wears white all the time?”
“I don’t care what he wears,” my father said.
“You just criticized him because he wears white all the time.”
“It’s no concern of mine.”
“I hope Ava is, because Ava is going downhill in a hand bucket!”
“She’s in her change of life,” said my father.
“She’s in the bottle is what she’s in. She’s been going through a lot these many years.”
“Well, we all have.”
“No, we all haven’t! You’ve had your work. She’s been the one to bear the brunt of it…. The best thing in the world for Ava would be to see Little Little married. Then she’d be free. Cowboy doesn’t present the same problem, but Cowboy’s got her things to work out, too. It’d be a blessing for Cowboy, as well.”
The Bombers band marched out on the field for the pregame warm-up.
Cheerleaders followed behind, some cartwheeling, others pitching flaming batons four feet in the air and catching them.
When the band played “La Cucaracha,” the cry went up for “ROACH!”
11: Sydney Cinnamon
EVEN THOUGH THEY PLAYED my theme song again and again, and began to chant ROACH! ROACH! ROACH!, I would not appear until the half. I knew I had strength for only one smashing performance on that hot Indian summer afternoon, and I saved myself until then.
But a small collection of my groupies gathered outside the gym, and as the game got under way, I went out to talk to them.
“Hey, aren’t you going to watch the game?”
“We came to see you, Roach!”
They were a motley crew, some of them familiar by now. One tall, skinny, black-haired girl, with enormous black-frame glasses that made her small face look buglike behind them, pushed a tiny bouquet of buttercups at me, which she’d tied together with red yarn.
“I picked them myself, Roach,” she said.
A boy with buck teeth handed me a small red balloon and asked me to autograph his sneaker. His sister had homemade fudge for me.
While I was signing “Good-luck wishes from The Roach!” across their pieces of paper, and asking them where they were from, what their names were, Mr. Palmer stopped by with a flashy blond on his arm. He was hurrying to the game, but he wanted to remind me we were having dinner that night with Mr. Hiroyuki. He gave my cheek a pinch, and called over his shoulder as he hurried toward the bleachers, “Remember that your appearance at the party tomorrow is a surprise! Don’t shoot your mouth off to anyone!”
When it finally came time for me to go on, I had secured the bouquet of buttercups and the red balloon under my shell. Hurriedly I had scribbled whatever came to mind across a corner of a program, and tucked it inside the bouquet.
It was the second verse from “La Cucaracha,” which I wrote out in Spanish (Cuando uno quiere a una, etc.), to make it more secret and romantic. Translated, it simply said: When a fellow loves a maiden, And that maiden doesn’t love him, It’s the same as when a bald man Finds a comb upon the highway.
My theme song was a strange song, anyway. Most people came to know that “La Cucaracha” meant “The Cockroach,” but few people knew the verses. Once at a Wilton High School assembly I sang the first verse in Spanish, as the song was written.
The principal called me into his office later and said, “You’re some kind of a smart aleck, aren’t you, Cinnamon?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Singing about marijuana that way.”
“That’s the song,” I said. “I didn’t make up the words.”
“You didn’t make up porque le falta, marihuana
que fumar?”
“That’s the song,” I said. “La cucaracha, la cucaracha, doesn’t want to travel on Because she hasn’t Oh no she hasn’t Marihuana for to smoke.”
I don’t think he believed me. I think he thought marijuana was some new weed discovered in the seventies and couldn’t possibly be referred to in a song written when he was a boy my age.
I had smoked marijuana only once, with a three-foot girl who worked at Leprechaun Village. One of her jobs was in the dining room after dinner, when she would pass from table to table wearing fairy wings and passing out chocolate mints on a silver tray. We smoked grass under the porch of the boathouse one night, watching the moon on the lake. I had heard that pot made you more romantic and I was trying to screw up the courage to kiss her, but after I smoked it, all I could think about was food, and the only thing she was curious about was whether or not someone with a hump could sleep on his back.
I told her no, not very well, it was easier on the sides or on the stomach, and we scampered hand in hand up to raid the kitchen of French pastries.
My big romance was with a normal-size girl whose parents had hired me to be BABY 1979 at a New Year’s Eve party. Her name was Andrea Applebaum, and she wore braces across her front teeth that made my lips bleed after I kissed her. She told me she had a genius-level I.Q. and intended to become a Phi Beta Kappa when she went to college, and she made out a reading list for me of books even Cloud hadn’t heard of, like Goethe’s novella The New Melusine, in which a young man falls in love with a dwarf and becomes one himself in order to marry her.
We’d sneaked down to her family’s rec room in the basement, where she played me tapes of old songs by The Beatles and held me in her lap, kissing my hair.
“Andrea Applebaum,” I said at one point, “tell me you mean this and I’m not just an experiment.”
“I don’t mean anything I do,” she said. “I’m having a good time, though.”
I wrote her three letters after that night and she wrote me four.
Interesting that you’ve become The Roach, she wrote in the last letter. I’m just reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which a man is changed into a roachlike character and everyone shuns him. I suppose I would find him attractive. I did you. My mother keeps asking me who this Sydney Cinnamon is who writes to me. God! If she knew!