“Well, let’s just show her one of them,” said Vinnie.
Vinnie was smarter than any of us thought.
We started talking as we entered the classroom because if we waited for Miss Johnson to ask us anything we would be in trouble.
“The thermometer broke. Tommy may die, but Miss Flag says he’ll be okay. The nurse is going to fix him. It was an accident. We didn’t mean to do it. I mean, Tommy didn’t mean to do it because it wasn’t our fault, it just broke.”
“Stop,” said Miss Johnson. “What’s wrong with Tommy?”
“He ate the mercury,” said Vinnie and I held up the broken glass tube and the plastic backing.
“What! He could die from that,” she yelled.
Now we were scared. We didn’t really think he could die, Vinnie just said that, and I was wishing it, but now Tommy might really die.
“I’ll be right back,” said Miss Johnson. “Everyone take their seats and get out a book and don’t make a sound.”
She left and everyone jumped up. “Is Tommy really going to die?” a bunch of kids asked. “What happened?”
But most of all we were asked, “Do you have any mercury?”
“Right here,” I said.
I opened the paper and slid the sliver drops out on the floor. There was fighting and pushing to see it, but there was also a lot of ohhhs and ahhhhhs as we rolled it around and it broke apart then came together.
“Can it really kill you?” someone in the circle asked.
“You heard Miss Johnson,” Vinnie said. “This stuff is dangerous. It’s more dangerous than poison. One little drop and you’re dead.”
“Is Tommy dead?”
“Not yet,” Vinnie said. “Miss Flag and the nurse are saving him.”
“Let me try,” someone said and pushed through the circle and put his hand down over the fluid.
But he hit it with the heel of his hand and it splattered and now there were only tiny drops. We tried to push them together but they were too small. The door opened and Miss Johnson stepped in.
“I thought I told you to be quiet and stay in your seats. I may have to keep all of you in. But just for your information, Tommy will be alright. The nurse made him regurgitate and he is resting.”
A shuddering thought went through many heads. Regurgitating sounded like an operation or at least something very scary.
“And I want to warn all of you, mercury is very dangerous. You should not let it touch your skin or your clothes or even your shoes because you might touch your shoes with your hands and then it could get into your blood and cause serious problems.”
Basically every pair of shoes lifted off the floor. Everybody straightened away from the backs of the chairs.
“Now where is the leftover mercury?”
No one said a thing.
“Well, come on, I have to put that in a safe place.”
Nothing.
“Vinnie, where is it?”
“Everywhere,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Everywhere on the floor and my hands and Mickey’s hands and some other kid’s. Everywhere.”
This was something else that was not taught in teacher school. She looked at a class of frozen students.
“Alright, two at a time I want you to tiptoe out of the classroom and go to the toilet and take your shoes off and then wash the bottoms of your shoes and wash your hands and then line up outside in the hallway. You two first.” She pointed at the first two kids in the first row.
We all got cleaned up and all stood in the hallway and we made no noise. When we were done, she said she would go back inside and get our coats and we would sit in the auditorium until three o’clock.
“But if you go in there you’ll get it on your shoes,” Vinnie said.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I want you all to grow up to be smart young men and women, and learn to be careful.”
She got our coats and told us the janitor would mop out the floor and it would be alright for tomorrow.
“But the janitor will get sick,” I said.
“That’s okay, we’ll warn him and he knows how to take care of things like this. Janitors know a lot more than we think.”
All the way home we said to each other “you can’t hit me. I maybe have mercury on my clothes and then you’ll get it on your hands and die.”
We passed by some tough kids, not ones from Rocky’s gang, but other tough-looking kids that were hanging out under the El. Suddenly we felt invincible. They looked at us with mean stares. Sometimes kids would come into the neighbourhood and shake down a lone kid or two for their money, even if it was just a nickel.
They looked like the kind of kids who would do that. But we kept walking right towards them. On another day we would have crossed the street to give us room to run if we had to, but not today.
“If they touch us they’ll die,” Vinnie said to me.
We both smiled, not the smile of funny, but the smile of power. And maybe it was the way we were walking, or maybe they had heard about the mercury or maybe they weren’t after our money, whatever it was, they stepped back when we passed. They were bigger than us and they stepped back. That had never happened before.
Vinnie and I got half a block past them and broke out laughing.
“Did you see that? They stepped back. They moved out of the way.”
It was hard to believe, but it happened, and it happened to us. Vinnie was so excited he hit me.
“You might die from that,” I said.
“I’m not going to die,” said Vinnie. “I’m never going to die. That mercury is making me stronger.”
That did not make any sense, but I felt the same way. So I hit him. Then he hit me and I hit him and we had the best walk home of any time in my life, except the time when I kissed Dorothy.
Laundry Day
“Mrs. Belimeyer hung out her sheets.”
Vinnie was like a little kid when he said that. He was twelve years old so he wasn’t a little kid but he was like one when he saw laundry on a line, especially sheets.
When the sheets came out on the clotheslines, we would play run through the laundry, and since he’d loved getting hugged a lot when he was small, he could pretend he was little again and have arms wrap around him. It was a cool game that was also warm.
We were playing stoopball, wondering if anything was ever going to happen to end our boring day. Then Vinnie told us about the laundry. Stoopball was for anytime. Laundry was when you got a chance.
I remember once seeing my uncle help my aunt when she was hanging out clothes, but that was different. That was when my uncle was the toughest guy on his street. I knew that because he drove a bus and you had to be strong to do that. That was a lot of people he was hauling around.
He also liked football. He played football when he was younger and told me about tackling other guys and I couldn’t imagine how you did that. You had to throw yourself at their legs and bring them down. If I tackled someone I figured my face would hit the street and that would be the end of the game for me.
He also mowed the grass in cemeteries when he was really young. But he did not have a power mower. He used a hand mower and pushed it back and forth, so I knew he was strong.
But he would not do laundry. How could he do laundry? He had to fix some lamp or polish some shoes. Laundry was for women, like his wife.
Then one day, while I was visiting them, my aunt had hung out her underwear on the line. She put the clothespins on the line and strung out the things that she wore under her clothes, the kind of things we laughed at when we saw them, except I didn’t laugh when they belonged to my aunt.
She was putting the last pin over the last unmentionable when the hook that was screwed into the wooden window frame, which hung onto the pulley for the clothesline, came out of the wall. It just gave out, like things do after fifty years of holding on.
“Help, Ed, help,” she yelled.
He jumped up from his
lamp or his shoes, it doesn’t matter which, but when he heard his wife yelling he was almost there already helping.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He saw her leaning out the window.
“The line’s come out,” she said. She did not turn her head around.
“Let me get it,” he said.
“No. I can’t let go.”
He could not get past her to reach out the window.
“Just let it down. We’ll pick them up and I’ll fix the line,” he said.
“No, I just washed them and I don’t want them to get dirty.”
They lived on the first floor. It was only a few feet to the ground.
“But I can’t get past you to grab it,” he said.
She pulled harder trying to hold the clothes off the ground.
“I can’t let them get dirty.”
“But I can’t do anything if you are there.”
“I’m not moving,” she said.
He turned and walked away. I had never seen him leave anyone with a problem, much less his wife. But there he went; I thought he was mad and was going to show her a thing or two.
But he did not stop walking. He headed straight to the front door, opened it and went outside. Then I saw him through a side window walking through the alleyway to the back. In a moment he was standing below the line.
“Let it come down,” he said.
I could hear laughter and if I pressed myself against the window, I could see a group of men next door in the backyard laughing at him.
“Going to pick up the little lady’s underpants?” one said.
My uncle said nothing. He reached up and took the first piece of frilly whatever it was off the line. The laughter grew louder. He took the next lacy thing off the line and put it on his shoulder on top of the first frilly thing.
“Panties on the shoulder, looks nice,” one of the men said.
My uncle was very strong. I wanted him to go over there and punch them. But he kept unpinning the undies and piling them on his shoulder.
“Did you wash them too?”
I thought he was going to throw down the underwear and walk over and punch them all. He was going to show them. You don’t say things like that to my uncle who can beat up everyone.
But he kept putting the frills on his shoulder and telling my aunt to lower the line a bit more.
“Hey, you look cute,” said one of the men.
My uncle took the last piece of clothing and my aunt let the rope of the line fall on the ground. Then he walked straight back through the alley, past the men.
They said nothing more. He said nothing. Please say something, I thought. Please hit them. Please beat them into the ground and then come home with the underwear. Please.
He walked past them.
When he came into the apartment, I said, “Those men were not very nice.”
He looked at me and smiled. “They have problems. I hope they get better.”
Then he took the underwear off his shoulder and placed it alongside the kitchen sink and told his wife she could hang them up inside.
The men outside were talking and laughing and opening beer. My uncle was fixing the clothesline. I wanted to be like my uncle.
But that had nothing to do with Mrs. Belimeyer’s sheets that were rising in the wind like waves. They almost touched the ground when the wind died because they were so wet. The rope line was ten feet up, but the sheets filled the entire space from just above the cracked concrete to the clothesline. Perfect.
“Ready,” said Vinnie. “Get set.”
He was rocking back and forth on his legs waiting for the right breeze to lift the sheets. That one was too small. He rocked, we waited, he rocked.
The wind came again. A good wind that lifted the sheets toward Vinnie. He waited and waited, then he headed for Mrs. Belimeyer’s clothesline. He hit the sheet and his arms went up and he looked like a ghost. That sheet stopped rising while the others went up beside it.
“You shouldn’t do that,” said Dorothy.
“But it’s fun,” said Vinnie. “And besides, we don’t hurt anything.”
“You sure get her mad,” said Dorothy.
“Ahhh, she gets mad at everything,” said Vinnie. “You coming?”
I wanted to do it, but if Dorothy wasn’t going to, I wouldn’t, but I was hoping she would because it was fun, and maybe we would get stuck together behind a sheet and then maybe we might touch.
“I don’t think so,” said Dorothy.
“Come on,” said Tommy.
“Come on.” Vinnie was waving to her.
“No.”
“You coming, Mickey?” Vinnie asked.
“No, I don’t think so. That’s for little kids.”
Joey came back with Vanessa who was just walking down the block looking for anyone to hang out with. By the time we were eleven and twelve the word “play” was fading unless it was playing stickball or something. Mostly we just wanted to hang out.
“You going through the sheets?” Vanessa asked Dorothy. “I am.”
Dorothy laughed sort of a sweet little laugh that I knew was laughing at herself. I was getting to know Dorothy’s laughs.
“Okay,” she said.
“What about you, Mickey?” Joey asked.
“Yeah, sure, yeah, I got nothing else to do.”
We all lined up to go through the sheets. Vinnie got close to me.
“You like Dorothy, don’t you?”
“Do not,” I said.
“Then why’d you change your mind about the sheets?”
“Cause. Just because.”
“Just because you like Dorothy.”
I think that was the best part of the day, even better than the sheets.
“Wait for the big one. Wait. Go.” We all said that same thing. We were all coaches.
The little kids were in front of us. They were heading for the clothesline just as the sheets were rising and heading for them. They timed it perfectly. They hit the sheets just as the cloth was going up and the wet cotton went across their faces and continued up into the sky as they ran underneath.
“Wow. That was neat,” said one of them.
“I’m going next,” said Tommy.
He ran to the other side of the yard and waited until the sheets were at their height. Then he stood like a racer at the starting line, though I had no idea what a racer at the starting line looked like then. He stood up sideways rocking back and forth ready to run. The sheets flapped in the wind then started to come down.
Tommy rocked and the sheets came down further. He rocked again as they fell, then the wind hit them again and one more rock and he was off. He ran like the police were chasing him. He hit one of the sheets as it took off and slammed into it, held up his hands and kept going until he came out the other side.
“That was fun,” he yelled.
Me and Dorothy and Vinnie and Joey ran over to where Tommy had started from. We all rocked and waited. But the wind had died. The sheets just hung. The little kids ran through them and Vinnie shouted, “Hey, you kids, you’re ruining it.”
But they did not care. They ran through and then turned around and ran back.
“Come on,” said Vinnie. “Wait ’til the wind comes.”
But the little kids didn’t listen. They ran through the sheets again.
“I’m going to beat you up if you don’t stop,” yelled Vinnie.
“Can’t catch us,” one of them said.
Then the wind came. It was a giant wind that sometimes came down between the row of houses and the hill of the railroad tracks. It came out of nowhere and lifted the sheets like kites. I should also not say kites since none of us had any idea of what kites were except for the picture we saw in school of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in a storm to prove that electricity was real.
None of us had any idea how flying a kite in the rain proved anything except that you would get wet, and if you got hit by lightning you would die. We were told we should never stand out
side in a lightning storm and we had plenty of those. We could watch the lightning from under the overhang at the front of the bar or from under the stairs of the El. But we knew if we stepped outside and a bolt came down it would kill us. So why was someone as smart as Benjamin Franklin standing outside in the rain with lightning and why didn’t he die?
We asked Miss Johnson, but she only said he was proving electricity was in lightning.
“So why didn’t he get killed?”
“Because he was doing an experiment.”
“Do experiments keep you alive?” we asked.
“No. They can be dangerous, and he was brave to do what he did.”
“So can we stand out when there’s lightning?”
“No, you’ll be killed.”
School was so confusing.
But the sheets reached as high as they would fly and then started down. Wait. Wait. It was falling. It would only take a second or two but if you ran too soon you would miss it. You would go right underneath it before it fell and then everyone would laugh. Wait ’til they fell, wait ’til just before they started up again.
“Go,” yelled Joey.
We took off. Only ten running steps but the timing was everything. Ten steps and we hit the sheets just after they fell and one second into them rising again. We hit them and the bottom of both sheets wrapped around us and made us look like wet blobs in a world of white.
The cool of the water was wonderful on my face. It slid over my skin and wrapped around my bare arms. My t-shirt got just a bit wet and when I came out the other side I could feel the freshness on my chest.
Dorothy came out right behind me along with Vanessa, Tommy and Vinnie. I would have little chance of getting lost alone in the sheets with her, but it was still fun.
“Where’s Joey?”
“Here!”
He raised the other sheet over his head. He had two hands on it and pulled it down to wrap around his head like a hat and a scarf. Then the wind came up again and the sheet buckled out and before Joey could let go, the clothespins snapped and the top end of the white bedcover fell down into the only muddy puddle on the ground.
“No!” shouted Dorothy.
The little kids saw what happened and took off running. We were left holding the crime, the evidence and the conviction.
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