Me, Mop, and the Moondance Kid

by Walter Dean Myers

  Nothing.

  I turned the lights back on and tried to figure out what went wrong. I had just about figured it out—that the time I took looking for the bottle had caused the light to fade away—when I heard this little yelp from Mom. It sounded like when you accidentally step on a dog's tail or something. I came running out of the room and Dad, who was in the living room, was right behind me.

  “What happened?” Dad asked.

  “I got beat up!” Moondance said.

  He didn't have to say it, you could see it. His clothes were all messed up and dirty and he was crying.

  “Oh, no!” Mom had her hand over her mouth.

  “Where did it happen?” Dad asked.

  “On the way from the library,” Moondance said.

  He was still carrying a library book and I could see that his hands were scraped and raw-looking.

  “Did they take your money?” Mom asked.

  “No, he just started up with me and then started pushing me,” Moondance said. He was sniffling.

  “Do you know the kid who did it?” Dad asked.

  “Rocky,” Moondance said, looking at me. “From the Eagles.”

  “How big is this kid?” Dad asked.

  “Do you know this Rocky's last name?” Mom asked. “Fm calling his parents right now!”

  “Just a moment.” Dad held one hand up. “How big is this kid?”

  “He's about this tall,” Moondance said, holding his hand about three inches over his head.

  “I see,” Dad said. “Don't worry about it. Your brother will take care of it.”

  Dad turned and started back toward the living room. Mom went after him and I could hear her saying that she should call Rocky's parents. Dad was saying no, that boys got into fights and that was part of growing up.

  I put my arm around Moondance's shoulders and took him into our room, praying Mom would win the argument.

  Moondance wiped his face off with a T-shirt and managed a smile. In the other room I could hear Mom and Dad talking. She was still upset but he was calm. I could hear her saying that she didn't want us fighting. I couldn't hear what Dad was saying, but whatever it was it didn't do much to calm Mom down. After a while I heard her walk past our room, and then she came back and opened the door. Her face was a little puffy too. She had been crying.

  She had a washcloth and wiped off Moondance's face. He was pretty much okay by that time.

  “Your father says that TJ. will fight this boy,” Mom said. “And that's the way it's going to be settled. He says I'm not to make sissies out of you.”

  She looked at me and her mouth tightened up. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and went out of the room. Then, a bit later, Dad knocked on the door.

  “What was the fight about?” he asked Moondance.

  “Nothing,” Moondance said. “He just started up, that's all.”

  “TJ., I guess you can take care of this bully?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He winked at me and closed the door.

  Mom and Dad didn't say a word during dinner. Not a word. After dinner Moondance and me watched television in our room before going to bed. He didn't say anything about the fight until after Mom had come in and kissed us and put the lights off.

  “Hey, TJ.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know, I feel kind of bad about the fight,” he said.

  “He's bigger than you are,” I said. “He's always picking on people.”

  “Not that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You know what started the fight?”

  “How could I? I wasn't there.”

  “He said he heard we were adopted.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then he said my real parents must have really been ugly to have kids like you and me.”

  “What's he talking about? He looks like a pimple with ears.”

  “I hit him first.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, then he really lit into me.”

  I tried to picture Rocky fighting Moondance. No matter how you look at it, Rocky was too big to fight Moondance.

  “You hurt real bad?” I asked him.

  “No, but you know why I feel bad?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hit him because of what he said about our real parents,” Moondance said. “That's why I didn't tell Dad. You think that was okay? To fight over our real parents?”

  “Sure, you should have hit him.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really gonna fight him?”

  “Sure.”

  “T.J., you want to know something about fighting Rocky?”

  “What?”

  “He's going to beat the daylights out of you.”

  “Oh.”

  That wasn't the best thing to hear in the whole world, that was for sure.

  Dad's mom goes to a Baptist church called Bethel Tabernacle. She told me that Bethel means “House of God,” and Tabernacle means “tent.” Only it's a brick church and not a tent.

  Grandma Lois is really round, but she don't seem fat. She's got dark skin, like Dad's, and her eyes are like his, but not exactly. I'm not sure if it's because she has ladies’ eyes or because they're just a little different.

  Dad's a Baptist and Mom is Catholic, but she helps out in Grandma's church sometimes. The church was giving a recital and she was helping to decorate the room it was being held in. Mop was over to our house the next day after practice and didn't want to go back to the Academy so Mom called Sister Carmelita to see if she could go to Bethel with us and Sister Carmelita said it would be okay.

  “And who are you, little lady?” Grandma Lois wiped her hands off on a towel and lifted Mop's chin up so she could see her better.

  “Mop.”

  “Mop?” Grandma Lois turned her head and looked down at Mop like she didn't believe her. “Now what kind of people be naming their child some Mop?”

  “That ain't my real name,” Mop said. “My real name is Olivia Parrish but everybody calls me Mop on account of the initials of Miss Olivia Parrish is M-O-P, which is Mop.”

  “And you like them calling you that?”

  “It's better than some dumb old Olivia!” Mop said.

  “And you T.J. and you the Moondance Kid, right?” Grandma Lois was starting her laugh.

  When Grandma Lois laughed, it didn't just come out of her mouth the way some people's laugh comes. It started way down in her stomach and you could see it shaking. Then she would start to rock like she was getting ready and you could see the laugh coming and then when it got up to her head her whole face would light up and the laugh would come out and fill up the room so good, it would make you laugh too.

  “Lord, if you kids ain't a mess, ain't nothing a mess!” She started laughing and we were all laughing.

  Even Mom laughed, which was good because she had been sad ever since Moondance and Rocky got into the fight.

  “Do you mind if they stay up here and read or something until we're finished downstairs?” Mom asked.

  “No, they can do what they want,” Grandma Lois said. “Let me see if there's any soda or anything in here.”

  We were in the church kitchen and Grandma Lois looked in the refrigerator for soda. There wasn't any soda, but she found some lemonade. She poured three glasses and put them on the table.

  “We don't have any cookies or anything like that …” she said.

  “We can make some cookies,” Mop said. “If you got the stuff.”

  “I don't think the church needs you to make a mess up here while we're cleaning up downstairs,” Mom said.

  “Girl, let them mess around a little if they want. Foots used to love to make cookies when he was little.”

  “Who's Foots?” I asked.

  “Foots? That was what we used to call your daddy,” Grandma Lois said. “First we started calling him Foot-to-foot. That's ‘cause every step I would make he'd be right behind me,
holding on to my house dress. If he couldn't see me, he'd be yelling out all over the place. ‘Mama¡ Mama!’“

  “Dad used to do that?” Moondance asked.

  “Didn't he? And if he walked outside the door and he lost sight of me for two minutes, he'd be screaming bloody murder. He was the biggest little mama's boy you ever wanted to see, and I loved every minute of it!”

  Grandma Lois threw her head back and laughed and everybody else laughed too.

  “So we might as well make some cookies,” Mop said.

  “You really know how to make cookies?” I asked.

  “Sure, all we need is some flour and stuff,” she said, looking up in the closet over the sink. “I'll be the chef and tell you guys what to do.”

  “How come you have to tell us what to do?”

  “You know how to make cookies?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  Mop couldn't find the regular flour so she used instant biscuit mix, which she said was just about the same thing. The first thing we did was to put two cups of mix in a big bowl. Moondance started cleaning up what we spilled as Mop and I added some milk and started stirring it up.

  “You hear about Moondance and Rocky having a fight?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Mop put a small pan on the stove and placed some butter in it. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “My mom thinks we should call his mother and tell her,” I said. “But my dad thinks I should fight him.”

  “I think you should fight him too,” Mop said.

  “Yeah, but if he fights him, Rocky's going to beat him up,” Moondance said.

  “You got to sneak him,” Mop said, “Walk up to him when he's not thinking about anything and knock him out. That's what I would do.”

  “What are you cooking the butter for?” I asked.

  “It goes in the cookies,” she said. “First you walk up to him and say something like ‘Hey, Rocky, did you know it rains purple in Iran?’ “

  “It does?”

  “No, but when you say that he'll think about it for a second.” The butter was just about melted and she poured it into the mix. “Then you bop him one and jump all over him. That's what I did once when a guy hit my little brother.”

  “You don't have a little brother.”

  “He really wasn't my little brother but I called him that,” Mop said. “Pour some of those raisins in.”

  There was a box of raisins on the shelf and I tried to pour some in, but they were all stuck together and came out in a lump. Mop started stirring them around and it started to look pretty good.

  “He was lucky, too,” Mop said. “I used to take karate classes and I learned how to reach right in between a person's ribs and snatch their heart out.”

  “You never went to no karate school, Mop,” I said. “I've known you almost my whole life and I know nobody from the Academy has gone to karate school.”

  “I didn't say karate school, “ she said. “I said Karate classes, which I took off the TV when I watched Bruce Lee.”

  “I guess I'll have to fight Rocky,” I said.

  “Sure,” Mop said. ‘Tut some sugar in.”

  “How much?”

  “How much they got?”

  I found a small box that was about a quarter full. “Not much” I said.

  “Put that in.”

  I dumped that in and Mop stirred it up. Then we found a couple of big flat pans and Mop started dropping the dough on them in big lumps. In fact, we all did that. Then we put them in the oven.

  We talked about a few other things, mostly about how the Academy was fixing to close. Then we started talking about the llama.

  “Mostly I'm worried about Taffy,” she said. “You know she's too big to just send back to California and she's too big for people to want her just because she's cute and everything. You know what I mean?”

  “I think somebody will take Taffy,” I said.

  “I don't know,” Mop kind of mumbled to herself. “I don't see anybody in too big a hurry.”

  Then we talked about the old days at the Academy. It was funny in a way. When me and Moondance were at the Academy, all we talked about were the days coming up and being adopted. But since I had left the Academy I could look back on it and think it wasn't so bad.

  “Even if Taffy gets to go to a zoo far away it won't be so bad,” I said. “She'll probably be happy in any zoo she goes to.”

  “I don't think so,” Mop said.

  “Mop, you going to cry?”

  “I think so.”

  She cried a little, softly, the way she does when she's real unhappy. I didn't say anything. One thing we agreed on a long time ago in the Academy. When somebody was sad, you could be near them and everything, but mostly you just let them be. That's because most of us couldn't do anything to stop their being sad. It helped having somebody near, though, and I went and sat next to Mop and put my arm around her.

  “The cookies are going to be good,” I said.

  “I think they're going to be more like cupcakes,” Mop said.

  “They'll still be good.”

  “T.J., how come I can't talk to Maria?” Mop shook her head. “Every time she gets near me I get so mumble-mouthed she must think something's wrong with me.”

  “Maybe because you're doing two things with her,” I said. “You're playing ball for her and you're waiting around to see if she and her husband are going to adopt you.”

  “You remember how Sister Marianne talked about teamwork and all that?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Yes, you do. Remember she was talking about the game of life and all that stuff?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I think that's what Maria's thinking about. If I can play ball all right, I can play the game of life.”

  “If that's what she's thinking, then it's not fair.”

  “Maybe, but it might be the only chance I got.” We heard somebody coming and Mop wiped her face with her hands and squeezed out a smile. It wasn't what you would call a great smile. In fact, it looked a little like she had a cramp or something. Then we took the cookies out of the oven.

  Actually, they were more like cupcakes, but they were pure, one hundred percent delicious¡ They were the best cookies I have ever had in my entire life. We had made twelve altogether and we gave two to Moondance, one to Grandma Lois, one to Mom, and then me and Mop split the rest. She was taking some back to the Academy and I was going to take the rest home. That turned out to be three because Mop and me had both eaten one.

  e played the Lions Thursday afternoon. Mike was supposed to pitch, but he hurt his thumb so Moondance pitched. Mop caught and we beat the Lions easy. Everybody was talking about how good Moondance pitched. Everybody except Evans, who always says you stink no matter what you do.

  I didn't get any hits but I didn't make any errors either. Not what you would call real errors. A girl on the Lions tried to steal third base and Mop threw me the ball. I didn't catch it, but I knocked it down and Jim said it was a good play.

  I didn't get any hits because I was nervous on account of Rocky. He was hanging around watching the game. I was standing near the fence talking to Mop when he came up on the other side of the fence.

  “Your brother tell you I knocked him down?”

  “He told him and you'd better not be around after the game,” Mop said.

  ‘Oh, yeah?” Rocky spit between his teeth right through the fence and on my sneaker. “What's going to happen if I'm around after the game?”

  “T.J.’s going to wipe your face in the dirt which you probably won't even mind since you're a maggot anyway!”

  “I'll be around after the game,” Rocky said. “And I'm going to hit you so hard I'm going to knock one of your initials right off your name, punk.”

  “Where you gonna be, Monkey Breath?” Mop banged her bat against the fence in front of Rocky. “Under the stands swallowing some more of your ugly pills?”

  I had to get up. I struck out on thre
e pitches and I could hear Rocky laughing. That's okay, we still won.

  After the game everybody left except me, Moondance, Mop, Evans, and Rocky. Mop told Evans that Rocky had hit Moondance and that I was going to punch Rocky's lights out and Evans went and got Rocky and brought him over.

  “He said he gonna punch your lights out!” Evans said in his real high voice. “That's what happens when you be messing with people's brothers.”

  You notice all this time I didn't say anything? You wonder why I didn't say anything? Because I was scared, that's why.

  “Go on, knock him out!” Mop said.

  I put my hands up and Rocky punched me in the face. In the nose. It felt like my whole face was on fire. It hurt something terrible¡

  “Now he really mad!” I heard Evans say.

  Wham¡ Rocky punched me again, this time on the arm.

  “Hit him back!” Mop was yelling.

  Wham¡ Rocky jumped on top of me and I went down. He sat on me and put his knees on my arms so I couldn't move.

  “Say ‘I'm a stupid dog’ or I'll knock your teeth out!” Rocky looked like a giant.

  I tried to twist away from him but he hit me in the face again. Then he got up and told me to get up if I wanted some more.

  I didn't want any more so I didn't get up. Rocky laughed and spit on the ground right near me. Then he walked away.

  ‘Tour nose is bleeding,” Mop said.

  I got up and started brushing myself off. I looked over at Moondance and he was crying. Rocky was still standing near the fence. I was really mad.

  I went over to him and he stepped away from the fence. I pushed him back into it and then he hit me in the nose again.

  This time I fell down hard and grabbed my nose because I thought it was broken. I heard Mop yelling at Rocky and then felt somebody helping me up.

  “That's two things you can't do,” Evans said, holding two fingers up in front of my face. “You can't play baseball and you can't fight!”

  Me and Moondance went with Mop back to the Academy and I washed up there. I didn't want Dad to know that I had gotten beat up by Rocky. You know, Evans didn't make a big deal of it, and neither did Mop, but I thought Dad would.