I'll Take You There

by Wally Lamb

  I wish Ma was home so she could squirt Bactine on my bites and not make me wait like Simone. I’m not allowed to squirt myself cause Bactine is medicine. Plus I might waste it like the time I wasted a whole roll of Scotch tape trying to give myself Japan eyes like Mr. Moto. He’s this wrestler I like. Pop says Mr. Moto probably has a tag on him that says “Made in Japan” like everything else does these days. I like Bobo Brazil for a wrestler, too. My worst wrestler is Killer Kowalski. He’s a dirty fighter. One time I seen him kick Bobo Brazil in that place where if you’re a boy, it really, really hurts. Midge Rosenblatt hit me down there once when the kids on our street were playing dodgeball and I started crying in front of all the other kids. Then I quit and went in the house. Later on, Simone said the ball hitting me there was an accident and that Midge felt real bad. Frances said yeah, but everyone else thought it was funny and even Midge was laughing too.

  “For real?” I asked Simone.

  She said a few kids might have been laughing a little. She doesn’t remember.

  Simone likes JoBeth Shishmanian cause they’re best friends, but Frances thinks JoBeth is stuck-up on account of her big sister, Shirley, is a model. We seen her once on Queen for a Day. And when this sad-looking lady with glasses got to be the queen cause she needed a wheelchair for her crippled kid, Shirley gave her a giant bouquet of roses and a cape that had fur on it. Ma said Shirley Shishmanian babysitted my sisters and me once—a long time ago when I was just a baby. And she was a terrible, terrible babysitter cause she spilled soda on our kitchen floor and didn’t clean it up good so the floor was all sticky. Plus, she fell asleep on the couch and wouldn’t wake up even after Ma and Poppy got home and kept going, “Shirley? Yoo-hoo.” And after that, she never got to babysit us again. Simone says her name isn’t Shirley Shishmanian anymore. She had to get a fake name on account of she’s a model. I bet Killer Kowalski’s got a fake name, too, cause it wouldn’t be very nice if you named your baby Killer. Frances is always going that wrestling is stupid and fake, but I tell her, “No, it’s not—you’re stupid and fake.” Sometimes Pop watches wrestling with me. He likes Lou Albano on account of Lou’s Italian and so are we. And when Lou is fighting, Pop goes, “Come on, paesano! Knock his block off! Clobber him!”

  Oops, I’m scratching again and one of my bites is bleeding. “Simone! Can you please, please, please squirt me? I’m bleeding to death.”

  “As soon as the story’s over.”

  “When’s it gonna be over?”

  “Five more minutes,” she says. “Are you remembering not to scratch?” Her and Frances are both eating their lunch on TV trays in the parlor cause they’re watching Search for Tomorrow. I tell her I’m trying not to scratch, but I can’t help it.

  Frances goes, “Well, I hope you like scars then.” She knows this girl in her class that got flea bites from her cat. And she kept scratching them until they turned into scabs. Then the scabs turned into scars. And even when she’s an old lady, that girl’s legs are still gonna have those ugly scars on account of she kept scratching. Sometimes Pop calls Frances Little Miss Know It All and she gets mad. I get happy, though, cause how does she like getting picked on? When I forget and pick my nose, she calls me Mr. Picky Nose. Or Stanley Wierzbicki. He’s this weird kid on our street that eats his nose junk. Him and Frances use to be in the same grade together, but Stanley stayed back so now they’re in different grades. Sometimes when he’s out playing in his yard, we joke around and say, “Uh-oh, we better get a cootie shot.”

  I have to eat lunch in the kitchen cause it’s Lipton chicken noodle soup and I might spill it on our new rug that’s called a braided rug. We got it at Sears cause our old rug was cruddy and a little bit smelly from our cat, Winky. So Pop rolled it up like a big, giant cigar. And when him and me brought it to the dump, I saw two rats and a hundred million seagulls. . . . I don’t get why it’s chicken noodle soup. All’s I see are noodles and little green things that Simone says is parsley, not bugs. I just put a saltine on top of my soup. And one of Frances’s pop-it beads on top of the saltine. Cause the saltine is a raft and the pop-it bead is this guy who can’t swim. And when the raft gets mushy, it’s gonna sink and the pop-it guy might drown unless I save him with my spoon. . . .

  Sometimes Frances and me play this game where she spins the globe in her and Simone’s bedroom and I have to close my eyes and put my finger on it. And wherever it stops, that’s where I’m going to live when I’m a grown-up. One time I got Switzerland and this other time I got the Pacific Ocean. And Frances went, “Ha-ha. Nice knowing you. You just drowned.” Last time we played the globe game, I got Japan. That time when I used all the Scotch tape trying to get Japan eyes like Mr. Moto? After I pulled the tape off, there was a hole in my Pledge of Allegiance eyebrow. That means my right eyebrow. Cause your right hand is what you say the Pledge of Allegiance with. So that’s how I remember my right and my left. When I used to be in kindergarten, we always said the Pledge of Allegiance and the Our Father first thing after we put our coats in the cloakroom and sat down at our desks. It’s called morning exercises, but they’re not exercises like the kind that Ma does in the parlor when Debbie Drake is on TV. At school? When we say the Our Father? I’m not ’posed to say the “for thine is the kingdom and the glory” part cause us Catholics don’t say that part. Just Protestants do. And maybe Jewish kids. I’m not sure. I’m glad I’m Catholic cause we get guardian angels. You can’t see them, but they’re always right behind you, keeping you safe. Like, if you forgot to look before you crossed the street and a car was coming? Your guardian angel would save you. Sometimes I look back real quick to see if I can see mine, but I haven’t yet.

  Frances and Simone don’t know it, but I’m watching Search for Tomorrow from the kitchen even though I’m not ’posed to cause I’m too young for those kinds of stories. So ha-ha for them. Yesterday? Joanne Tate’s friend Lisa was crying cause she thinks her husband’s got a girlfriend. And he does, too, cause I seen him kissing this other lady at his work. And Lisa’s having a baby so she doesn’t want to get a divorce. Oh good, here’s a commercial.

  “Simone! Please can you squirt me now?”

  “Can’t! I just painted my fingernails and they’re not dry!”

  So I go, “You better not spill nail polish on our new rug!”

  Then Frances has to put her big nose in it. “You should talk, Felix! You spill stuff all the time!”

  “I do not!”

  “You do so!”

  Simone tells me she’ll get the Bactine after her nails get dry and there’s another commercial. On TV right now, this lady’s cleaning a toilet and singing, There’s less toil with Lestoil. It’s so easy when you use Lestoil. I know lots of commercials. Like You get a lot to like with a Marlboro. Filter, flavor, flip-top box. And Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat. Rice-A-Roni, everybody’s got the beat. Now this other lady’s waxing her floor with Johnson’s Glo-Coat. Ma uses that. First her and Simone carry the table and chairs out of the kitchen. Then Ma washes and waxes our floor. And after it dries but before they bring the table and chairs back, it’s real slippery. You can wear just your socks and pretend you’re ice skating.

  Oh no. Here comes stupid Frances into the kitchen. I ask her what’s for dessert and she goes, “Nothing if you don’t eat your—hey! Get my pop-it bead out of there.” She grabs it and puts it under the faucet. “What are you playing with pop-it beads for anyway? Are you a little girl or something?”

  And I go, “No. Are you a big smelly baboon?”

  “Yup,” she says, and she starts monkey-walking and going, “Ooo-oo-ooo. Me want banana.” I don’t want to laugh, but I can’t help it. Out of my two sisters, she’s the funny one. And out of Pop and Uncle Iggy, Uncle Iggy is the funny brother but Pop’s kinda funny, too.

  Frances takes the jug of spring water out of the icebox. Then she gets the Zarex out of the cabinet. Frances makes Zarex better than Ma cause she puts in way more syrup and it tastes nice and sweet.

 
“Can I have some?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Why not?”

  “Because you haven’t even drank your milk yet.”

  “Then can I make chocolate milk?” She says no. “Why not?”

  “Because I said so. Now shut up and eat your soup.”

  When I tell her she’s not my mother, she goes that’s a relief because I sure was an ugly baby. “You’re mean!” I say.

  “You’re mean,” she says back.

  “Plus, you’re a brat!” I tell her.

  “Plus you’re a brat.”

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  Ma says that when Frances starts copying me, I should ignore her cause she’s just trying to get my goat. Which means make me mad. The first time Ma said, “Don’t let her get your goat, Felix,” I went “Huh?” Cause all’s I could think of was the goats up at Wequonnoc Park that eat out of your hand if your mother gives you a nickel to buy some pellets from this machine that looks like a gumball machine.

  “Ha-ha, Frances,” I go. “You’re not even getting my goat.”

  And she goes, “Ha-ha, Frances. You’re not even getting my goat.”

  “Shut up, copycat!”

  From the parlor, Simone tells me to stop screaming. She tells Frances that whatever she’s doing, to stop egging me on. And that the commercial’s over and their show’s back on.

  “Shut up, copycat,” Frances says, ’cept she doesn’t yell it. She whispers it, and that really makes me mad. Plus my busquito bites are itching worse than ever. Frances takes a big gulp of her stupid Zarex and says, “Ahh, dee-lish!” After she goes back to the parlor, I take her whole stupid pop-it bracelet and throw it in the garbage under some icky scrambled eggs from breakfast that I didn’t eat. Then I start watching Search for Tomorrow again.

  I wish Ma would get home. Or else I wish I was down at the lunch counter where her and Pop are. At the lunch counter, we got stools that you can spin around on. And when you get off, you’re dizzy and it makes you walk like you’re Lush Magoon. He’s this drunk guy who lives in the apartment house across the street from us. One time he fell off the sidewalk into the gutter in front of our house and just stayed there. And my mother had to call the cops so he wouldn’t get runned over and squashed to death. One time I had a bad dream where Lush Magoon was chasing me and I kept trying to yell “Help! Help!” but no sound would come out. When I woke up, I was still scared so I went to Ma and Pop’s room and woke up Pop. And he went, “To what do we owe this honor?” Then he walked me back to my room and sat on my bed. He said I didn’t have to be scared of Lush cause he was harmless. And that he felt sorry for him cause Lush has a fake leg from being in World War Two. And after he came home again, his wife didn’t want to stay married to him anymore. And that was why he always got drunk: cause he had to get a fake leg and a divorce. So then I didn’t feel scared anymore, except I still did a little bit cause I kept thinking about the bloody stump where his leg used to be.

  Before Ma left, I asked her what we were having for supper and she said beans and hot dogs. I was happy cause that and English muffin pizzas are my two best things to have for supper. My worst thing to eat for supper is Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks on Friday cause we can’t eat meat. Fish makes the house stink when you cook it. Or when you have a goldfish but don’t clean out his bowl as much as you should. The water gets stinky from fish poop. I had a goldfish named Skippy once. So one time I thought, hey, if his name is Skippy, I bet he likes peanut butter. So I put some in his bowl and he died. Ma said he woulda died anyway, but Frances kept calling me Goldfish Killer. Ma made her go to her room and think about other people’s feelings. And when she came out, she had to apologize. Then me and her buried Skippy in the backyard and made him a Popsicle-stick cross. Some families, if their goldfish dies, they just flush him down the toilet. But not us. We bury ours.

  Yippee! Here comes the Bactine. I stick out my arms and Simone squirts them. “Close your eyes,” she says, and when I do, she squirts the two on my neck.

  “Don’t forget my earglobe,” I remind her.

  She laughs. “Earlobe,” she says. “Felix, you’re so funny.”

  Frances comes in carrying her TV tray and she goes, “Yeah, funny peculiar.” Simone’s nice most of the time. Frances is nice sometimes, like when she plays with me, but sometimes she’s snotty. I like them both the same, but not when Frances is mean to me. Then I just like Simone.

  They start doing the dishes. Simone always washes and Frances always dries. Sometimes I help Ma get supper ready. I’m the napkin folder and the fork and spoon putter-outer. Simone says I should finish my lunch so I can go out and play. But I don’t want to cause our street is so boring. ’Cept for Stanley Wierzbicki and me, our whole neighborhood is girls, girls, girls: Midge Rosenblatt, Pinky Jenkins, DeeDee Abercrombie. Oh, and there’s this other, older girl who may even be a woman that lives around the corner on Freedom Street. Her name is Roxy Rajewski and she’s a tomboy. She spits in the gutter and kinda has a mustache. And when you’re jumping rope and she takes an end? She yells “Hot pepper!” and starts turning it so fast it’s almost like a whip! My mother said Roxy should put some Nair on her mustache cause it’s so noticeable, but that she better not shave it cause then it would grow in thicker. This summer Ma let Simone shave her legs cause they were getting hairy. And you know something else? Some people call Roxy this bad name which, I’m not ’posed to say it but I’ll whisper it. Roxy Rotten Crotch.

  One time me and Frances were making a snowman and Stanley hit me in the face with a snowball on purpose and I got a bloody nose. And this other time, he pulled down his pants and went to the bathroom right in his front yard while cars were driving by! Frances says he was such a dumb bunny when he was in her grade that he couldn’t even say the easy multiplication tables. And last night? He wanted to play hide-and-seek with us, and Simone said no and told him he had to go home. But he wouldn’t. And when Pinky started counting “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” Stanley hid behind our car, even though we weren’t even letting him play! Then Frances said if he didn’t get off our property, she was going in and getting our father to come out and kick him out of our yard. But then Stanley’s big brother, Brad, who’s a teenager, came out and went, “Hey, nimrod! Get the H-E-double-toothpick in here! Supper!” ’Cept he said the whole word, not just the letters.

  There’s something I don’t get about swearing. One time I asked Frances if I could have a bite of her Popsicle, and she said, “Yeah, as soon as hell freezes over.”

  And I said, “Uh-oh, you just said a swear.”

  And she went, “No I didn’t, cause I was talking about hell the place, not saying it like, ‘What the H do you think you’re doing?’” But I kind of don’t get the difference cause this other time Frances was being a brat and calling me names. And I went, “Go to hell, Frances the Talking Mule.” And Ma heard me. So I told her I meant hell the place. She said it didn’t make any difference, and I had to sit on the kitchen stool until I heard the stove timer ding. . . .

  Some teenagers are nice and some are hoody. Brad Wierzbicki’s hoody. Simone said she seen Brad in front of New Breed Auto Club where all the hoody boys go to fix their cars and hang out. And he was smoking and spitting in the gutter, which is a dirty habit. Spitting, I mean. Not smoking. Smoking’s okay as long as you’re a boy. The only girls that smoke are hoody girls.

  My pop smokes Kools and Uncle Iggy smokes Old Golds. Their real names are Salvatore and Ignazio. I wish I had a brother like Poppy does. On my this year’s birthday, that was my wish. I blew out all the candles, too, but I got a Mr. Potato Head instead of a brother. On my next year’s birthday, I’m going to wish for a Lionel train instead. You can only wish for one thing, my mother said, cause you don’t want to be greedy. I seen that train set at this store over near where my Nonna and Nonno Pucci live that’s called Mister Big’s. My mother is Nonna and Nonno’s daughter and her name used to be Marie Pucci. Now it�
�s Marie Funicello cause she and Pop got married. Before Poppy went into the army, he used to live with Nonno and Nonna Funicello plus Uncle Iggy.

  One time? Pop and Uncle Iggy had this big fight where they were fighting each other for real, not just horsing around. I wasn’t even born yet so I don’t remember it. Pop got Uncle Iggy in a headlock, and when Uncle Iggy tried gettin’ out of it, he kicked over our coffee table and it broke and so did our lamp. Before that fight, him and Pop used to run our lunch counter together. But then Uncle Iggy started working at this other place called Electric Boat that makes submarines. Now him and Poppy are friends again. The only person who ever calls Uncle Iggy “Ignazio” is my Nonna Funicello. She’s Poppy’s mother and Uncle Iggy’s mother. Uncle Iggy still lives at Nonna Funicello’s house on account of he never got married. I think maybe no lady wants to marry him cause he has that flat, crooked thumb. Sometimes Pop calls Uncle Iggy his numbnuts brother, and I think it’s cause Uncle Iggy has this fake can of salted nuts that, when he says, “Want some?” and you open up the can, these fake snakes come flying out. And there’s not really any nuts in there. One time when we had company, Ma bought a real can of mixed nuts, and Frances got in trouble for eating most of the good ones before the company even got here. And all that was left practically was peanuts and Brazil nuts. Frances was ’posed to stay in her room, but she kept coming out and having to go to the bathroom cause all those nuts gave her the runs.

  Simone and Frances finish the dishes and go out to the front hall to call Ma. They want to find out when she’s coming home on account of they want to walk downtown and see some dumb Elvis Presley movie.

  Oh, look. Here comes Winky. She’s a girl cat and she’s got a broken purrer that Uncle Iggy says sounds like an old jalopy that’s trying to start up in winter. I’m not ’posed to feed her from the table, but sometimes I do. “Here, Winky. Want some soup?” Yup, she does. She’s sitting in my lap and has her front paws on the table, and I’m letting her lick soup from my bowl. Frances told me cats’ mouths are cleaner than people’s mouths. Plus, cats always land on their feet. Even if they fell off the top of the Empire State Building, they wouldn’t get hurt cause they’d land on their feet. For real.