America

by E. R. Frank

“Okay,” I say. “Pitch it.” He pitches it. I hit a pop fly. He catches it behind his back. Then he sits on his butt in the grass and waves his hand at me to come get next to him. I do, and our faces are real close. His breath smells. He talks real low.

  “What you have to do is, when you get to your mother’s tomorrow, as soon as you get there, as much as you can, you be bad.”

  “Be bad?” I back up from his breath.

  “That’s what I’m trying to say.” He pulls a brown cigarette from behind his ear and sets it between his lips without lighting it. “Don’t listen to anything your mother tells you. Do as many bad things as you know how. Act like a real bad kid. Okay?” His cigarette moves up and down in time with what he’s saying.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “If you act bad,” he says, “that mother of yours will make sure to send you home right back here to Mrs. Harper before your day is even up, and she won’t ever want you to visit again, much less want to keep you.”

  “But Mrs. Harper will be mad.” If I do it like he says, she’ll end up looking at me hard and turning her back. “Mrs. Harper will get extra mad.”

  “Nope,” he tells me. “She won’t be mad as long as she gets you home for good.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve told you what to do,” Browning says, messing with a dandelion. He knows how to tie a knot in it and then snap the stem so the flower part flies off. “If you want your mother to leave us all be.” He shrugs at me and flicks the dandelion top. The flower hits my eye. “It’s up to you.”

  “What’s pissed you off?” Dr. B. goes.

  “You.”

  “What is it that I’ve done?”

  “Step off.”

  “Please sit down, America.”

  “I’m out of here.”

  “We have five minutes left, America.”

  “Fuck your five minutes.”

  “I’ll see you Thursday then.”

  “Oh, yeah? Fuck Thursday.”

  * * *

  I fuck Thursday. I keep my ass in the rec room watching Ping-Pong. I watch that ball popping all back and forth. I watch it careful, concentrating real hard, and doing that shit helps keep those cracks in my brain sealed up tight. It works so good, I almost don’t even notice Dr. B. hanging out in the doorway awhile, looking at me.

  * * *

  “Something kept you from coming to our session Thursday.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I looked for you.” America gets lost easy. “I found you in the rec room.” And is not worth the trouble of finding. “I was interested in what it was that took you to the rec room instead of to our session.” He’s got a regular deck of cards in his stupid pile of games.

  “War,” I go.

  “Something happened that kept you from our session, America.”

  “You know the rules?” I’m knuckle-shuffling.

  “You don’t want to discuss what happened.”

  “I asked if you know the rules, man.”

  “I’m not sure if I know your rules.” I slap down the deck. He cuts it.

  “Two of spades beats everything, including aces. Aces beat everything but the two of spades. Count your cards.”

  “Twenty-five,” Dr. B. goes.

  “Twenty-seven,” I go. “Here. Pick one.” He picks. “Now we’re even.”

  “All right.”

  “So throw down, man.” We throw down. “See that?” I say. “We got war already.”

  “War.”

  “Well, let’s go then, doc,” I say. “I De Clare War.”

  Then

  IT’S SATURDAY AFTERNOON, and my mother was here earlier, but then she left on an errand. I’m waiting by the window so I can see her coming back, but I’m so high up, everybody down there on the street looks all the same. Like fleas. And the cars look like toys. But if I stay by the window, Brooklyn and Lyle won’t bother me. They took the rest of my Tootsie Rolls already, and Brooklyn punched my ear, but then when I got by the window, they changed the channel on the TV and started ignoring me.

  I get to thinking about yesterday morning and how I’d found Mrs. Harper in her workroom, the walls all filled up with finished angels. About how those angels were perfect. All the same, a zillion same, all like me. It made me scream my hide-and-seek scream, my tag-and-tickle, you-can’t-catch-me scream. Those angels had brown hair that wasn’t real straight and not too curly, and yellow flecks inside green eyes with a flat shape on the outsides, and reddish-brown skin and wings, and puffy mouths and skinny noses. I screamed good and loud, and I must have scared Mrs. Harper real bad because when she lifted her head from the table, it looked like maybe she was a little bit crying.

  * * *

  “I’m supposed to go home now,” I go.

  “Where that?” Brooklyn goes.

  “Two forty-two Willow Road, Nyack, New York,” I go. Then I say all my numbers.

  “Never heard of no Nyack,” Brooklyn goes. “You in New York City now, bro.”

  “Yup,” Lyle goes.

  “He not going nowhere,” Brooklyn goes to Lyle.

  “Where’s the phone?” I go.

  “Where the phone?” Lyle goes to Brooklyn.

  “Under the sink,” Brooklyn goes. I leave the window and look under the kitchen sink, but it’s just cockroaches under there. “The bathroom sink,” Brooklyn goes, but there’s just more cockroaches and a phone without any cords anywhere for plugging in.

  “Do your neighbors have a phone?” I go.

  “You bother the neighbors, Mama going to beat your ass,” Lyle goes.

  * * *

  Our mother isn’t home yet from her errand, and it’s real dark outside the window. Brooklyn says I get to share the sofa bed with Lyle. But Lyle says he’s saving it for Kyle, and makes me sleep on the floor. The floor is the same kind of floor as Mrs. Harper’s kitchen. It’s gray and black squares. It’s the floor of the whole apartment. It’s hard and cold. Lyle won’t let me have Kyle’s share of the blankets or pillows. Brooklyn says Kyle isn’t even alive. He says Kyle’s dead, but Lyle’s crazy and pretends Kyle is just away visiting somewhere, but Brooklyn doesn’t make Lyle share the bed.

  I’m real sore all over, plus I’m cold, but when the light starts outside, I stand up by the window again to wait for my mother or Mrs. Harper to come get me. I don’t see them, either one, down there in the middle of all those fleas, though, and then Brooklyn and Lyle get up and eat cereal without any milk. After that I think I see the lady who took me on the bus from Mrs. Harper’s house to a taxi to an office where my mother got me. I think I see that lady for a minute, but they all look too much the same down there, and it’s not her.

  * * *

  Brooklyn and Lyle go out. They leave me alone in the apartment, and I look for a phone that works somewhere, but I can’t find one.

  * * *

  When they get back, it’s close to nighttime again, and I’m real hungry, and I get to crying. I’m supposed to start kindergarten tomorrow.

  “Shut up,” Brooklyn goes. I get to crying harder. “Shut up, or I’ll throw your ass out the window,” he tells me. But then Lyle walks right up and punches my eye, and I shut up, and Brooklyn forgets about throwing me out the window.

  * * *

  Our mother hasn’t gotten back yet, and Mrs. Harper doesn’t come get me, and Clark Poignant can’t because he’s too sick in his bed, and Browning doesn’t come, either, and there’s no phones, and I don’t start kindergarten. When I cry, Brooklyn and Lyle, one or the other, hit me, and I spend a real lot of hours looking out the window, waiting hard.

  * * *

  Brooklyn is the baddest seven-year-old you ever knew. Brooklyn smokes regular white cigarettes and watches the naked channel and MTV and the cartoon channel. Brooklyn cooks toast for us and ravioli out of a can and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Brooklyn knows how to clear the toilet so it will flush again, and he knows every bad word they ever invented, even some in Spanish. Also, Brooklyn knows how to
pee out the window into the air shaft and how to steal from the stores downstairs and from the tables on the street. Brooklyn is very, very bad and knows everything.

  * * *

  He tells me not to leave out the apartment until after ravioli because I’m supposed to be in school, and if our mama finds out anybody else finds out we’re not doing school, she’ll beat our ass the minute she gets back from her errand. Brooklyn likes Slim Jims, which he steals from downstairs, and he likes things that are green. He uses a Magic Marker to color all of his underwear green. Brooklyn likes my eyes because they’re green, but they make him mad, too. When Brooklyn gets mad at me, he knocks me down. Sometimes I just stay on the gray and black floor when he’s around so I’m down already and don’t have to get knocked. Brooklyn isn’t mad when he needs someone to play I Declare War or jacks. Brooklyn stole the cards, and I stole the jacks from a table outside. I thought maybe I’d get to go home then because stealing is bad, but nobody saw.

  * * *

  “When does our mother get back?” I say to Lyle.

  “She not your mama,” he goes.

  “She is, too,” I go.

  Brooklyn’s shuffling the deck, one-handed. Were getting ready to play three-way War.

  “When does she get back?” I ask Brooklyn. He slams the deck down. Lyle cuts it.

  “How does I know?” Brooklyn goes. “She on a errand.” He deals out the cards.

  “But when is she coming back?”

  “She coming back,” Brooklyn goes.

  “Yeah, but when?”

  “Shut up.”

  * * *

  Brooklyn lets us go out on Saturdays and Sundays.

  There’s a pay phone outside on the corner, but the talking part is torn off. There’s another one two blocks away, and I’m real happy when I see it, but then I can’t reach. It’s too high.

  The grown-ups don’t notice us on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m disappeared, and I can’t make anybody find me. There’s so many people everywhere, and none of them see me. I keep looking around for Mrs. Harper or Browning, and even Clark Poignant in case he got better enough to be out of his bed, but I don’t see them anywhere. What I see are high buildings all right next to each other and lots of cars and stores. There’s crowds of people all the time, but no grass. I want to get swung around or chased, but mostly, they can’t see me. Only sometimes when they yell for me to get away from there or they laugh without saying why. I don’t mind the yelling or laughing because at least somebody’s finding you.

  * * *

  Lyle’s allowed to go out on all the days as long as he goes somewhere called the Wheets. That’s where he and Kyle used to live and where they don’t mind if he’s not doing school and if he pretends Kyle is alive. When he comes home at night from their house, he bangs on the door and says, “Let us in, you chuckleheads.” We know it’s him, and dead Kyle, so we let them in.

  * * *

  Brooklyn makes us take a bath because Brooklyn says you have to. Lyle smells worse than me because he’s eight and bigger than Brooklyn and can get Brooklyn on the floor most of the time when Brooklyn tells him to take a bath. A bath here is different from a bath at Mrs. Harper’s. There’s only one towel. Brooklyn colored it green, so sometimes, even though we get clean from dirt, we get green on us after we dry off. Lyle and Brooklyn say if I scrub hard enough, I’ll uncover the black, but it never happens.

  “You white,” Lyle says.

  “No, I’m not,” I say.

  “He white,” Lyle says to Brooklyn.

  “He not black,” Brooklyn says.

  “I’m not white,” I say.

  “He mixed,” Brooklyn says.

  “He not our brother,” Lyle says.

  “I like his eyes,” Brooklyn says, and then he knocks me on the floor.

  * * *

  Sometimes the lights and the TV don’t work. Brooklyn and Lyle get nicer in the dark. We all three get on Brooklyn’s bed when the lights and TV don’t work, and nobody knocks anybody.

  * * *

  I write down my numbers on the floor in the corner with a black Magic Marker, but Lyle scribbles over them. I say the numbers over and over in my head, so I won’t forget.

  “I would like to make a collect call,” I say whenever I remember to practice. “I need to make a collect call, please.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Harper said if you need help, you can go to a policeman. Every time Brooklyn sees policemen, he hides real quick. Brooklyn says they’ll beat you worse than anyone. He says they’ll kill you. When I see policemen, I go the other way.

  * * *

  I’m hungry. My stomach is gurgling. Plus also, I want to get caught being bad so I’ll get sent back to Mrs. Harper. I take chips and Ding Dongs and run. After a minute, a hand grabs the back of my neck.

  “Hold on,” a man says, but he’s not talking to me yet. He’s talking into a cell phone. The cell phone is small and black. It has round white buttons. It has a little black antenna. I want to eat it. I want to wet my pants.

  “I need to make a collect call,” I tell the man with his hand on my neck.

  “Shorty here wants to make a collect call,” he shouts into the cell phone. He laughs for a long time. He has gold in his mouth. He takes the Ding Dongs from me.

  “I stole them,” I say. Maybe he’ll send me home.

  But instead he tucks his cell phone between his ear and shoulder and rips open my Ding Dongs. He pops one into his mouth and walks away.

  * * *

  I like it when Brooklyn has bad dreams, because then I get to share his bed.

  “If you tell the dream, you’ll never have it again,” I tell him. It’s one of Mrs. Harper’s tricks, and it works real good.

  “So?” Brooklyn says. He’s warm and smells like cigarettes. His bed is small, so we have to squeeze, but it feels good to get mushed up against another person. A little bit like climbing on Clark Poignant or Browning or getting dried off after a bath by Mrs. Harper.

  I’m about to fall asleep when Brooklyn goes, “Dream there a monster.”

  “What kind of monster?”

  “Kind that wearing a mask and chase you to rips out your guts.”

  “Did it get you?” I ask.

  “Almost,” Brooklyn says. “But then God kill it.”

  * * *

  I try real hard to remember my mother. I try to remember her face or her voice. There was a lady Brooklyn and Lyle would call white with toenails painted brown. She rode the bus with me from Mrs. Harper’s and then took me in a taxi to an office. Then there was another lady who was my mother. A train underground and Browning’s Tootsie Rolls weighing down my back pocket. A street and a door and an elevator going up with a smell a lot like Browning’s gin root beer and bad breath. Then there was this apartment and my mother yelling bad words into her cell phone and smacking Lyle on the top of his head. Jamming the cell phone into her pocket and telling me and Lyle and Brooklyn she had to go on an errand and don’t open the door for nobody. Leaving and gone.

  * * *

  They fight at both next doors. I never see them, but they’re grown, and they use a lot of bad words that make me real sure I’ll never be able to catch up, be caught, and get sent home. I try, anyway. I start using bad words at Lyle and Brooklyn. When Brooklyn goes to knock me, I grab the ravioli pot and bash him on the head. He falls right on his knees and goes all blank, looking just like one of Mrs. Harper’s angels. Then he falls flat on his face, and Lyle crosses his arms.

  “You beat him down,” Lyle says. I’m still holding the ravioli pot. I put it back on the stove. My hand has some red sauce on it. It matches all the splatters everywhere.

  “Hey, Kyle,” Lyle says to the empty couch. “America beat down Brooklyn.”

  “You okay, Brooklyn?” I ask. I touch his butt with my toe. He groans a little bit. I want to smush up against him and tell him sorry, but I can’t.

  He and Lyle get a lot nicer after that.

  * * *

 
; Browning said when you’re bad, they send you away. That’s why Mrs. Harper sent me away. Because I’m bad. Somebody here would send me away, too, right back to Mrs. Harper, if they saw me being bad, only now I almost forget that’s a reason for being bad. I just like it. Plus, Lyle and Brooklyn like it. The more bad I am, the more I don’t have to sleep on the gray and black squares.

  I pee out the window, but not the air shaft one. The street one. Lyle and Brooklyn like that. I push Lyle out of his bed and give him a fat eye keeping him out. Brooklyn likes that. I tell the store people four blocks over to eat shit so while they’re mad at me, Brooklyn can steal bologna and purple bubble gum. I steal a knife and try to make cuts in car tires along the streets. I’m not strong enough, so I steal people’s doormats and rip them up instead. I find a brick and smash windows. It’s real hard because the windows are higher than me and solid, and the brick is heavy, but I break some, anyway. Brooklyn teaches me how to smoke, only I don’t like it, even after I don’t cough anymore from it. What I like is lighting the match. I like the blue of the fire at the bottom part of the flame. I like to look at that and then at the yellowy orange above it, and think about when Mrs. Harper would paint the wings or the hair that color.

  * * *

  “I’ll steal a car,” Lyle says.

  “You don’t know how,” Brooklyn says. “Plus, you too small.”

  “I’m bigger than you,” Lyle says.

  “You a bigger pussy,” Brooklyn says. I laugh.

  “What is you laughing at?” Brooklyn says. “I’ll beat you down.”

  “No, you won’t,” I say. “I’m almost as big as you, and I’m not a pussy.”

  “You used to be,” Brooklyn says.

  “Used to ain’t any use to you,” Lyle singsongs.

  “Shut up,” Brooklyn says, and then he starts giggling.

  “Make us some ravioli,” I tell Brooklyn. He does.

  * * *

  I steal Magic Markers. I use all the colors. I write my numbers on the walls and the floors. This time, I tell Lyle I’ll beat him down if he scribbles it over. I tell him I’ll beat down Kyle, too, just in case. When I run out of room, I write my numbers on the stove, the two chair seats, the TV sides and screen, and the outside of the bathtub. Then I write on the sofa bed. The sink. Our clothes.