JoJo took a longer shower after Alex and dressed himself much the same way. Alex, propped on the bed, watched his confederate comb the curly hair and thought how good-looking he was. It was obvious that Teresa adored her brother. She made them tuna salad sandwiches and brought them up with a quart of milk. They were gulping them down when the headlights of the family car sprayed across the front of the house, flaring momentarily in the window. The horn honked, unnecessarily announcing the arrival of the family, and then the motor went silent. Teresa started for the door.
“Don’t tell ’em we’re here,” JoJo said.
Teresa stopped, hand on the knob. “Why?”
“Well…”
“Lisa’s going to come up here, so—”
“Tell her … and we gotta tell Mama pretty quick, but the old man—he don’t need to know. No tellin’ what he’ll do.”
“Mom got the call from the reformatory this morning, but she wasn’t going to tell him—at least not till they went out to the movie. She knew he’d use it as an excuse not to take her.”
“What difference would that make?” Alex asked.
“Anything might make a difference,” Teresa answered, moving from the door to gather the pile of dirty clothes. “I’ll burn these.”
When she went out, Alex was both sorry and glad. Whenever she looked at him with more than a glance, his face got hot and his tongue thick and unwieldy. This was the first girl he’d talked to since puberty, which had changed his fantasies and hungers. Teresa Altabella was pretty and prematurely enticing, with full breasts, a tiny waist, and full hips and thighs. It was enough to discomfit many adult males, much less a thirteen-year-old who had seen no girls for a long, long time. He knew that she was thirteen from JoJo, and, when asked, he’d told her that he was freshly fifteen, blushing even more hotly at the lie.
When she was gone, JoJo explained that his parents weren’t happy, not that there was any chance of their separating. They didn’t do such things. But Joe, Sr. was from the old country, and didn’t care about anything but making money and babies. He owned a dozen small apartment buildings in the slums. He’d put three thousand dollars into a unit in 1934, and when he had enough equity, he borrowed against it to buy another; the peasant understands the value of property more than the middle class does. Nevertheless, he kept working as a meat-cutter for a supermarket, taking all the overtime they offered. His wife, born in Brooklyn, thought they should enjoy life, that he should buy her nice things and take her out. At thirty-eight Lorraine was young enough to want some fun. She didn’t want to bear more children, whereas babies were also wealth to him.
Even at thirteen Alex knew enough, had read enough, to know that the Altabella family was somewhat bizarre. Despite that, he felt the underlying warmth between them. It felt good, the belonging. It felt even better when he thought of Teresa—she with the soft brown eyes and quick smile and breasts uptilted in an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse. He stared at her compulsively when her gaze was elsewhere, but the moment their eyes touched, his dropped to his shoes.
The older Altabellas slept in the large downstairs bedroom at the rear of the house, while the three children had two small bedrooms upstairs. The house roof slanted to a peak, making it much smaller upstairs. There was a small bathroom and the two bedrooms, nothing else. In fact one had to go through the girls’ room to reach JoJo’s.
Teresa went downstairs and returned with her eleven-year-old sister, Lisa, for whom no genes of beauty had been left. With eyes set too close, teeth needing braces, and a nose both big and hooked, she caused her mother to worry that she wouldn’t find a husband. Lisa was still too young to feel much pain about her homely face. Now, when she burst into the room, she was visibly afire with joyous excitement. She leaped up and hooked her arms around her brother’s neck, and he swung her around several times while she screeched and kissed him.
Never had Alex been told that men rise to their feet as courtesy when women enter a room, so he hadn’t moved from the bed, back against the headboard, legs extended. He was moved by the love flowing between the handsome older brother and homely little sister.
“Alex, meet my baby sister, Lisa.”
He nodded, still on the bed. “I met you on the visiting grounds a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh yes, I remember! You had a Boy Scout uniform.” She turned to JoJo. “When I saw you in a Boy Scout uniform I nearly started laughing.”
“Yeah,” JoJo said, grinning and shaking his head. “And the old man was fuckin’ proud of me in it. It didn’t matter that I was in reform school … I was a Boy Scout.”
“Lisa,” said Teresa, “you’re Daddy’s favorite, so maybe you should tell him about JoJo.”
“Why tell him?” JoJo asked. “Mom has to know, but he’s gone all day, and he never comes up here or goes out back. He goes from the dinner table to the bedroom—in a straight line.”
Teresa shrugged her indifference, and it was thus decided. At least for now, Joe Altabella Senior would be kept unaware that his son was more or less at home. The way the house was arranged, with the master bedroom at the rear downstairs and the stairs at the front, JoJo and Alex could come and go, even with Joe, Sr. home, without being seen. During the day, when Joe was gone, they would exit by the kitchen door into the back yard and through the gate into the alley, emerging on a busy boulevard a block away. This route made it unlikely that neighbors would see, just in case the police had someone watching. At night, when Joe was home, the darkness would protect them from possible eyes as they went out the front door.
On the second day, a pair of juvenile detectives came to ask the mother if JoJo had contacted his home. (She shook her head no, silently saying a Hail Mary to expiate the lie.) They also asked her to call them if he did. They promised not to hurt him if she turned him in.
But on the first night, totally exhausted from the tension of the escape and the thirty miles of trekking, Alex unintentionally fell asleep fully dressed on the bare mattress of JoJo’s bed. It was around midnight, and they had turned the radio on, tuning in a popular music disc jockey who broadcast from a South L.A. drive-in, and who took dedications over the phone. Alex’s interest in the love songs of popular music had risen almost simultaneously with puberty. The real music to him, however, was the mellifluous voice of Teresa. She was telling JoJo about mutual friends and about his girlfriend, Connie Gianetta, who kept asking when he was coming home. Alex was a listener, entranced because such talk was totally new to him. He failed to see the banality because of his age. He listened while lying comfortably on the bed, totally comfortable, even though he was dressed and the mattress was bare. Sleep clubbed him down without him asking for it. He dreamed of Teresa. It was the first time dreaming of a girl—or at least the first time he remembered in the morning. It was a flash of a dream: she was lying beside him, fully clothed, though he could feel her body arousing him. Her mouth was on his face, so warm, so very warm, and he moaned with longing for the open mouth and hot, sweet breath. Those were the fragments he recalled in the morning.
* * *
Also in the morning, JoJo had two twenty-dollar bills. He’d crept downstairs in the wee hours and took them from his father’s wallet.
“Man, I’ve been gettin’ him since I was nine years old. It’s the only way to get a nickel from him—steal it. Shit! He don’t even give Mom grocery money. He does the shopping.”
“You don’t have to convince me, JoJo,” Alex said, sensing from the tone that his approval was important.
“And he’s fuckin’ rich,” JoJo said. “We live in this fucked-up neighborhood when we could be somewhere nice. Ah, man! I’d do anything to meet some of those chicks from Hollywood High and Beverly Hills High, even if they are mostly Jewish chicks … who don’t fuck around. Lana Turner went to Hollywood High. Did you know that?”
Alex shook his head, and chuckled. “That don’t mean they all look like Lana Turner.”
“Naw, but they are fine, fine, fine…”
> “So what’re we gonna do today?”
“Whatever we do, it’s gotta be better than what we were doing. Right?”
“No bullshit!”
A light knock on the door preceded Teresa’s entrance. A tight, white turtleneck sweater accented her breasts, and a tight gabardine skirt did the same for her derriere and thighs. She also wore the mandatory white and brown saddle shoes and bobby socks. “Daddy’s gone to work. We’ll tell Mom you’re here now.”
“Okay,” JoJo said.
“What’re you dressed up for?” Alex said impulsively, then blushed.
The blush worsened when she replied, “I go to school. Remember?”
“We’ll be down in a few minutes,” JoJo said.
“Not me, man,” Alex said. “This is a heavy scene and I’ll just get in the way.”
“I want you to meet her.”
“Yeah, sure, but not right now this morning. We’ve got time.” Alex gently but firmly pushed JoJo toward the door. “Go on, see your mom.”
Teresa had left the door ajar moments before. She was visible through it in her bedroom, leaning slightly forward while drawing her mouth in the heavy red lipstick of the time. While passing her to reach the stairs, JoJo slapped her backside, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make her arch perceptibly forward. JoJo’s footsteps clattered on the narrow stairwell while Alex stood in the doorway between the two bedrooms, watching Teresa and wondering what to say when she turned from the mirror.
She pressed her lips together, joined the lipstick tube together, and her eyes met his via the mirror.
“You’re sure pretty,” he said, half tentative, half blurting.
She smiled and glowed with it. “Thank you.”
“I’ll bet you’ve got tons of boyfriends.” He cursed the comment the moment it was in the air. His feeling of stupidity grew when she continued to smile without replying.
“Do you?” He pressed because the silence was worse.
“I guess boys like me. I wouldn’t say tons though.”
“Anyone special?”
“Mmm, yes, I guess so … sort of.”
“Oh…”
“I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. Which is kinda weird. He comes by nearly every day, and calls once or twice.” She was obviously musing aloud; then she pointedly added: “He’s half Chicano and half Irish. His name is Wedo. Wedo Murphy. He’ll be seventeen next week. A real sharp guy.”
The information wilted sprouting fantasies. He’d known that any girl this pretty and developed would have boyfriends, but a seventeen-year-old was virtually an adult. A thirteen-year-old, even one passing as fifteen, was no competition.
“Oh, oh, wow!” she said suddenly. “I gotta go. I’m already going to be late—again. God! I wish I could quit.”
She was an explosion of energy, grabbing books and things, pausing for a last long look around to see if anything was forgotten. Then she was gone, leaving a smile and a “see you later.” Her scent and her presence lingered, at least Alex thought so. The pleasurable nervousness and the sort of ache was something new—and he recognized what he felt. He went into JoJo’s bedroom and looked through the window as she appeared below, went through the gate and down the sidewalk, finally moving beyond his angle of vision. He remained looking long after she was gone. Everything was bright and clean in the sunlight. The neighborhood was a poor working-class one, but there were postage-stamp lawns and occasional palm trees, jutting high and tilted. Somewhere a carpenter was already pounding nails, the sound of the hammer carrying clearly in the morning air. Alex suddenly longed to go out into the sunlight and see the city. He wanted to look for experience.
Sometime later JoJo came rushing upstairs. Alex was on the unmade bed, reading an old Esquire he’d found. JoJo was obviously happy.
“It went good, huh?” Alex asked, putting down the magazine and sitting up.
“Oh yeah … but she’s all fucked up … happy to see me, scared to death ’cause I’m on the run. She wants to meet you—and you’re welcome here forever as far as she’s concerned.”
“You’ll have to tell your old man, too.”
“Who? He doesn’t have to know.”
“What happens when he goes to Whittier to visit?”
JoJo’s grin turned blank. He hadn’t thought of the visits. Two Sundays a month the family went to Whittier. After a ticking silence, he threw off the problem. “So we tell him. He ain’t gonna turn me in, that I know. So fuck it, why worry? Let’s go out somewhere. I’ll show you San Pedro. It’s a beautiful day.”
“That sounds real good to me. What’ve you got in mind?”
“Well, man, I thought we might check out the neighborhood, get some reefer—I can get some good, fat joints for half a buck apiece. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good to me.” Even under torture Alex wouldn’t have admitted to never before smoking marijuana, nor that he had fears of it while wanting to be initiated. All the sharpest guys in Whittier talked about getting high on weed and, yes, another thing: breaking open Benzedrine inhalers for the saturated strips inside. He had to try that, too.
“Can you roll?” JoJo asked.
“Roll?”
“Yeah, roll cigarettes, joints.” JoJo made a hand gesture to indicate.
“Oh yeah,” Alex said, then laughed inwardly, recalling that he’d learned to roll cigarettes by hand in Camarillo. It already seemed a long time ago. For a moment he wondered what had happened to Red Barzo and First Choice Floyd.
“Good,” JoJo said. “I gotta learn how. I use a little pipe now when I can’t get somebody to roll ’em. It’s a lot cheaper to buy it loose instead of joints already rolled. Man, I can get a lid, ’bout fifty joints, for eight bucks, if it’s loose.”
“So let’s get it that way. But let’s go. Fuck, I didn’t split from that place to look out windows. Maybe we can go downtown to a movie.”
“No, no, a flick is risky in the daytime. Truant offiers check ’em out ’cause every kid playin’ hooky goes to a flick.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t think. But there’s something we can do.”
“We’ll go to the pool hall, get that weed. Then sort of play it by ear. You hungry?”
Alex shrugged. “Yeah, sort of. We got used to regular meals in there.”
“I know a good Mexican café where they give up huevos rancheros for sixty-five cents.”
“What’s huevos rancheros?”
“Mexican-style eggs … with chile and refried beans. It’s good.”
“Yeah, it sounds good.”
“Let’s get moving before the breakfast hour is over.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later they slipped out the back way into the alley. High board fences, some sagging, hid them from the adjacent houses and any possibly curious eyes. At the corner they turned onto the sidewalk of a hillside street. The slope was not severe, but the hill overlooked the Los Angeles harbor beginning two miles away and stretching to the distance. The bright morning sunlight turned the calm harbor waters into molten gold. “Man, that’s beautiful,” Alex said.
“Well, let’s go down to Cabrillo Beach when we get that weed and eat.”
“Yeah … good idea,” Alex said, standing another few seconds to look at the panorama, suffused with awe so potent that it ached. The anchored ships were strewn across the water; some still wore the paint of war. Others were drab, long tankers, or bulky cargo ships with booms. One was huge and white, with a giant red cross on its side and across its top. The arc of the shoreline had a conglomeration of structures, the otherworldly silhouettes of an oil refinery next to giant silver oil-storage tanks. Shipyards were there, with drydocks and giant cranes that reminded Alex of prehistoric birds—and in the distance the skyline of Long Beach glinted in the sunlight.
“Let’s go, man,” JoJo said. “Any cop ’round here knows me.”
At the bottom of the hill was the main business street, thick with pedestrians. Alex looked at t
he faces, all of them intent and serious on their own business. He wanted to scream out his happiness at being free and able to see the world. It was a street primarily of the poor, with small markets, a day-old bakery, small men’s shops, and a Goodwill store. The pool hall entrance was down an alley off the boulevard. Of the six tables, two were for snookers, and just one of the six was in use. Four Chicanos dressed much the same as JoJo and Alex were playing. It took a minute for the newcomers’ eyes to adjust to the dimness after the outside brightness.
“Eh, JoJo!” one of the quartet said loudly, stopping the game. “When’d you raise, man?” He shook hands and patted JoJo’s back.
“Hey, Rico, baby. I didn’t raise. I split. Me and this dude here.”
The conversation paused while JoJo introduced Alex to Rico, and the two shook hands. The other three players watched for half a minute and then ignored what was going on. It was a lot of protocol for teenagers, but these youths lived in a harder world than those of the middle class. Alex felt the dark eyes studying him as he shook hands. Rico was slender, fighting acne, his age anywhere from fifteen to eighteen.
“Got any grass?” JoJo asked.
“Quantos?” Rico asked.
“A lid … half a lid. Not joints.”
“Go to the Toledo, man,” Rico said.
“Got change, man, for a twenty?”
“Hey, brother, you gettin’ rich.” Rico turned and spoke Spanish to one of his associates. Then to JoJo: “We got change.”
Alex waited while JoJo went to the men’s room at the rear, followed by Rico and the Chicano he’d spoken to in Spanish. The other two ignored Alex, and he ignored them, meanwhile rolling a billiard ball across the green velvet of an empty table to have something to do.
The trio was gone for one minute. When they came out, Rico came over with JoJo and spoke to Alex. “I got a cousin in Whittier, man. JoJo says he’s a friend of yours. Lulu Cisneros from Temple Street.”
Little Boy Blue Page 25