“Do you wanna get a pop right here, boy? Who in the hell raised you to think that you can just ignore an adult!” When I finished locking my bike, I turned to face the principal and I looked him square in his cold rat eyes.
“The same adult that told me to lock up my bike…unless you wanna tell my daddy why it wuddn’t locked? Now, you wanna talk about the bra, sir?”
“In my office! I’m calling your father.”
I glanced up at my homeroom window. Mrs. Bradford tipped her head compassionately, and Firefly was doing his fat dance and mouthing the words lest you forget.
* * *
I was instructed to sit outside the principal’s office, where his secretary could watch me. As if I might go stealing another bra if left unguarded. Behind the frosted glass I could hear the muffled argument going on inside Totter’s lair. His assistant Claire was pretty and young and seemed uncomfortable with the whole business seeping through the door. She kept staring at me as if she was sizing me up for a special mission that she wasn’t sure if she could tell me about just yet. She even stuck her finger into her ear and swirled it around a few times before pulling it out and looking at it. I thought it strange for her to so unself-consciously do that without taking her eyes off of me. And I wondered if any other girls did things like this. I knew Jane didn’t. But, I guess I wasn’t in the age range of guys that Claire would feel embarrassed in front of. The two of us just stared at each other while the yelling swelled. She then leaned all the way across her desk and held her wrist out—upturned to me.
“Do you think this smells nice?” Claire didn’t even wait for me to answer. “It’s Charlie by Revlon. Vogue says Charles Revson’s got a nephew who’s a Formula One race car driver…” Claire stopped when the din within increased, and I really wished her to stay stopped so I could hear what was being said, unless she added more things about Formula One.
“The next time you approach my boy and threaten him with that goddamn paddle in your hand, I swear to God I’ll come up here and shove it straight up your fuckin’ ass!”
“Paul, I think…”
“So, ya ever heard of Led Zeppelin?” Claire asked me.
I nodded, not wanting to miss the argument.
“Don’t Paul me! Every parent knows about you. You drag me away from work for something as ridiculous as this shit? Oughta fuckin’ be ashamed of yourself, Totter! Is this about that fuckin’ cannon?”
“Well, the renegade efforts of the cavalier men in your family to impress the fairer sex…”
“Fairer sex, Totter? You need ta fuckin’ watch it right now. Her name is Genie, and she’s my wife. It was never gonna be you, ya little turd! And she didn’t marry me because I rolled a goddamn cannon into an intersection! It was high school, another part of your life you musta slept through.”
“Well, I just thought Mickey…”
“You thought!? Just find out next time before you go pointing your goddamn finger at everyone you think has done something wrong! But you have to ask him. Do it calmly, and in private. He’ll answer any questions you’ve got. But you’ve got to go about it in the way that you’d eventually like him to go about it.”
“I think Robert Plant is God,” murmured Claire.
Suddenly the door opened, startling Claire, and Mr. Totter came out behind a fake smile, attempting to glad-hand my dad.
“Well, Claire, balance is restored at our school. You’re safe.” Dad rolled his eyes, as if Claire had been at risk. “It seems Mickey was just helping his mom with some laundry before school, and it must’ve just…gotten stuck. I’m sorry, Mickey, you can go to class now. Paul, always a pleasure.”
“Likewise, Mr. Totter, and don’t hesitate to call me if that boy gives you any trouble.” Dad winked at me, and I headed to class.
My dad didn’t even ask me about the bra until that night. When I told him, he just laughed, but he told me to stay away from The Hole.
“Mickey!” Mr. Totter speed-walked down the hall at me once he checked that my dad was out of sight. At that moment, Andy was arriving late to school and walking toward us. “Uh, you might return this, uh, brassiere to your mother.” Mr. Totter handed me a brown paper lunch bag stapled shut just as Andy walked past, pretending politely to have overheard nothing about a brassiere. “Now, I’ve double-bagged the brassiere, lest you forget, I don’t want to see or hear of that bag being opened until you get home, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then.” Mr. Totter tilted and spun on his heel and sped back to his office.
I opened the door to my homeroom just as Andy was entering his homeroom down the hall. We nodded to each other, acknowledging each other’s existence, and mostly, politely and simply acknowledging that neither one of us cared that we had absolutely nothing in common with each other, from sports to ice cream. As I entered Mrs. Bradford’s homeroom, everyone turned away from the three paintings leaning on the chalkboard and stared at me.
“Everything okay, Mickey?” Mrs. Bradford smiled.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, well, we were just talking about inventions.” She retrieved something from her satchel while I passed the three paintings slowly. All three paintings were small and all were signed at the bottom-right corner: Jane Two. I felt a surge of joy, like seeing old friends.
Firefly was shooting me thumbs-up from the back of the group. As I walked down the aisle to my seat, I noticed that everyone looked at me just a little bit differently.
“A bra?” Emmalyne asked, hushed. I glanced at her, but kept walking to my seat. Others ran with it.
“I heard she had big boobs, too.”
“I heard she was in high school!”
“And he smacked Mr. Totter or somethin’ like that.”
“Cool bike!” whispered Firefly.
“All right, I’d like everyone to write down an idea for an invention and bring it to class tomorrow.” Mrs. Bradford handed one paper to the first desk on the left row, then another to the first desk on the far row. “Here are a couple of examples to look at. It can be absolutely anything.” One of the papers that finally got to me smelled of that sweet spice I loved. I read it and inhaled her, and all the silence in the world came screaming into the room. I remember the example I read was for an antigravity machine that utilized two objects that wielded the same attraction and would thus cancel each other out. I didn’t have to see Two in the corner to know it was Jane’s creation. One of the objects was a cat, citing the fact that no matter how you held a cat and dropped it, it would always land on its feet. The other was a slice of peanut butter toast, which, with ten years of breakfasts to the inventor’s credit, had been proven to always land peanut-butter-side down, if dropped. The inventor Suggested that if the toast were strapped to the back of the cat peanut-butter-side up, then the cat would just hover if dropped—in defiance of gravity—with each side insisting on hitting the ground, when only one could be allowed.
Jane’s parents were Woodstockers who actually numbered their children. Two had become Jane’s middle name by the time I discovered her. Jane Two. And that’s when it dawned on me what I had been overhearing in my neighborhood, “One, Two, Three, Four, Five, let’s go!” It had been Mrs. Bradford calling each of her children to come inside and eat. Jane was a true flower child, and the more I learned about her, the more I fell in love with her. And because she was the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bradford, and she went to a different school across town, I was reasonably confident that I was the only person who understood this secret reference to Jane.
John Lennon once said to me, while my ears were wrapped in headphones, that he thought no one was in his tree. And that’s too bad, because as my Grandaddy used to say, loneliness is an eyesore. But I had definitely found someone in mine. Jane’s nonsense suited my nonsense. To say I was smitten would qualify for the understatement-of-the-year award. Jane was the most perfect person in the history of perfect people or in the history of ever, for that matter. Jane wa
s the answer.
I charged home after school as fast as I could pedal, passing The Plank with its Firebird right where I had seen it that morning. I felt like a superhero. As I flew past, I believed Kevin’s car stereo when it told me that once I made my mind up, neither Superman nor the Green Lantern had anything on me. Kevin was on that Firebird’s roof again, holding court to the other heads and druggies, with Lilyth, his queen, cuddled up right next to him shivering in the cold under a football blanket—my football blanket! She had skipped school again. Kevin shot me a sly grin. I always liked when he did that, but I just kept on pedaling.
I could usually tell pretty accurately what radio station a person would listen to by the type of car they drove and the look of the driver. And because it was usually a searing heat in Texas, and rarely so cold to require a sealed and heated car, almost everyone had their windows rolled down regardless of the time of year. So, if I heard something good, my route home could become somewhat erratic trying to continue the song on the radio of passing cars. At the first intersection after the park, I headed for a Mustang with some high school kids in it backing out of a driveway, swerving around it to Donovan reminding us what happens to a mind when it surrenders to a forever love, and I pedaled away. I rounded The Dancing Mailbox at the corner on Bentliff Street as I blazed down Sandpiper Drive, straight for Jane’s house, cross-referencing which most important thing I should say to her first. When I reached the line of tall bushes that lined the Bradfords’ driveway, I set my bike down behind it, parted the hedge, and poked my head through just enough to see that their garage door was open. It smelled of spilled turpentine, even from where I stood, and Jane’s spice. On a cinder block bundled up in a poufy purple down vest, painting under her headphones, sat Jane. Her voice was soft, filling the air with “Sunshine Superman” and the rewards of giving love time. I’d already heard the song end as I rode past a Camaro, so I knew that she was singing along to my 45…my 45!
I had so many things that I wanted to tell her, and I just didn’t want them to all overlap. I wanted her to hear every one of my thoughts alone, so she could understand, but I also wanted her to have the feeling of them all combined. I had all of my love for her categorized alphabetically and damn near subdivided by category, and I wanted to give it to her in a delicately wrapped box. I straightened my hair, took a deep breath, and stepped through the ficus bushes just as AMERICAN VANLINES obliterated Jane from my line of sight. As the movers backed up the driveway, I heard Mrs. Bradford greeting the driver, so I ducked back behind the bushes and listened to her give the driver directions to a storage facility as the new house was still under construction.
Truck doors slammed and I waited while the movers followed Mrs. Bradford into the house, then I strode around to the garage, where Jane had been just moments earlier. I could still smell her there, but my eyes could no longer find her. I wanted to continue on to the front door and ring that goddamn bell, but my legs stopped working when my window of confidence slammed shut with that orange VW door. The snickering engine propelled the VW Vanagon forward, and I watched it drive off with Jane lightly perched in the front passenger seat.
* * *
As my Schwinn careened around the corner a few houses up from mine, I waved to the Milans, out bundled up in wool Cowboys blankets nested in their lawn chairs drinking beers and holding hands. Even from afar they recognized me, and Mr. Milan hollered, “There’s my soldier!” Then I saw The Plank. Lilyth was getting out and blocked my path as she saw me approaching, so I skidded to a stop beside the Firebird.
“Hey! Listen, Mickey, don’t tell Dad that Kevin gave me a ride home, okay?” Kevin flashed me a grin. “I’ll give you a dollar, ya lil’ brat! Kevin, give me a buck.” Lilyth snatched my brown paper bag hostage to prevent me from tearing off before she could hand me my bribe money. “What’s in yer lunch bag?”
“Give it back, Lilyth!”
She tore open Totter’s staples. “Where the hell did you get this? Kevin, Mic’s got my bra!” I tried to put everything together, and even looked to Kevin for explanation, but he was too high to clue in. “Answer me, y’little retard!”
“From, um…Mr. Totter…he…”
As Lilyth looked to Kevin for support, I took off pedaling for home.
“MICKEY! Damn it, get back here!” Winded, I dragged my Schwinn inside the house and leaned against the front door to catch my breath, trying to process one of life’s little revelations now aggregating in my head.
“Wanna eat somethin’, Sug?” I just stood at the door processing my sister and The Hole. “You fine, darlin’?”
“Yeah, Mom.” I gasped for air as I walked to the fridge to grab the bottle of Gatorade. I gulped green, stopping only to catch my breath. Mom kept on charring fish sticks and stirring grits.
For a long time, I hung on the refrigerator door and chugged.
“Shut that door and use a glass!” I sat down at the kitchen table. I needed to after that. “Lawrence and his mother came by today. Seems you and Lawrence will be on the swim team together. And she and I think it’ll be okay to ride bikes if y’all go together.”
“Who’s Lawrence?”
“Y’all played football together. Big ole thing for a young fella. I think y’all call him Fireball? Or, Fireplug, maybe?”
“He’s actually gonna swim?”
“I s’pose so. And as long as y’all stay together, bikes are okay. But stay together and be careful, that pool ain’t just around the block.”
I hugged my mom and thanked her, and as soon as I got my wits about me, I opened the sliding glass door and thumped out just in time to hear, “One, Three, Five!” So I came right back inside to the kitchen just as Lilyth stormed in, eyes aflame, breathless.
“Mom! I just thought you should know, I’m really concerned, I saw Mickey smoking.”
From the stove, Mom turned to me and took a long drag of her cigarette. I knew she was thinking what to say. For a time she regarded me, standing there dumbfounded by Lilyth’s bold-faced lie constructed to get attention off her bra, in case I had already told on her. I didn’t tell on her and I didn’t smoke. I had never smoked. Smoking fucking disgusted me. It still does. But I didn’t know any words to protect myself outside of that’s not true, so I left the room without saying anything else.
“Mom, I’m telling you!” persisted Lilyth.
Mom called after me, “We ain’t done discussin’ this till your father’s home, Sug.” I went straight to my room—to my Charles Chip can. I lost myself in her, and I didn’t hear another lying word about smoking for quite a while.
* * *
On Saturday morning, I met Firefly by The Ditch about an hour earlier than swim practice and we set out across town. We didn’t really know how long it would take us to ride to the pool, so we gave ourselves a healthy margin. Down the golf cart path lined by huge houses under construction, we gaped at the fancy neighborhood. Eventually, I had to stop and wait for Firefly because he lagged so far behind.
As he caught up, I heard him yelling, “What the hell you stoppin’ for, Mic? You can’t hack it? I mean, if you need to, it’s fine with me! We can stop if you need to. Do you?” Sweating profusely, Firefly coasted to a stop alongside me. “Damn, what is this place?” From under the trees near hole eighteen, we looked out at the landscape, and we both had to sit our asses down, taking it all in. There were huge houses everywhere like giant empires growing out of the verdant sod. Across the groomed green, I saw a giant butter yellow house still under construction that looked like something out of the movies. Firefly rolled on the golf turf that looked just like the fake grass at the Putt-Putt, only it was real. “Jeezus, how they git it like this?”
“It’s like velvet.” I joined Firefly and rolled, too.
“What the fuck’s velvet?” asked Firefly.
“My Mamau has some. It’s really nice. Expensive, too.”
And then out of Firefly’s mouth emerged James’s gold standard. “Man, these houses are fuckin�
� NIGGER-COCK!” I asked Firefly where he had heard that term before and what he thought it meant. He said he had heard some cool black man on my porch say it when he and his mother had dropped by to talk about swim team, and that while his mom was inside, Firefly had sat next to him in a rickety lawn chair and coaxed the meaning out of him. And sure enough, James had told him the same thing that he told me that day that I was getting red-necked by Eddy.
“Nigger-cock, it just a little bit bigga, an a little bit betta’n anything like it. Now hush it, boy’n ya don’t say it front a tha ladies.” I guess, until I heard Firefly say it, I had just never heard it used to describe anything besides ability.
“Hey, that yellow one ain’t got no door yet; let’s go check it out,” said Firefly. We rode our bikes across the exquisite expanse of emerald toward the inviting yellow clapboard structure. “It ain’t got stairs, Mic.” Firefly followed me as I clambered up about five feet of stacked building materials and crawled into a gaping entryway where a new door leaned against the wall. It looked like the workers had just suddenly got up and left. Big black thermoses and lunch boxes remained in the middle of a polished hardwood floor in what seemed like it would become an auditorium. “You think they got giraffes, Mic?” asked Firefly panning up wide-eyed to the ceiling of the living room. It smelled of new wood, Formica, and factory chemicals. “Mic, it’s like inside a fuckin’ whale’s stomach!” The Moby Dick ceiling vaulted to heaven. Trimming the room’s circumference halfway up the walls was a balcony whose dark, lustrous wood matched the crossbeams ribbing the high ceiling. “How the fuck you get up there? Must be stairs, right?” Firefly then grabbed a cedar roof shingle from a neat pile by a closet without doors, set it between two sawhorses, and karate chopped it in half with a loud Bruce Lee wail. “Hey, how many families do you think live in these things?” Firefly bit a shingle splinter from the butt of his hand.
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