Notes on a Banana

by David Leite

  I began crying. “Someone’s in my room.”

  He jumped up and started for the kitchen, where he had a baseball bat behind the door. As I explained I’d heard breathing, he stopped and looked at my mother.

  “C’mere, sweetheart.” She gathered me into her lap on her Harvest Gold La-Z-Boy. “It’s a new house,” she said softly. “You’re just not used to the sounds, that’s all.”

  I leaned back and searched her face. She was a practical joker. Maybe she’d put something in the room, like a tape recording of her breathing. She liked to do things like that, same as Vu Costa did, to have that gotcha moment—later apologizing through squeaks of laughter. But there were only smiles.

  My father put out his hand for me to take it. “Let’s go check together, Son.” Back in my room, we sat on the bed. I put my head in his lap, listening.

  After several minutes: “See? Nothing.” He lifted the covers, and I crawled in, unconvinced.

  “Dad banse.”

  “God bless you, Son.”

  “Don’t close the door!”

  “I won’t.”

  In the dark, it was just me and Jesus, with his big heart flickering on top of my bureau. When the breathing started again, I put my fingers in my ears and prayed to him something fierce, lips moving nonstop until I fell asleep.

  I’m not sure how long after, or how many times, but I heard it again. In my room, the bathroom, the hallway. While I was taking my bath, I’d slide under the water to blot it out. New-house sounds, I kept repeating, new-house sounds. It could be the furnace or the radiators, my father had told me. At night I crept down to the laundry, which is below my room, and waited. The furnace roared to life, but it wasn’t the same sound. There was pinging and gurgling, but no breathing.

  Years later, I jabbed a tack through these experiences and pinned them to the middle of some bulletin board in my head, pointing to them as the beginning of unusual behaviors. My Ground Zero of Lunacy. But I was wrong. The timeline of strange behaviors stretched back even earlier—to three or four, maybe. The way my mother and godmother described it, the clock on Captain Kangaroo, with its ogling eyes and chomping mouth, always sent me toddling into their thighs, screaming, “Cloxsh! Cloxsh!” I was inconsolable. Once, they said, a distant relation whom I didn’t recognize visited Vu and Vo on Brownell Street, and I was so spooked, I clawed up my father to burrow in his arms. When the man didn’t leave, I let loose a shrill blast so unremitting, he slunk out the door backward, apologizing. Later, when I was five or six, angry traffic jams, especially on days so blindingly hot the chrome around the windows left welts on my arms, had me cowering in the footwell behind my father as he drove, pleading for him to get us home. He’s a sensitive kid, I heard often. He’ll grow out of it, they all told each other. Give him time.

  Yes, time is all I need, I told myself. Time.

  7

  TREAD LIGHTLY, MR. GOODE

  Mr. Goode, our neighbor down the street, was sprawled, legs apart, on a low lawn chair in his backyard. He kept glancing at the screen door of the kitchen, where Mrs. Goode was making dinner, and then back at me. Dommie Goode and I were playing yard darts or something. Mr. Goode didn’t think much of his son; you could see that. Dommie was small for his age. We were both about ten, but I was at least a head taller. Whenever any of us kids played in their yard, which we all hated, Mr. Goode would call Dommie an “idiot,” or “stupid,” or “pathetic.” Dommie would mutter, “Sorry,” and try to catch better or throw harder or run without falling.

  “Don’t listen to your father, Dommie,” Mrs. Goode would shout from the window. Mrs. Goode never came out of the house. “You’re doing just fine.”

  Mr. Goode was fiddling with the handle of a broken Wiffle bat; the other part had been flung into the weeds, forgotten. When Dommie wasn’t looking, he held the bat handle at his crotch and waggled it at me and smiled, jerking his head toward the slanted metal bulkhead that led into the basement.

  My face burned, and I ran to the other side of the yard. At the same time, something inside wanted me to glance back, to see if he was looking. I liked the attention. Every time I did look over, he’d waggle the bat and nudge his chin toward the basement door. How a ten-year-old knows things like this is beyond me now, but back then I knew exactly what he wanted. I was terrified and disgusted. But I was also curious, intrigued.

  “Dommie, time for dinner. Say goodbye.”

  “Bye,” I said to Dommie as he skulked up the porch stairs, and I began walking home. When I passed Mr. Goode, he grabbed my arm and pulled me close to his mouth. His lips were on my ear. “It’s eight inches,” he whispered. Another waggle. I froze. He took my hesitation as consent and led me by the hand behind the house, away from the kitchen window. “I have a present for you, Dave,” he added. “Come on, come to the basement.” I waffled. “Please? You’ll like it. I promise.” I drew closer.

  He lifted one of the metal doors, and I followed him down and into a dark corner of the mildewy cellar. My heart was pounding and I almost ran, but he seemed to know something about me, and I wanted to know what that was.

  “I’ll be right back.” He took the stairs two at a time, and I heard him tell Mrs. Goode he had to get something in the basement. When he came back, I felt a heavy sense of disappointment. He had nothing for me.

  Then he fished himself out of his pants, and I couldn’t look away. I had to see. I felt no shame at that moment, just electric curiosity. His was different from mine. It was hard and purple and big, but one thing was for sure: It was nowhere near the size of the handle of that baseball bat.

  “Do you want to touch it?”

  “No!” I clutched. But I did, so much. I remembered Paneen and the smoke curls of hair coming out of his jeans. Mr. Goode had the same thing, and I finally understood where those curls started, and what they were lapping at.

  “Well, look what I’ve got!” His voice was warm brandy. He pulled a magazine out from the back of his pants and flipped it open. Inside were naked boys and girls, not much older than me, playing shuffleboard. Suddenly I felt as if I’d been slapped in the back of my head by my mother. This is wrong. This is very wrong.

  “G’head,” he pleaded. “Touch it.”

  Somehow I understood that even though he was much bigger and older than me, I was in control. He wanted something from me. He needed me. And I knew that he would never hurt me because of the trouble I could get him into.

  “I really want to touch it, Mr. Goode,” I said with the Art of the Straight Face. “I just have to see if my father’s van is in the driveway, because if it is I have to go and have dinner.”

  “Hurry, go check.”

  At the top of the stairs, I turned around. He was covering himself with the magazine, his pants ringing his ankles. He looked in pain, almost like he was ready to cry. “I’ll be right back, I promise.” Once I cleared the corner of the house, I ran home as fast as I could. My father wasn’t there yet, but that wasn’t why I bolted. I ran because I wanted to stay.

  I went back to their house only one more time. Mr. Goode had a friend over, and they were sitting at the kitchen table. Between them was a forest of empty beer bottles.

  “He’s out with Mrs. Goode,” he said when I asked after Dommie. “Do you want to wait and come watch TV with us in the bedroom?” The other man smiled at me, but his red eyes seemed to focus on the cabinets behind me.

  “Mr. Goode, my father wants me to tell you that you better tread lightly,” I lied to him. Tread lightly was a phrase my mother used, and it always made people back off. It was as if a window shade had juddered up in front of his face. His eyes grew wide, and his smirk melted. He stood up and walked to the door.

  “Get out,” he said, holding the door open for me.

  “When is . . .”

  “GET OUT!”

  When I reached the door, I turned around to see the other man standing and unsteadily stuffing his cigarettes and matches in his pocket. He stumbled out the front door and
skidded out of the driveway in his car, shooting gravel and dirt everywhere, before I even reached the street.

  I never told my parents. How could I? I was titillated and intrigued. I wanted to see everything, to touch everything. Plus, I was hounded by guilt. I knew that what I did was wrong, a sin I was supposed to confess to Father Fraga, who would know exactly who I was even though the confessional was supposed to be anonymous. No, I couldn’t admit this to him or anyone. Ever. If I’d told my father, he would have killed Mr. Goode right there. Smashed his skull with the baseball bat he kept behind the kitchen door.

  8

  I’M MELTING

  Tongues of fire lick up the woman’s skirt, insistent and vulgar. In no time the flames jump to her blouse and devour the filigree ringing her neckline, engulfing her face in a great and sudden whoosh. Her skin cracks and blisters. I watch, immobile, as burnt patches slough off, falling from her jaw, melted. I search for a way out, but I’m blocked. An intense heat suddenly combusts in the middle of my chest and spreads to my face, arms, and legs. As my heart hammers, I begin seeing pulsing white spots in the dark, keeping time. A metallic taste corkscrews its way up my esophagus and explodes in my mouth. I have to get out of here. I’m panting for air. Looking over again, I watch the woman’s cheekbones, minutes before so lovely and round, collapse into themselves. She’s swallowed up now. Just then, her eyes loll out of their sockets. Her head, blackened, falls onto her chest.

  Tripping over bodies, I run.

  “Where are you going?” Brian Davis whispered as I pushed past him and his brother, Jeff.

  Think fast. Think calm. “The bathroom.”

  Brian, who was also in sixth grade, had invited me that week to go to the movies on Saturday. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. That is, before I realized it was a horror flick—projected in resplendent 3-D.

  I heaved open the doors. The afternoon light slammed into my eyes. The lobby smelled of popcorn and rancid butter. Behind the counter a pimply-faced teenager hunched over a book. She looked up, indifferent by my sudden and frantic appearance in the middle of the movie.

  I blinked at her as she waited for me to say something. “Pay phone?”

  She pointed to the stairs. I turned and faced the promotional poster. “House of Wax” dripped across the bottom in big red and orange letters. “3-D” was even larger at the top. I ripped the cardboard glasses from my face and stuffed them into my pocket.

  “Ma?” I said into the pay phone.

  “What’s the matter?” It was her panicky voice. “Why aren’t you in the movie?”

  “Uh, nothing,” I stumbled. “I . . . just, wanted to say hi.”

  “Well, hi. Now get back in the movie.” And she hung up.

  To stall for time, I scanned the candy counter with a deep seriousness, the same kind of look I’ve seen hanging on my father’s face when he buys a car or tries to talk cemetery plots with my mother. I look weird. I know I look weird. She can tell I look weird. Rows of shiny boxes of Raisinets, Milk Duds, Snow Caps, and Red Hots. Any other day and I could’ve knocked back one, maybe two, easy. I couldn’t have been less hungry. Instead I ordered an orange soda and sipped it slowly. I felt conspicuous, exposed.

  Small talk. “How long have you worked here?” I asked, or something like that, but didn’t hear the answer. Although I was looking at the girl, nodding at the right places to mimic conversation, the movie looped, flickering somewhere in the space between us: bodies burning, eyes falling out, skin sluicing, and the heat reignited in my chest. What is that? I dug the heel of my hand in hard and rubbed, as if it were indigestion. No relief. Is this a heart attack? Can kids have heart attacks? Then catapulted again, this time through the front doors. Pacing in tight tormented circles on the sidewalk, trying to calm myself, did nothing.

  Five minutes. Eight minutes. Ten minutes. Any longer and I risked being mercilessly teased, so I headed back inside. Slipping on the paper glasses, I slouched down in my seat and closed my eyes for the rest of the movie, but the images didn’t stop.

  As the show let out, Mrs. Davis was sitting out front in her idling car. When she saw us, she leaned over the seat and popped open the back passenger door.

  “Hurry up before I get a ticket.”

  I let Brian and Jeff pile in first. I needed to be near the door; it felt safe. As we headed down Pleasant Street, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being outside of myself, floating. Time pulled and stretched but never budged. The movements of the others slowed to blurred smudges. My eyelids closed and opened over what felt like minutes. Sound folded in on itself, muffled.

  “. . . Dave? . . . Dave?” someone called. It was Mrs. Davis; at least I think it was. My head seemed to take hours to crane up to look into the rearview mirror. She was looking back at me. What is she saying? I shook my head, and the world righted itself for a moment. “Did you like the movie?”

  I nodded.

  At the mention of the movie, my guts turned into snakes, knotting themselves just below my rib cage. If I could have plunged my fist into my belly, like those psychic surgeons I’d heard about in Mexico, and ripped them out, I would have. Anything to stop it. I was terrified that if I didn’t clench, I would shit and piss myself right there in the backseat. Outside the window, people, buildings, cars whizzed by in soft focus, bleeding, melting. Melting. I saw the faces again. The snakes lurched. I grabbed the door handle. What? And fling yourself into the street? I didn’t want out of the car; I wanted out of me. To squeeze through my pores and no longer inhabit skin.

  Mrs. Davis sailed up Sharps Lot Road and looped into our horseshoe driveway. “See ya Monday,” I said, trying to act as normal as I could, but it sounded like an actor reading a line.

  “How was the movie?” my mother asked.

  “Fine.” I walked through the kitchen, without my usual lifting of pot lids to see what was for dinner. I didn’t want her to see me, because she’d be able to tell something was wrong.

  “Just ‘fine’?”

  “Yeah,” I said, continuing down the hall.

  “Come back here, mister.” I took a deep breath and turned around.

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?” She squinted, looking for clues.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “YES!”

  “Well, if you’re so okay, why did you call me from the movies?”

  “I told you, I just wanted to say hi.” She didn’t believe me.

  At dinner I pushed my food around my plate. My parents talked, but they sounded a million miles away as I scanned my body for any of those electrical shorts still sparking inside. What was that, anyway? Some kind of reaction? But to what? When they were done eating, my mother looked at my still-full plate. She grabbed it, whacked it against the trash bin so the food would slide off, and then plunged it into the sink full of water, saying nothing.

  Afterward, I lay on the floor in front of the TV. Rusty, a stray dog we had adopted, always seemed to sense when I was in pain. He licked my face, then grunted himself down along my back. He felt good and safe and sure. Edith Bunker flickered on the screen. People laughed; I didn’t see why. Next was Sandy Duncan. Nothing. By the time Mary Tyler Moore aired, something had begun ebbing, pulling with it those crazy detonations and that frightening sense of disconnection, and I grew sleepy. I will be okay. I will be okay. When I started awake, my parents were dead away in their La-Z-Boys, and my insides were under siege again. “It,” whatever it was, was happening again, and a scream rocketed up from somewhere behind my belly button.

  “Ma!”

  She shot up, cross-eyed and half-conscious. “What’s . . . what’s . . . the matter?”

  “I don’t know. Something’s happening to me.”

  “Are you hurt? What’s the matter? WHAT’S THE MATTER?!” Her voice grew shrill with panic, which only scared me more and woke my father.

  I explained how there was this explosion of heat in my chest, how I’d had to run out of the the
ater, that I never saw the rest of the movie, even though I told Brian I did, and that it was happening again, now, here, on the floor, right this very minute.

  “Do you need to go to the emergency room?” She patted my body, as if she could find the source of my pain.

  “I don’t know.” I looked at my father. “Maybe?”

  “Elvira . . . ,” he said, trying to defuse the situation.

  “It could be a heart attack, you don’t know, Manny.”

  I knew it. I knew I was having a heart attack.

  “Son, come on, let’s go to bed,” my father said, leading me to my room. “I promise you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  I suddenly ached for the glow of my Jesus candle, but I was eleven, and I’d nixed it years before. “Ma, can you put a night-light in here?”

  “Of course, sweetheart.” She waved my father to get the one from the kitchen. She sat on the bed and rubbed my chest. “Does it hurt now?” I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t pain I was feeling. It was something far worse.

  As they were about to leave, I asked my father to sleep with me. He looked at my mother. I could tell he was evaluating the seriousness of the situation. “Please, Daddy, I’m scared.”

  “Okay, Son.”

  Only sleep didn’t come. I lay there watching my father’s chest rise and fall. When I felt the fear ratcheting up, I placed my hand on his rib cage and tried to breathe like him. He looked so peaceful, so at rest, I thought I could feel that way, too, if I could only mimic him. The next night was the same, and the one after that.

  Dave’s afraid of a movie,” Brian Davis said at our lunch table at school, his voice worming into my fear.

  “I am not!”

  “Yes, you are. Your mother called my mother and told her.” That was it. At the mention of mothers, taunts rippled around the table. The kids on the far end stood up and leaned in, trying to get in on the action. They wagged their heads at me, making baby talk and pretending to cry. I grabbed my plate, a hard plastic thing covered in institutional-smelling food, and chucked it as hard as I could. It missed everyone and went scudding across the cafeteria floor. I picked up my tray and was about to whale on someone when Mr. Souza, who had been my fourth-grade teacher, grabbed me under my arms and yanked me out of the folding metal table. I struggled against him, kicking the table and anyone I could reach. The room fell quiet.