“Well?”
“I can guarantee one thing, Armstrong,” she says soon as the other half’s gone, “this is not the last Ho Ho that Edwina Gaines will consume.”
She winks at me and smiles. Smiles. Man, this really must be Santa’s food.
Pretty soon it goes around that I’m giving away Ho Hos. A whole lot of kids come running up to me.
“Hey, Armstrong, can I have one?” a fourth-grader asks.
“Sure,” I say.
“Can I?” says a boy with shoes untied.
“If you drink your milk with it.”
“I will.”
He’s so cute. Must be a kindergartner.
More and more little feet come running. More and more Ho Hos go. And then a terrible thing happens.
I have to say no to little kids.
“I’m so sorry, boys and girls,” I say. “But there are only five more Ho Hos in Armstrong’s box. And those I’ve got to save.”
I carry the last five over to Ross’s table and set them down. “Here you go, Ross,” I say. “I am sorry that I stole from your lunch. I hope you will accept my apology and my Ho Hos. And, while you’re in an accepting mood, I hope you don’t mind some advice.”
“What?” he says in a tone that says he does mind.
“Tomorrow when you come to school, bring the two boxes you worked for, plus these five I just gave you, and hand ’em out to those kids over there. After they eat ’em and nobody’s mouth catches fire, your reputation around here will be restored.”
Charlie
When I tell my dad how Armstrong turned our nickels into his Ho Hos, and how he saved both our reputations, Dad says, “I guess you’re even now.”
I guess we are.
· 7 ·
Two Holidays
Charlie
ANDY LOVED HANUKKAH. He loved the smell of melting wax and the light that got brighter with each new candle, each new night. We’d sit on the living room floor and spin dreidels for gold coins that were really chocolate. Sometimes a dollar bill would flutter down from the sky and land in the pot. Mom said it must’ve come from God Himself because we were such good boys. When we were little, we believed her. When we were older, we pretended to.
There’s been no Hanukkah this year. Mom didn’t bring out the menorah, and I didn’t mind. What’s the point of spinning a dreidel alone?
But something tells me we shouldn’t let Andy’s favorite holiday just go by.
I slide open the door to our dish closet, go up on my tippy-toes, and pull down the menorah. It belonged to my great-grandfather, Zayde Moishe, who was a rabbi “in the old country,” as Andy used to say.
I grab a box of colored candles left over from last year. Who knows if we’ve even got enough? Tonight’s the last night and I’ll need eight plus the shammes.
I tip over the box and count. There are nine.
Mom always went a little crazy with the presents. Dad would say, “Let the holiday be about light. And the sweetness of applesauce on latkes. The boys hardly need eight nights of gifts.”
“Trinkets,” Mom said. “That’s all they get. A little something to open each night.”
Hanukkah brought us our Nerf basketball hoop, every board game we ever played, our Hot Wheels, and the walkie-talkies we’d stay up late chatting on. Mom called them trinkets. They were our favorite toys.
Upstairs, I push open the door to Andy’s room. I’m the only one who really comes in these days. Except for Lily once in a while to clean. And Mom once in a while to cry.
I put the menorah on the windowsill, fill it with candles, and strike a match. I’d feel silly saying the prayer out loud by myself, so I say it in my head.
Then I light the candles.
When the last one is lit, I put the shammes in the center holder. I stand back and watch the burst of light in my brother’s window.
“Happy Hanukkah, Andy,” I whisper.
The floor creaks behind me. I turn around, and there’s Mom. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me. And at the menorah.
“It’s the last night,” I say.
Her arms reach around her like she’s cold.
“I didn’t buy you anything.”
“I don’t want anything.”
I look away from her, back at the candles.
“Sit with me till they burn out?”
Mom doesn’t answer.
I don’t move until I hear the mattress frame squeak. Then I turn and sit beside her on the bed.
When Andy and I were little, like maybe four and five, Mom would take us on outings. We’d go downtown to the public library or to the original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax. If there was a crowd, she’d walk between us and hold our hands. When she spotted something she didn’t want us to miss, like a dog in a shopping cart or a tourist in a big Texas hat, she’d tell us in Yiddish to kee-kois. It meant “give a look.”
Or she’d just squeeze our hands twice. One squeeze for each syllable of kee-kois. We’d answer back with a single squeeze to say, We saw, we gave a look.
The light from all nine candles is so bright you can see them double in the window. It looks like two menorahs: eighteen candles. That’s something I want Mom to notice. So I take her hand and squeeze it twice.
She doesn’t squeeze back.
Armstrong
Most times when we go to church, I fall into a deep trance. My eyes stay open, but really I’m asleep. It’s a trick passed down in the Le Rois family, from Daddy to Lenai to Cecily to Charmaine to the twins to me. “You can sleep all you want in church,” Daddy says, “but don’t let Mama catch you with your eyes closed.”
Tonight, though, I’m having a hard time staying asleep. The preacher is talking about gratitude for the gifts we receive all year, not just on Christmas. Gift of life. Gift of family. Gift of friendship. I wonder if my daddy got ahold of his sermon and is preparing us for what’s not going to be under the tree when we get home.
Turns out there are some presents waiting. It’s tradition to unwrap them in order, oldest to youngest, so Daddy goes first. He says what he always says on Christmas Eve, what he’s been saying every year since I came along.
“You already gave me six gifts, Gracie. I don’t know if I can handle one more.”
“You’re not getting another of those,” she says. Then she slides him a big wrapped box. “Open this instead.”
It’s a brand new toolbox, red metal with a solid latch. Two trays for screwdrivers and pliers and drill bits, and under that a big empty space for his hammer and his sander and his drill. No new tools, but a beautiful box just the same.
He kisses her and says, “Your turn, Mama.”
The rule is only one present per person. But for Mama we all break the rule. Daddy bought her a new dress for the one night a month they go out. Lenai gives her coupons for homemade cookies, cakes, and other sweets that will be off-limits to everybody but her. Cecily made a drawing of Mama’s hands. Charmaine made a foot-tall pad of paper, each sheet stamped with DON’T FORGET! She made it in print shop for all the reminder notes Mama leaves Daddy around the house. The twins each made her an earring in metal shop, so she’s got a pair. And I give her something I made out of a stick of wood that Mr. Khalil taught me how to whittle.
“Is this a gift for me or for you?” she teases, holding up the back scratcher.
“Both,” I say.
Now the sisters start in. Lenai opens the latest Isley Brothers album. Cecily unwraps a set of watercolor paints. Charmaine gets a new softball glove. Nika and Ebony get new slippers. They split the colors to make two mismatched pairs.
Finally it’s my turn. Daddy slides a heavy box over to me. I rip through the Santas and the snowflakes and—
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Your new lunch box.”
“Looks like your old toolbox to me.”
“Well … it’ll keep your sandwich safe.”
“Daddy,” I say, “if I bring lunch to school in this thi
ng, people will think I’m the maintenance man.”
“Why don’t you open it and see what’s inside?”
I raise the latch and turn back the lid. The whole thing smells like rusty screws, chocolate, and something I can’t identify because it’s a new scent to my nose. I lift the tray and see a chocolate Santa from See’s Candies. And under that a brand-new shirt, dark green with a light green collar. And the tag still on!
“For when you’re not in the mood for pink,” Daddy says. And we all bust up.
But the best gift of all is the knock at the door. When I invited old Mr. Khalil to join us at church, he said that he lacked the posterior for a night in the pews. “The wood,” he explained, “in prolonged contact with my underside, is like bone on bone, Armstrong. If it were a wedding or a funeral, I could make it through. But if I sit for a Christmas Mass, I may never get up.”
“How about afterward you come by our house for dinner? We’ve got plenty of cush on the couch.”
“I couldn’t leave Patches.”
“He’s welcome too, Mr. Khalil. It’s Christmas.”
Well, guess who just showed up with a bag of books for us all. Our very own Santa Claus. He even brought his dog.
That preacher was right. We’ve got a lot to be grateful for right here.
· 8 ·
Shadow Words
Armstrong
IN THE MIDDLE OF JANUARY it starts to rain. Not the dibble-dibble-dop kind you can run around in. This is a crack-open-the-sky rain, with wind that flips umbrellas inside out and puddles so deep your socks never dry. It rains so much we’re stuck inside for a whole week. Mrs. Valentine’s class is playing word games, holding story contests, and learning how to square-dance. There’s laughter and noise and a whole lot of bumping up against our shared wall. It’s like the kids next door have a stash of sunshine all their own.
Meantime, our class stays in the dark. Mr. Mitchell puts on filmstrips and reads his Los Angeles Times by flashlight while we’re in a coma of atomic energy, oil refineries, and the colonial era in American history. When the lights come on, we get to do math exercises, spelling drills, and grammar work sheets. By the fourth day our heads are dripping with decimals and prepositional phrases, like those gutters are dripping with rain.
On day five, when the classroom feels like the hospital where my mama works, Mr. Mitchell brings out the record player.
“Today you’re going to meet a great American songwriter,” he says.
“Jim Morrison,” somebody shouts.
“Joni Mitchell,” says somebody else.
“Cat Stevens?” Shelley wonders.
“Stevie Wonder!” I say.
Mr. Mitchell wags his head at every guess.
He holds up an album cover, and I can see a white man with a straight nose and dark eyes and a banjo in his hand. “Stephen Foster,” Mr. Mitchell says.
A stack of song sheets gets passed around the room, one for every table. Mr. Mitchell slides the record out of its sleeve and eases it onto the turntable. The disc starts to spin. The needle comes down and rides over scratches and dust. This must be a really old record.
Music fills the room. And I see Charlie Ross’s face change like the tune brought him a memory.
Charlie
The voice on the record, like the words on the song sheets, sings:
Camptown ladies sing this song,
Doo-dah! Doo-dah!
Camptown racetrack’s five miles long,
Oh, doo-dah day!
But in my head I’m singing the words me and Andy made up to this same tune:
Mammoth Mountain, here we come,
Doo-dah! Doo-dah!
Mammoth Mountain, here we come,
Oh, doo-dah day!
We’re in the way way back of the station wagon, loaded up with winter clothes, snacks, board games, ski and after-ski boots, Andy, and me. My hand is pressed to the car window, the temperature dropping with each curve. Out that same window I see the shadows of four sets of skis pointing their tips up Highway 395, reaching for the mountain ahead. And just past those shadows, brightening the side of the road, is a bank of stark white snow. We’re going skiing. All the doo-dah week long.
Dad always let us explore the mountain on our own. “As long as you ski on the buddy system,” he said.
We liked the back of the mountain, over on chair 9. It was the longest ride and had the shortest lines. Each chair had a safety bar you could pull down, with a footrest for your skis.
On sunny days we’d kick back and work on our tans.
On snowy days we’d bundle up. Andy was the Masked Marvel in his facemask, goggles, and scarf. The harder it snowed, the louder he sang “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.
Once I skied ricochet way too fast, caught an edge, and flipped over. I landed with my arms stuck in two feet of snow up to my shoulders.
I started to panic. Andy was there in a flash.
“Charlie,” he said, “you okay?”
He lifted me out of the snow, cleaned my goggles with his lens cleaning paper, and helped me back into my skis.
“That’s a little fast for this run,” he said. “You should try it again when the light’s better, and maybe take it slow next time.”
The record crackles to the next song, and a woman’s voice sings:
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home.
’Tis summer, the darkies are gay,
The corn top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day.
It’s one song sheet per table, so Armstrong and I share. During “Camptown Races” he was singing along, tapping the floor with his left foot and joining in.
He’s not singing along now.
The time has come when the darkies have to part,
Then my old Kentucky home, good night!
The record spins. Two tables over, Shelley Berman is mouthing the words but not singing them. Then her mouth closes. Otis is slumped in his chair. Alex Levinson isn’t singing. Armstrong’s still not. And now neither am I.
Mr. Mitchell is walking around the room, adding his deep voice to the song.
The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darkey may go.
A few more days and the trouble all will end,
In the field where the sugar-canes may grow.
Mr. Mitchell stops behind our table and rests his hand on Armstrong’s shoulder.
“How come you’re not singing?”
Armstrong shrugs. Mr. Mitchell steps to his desk and lifts the needle off the record. The room is silent except for the rain.
“Stephen Foster is a great American songwriter. He’s part of our culture.”
“He ain’t a part of mine.”
Mr. Mitchell comes back to our table.
“It’s that word, isn’t it?” he says, pointing to “darkies” on the song sheet. “He doesn’t mean it in a bad way. Language is constantly changing, boys and girls. When Stephen Foster wrote ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ the word darkies just meant black people. His lyrics actually gave them a new dignity they hadn’t had before in song.”
I glance at Armstrong. The look on his face is more like shame.
“If you don’t feel like singing, Armstrong, you can just listen.”
“Can I leave?”
“Excuse me?”
“Can I leave the class?”
Mr. Mitchell laughs. “Where would you go?”
“Outside in the hall. Until the song ends.”
“And be unsupervised?”
“I’ll just stand there. When it’s over, I’ll come back in.”
Mr. Mitchell stares at Armstrong. Armstrong stares back. Then Mr. Mitchell sweeps his hand toward the door.
He puts the needle back down. The song starts over. He turns the volume way up.
Armstrong
…
Charlie
By lunchtime kids are splashing around in puddles and w
arming up in the sun. The yard is still wet, but I check out a sockball and declare myself captain of one team. Jason says he’ll be captain of the other. He gets first pick and chooses Armstrong. I get next two and take Otis and Leslie—Otis because I want to win and Leslie because I want her to know she’s my first pick. As the rest of the players get chosen, I notice Armstrong off to the side, bouncing the ball in a steady rhythm, his hand in a hammer fist.
Our team wins rock-paper-scissors, so we’re up first. Otis comes to the plate and socks the ball through an opening between Armstrong and Alex. Jason runs it down, but by the time he throws it in from the outfield, Otis is standing calmly on second base.
Being captain gives me a chance to do what I’ve been waiting all year to do: whisper something, anything, into Leslie’s ear. So when it’s her turn to be up, I tap her shoulder, lean close to her shiny black hair, and bring my lips within kissing—I mean, whispering—range.
“Bunt,” I breathe.
She lifts her eyes toward mine and nods. It feels like a yes to a boy on one knee.
I don’t know how, but Armstrong must’ve overheard. Because when Leslie lifts the ball with her left hand, Armstrong creeps forward from third base. And when she gives the ball a tiny tap, he’s already racing toward it.
“Go, Leslie!” we shout from our bench. She runs like a gazelle, her feet slapping the wet ground. In sockball there are two ways you can get out: either the baseman catches a throw from the field before you step on the base, like in baseball; or you get hit by the ball, like in dodgeball.
Leslie is halfway to first when Armstrong fires. Not at the baseman.
Leslie limps home to our silent bench.
But her sacrifice brought Otis to third and me to the plate. I size up the outfield, see Shelley daydreaming in right, and—
BLAM! I smack that rubber ball so high that astronomers are about to discover a new planet.
Otis skips home while I round second. Jason covers for Shelley, fielding the ball after it bounces off the back fence. He throws it in to Armstrong just as I’m rounding third.
“Charlie, look out!” Leslie screams. The ball hurtles toward me at a speed faster than a meteor—the speed of Armstrong’s right arm.
So I freeze. My untucked Wilson tennis shirt flaps in the wind as the ball whizzes by in a near miss. I skip the rest of the way home.
Armstrong and Charlie Page 7