KooKooLand

by Gloria Norris

  “I stink,” she moaned.

  “No you don’t,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “It’s just me.”

  Fall Back

  “And what did you do over your summer vacation?”

  Miss Morrissey was smiling at me and I was smiling back, trying to ignore Billy from the Projects who was picking his schnoz with his new pencil and rubbing his boogers on my desk.

  “I went to Old Orchard Beach,” I replied sweetly, knowing better than to include Blood Feast, rat shooting, or the Combat Zone in my answer. “My dad raced me on the beach and taught me how to ride the waves.”

  “He sounds like a very nice father. What does he do for a living?”

  “He does landscaping at the North End,” I chirped. “I help him sometimes. I took care of Hank Piasecny’s lawn. He owns a gun shop. He’s loaded.”

  Miss Morrissey frowned and I knew I’d gotten a bit carried away.

  “Well, I’m glad you got some fresh air. Being outdoors is very important, children. President Kennedy wants us all to be active, healthy Americans.”

  I nodded and smiled without showing any of my Dracula teeth.

  I already knew Miss Morrissey was big on healthy stuff. Virginia had had her for a teacher when she was in fourth grade and had given me the lowdown.

  “Please stand, children,” she ordered us that first morning. Then she started reeling off a list of breakfast foods. “Juice or fruit? Eggs or cereal? Ham, bacon, or sausage? Toast or English muffin? Milk or cottage cheese?”

  You were supposed to have had one from each food group. If you had, you could sit your ass down. If not, you had to remain standing and tell Miss Morrissey where you had screwed up. By the third day of school, everybody had got the hang of it and just sat their ass down even if they’d had a Devil Dog for breakfast. All except for Billy from the Projects.

  “I had coffee and a jelly doughnut,” he told Miss Morrissey every day, even though it sent her into a conniption fit.

  “Just sit down, for cripes’ sake,” I whispered to him on day three.

  “Mind your beeswax,” he shot back, “or I’ll beat you up.”

  “You try any baloney this year,” I hissed, “and my father’ll beat you up.”

  Billy from the Projects suddenly looked like he was quaking in his Buster Browns. Everybody in the projects knew Jimmy had punched a punk that summer and threatened him with his .22. The punk had been carving his initials into the tree in front of our house—one of the only elm trees left in Elmwood Gardens—and Jimmy had to teach him a lesson ’cause the boy had no goddamn respect for the great outdoors.

  Billy from the Projects sat his ass down from then on and pretended he’d had a healthy breakfast.

  But it wasn’t just breakfast Miss Morrissey got on our case about. We were supposed to be in bed by eight thirty and sleep with the window open. And on Mondays she asked if we’d changed our underpants.

  Before the first week was out I’d decided Miss Morrissey was pretty dippy.

  But I didn’t care ’cause at least she liked me. Papou didn’t even have to grease her wheels with a case of Orange Crush. Once she heard from my third-grade teacher that I wasn’t a dummkopf, she wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept me after school to hang her holiday decorations and to listen to her stories about the glorious cruise she took to Cuba before the evil Commies took it over.

  And fourth grade didn’t turn out to be so hard after all. I could usually do my homework in under ten minutes. I’d time myself with Jimmy’s stopwatch and kept a running list of my times.

  One night Shirley watched me breeze through my homework. She said she wished she coulda followed the principal’s advice at the end of the previous year and skipped me a grade. But Jimmy had told the buttinsky principal that when a horse is going good that’s no time to bump him up in class. I might get all shook up and lose my appetite like Victory Bound when he was moved to another track. Hell no, Jimmy had said. He wanted to keep me back with my class.

  “No Caspar Milquetoast pencil-pushing do-gooder is going to tell me how to run my own family,” Jimmy had said to Shirley when they returned from the meeting with the principal. “Who’s the boss around here anyway—me or him?”

  “You are. You’re the boss,” Shirley had replied stiffly.

  “Really? Gee, you don’t sound too convincing.”

  “You’re the boss!” Shirley had repeated, trying to sound more enthusiastic.

  “Wow—what a performance. Give Ava Gardner here an Academy Award.”

  “Jimmy, please, don’t start—”

  “Start what? I’m not starting anything. I’m just trying to get the facts straight. I’m trying to see where I stand in this family. ’Cause you seem to think another man knows better about raising my kid than I do.”

  “You know best, Jimmy. You always know best.”

  “That’s right. Just like the TV show—Father Knows Best. And don’t you forget it.”

  Then he turned to me.

  “See what you did? You’re always causing trouble around here. If it wasn’t for you, things would be smooth sailing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, not sure what I was apologizing for.

  “Now you’ve made me late,” Jimmy barked, and took off for the track.

  “Thank God for the horses,” Shirley groaned as she poured herself a highball. I stuffed my mouth with Chuckles and we snuck on a Red Sox game. Watching forbidden baseball with Shirley had turned me into a fan too.

  But, unfortunately, Jimmy’s luck with the horses turned that fall. Victory Bound ran one more good race and then came up lame. Everybody told Jimmy the horse should be sent to the glue factory, but Jimmy said Victory Bound had so much goddamn heart he might come back. Shirley told me that the horse was eating us out of house and home. She had to work longer hours to try to pay for him. Most of the time she wasn’t even home before I left for school.

  Jimmy worked longer hours too, at the bookie joint. He started making bigger bets, looking to make a killing so he could buy another racehorse. He pictured a whole stable of Victory Bounds running under the Norris banner. Then if one was going bad, the others could help make up for it. He explained it all to me and it made sense.

  In order to make a big killing, Jimmy needed to come up with more dough to bet. Uncle Barney had a bunch of air conditioners and Jimmy thought he could move them, no problem. Virginia and I helped Jimmy carry the heavy boxes up to our bedroom as he barked orders at us to “keep her steady” and “steer to the left” as if each air conditioner were a World War II battleship. He stacked the boxes up to the ceiling.

  But it turned out Jimmy couldn’t move any of those air conditioners. Instead, after a few weeks he decided to take one to a pawnshop. He lured me to go along by saying he’d be stopping at Hank’s old house on the way back. Hank had asked Jimmy to trim a few trees there before the frost set in. Jimmy said Susan might be home visiting from college for the weekend. He told me Susan had been made head of her school newspaper and had a poem that was going to be published in a book. I couldn’t wait to congratulate her. I decided it was the perfect time to give her the snow globe instead of waiting till Christmas.

  On the way to the pawnshop Jimmy seemed down in the dumps. He said he was glad I had come along ’cause he wanted some company. He felt Shirley was abandoning him ’cause she worked so goddamn much. He said Virginia was a dopey teen-rager with her head in the clouds and he was afraid she was turning boy crazy on him. He said I was the only female in the family he could rely on and it was a damn shame I hadn’t been a boy.

  The whole conversation made me down in the dumps too. I was glad when we arrived at our destination, and leapt out of the car so fast Jimmy didn’t even have to tell me to “Hop to it, Dracula.”

  The pawnshop was crammed to the gills with junk. The owner seemed to know Jimmy pretty well.

  “You crazy Greek,” he laughed. “Who the hell’s gonna buy an air conditioner in October?”

&nbs
p; “Smart people. People who don’t wanna get soaked buying one in June, that’s who,” replied Jimmy. “Just take a look at it, you cheap Frog.” He had lugged the sample specimen into the shop and was prying open the box. “It’s brand spanking new, unlike most of the crap you got in this fleabag joint.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya, they won’t sell till summer and I got no place to store ’em.”

  “All right, dummkopf,” Jimmy said with a shrug, closing the box back up. “I got other customers who want these babies. I was doin’ you a favor, givin’ you the first shot.”

  “What I could really use right now is more of those fancy old Christmas ornaments. You got any more of those?” asked the pawnshop owner.

  I froze.

  Jimmy saw my face and offered a quick explanation.

  “I found some ornaments at the North End. Some mucky-muck was throwin’ ’em out.”

  “Why would a mucky-muck be throwing out fancy Christmas ornaments?” I blurted out.

  “How the hell should I know? Rich people got more stuff than they know what to do with, while the rest of us are scraping by.”

  “How come you didn’t keep those North End ornaments for us since ours got stolen?” I fired back, trying to catch him in a big fat lie.

  “Because I found ’em before ours got swiped and we didn’t need any more frickin’ Christmas ornaments. Now let’s go,” he snapped, lifting the air conditioner off the counter.

  “Sorry,” said the pawnshop owner.

  “Yeah, thanks for nothing,” replied Jimmy.

  On the way to Hank’s old house Jimmy tried to butter me up.

  “I bet I know what you’d like. A nice, thick, coffee milk shake.”

  “Oh boy,” I mumbled.

  We headed over to Cremeland, which was a hop, skip, and a jump from the Valley Street jail. As we drove past the jail I wondered if the lard-ass cops were ever gonna nab Jimmy or if, like he always boasted, he was just too goddamn smart for them.

  At Cremeland, Jimmy sent me up to the window to buy a coffee milk shake. As usual, we had to share and he drank most of it. But this time I didn’t care ’cause I had a stomachache. I felt like puking into the milk shake and passing it back to him.

  When we got to Hank’s old house it was dark and empty. Susan was nowhere around. I wondered whether she was ever supposed to be there. I wondered whether Jimmy had concocted the whole thing about her being there just to get me to go along.

  As I watched him trim the trees, swaying on his rickety old ladder, I imagined him falling and breaking his frickin’ neck and me being free at last, free at last.

  When we got home, I helped him lug the air conditioner back up to my bedroom. He shoved it on top of the other air conditioners and then took off for the track. I climbed up on my wobbly bunk bed and lay down. I balanced the snow globe on my forehead and scrunched my eyes closed as tight as I could. I was hoping Susan could feel me thinking about her, or that I could read her mind like the swami I had once seen at a county fair. I was hoping to see what the future had in store for us.

  But nothing came to me. Everything was quiet.

  That’s when I realized something was wrong. There was no sound coming from Squirmy Two’s cage. No creaking of her hamster wheel. No angry chattering. No scratching of her nasty little claws.

  I looked down and saw Squirmy Two lying in her cage. Her tongue was hanging out and any dummkopf could tell she was dead. Immediately I wondered if it was my fault. Had I killed Squirmy Two? Had I neglected to feed her ’cause I was afraid to go near her cage? Had she died of loneliness ’cause I never played with her? Had she died ’cause I wished Jimmy dead?

  She was mean and I didn’t like her, but even so, I started to cry.

  Sufferin’ Succotash

  Hunting season was upon us. But even that didn’t seem to cheer Jimmy up. Hank had invited Jimmy up to his hunting camp near Canada to get away from it all and I was hoping he’d go. It was like a vacation for me when he did. I could watch all my favorite TV shows, the ones Jimmy had banned. Shows like The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, in which the father wore a necktie, or, as Jimmy called it, a noose. But Jimmy had a million reasons that year why he didn’t feel like going to Hank’s camp. It was too goddamn far. The other hunters who were going were a bunch of ding-dongs. And Jimmy always got stuck cooking for the ding-dongs and butchering their deer since he was the best goddamn cook and the best goddamn butcher in the bunch.

  So Jimmy stayed put.

  Then he regretted that he’d stayed put and felt even worse.

  He became convinced he was dying. At first, he thought he had spinal meningitis and had me and Virginia tap on his spine to see if it hurt. When that didn’t pan out, he thought he probably had the Big C. So he dragged me with him to see Dr. C, who had finally gotten his license back. Dr. C told him he was sick all right, sick in the head, and gave him some tranquilizers—black-and-green capsules called Librium—that Jimmy washed down with his highballs. But they didn’t seem to make a lick of difference.

  He tried watching some of his favorite TV shows, The Three Stooges and Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, hoping to cheer himself up. He made me watch with him ’cause he said only wackos laugh alone. Normally, every time Sylvester said “sufferin’ succotash,” we would both crack up. But not this time. Instead, Jimmy just sat there pointing his .22 at Tweety and pretending to blow him away.

  When cartoons didn’t work, Jimmy decided eating some of his favorite foods might make him feel better.

  “Maybe if I had some brains . . . ,” he said to Shirley.

  So Shirley fried up a whole mess o’ crispy brains. YaYa had taught Shirley how to make all of Jimmy’s favorite foods. Glands. Intestines. Spleens. Stuff normal Americans chucked out and, as far as I could tell, only Greeks and movie cannibals like Fuad Ramses ate. Jimmy kidded YaYa that Shirley’s brains made hers look sick, but YaYa didn’t think that was funny. She said Jimmy’s fresh mouth made her sick and that his two brothers beat him by a mile.

  But it didn’t really matter whose brains Jimmy ate. He said the tranquilizers had screwed up his goddamn taste buds and everything just tasted like spit.

  All this time Jimmy was miserable I was dying to sneak back to church. I wanted to say a few Hail Marys to make Jimmy feel better in order to make up for wishing him dead. But I didn’t think I could risk it. In his miserable state, if he caught me going to church, there was no telling what he might do. So instead I coughed up fifty cents for a collection Tina said the church was taking to give Thanksgiving turkeys to poor people. It hurt to give away so much dough, but Tina said God would like me better, so I did it.

  With less money to spend on candy, I was really looking forward to Halloween. Jimmy said I didn’t need a costume that year, I could go as Dracula, and waved his fang fingers in front of his mouth.

  “He doesn’t mean to be mean,” insisted Shirley. And she went out and bought me the prettiest princess costume she could find to make up for it.

  I couldn’t wait to show off that costume at the school Halloween party, but when the day came, Jimmy kept me home to go duck hunting with him. He said I wasn’t gonna be learning anything that day and we’d be back in plenty of time for me to go trick-or-treating. He said trick-or-treating should be enough Halloween festivities for any person for one day.

  Shirley hugged me extra tight before I left. I knew she was worried about me going with him. But she said she couldn’t make a fuss about it ’cause he was sick in the head right now and might go off the deep end if anybody got on his case.

  “We have to act like nothing’s wrong and do what he says and make sure he knows he’s the man of the house. That’s what Dr. C says. OK, honey?” asked Shirley.

  “But what if he wants me to race him across the highway or swim in the freezing ocean or eat a dead duck’s eyeball?”

  “He’s not that crazy,” she assured me, but I could tell from her fake smile she wasn’t that sure.

  “Don’t worry,
” I said, reassuring her instead. “I’ll be OK.”

  I raced Jimmy to the car and lost by a mile and we headed off to kill some ducks.

  We got to the coast in record time and hunkered down in the canoe at Norris Point. That’s what the wardens had dubbed that particular jut of land. They called it that ’cause Jimmy owned the goddamn place. He shot as many ducks as he pleased, screw their kill quotas, and they could never catch him.

  I’m like the Road Runner, Jimmy said. I always get away.

  Meep meep, dummkopfs.

  The wind was howling in my ears. My eyes and nose were dripping frozen tears and snot. I wiped them both on my sleeve when Jimmy wasn’t looking. While we were waiting for some ducks to swoop in, Jimmy had a few highballs and asked me if I thought my mother was cheating on him like no-good Doris had cheated on poor Hank.

  “If you ever see a guy in the house, you have to report it to me. You’re like my deputy. Get it? I’m deputizing you,” he said.

  I nodded, not wanting the job.

  Then I thought, I hope she is cheating. I hope she leaves you for a North End doctor who isn’t sick in the head and who takes me to church. Better yet, I hope she moves to KooKooLand with Doris, Susan, and me and marries Ozzie Nelson after he divorces Harriet.

  “You can’t trust any woman,” Jimmy continued. “They’re all as flighty as these ducks.”

  He began luring the ducks to him with his duck call.

  Quack quack quack.

  “All women are capable of cheating.”

  Quack quack quack.

  “It’s in their genes.”

  Quack quack quack.

  “Even YaYa cheated on Papou when I was a kid.”

  Quack quack quack.

  “Poor Papou never knew. All these years I’ve kept it on a stone wall.”

  I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was true or if he was just wacko. YaYa seemed as scared of Papou as I was. I couldn’t picture her cheating on him.